To Bayreuth again, through dirty, dusty, nasty-smelling, unromantic
Germany, along the banks of that shabby--genteel river known as the
Rhine, watching at every railway station the wondrously bulky
haus-fraus who stir such deep emotions in the sentimental German
heart; noting how the disease of militarism has eaten so deeply into
German life that each railway official is a mere steam-engine,
supplied by the State with fuel in case he should some day be needed;
eating the badly and dirtily cooked German food,--how familiar it all
seems when one does it a second time! One week in Bayreuth was the
length of my stay in 1896; yet I seem to have spent a great part of my
younger days here. The theatre is my familiar friend in whom I never
trust; the ditch called the river has many associations, pleasant and
other; I go up past the theatre into the wood as to a favourite haunt
of old time; I lunch under the trees and watch the caterpillars drop
into my soup as though that were the commonest thing in the world; I
wander into the theatre and feel more at home than ever I do at Covent
Garden; I listen to the bad--but it is not yet time for detailed
criticism. All I mean is, that the novelty of Bayreuth, like the
novelty of any other small lifeless German town, disappears on a
second visit; that though the charm of the wood, of the trumpet calls
at the theatre, of the greasy German food, and the primitive German
sanitary arrangements, remains, it is a charm that has already worn
very thin, and needs the carefullest of handling to preserve. Whether,
without some especial inducement, the average mortal can survive
Bayreuth a third time, is, to me, hardly a question. As for my poor
self, it suits me admirably--certainly I could stand Bayreuth half a
dozen times. I like the life--the way in which the hours of the day
revolve round the evening performance, the real idleness, passivity,
combined with an appearance of energy and activity; I like to get warm
by climbing the hill and then to sit down and cool myself by drinking
lager from a huge pot with a pewter lid, dreamily speculating the
while on the possibility of my ever growing as fat as the average
German; I like to sit in a café with my friends till three in the
morning, discussing with fiery enthusiasm unimportant details of the
performance we have lately endured; I like being hungry six times a
day. All these trifles please me, and please others. But the majority
of the crowd of visitors are not pleased by them; and what can they do
in Bayreuth after the freshness of novelty is worn off? They go to
Villa Wahnfried and look for a few seconds at the spot where Wagner is
buried--as I heard it said, like a cat in a back garden; they look for
a few seconds at the church; they lunch; they buy and partly read the
English papers; and then? Inevitably the intelligent reader will say,
the opera in the evening. And I, who have been to the opera in the
evening, gasp and remark, Really!
Lest this ejaculation be entirely misinterpreted by the irreverent,
let it be said at once that the performances are not, on the whole,
very bad. But I wish to consider whether they are of a quality and
distinction sufficient to drag one all the way from England, and to
compensate those who find the day dull for the dulness of the day,
whether they are what Bayreuth claims them to be--the best operatic
representations in the world, the best that could possibly be given at
the present time. The circular sent out by amiable Mr. Schulz-Curtius
states that, "while not guaranteeing any particular artists, the aim
of Bayreuth will be to secure the best artists procurable" (or words
to that effect). Is this genuinely the aim of Bayreuth, and does
Bayreuth come near enough to the mark to make some thousands of
English people think they have spent their time, money, and energy
well in coming here? For my part I say Yes: even were the
representations a good deal poorer, they form, as I have said, a
centre for the day; I rise in the morning with them before me, and
make all my arrangements--my lunches, discussions, and lagers--so as
to reach the theatre at four o'clock; they save me from a life without
an object, and add a zest to everything I do; they correspond to the
trifling errand which renders a ten-mile walk in the country an
enjoyment. But those who come here for nothing but the theatre, who
do not feel the charm of the Bayreuth life, will, I am much afraid,
answer No. Had I no friends here, or did I not enjoy their company and
conversation, if my stomach refused lager and I could not smoke
ten-pfennig German cigars, if I were not violently hungry every two
hours, I am very much afraid I should answer No. The working of the
scenic arrangements is, of course, as perfect as ever. Of course there
are one or two mistakes,--stage machinists, after all, are built of
peccable clay,--but these occur so seldom that one can sit with a
feeling of security that is not possible at Covent Garden. In "The
Valkyrie" the fire does not flare up ten minutes late; the coming of
evening does not suggest an unexpected total eclipse of the sun; the
thing that the score indicates is done, and not, as generally happens
at Covent Garden, the reverse thing. The colours of the scenery are
