With genuine joy I sit once more in my old arm-chair and watch the
brawling Wissahickon Creek, its banks draped with snow, while overhead
the sky seems so friendly and blue. I am at Dussek Villa, I am at home;
and I reproach myself for having been such a fool as ever to wander from
it. Being a fussy but conscientious old bachelor, I scold myself when I
am in the wrong, thus making up for the clattering tongue of an active
wife. As I once related to you, I recently went to New York, and there
encountered sundry adventures, not all of them of a diverting nature.
One you know, and it reeks in my memory with stale cigars, witless talk,
and all the other monotonous symbols of Bohemia. Ah, that blessed
Bohemia, whose coast no man ever explored except gentle Will
Shakespeare! It is no-man's-land; never was and never will be. Its
misty, alluring signals have shipwrecked many an artistic mariner,
and--but pshaw! I'm too old to moralize this way. Only young people
moralize. It is their prerogative. When they live, when they fathom good
and evil and their mysteries, charity will check their tongues, so I
shall say no more of Bohemia. What I saw of it further convinced me of
its undesirability, of its inutility.
And now to my tale, now to finish forever the story of my experiences in
Gotham! I declaimed violently against Tchaikovsky to my acquaintances of
the hour, because my dislike to him is deep rooted; but I had still to
encounter another modern musician, who sent me home with a headache,
with nerves all jangling, a stomach soured, and my whole esthetic system
topsy-turveyed and sorely wrenched. I heard for the first time Richard
Wagner's _Die Walküre_, and I've been sick ever since.
I felt, with Louis Ehlert, that another such a performance would release
my feeble spirit from its fleshly vestment and send it soaring to the
angels, for surely all my sins would be wiped out, expiated, by the
severe penance endured.
Not feeling quite myself the day after my experiences with the music
journalists, I strolled up Broadway, and, passing the opera-house,
inspected the _menu_ for the evening. I read, "_Die Walküre_, with a
grand cast," and I fell to wondering what the word _Walküre_ meant. I
have an old-fashioned acquaintance with German, but never read a line or
heard a word of Wagner's. Oh, yes; I forget the overture to _Rienzi_,
which always struck me as noisy and quite in Meyerbeer's most vicious
manner. But the Richard Wagner, the later Wagner, I read so much about
in the newspapers, I knew nothing of. I do now. I wish I didn't.
Says I to myself, "Here's a chance to hear this Walkover opera. So now
or never." I went in, and, planking my dollar down, I said, "Give me the
best seat you have." "Other box-office, on 40th Street, please, for
gallery." I was taken aback. "What!" I exclaimed, "do you ask a whole
dollar for a gallery seat? How much, pray, for one down-stairs?" The
young man looked at me curiously, but politely replied, "Five dollars,
and they are all sold out." I went outside and took off my hat to cool
my head. Five good dollars--a whole week's living and more--to listen to
a Wagner opera! Whew! It must be mighty good music. Why I never paid
more than twenty-five cents to hear Mozart's _Magic Flute_, and with
Carlotta, Patti, Karl Formes, and--but what's the use of reminiscences?
I could not make up my mind to spend so much money and I walked to
Central Park, took several turns, and then came down town again. My mind
was made up. I went boldly to the box-office and encountered the same
young man. "Look here, my friend," I said, "I didn't ask you for a
private box, but just a plain seat, one seat." "Sold out," he
laconically replied and retired. Then I heard suspicious laughter.
Rather dazed, I walked slowly to the sidewalk and was grabbed--there is
no other word--by several rough men with tickets and big bunches of
greenbacks in their grimy fists. "Tickets, tickets, fine seats for _De
Volkyure_ tonight." They yelled at me and I felt as if I were in the
clutches of the "barkers" of a downtown clothing-house. I saw my chance
and began dickering. At first I was asked fifteen dollars a seat, but
seeing that I am apoplectic by temperament they came down to ten. I
asked why this enormous tariff and was told that Van Dyck, Barnes,
Nordica, Van Rooy, and heaven knows who besides, were in the cast. That
settled it. I bargained and wrangled and finally escaped with a seat in
the orchestra for seven dollars! Later I discovered it was not only in
the orchestra, but quite near the orchestra, and on the brass and big
drum side.
When I reached the opera-house after my plain supper of ham and eggs and
tea it must have been seven o'clock. I was told to be early and I was.
No one else was except the ticket speculators, who, recognizing me, gave
me another hard fight until I finally called a policeman. He smiled and
told me to walk around the block until half-past seven, when the doors
opened. But I was too smart and found my way back and everything open at
7.15, and my seat occupied by an overcoat. I threw it into the orchestra
and later there was a fine row when the owner returned. I tried to
explain, but the man was mad, and I advised him to go to his last home.
