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The "Poème de l'extase," with its oceanic tides of voluptuously entangled bodies, is a sort of Tannhäuser "Bacchanale" modernized, enlarged, and intensely sharpened. For, in spite of the fact that at moments he handled it with rare sympathy, the orchestra was not his proper medium. The piano was his instrument.
Only Rubens could have painted these spirited, impossible, glorious things, which for all their greatness send one's thoughts back longingly to the portrait of his wife, in the Tribuna, while No. 216 the Bacchanale is so coarse as almost to send one's feet there too. Looking round the room, after Rubens has been dismissed, it is too evident that the best of the Uffizi collection is behind us.
Or, from another view, reversing the usual order, we may find the quality of traditional Trio in the first melody and a bacchanale of wild humor in the middle. For, out Above rings a barbarous cry, in defiance of common time and rhythm. Suddenly we are surprised by the sound of the martial stride of the second theme of the Andante which moves on the sea of rough harmony as on a native element.
Death fiddles his mournful chant to echoing, expressive wind. On the abandon of grief follows the revel of grim humor in pranks of mocking demons. All the strains are mingled in the ghostly bacchanale. The descending song is answered in opposite melody. A chorus of laughter follows the tripping dance. The summoning chords, acclaimed by chorus, grow to appealing song in a brief lull.
As the whirring sounds grow fainter and fainter, the pilgrim's song is again heard gradually approaching, and at last closing the overture in a joyous burst of harmony. The first act opens with the scene in the Venusberg, accompanied by the Bacchanale music, which was written in Paris by Wagner after the opera was finished and had been performed. It is now known as "the Parisian Bacchanale."
The neglect to provide a ballet in the usual place led to a tremendous disturbance in which the Jockey Club took the lead. Wagner's purpose in the extended portion of the overture now called the "Bacchanale" may be read in his stage-directions for the scene. A large cave seems to extend to an invisible distance at a turn to the right.
Is it "anything" to bring peace and quiet pleasure and comfort and appreciation where their opposites were wont to hold bacchanale? Yes. No woman who honestly tries the course I have endeavored to outline will ever doubt that she really accomplishes something; neither will she regret.
H. E. Huntington's Vermeer, as well as the supreme Marquand example of that master; more than the regular wealth of Rembrandts, Manet's "Still Life," Gauguin's "Women by the River," El Greco's "View of Toledo," Franz Hals' big jovial Dutchman from Mr. Harry Goldman's walls, and Bellini's "Bacchanale" to say nothing of the lace in galleries 18 and 19, Mr.
Paul de Kock calls an English nobleman, in one of his last novels, Lord Boulingrog, and appears vastly delighted at the verisimilitude of the title. For the "rugissements et bondissements, bacchanale et saturnale, galop infernal, ronde du sabbat tout le tremblement," these words give a most clear, untranslatable idea of the Carnival ball. A sight more hideous can hardly strike a man's eye.
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