likewise as intolerably German as ever--the greens coarse and rank,
the yellows bilious, the blues tinged with a sickly green, the reds as
violent as the dress of the average German frau. On the other hand,
many of the effects are wonderful--the mountain gorge where Wotan
calls up Erda, Mime's cave, the depths of the Rhine, the burning of
the hall of the Gibichungs. But the most astounding and lovely effects
in the setting of the drama will not avail for long without true,
finished, and beautiful art in the singing and acting; and, with a
few exceptions, the singers do not give us anything approaching true,
finished, and beautiful art. The exceptions are Van Rooy, Brema,
Gulbranson, Brema, and Schumann-Heink. Van Rooy has a noble voice,
admirably suited to Wotan, and he both sings and acts the part with a
majesty and pathos beyond anything dreamed of by any other Wotan I
have heard. He appears to have been the success of the Festival; and
certainly so strong and exquisite an artist deserves all the success
he can gain in Bayreuth. Brema's Fricka is noble and full of charm;
Schumann-Heink sings the music of Erda with some sense of its mystery
and of Waltraute in "Siegfried" with considerable passion; and
Gulbranson has vastly improved her impersonation of Brünnhilde since
last year. She is still unmistakably a student, but no one can doubt
that she will develop into a really grand artist if she avoids ruining
her fine voice by continually using it in a wrong way. Her Brünnhilde
is just now very beautiful and intensely pathetic, but it owes less to
her art than her personality. She does not interpret Brünnhilde--rather
she uses the part as a vehicle for her private emotions; to an
inordinate degree she reads into it her real or imaginary experience;
and she has not learnt the trick of turning her feelings into the
proper channels provided, so to say, by the part--of so directing
them that Gulbranson disappears behind Brünnhilde. Still, it is a
great thing to find an artist of such force and passion and at the
same time such rare delicacy; and I expect to come here in 1899 and
hear an almost perfect rendering of Brünnhilde. As for the rest of
the singers, the less said about most of them the better. They have no
voices worth the mentioning; the little they do possess they have no
notion of using rightly; and their acting is of the most rudimentary
sort. We hear so much of the fine acting which is supposed to cover
the vocal sins of Bayreuth that it cannot be insisted on too strongly
that the acting here is not fine. I can easily imagine how Wagner,
endeavouring to get his new notion into the heads of the stupid
singers who are still permitted to ruin his music because they are now
veterans, would fume and rage at the Italian "business"--the laying of
the left hand on the heart and of the right on the pit of the
stomach--with which incompetent actors always fill up their idle
intervals, and how he would beg them, in Wotan's name, rather to do
nothing than do that. But to take the first bungling representation of
the "Ring" as an ideal to be approached as closely as possible, to
insist on competent actors and actresses standing doing nothing when
some movement is urgently called for, is to deny to Wagner all the
advantages of the new acting which modern stage singers have learnt
from his music. The first act of "The Valkyrie," for example, will be
absurd so long as Sieglinde, Hunding, and Siegmund are made to stand
in solemn silence, as beginners who cannot hear the prompter's voice,
until Sieglinde has mixed Hunding's draught. And some of the gestures
and postures in which the singers are compelled to indulge are as
foolish as the foolishest Italian acting. Who can help laughing at the
calisthenics of Wotan and Brünnhilde at the end of "The Valkyrie," or
at Wotan's massage treatment of Brünnhilde in the second act? The
Bayreuth acting is as entirely conventional as Italian acting, and
scarce a whit more artistic and sane. Even the fine artists are
hampered by it; and the lesser ones are enabled to make themselves and
whole music-dramas eminently ridiculous. On the whole, perhaps, acting
and singing were at their best in "Siegfried." In "The Rheingold" some
of the smaller parts--such as Miss Weed's Freia--were handsomely done;
the Mime was also excellent; but I cannot quite reconcile myself to
Friedrichs' Alberich. "The Dusk of the Gods" was marred by
Burgstaller, and "The Valkyrie" by the two apparently octogenarian
lovers. That is Bayreuth's way. It promises us the best singers
procurable, and gives us Vogl and Sucher, who undoubtedly were
delightful in their parts twenty years ago; and it would be shocked to
learn that its good faith is questioned so far as lady artists are
concerned. Whether it is fair to question it is another matter. In
Germany feminine beauty is reckoned by hundredweights. No lady of
under eighteen stones is admired; but one who is heavier than that,
instead of staying at home and looking after her grandchildren, is put
into a white dress and called Sieglinde, or into a brown robe and
called Kundry; and a German audience accepts her as a revelation of
ideal loveliness through the perfection of human form.