Why even the ushers laughed. At 7.45 there were a few dressed up folks
down stairs, and they mostly stared at me, for I kept my fur cap on to
heat my head, and my suit, the best one I have, is a good, solid
pepper-and-salt one. I didn't mind it in the least, but what worried me
was the libretto which I tried to glance through before the curtain
rose. In vain. The story would not come clear, although I saw I was in
trouble when I read that the hero and heroine were brother and sister.
Experience has taught me that family rows are the worst, and I wondered
why Wagner chose such a dull, old-fashioned theme.
The orchestra began to fill up and there was much chattering and noise.
Then a little fellow with beard and eyeglasses hopped into the
conductor's chair, the lights were turned off, and with a roar like a
storm the overture began. I tried to feel thrilled, but couldn't. I had
expected a new art, a new orchestration, but here I was on familiar
ground, so familiar that presently I found myself wondering why Wagner
had orchestrated the beginning of Schubert's _Erlking_. The noise began
in earnest and by the light from a player's lamp I saw that the prelude
was intended for a storm. "Ha!" I said, "then it was the _Erlking_ after
all." The curtain rose on an empty stage with a big tree in the middle
and a fire burning on the hearth.
There was no pause in the music at the end of the overture--did it
really end?--which I thought funny. Then a man with big whiskers,
wearing the skin of an animal, staggered in and fell before the fire. He
seemed tired out and the music had a tired feeling too. A woman dressed
in white entered and after staring for twenty bars got him a drink in a
ram's horn. The music kept right on as if it were a symphony and not an
opera. The yelling from the pair was awful, at least so it seemed to me.
It appears that they were having family troubles and didn't know their
own names. Then the orchestra began stamping and knocking, and a fellow
with hawk wings in his helmet, a spear and a beard entered, and some one
next to me said "There's the Hunding motive." Now I know my German, but
I saw no dog, besides, what motive could the animal have had. The three
people, a savage crew, sat down and talked to music, just plain talk,
for I didn't hear a solitary tune. The girl went to bed and the man
followed. The tenor had a long scene alone and the girl came back. They
must have found out their names, for they embraced and after pulling an
old sword out of the tree, they said a lot and went away. I was glad
they had patched up the family trouble, but what became of the big,
black-bearded fellow with the hawk wings in his helmet?
The next act upset me terribly. I read my book, but couldn't make out
why, if _Wotan_ was the God of all and high much-a-muck, he didn't smash
all his enemies, especially that cranky old woman of his, _Fricka_? What
a pretty name! I got quite excited when Nordica sang a yelling sort of a
scream high up on the rocks. Not at the music, however, but I expected
her to fall over and break her neck. She didn't, and shouting Wagner's
music at that. Why it would twist the neck of a giraffe! Quite at sea, I
saw the brother and sister come in and violently quarrel, and Nordica
return and sing a slumber song, for the sister slept and the brother
looked cross. Then more gloom and a duel up in the clouds, and once more
the curtain fell. I heard the celebrated _Ride of the Valkyries_ and
wondered if it was music or just a stable full of crazy colts neighing
for oats. Dean Swift's Gulliver would have said the latter. I thought
so. The howling of the circus girls up on the rocks paralyzed my
faculties.
It was a hideous saturnalia, and deafened by the brass and percussion
instruments I tried to get away, but my neighbors protested and I was
forced to sit and suffer. What followed was incomprehensible. The crazy
amazons, the Walk-your-horses, and the disagreeable _Wotan_ kept things
in a perfect uproar for half an hour. Then the stage cleared and the
father, after lecturing his daughter, put her to sleep under a tree. He
must have been a mesmerist. Red fire ran over the stage, steam hissed,
the orchestra rattled, and the bass roared. Finally, to tinkling bells
and fourth of July fireworks, the curtain fell on the silliest pantomime
I ever saw.
The music? Ah, don't ask me now! Wait until my nerves get settled. It
never stopped, and fast as it reeled off I recognized Bach, Mozart,
Beethoven, Schumann, Weber--lots of Weber--Marschner, and Chopin. Yes,
Chopin! The orchestration seemed overwrought and coarse and the
form--well, formlessness is the only word to describe it. There was an
infernal sort of skill in the instrumentation at times, a short-breathed
juggling with other men's ideas, but no development, no final cadence.
Everything in suspension until my ears fairly longed for one perfect
resolution. Even in the _Spring Song_ it does not occur. That tune is
suspiciously Italian, for all Wagner's dislike of Italy.
And this is your operatic hero today! This is your maker of music
dramas! Pooh! it is neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring. Give me
one page from the _Marriage of Figaro_ or the finale to _Don Giovanni_
and I will show you divine melody and great dramatic writing! But I'm
old-fashioned, I suppose. I have since been told the real story of _Die
Walküre_ and am dumfounded. It is all worse than I expected. Give me my
Dussek, give me Mozart, let me breathe pure, sweet air after this
hot-house music with its debauch of color, sound, action, and morals. I
must have the grip, because even now as I write my mind seems tainted
with the awful music of Richard Wagner, the arch fiend of music. I shall
send for the doctor in the morning.