When the Bayreuth Festival Playhouse was at last completed, and opened
in 1876 with the first performance of The Ring, European society was
compelled to admit that Wagner was "a success." Royal personages,
detesting his music, sat out the performances in the row of boxes set
apart for princes. They all complimented him on the astonishing "push"
with which, in the teeth of all obstacles, he had turned a fabulous and
visionary project into a concrete commercial reality, patronized by
the public at a pound a head. It is as well to know that these
congratulations had no other effect upon Wagner than to open his eyes
to the fact that the Bayreuth experiment, as an attempt to evade the
ordinary social and commercial conditions of theatrical enterprise,
was a failure. His own account of it contrasts the reality with his
intentions in a vein which would be bitter if it were not so humorous.
The precautions taken to keep the seats out of the hands of the
frivolous public and in the hands of earnest disciples, banded together
in little Wagner Societies throughout Europe, had ended in their
forestalling by ticket speculators and their sale to just the sort of
idle globe-trotting tourists against whom the temple was to have been
strictly closed. The money, supposed to be contributed by the faithful,
was begged by energetic subscription-hunting ladies from people who must
have had the most grotesque misconceptions of the composer's aims--among
others, the Khedive of Egypt and the Sultan of Turkey!
The only change that has occurred since then is that subscriptions are
no longer needed; for the Festival Playhouse apparently pays its own way
now, and is commercially on the same footing as any other theatre. The
only qualification required from the visitor is money. A Londoner spends
twenty pounds on a visit: a native Bayreuther spends one pound. In
either case "the Folk," on whose behalf Wagner turned out in 1849,
are effectually excluded; and the Festival Playhouse must therefore be
classed as infinitely less Wagnerian in its character than Hampton Court
Palace. Nobody knew this better than Wagner; and nothing can be further
off the mark than to chatter about Bayreuth as if it had succeeded in
escaping from the conditions of our modern civilization any more than
the Grand Opera in Paris or London.
Within these conditions, however, it effected a new departure in that
excellent German institution, the summer theatre. Unlike our opera
houses, which are constructed so that the audience may present a
splendid pageant to the delighted manager, it is designed to secure
an uninterrupted view of the stage, and an undisturbed hearing of the
music, to the audience. The dramatic purpose of the performances is
taken with entire and elaborate seriousness as the sole purpose of
them; and the management is jealous for the reputation of Wagner. The
commercial success which has followed this policy shows that the public
wants summer theatres of the highest class. There is no reason why the
experiment should not be tried in England. If our enthusiasm for Handel
can support Handel Festivals, laughably dull, stupid and anti-Handelian
as these choral monstrosities are, as well as annual provincial
festivals on the same model, there is no likelihood of a Wagner Festival
failing. Suppose, for instance, a Wagner theatre were built at Hampton
Court or on Richmond Hill, not to say Margate pier, so that we could
have a delightful summer evening holiday, Bayreuth fashion, passing the
hours between the acts in the park or on the river before sunset, is
it seriously contended that there would be any lack of visitors? If a
little of the money that is wasted on grand stands, Eiffel towers, and
dismal Halls by the Sea, all as much tied to brief annual seasons as
Bayreuth, were applied in this way, the profit would be far more certain
and the social utility prodigiously greater. Any English enthusiasm for
Bayreuth that does not take the form of clamor for a Festival Playhouse
in England may be set aside as mere pilgrimage mania.
Those who go to Bayreuth never repent it, although the performances
there are often far from delectable. The singing is sometimes tolerable,
and sometimes abominable. Some of the singers are mere animated beer
casks, too lazy and conceited to practise the self-control and physical
training that is expected as a matter of course from an acrobat, a
jockey or a pugilist. The women's dresses are prudish and absurd. It
is true that Kundry no longer wears an early Victorian ball dress with
"ruchings," and that Fresh has been provided with a quaintly modish copy
of the flowered gown of Spring in Botticelli's famous picture; but the
mailclad Brynhild still climbs the mountains with her legs carefully
hidden in a long white skirt, and looks so exactly like Mrs. Leo Hunter
as Minerva that it is quite impossible to feel a ray of illusion whilst
looking at her. The ideal of womanly beauty aimed at reminds Englishmen
of the barmaids of the seventies, when the craze for golden hair was
at its worst. Further, whilst Wagner's stage directions are sometimes
disregarded as unintelligently as at Covent Garden, an intolerably
old-fashioned tradition of half rhetorical, half historical-pictorial
attitude and gesture prevails. The most striking moments of the drama
are conceived as tableaux vivants with posed models, instead of as
passages of action, motion and life.
I need hardly add that the supernatural powers of control attributed
by credulous pilgrims to Madame Wagner do not exist. Prima donnas and
tenors are as unmanageable at Bayreuth as anywhere else. Casts are
capriciously changed; stage business is insufficiently rehearsed; the
public are compelled to listen to a Brynhild or Siegfried of fifty when
they have carefully arranged to see one of twenty-five, much as in
any ordinary opera house. Even the conductors upset the arrangements
occasionally. On the other hand, if we leave the vagaries of the stars
out of account, we may safely expect always that in thoroughness of
preparation of the chief work of the season, in strenuous artistic
pretentiousness, in pious conviction that the work is of such enormous
importance as to be worth doing well at all costs, the Bayreuth
performances will deserve their reputation. The band is placed out of
sight of the audience, with the more formidable instruments beneath
the stage, so that the singers have not to sing THROUGH the brass. The
effect is quite perfect.