ISOLDE'S SERVING-WOMAN
The daughter of debate,
That discord aye doth sowe.
Verses by Queen Elizabeth in Percy's Reliques.
It is an inquiring age. We investigate the domestic habits of the poet or the sandpiper with equal zest. We analyze dress and intellectual states with the keenest delight. Upon all things we speculate, ponder, ring the changes of scrutinizing comment. Thus it chanced upon a day that certain learned Thebans, sitting in the solemn conclave of educational chop-houses, fell upon disputatious views of the profound character of Brangäne in Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde," and there were diverse theories.
Strange it seems to the calm and unprejudiced observer that there should be difference of opinion as to the character of Brangäne. To be sure, the weary mind of the hardened critic never hopes to receive highly intelligent views on such questions from casual or even habitual opera-goers.
When this writer presumed to object to the richness of Edyth Walker's costume as Brangäne, he was told that the woman was of noble birth and that she was not Isolde's maid, but her companion. Also he was told that Miss Walker's costume was approved in Vienna, which concerned him not a jot, seeing that the authority for the interpretation of Brangäne does not rest in Vienna, but in the poem of Wagner.
Louise Homer's conception of Brangäne was deplored by some of the learned Thebans in that it was not heroic. Where are Brangäne's heroics in the drama? Marie Brema, who soared through the New World with a contralto voice and a soprano ambition, always acted Brangäne as if she were a sister of Isolde. She conceived the pleading of the tirewoman in the spirit of the third act of "Die Walküre." But there was no Wotan to kiss the godhood or the scales from her eyes.
Marianne Brandt of blessed memory smote the harp with no uncertain hand. She knew the meaning of Brangäne in those now far-off days when Lili Lehmann was Isolde, Albert Niemann Tristan, Robinson Kurvenal, and Fischer King Mark. "And there were giants in those days." But it is not a question of personal authority. It is a question of direct examination of the poem, of the significance of the drama.
In these days no one studies a Wagnerian play solely at first hand. Is Kundry to be explained? Then search the Scriptures. Read all the old poems, delve among the legends, turn up the sods of centuries. Is Parsifal to be analyzed? Plunge into the Oriental forests and emerge with your Aryan expulsion and return formula; co-ordinate your poetic axes; parallel column your Siegfried, your Ulysses, and your guileless fool. Heaven be thanked, Brangäne is not a mighty heroine of antique fable. She is but a parhelion which dwells near the sun. We may dispose of her with little effort.