The Germans are devoid of a sense of colour, they are devoid of a
sense of beauty in vocal tone, and I am at last drawing near to the
conclusion that they have no sense of beauty in instrumental tone.
Throughout this cycle the tone of many of the instruments has been
execrable; many of them have rarely been even in approximate tune. The
truth is that the players do not play well unless a master-hand
controls them; and a master-hand in the orchestra has been urgently
wanted. Instead of a master-hand we have had to put up with Master
Siegfried Wagner's hand (he now uses the right), and in the worst
moments we have wished there was no hand at all, and in the best we
have longed passionately for another. I do not propose to discuss his
conducting in detail. Under him the band has played with steady,
unrelenting slovenliness and inaccuracy; the music has been robbed of
its rhythm, life, and colour; and many of the finest numbers--as, for
example, the Valkyrie's Ride, the prelude to the third act of
"Siegfried," the march in "The Dusk of the Gods"--have been
deliberately massacred. One cannot criticise such conducting: it does
not rise near enough to competence to be worthy of criticism. But one
has a right to ask why this young man, who should be serving an
apprenticeship in some obscure opera-house, is palmed off on the
public as "the best artist procurable"? He scarcely seems to possess
ordinary intelligence. I had the honour of being inadvertently
presented to him, and he asked me, should I write anything about
Bayreuth, to say that he objected very much to the Englishmen who came
in knickerbockers--in bicycle costume. When I mildly suggested that if
they came without knickerbockers or the customary alternative he would
have better reason to complain, he asserted that he and his family had
a great respect for the theatre, and it shocked them to find so many
Englishmen who did not respect it. I mention this because it shows
clearly the spirit in which Bayreuth is now being worked. The Wagner
family are not shocked when Wagner's music is caricatured by an
octogenarian tenor or a twenty-stone prima donna; they are shocked
when in very hot weather a few people wear the costume in which they
suffer least discomfort. So the place is becoming a mere fashionable
resort, that would cause Wagner all the pangs of Amfortas could he
come here again. The women seem to change their dresses for every act
of the opera; the prices of lodgings, food, and drinks are rapidly
rising to the Monte Carlo standard; a clergyman has been imported to
preach on Sunday to the English visitors; one sees twenty or thirty
fashionable divorce cases in process of incubation; and Siegfried
Wagner conducts. With infinite labour Wagner built this magnificent
theatre, the most perfect machine in the world for the reproduction of
great art-works; and Mrs. Wagner has given it as a toy to her darling
son that he may amuse himself by playing with it. And, like a baby
when it gets a toy, Siegfried Wagner is breaking it to pieces to see
what there is inside. Unless it is taken from him until he has spent a
few years in learning to play upon instead of with it, Bayreuth will
quickly be deserted. Already it is in decadence. I shall always come
to Bayreuth, for reasons already given; but fashions change, and the
people who come here because it is the fashion will not be long in
finding other resorts; and those who want only to see the music-plays
adequately performed will have learnt that this is not the place for
them. With one voice the ablest German, French, and Dutch critics are
crying against the present state of things; and it is certainly the
duty of every English lover of Wagner to refuse to take tickets for
the performances that are to be conducted by Wagner's son. Bayreuth
promises us the best artists. Whether some of the singers are or are
not the best artists is largely a matter of taste. But that Siegfried
Wagner is the best conductor procurable in Germany is too preposterous
a proposition to be considered for a moment. He may be some day; but
that day is far off.
As for the representation of "Parsifal," I should not trouble to
discuss it had not Mr. Chamberlain's book on Wagner lately come my
way. It shows me that the old game is being pursued as busily as ever.
