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It was at Nuremberg that we struck the inundation of music-mad strangers that was rolling down upon Bayreuth. It had been long since we had seen such multitudes of excited and struggling people. It took a good half-hour to pack them and pair them into the train and it was the longest train we have yet seen in Europe.
At Bayreuth, as in Paris, if it should happen that Forcheville thought of him at all, it would only be as of some one who counted for a great deal in the life of Odette, some one for whom he was obliged to make way, when they met in her house.
He asked me the question as though the answer were really important to him, and when I said, a little casually I daresay, that I had, he seemed pleased. He began to speak of Wagner, not as a musician, but as the plain man who received from him an emotional satisfaction that he could not analyse. "I suppose Bayreuth was the place to go really," he said. "I never had the money, worse luck.
Petersburg, of the chorus at Bayreuth, and of other well-known assemblages under high musical direction; but the cathedral choir at Berlin, in its best efforts, surpassed any of these, and the music, both instrumental and choral, which reverberates under the dome of the imperial chapel at the great anniversaries there celebrated is nowhere excelled.
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.
I mention these incidents because I think they help to disprove the notion that modern music has less power over the actions and feelings of men than primitive and ancient music. It was the wild enthusiasm inspired in me by Wagner's earlier operas that led me irresistibly to Bayreuth, and I really would have been willing to toil as a slave for years rather than miss this festival.
If only they would try to root up this great fiction, which has bothered us for the last three centuries; if only they would open their eyes and see what great men like Rousseau and Tolstoy saw so clearly the silliness of opera; if only they would see the anomalies of the Bayreuth show.
We might make for Munich if we like; or strike the Isar at Landshut, and then work up through Ratisbon, and then through the Fichtel Mountains to Bayreuth, and so into Saxony; or from Landshut we can cross the Bohmerwald Mountains into Bohemia; or, if we like, from Munich we can keep west into Wuertemberg, up through Hesse-Darmstadt and Cassel into Hanover; or, lastly, we can go on to Mannheim and down the Rhine, and then come round by sea to Hamburg."
She wished much to go to Bayreuth for the Wagner operas in the summer, and the aunt with whom she had hoped to travel was not willing to go. Besides, she really could not afford the trip, and at least Stanford had plenty of money.
One of the long-haired sang the champagne song, and Wurzelmann made a witty speech. Döderlein suggested that now was the time to let the mice dance and the fleas hop. When one of the lost-in-dreams sang David’s March, which according to the rules of Bayreuth could not be classed as real music, Döderlein exclaimed: “Give me Lethe, my fair one.” By “Lethe” he meant punch. Daniel drank Lethe too.
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