From a photograph by Hanfstaengl.     Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson

RICHARD WAGNER

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IF RICHARD WAGNER CAME BACK

BY HENRY T. FINCK

Author of “Wagner and His Works,” “Chopin,” “Success in Music,” etc.

THE outcome of the first Bayreuth Festival, in 1876, was a deficit of $37,500. There was need of thirteen hundred subscriptions to cover the expenses, but barely one half that number had been secured, thanks to the hostility of the German press, which for years in advance had systematically decried the project as a humbug, and at the last moment actually got up a fake smallpox scare in order to frustrate the festival. Wagner was only sixty-three years old at that time, and therefore quite too young to be appreciated in a country where it seems to be held that the only real genius is a dead genius. A series of concerts given in London in the hope of covering the deficit referred to resulted in further losses. The plan of repeating the Nibelung performances in Bayreuth every year or two consequently vanished like a rainbow, and it was not till Wagner was ready with his swan-song, “Parsifal,” in 1882, that he found it possible again to invite the world to that Bavarian town. This time there was actually a surplus of $1500. Wagner was beginning to be appreciated! Six months later he died.

If he came back to-day, thirty years after, what would he find? If he glanced at the newspapers and the musical periodicals, he would note, perhaps not without some surprise, that no trace is left of the virulent opposition to his music-dramas which had thwarted his plans and made life a burden to him. He would see himself ranked with the classics, the musical world no longer divided into Wagnerites and anti-Wagnerites, and most of those who do not personally care for his music yet willing to pay him the tribute of respect which they give to Bach and Beethoven.