Since Wagner's death the world has been carefully and persistently
taught that only Bayreuth can do justice to "Parsifal"; and since the
world believes anything if it is said often enough, it has come to
think it sheer blasphemy to dream of giving "Parsifal" elsewhere than
at Bayreuth. "Parsifal" is not an opera--it is a sacred revelation;
and just as the seed of Aaron alone could serve as priests in the
sacred rites of the temple at Jerusalem, so only the seed of Wagner
can serve as priests--that is to say, as chief directing priests--when
"Parsifal" is played. Thus declare the naive dwellers in Villa
Wahnfried, modestly forgetting the missing link in the chain of
argument which should prove them alone to be the people qualified to
perform "Parsifal"; and I regret to observe the support they receive
from a number of Englishmen and Scotchmen, who are grown more German
than the Germans, and just as religiously forget to make any reference
to this missing link of proof. But these Germanised Scotchmen and
Englishmen work hard for Bayreuth: now they whisper in awestruck tones
of the beauty and significance of "Parsifal"; now they howl at the
unhappy writers in the daily and weekly Press who dare to find little
significance and less beauty in the Bayreuth representation; and, to
do them bare justice, until lately they have been fairly successful in
persuading the world to think with them. Verily, they have their
reward--they partake of afternoon tea at Villa Wahnfried; they enjoy
the honour of bowing low to the second Mrs. Wagner; Wagner's legal
descendants cordially take them by the hand. And they go away
refreshed, and again spread the report of the artistic and moral and
religious supremacy of Bayreuth; and the world listens and goes up
joyfully to Bayreuth to be taxed--one pound sterling per head per
"Parsifal" representation. The performances over, the world comes away
mightily edified, having seen nothing with its own eyes, heard nothing
with its own ears, having understood nothing at all;--having, in fact,
so totally miscomprehended everything as to think "Parsifal" a
Christian drama; having been too deaf to realise that the singers were
frequently out of the key, and too blind to observe that the scenery
in the second act resembled a cheap cretonne, and that many of the
flower-maidens were at least eight feet in circumference. On the way
home the world whiles away the long railway journey by reading
metaphysical disquisitions on "Parsifal' and the Ideal Woman,"
"'Parsifal' and the Thing-in-Itself," "The Swan in 'Parsifal' and its
Relation to the Higher Vegetarianism." It knows the name of every
leit-motif, and can nearly pronounce the German for it; it can refer
to the Essay on Beethoven apropos of Kundry's scream (or yawn) in the
second act; it can chat learnedly of Klingsor, in pathetic ignorance
of his real offence, and explain why Amfortas has his wound on the
right side, although the libretto distinctly states it to be situated
on the left. It is a fact that this year a lady was heard to ask why
Parsifal quarrelled with his wife in the second act. (I might mention
that an admirer of "Parsifal" asked me who the dark man was in the
first act of "The Valkyrie," and whether Sieglinde or Brünnhilde was
burnt in the last.) The which is eminently amusing, and conjures up
before one a vision of Richard, not wailing, like the youth in
Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound," for the faith he kindled, but gazing
patiently, rather wearily, with a kindly ironical smile, on the world
he conquered, on the world that adores him _because_ it fails to
understand him.
Happily, it is not my business to reform the world; and writing in
October, when so many of the idealists who felt with Parsifal in his
remorse about the duck-shooting episode are applying the lesson by
wantonly slaughtering every harmless creature they can hit, it would
be superfluous to point out in any detail how very wrong and absurd is
the world's estimate of the Bayreuth performance. In fact, were it my
object to assist in the destruction of Bayreuth, no better plan could
be found than that of approving cordially of everything Bayreuth does.
For it is fast driving away all sincere lovers of Wagner; it lives now
on fashionable ladies, betting men, and bishops: when the fashion
changes and these depart, the Bayreuth festivals will come to an end.
Bayreuth is only an affectation; not one pilgrim in a hundred
understands the "Ring" or "Parsifal"; not one in a thousand is really
impressed by anything deeper than the mere novelty of the business.
Visitors go and are moved by the shooting of the duck (the libretto
calls it a swan, but the management chooses to use a duck); they talk
of Wagner's love of animals and of how they love animals themselves;
they go straight from Bayreuth to Scotland and show their love in true
sportsmanlike fashion by treating animals, birds, and fishes with a
degree of cruelty so appalling as to disgust every right-thinking and
right-feeling man and woman; and they tell you that the stag likes to
be disembowelled, the bird to have its wings shattered, the fish to be
torn to pieces in its agonised struggle for life. Or, having been
moved by the consequences of sin, they straightway go and prepare
cases for the divorce courts; having appreciated the purity and peace
of monastery life and a daily communion service, they return without
hesitation or sense of inconsistency to their favourite modes of
gambling; having revelled in the most lovely music in the world, they
proceed to listen nightly to the ugliest and silliest music in the
world. Their appreciation of Bayreuth is a sham; they would cheerfully
go elsewhere--say to Homburg--if Bayreuth were shut up; and before
long they will go to Homburg or elsewhere, whether Bayreuth is shut up
or not.