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I can extract no such moral. Perhaps some unfortunate essays and letters of Wagner gave the commentators their cue and lead; for Wagner, when he put away his music-paper and sat down to his writing-paper, often showed himself a willing victim of catch-phrases; also many sentences of the drama can be construed as paraphrases of this particular catch-phrase for example, "Nun banne das Bangen, holder Tod, sehnend verlangter Liebestod."
The fire that licks the rock of the Walkyrie, the Rhine that rises in the finale of "Götterdämmerung" and inundates the scene and sweeps the world with its silent, laving tides, the gigantic blossom that opens its corolla in the Liebestod and buries the lovers in a rain of scent and petals, the tranquil ruby glow of the chalice that suffuses the close of "Parsifal," are the moments toward which the dramas themselves labor, and in which they attain their legitimate conclusion, completion and end.
At last the opportunity came, but it is not on record that the public clamored for its repetition or ranked her Casta diva with her singing of Isolde's Liebestod. Melba, one of the most exquisite of florid sopranos, once attempted Brünnhilde in Siegfried. One performance, and her good judgment came to her rescue.
Evelyn sang "Elsa's Dream," "Elizabeth's Prayer" and the "Liebestod," and when she was recalled at the end of the concert, she sang Senta's ballad as a bonne bouche, something that the audience had not expected, and would send her friends away more than ever pleased with her.
This very night the walls of the fortress should fall, unveiling the secret of this insolent loveliness, the desire of all the world. Ah, my lady Allegra, was it chance alone that led you to choose Isolde's "Liebestod" for this the supreme enchantment? The music fell away into nothingness and I stepped forward, my hand on the knob of the folding-doors that led to the front room.
Or the motive may reappear after it has served its purpose on the stage; it is then a reminiscence of past events. No finer example of this could be found than in the music of Isolde's swan-song, the so-called Liebestod, which is built up out of the motives of the life into a symphonic structure of almost unparalleled force and truth.
"You cannot marry him, you love me.... But why don't you answer. What are you thinking of?" "Only of you, dear.... Let me kiss you again," and in the embrace he forgot for the moment the inquietude her answer had caused him. "That is my call," she said. "How am I to sing the Liebestod after all this? How does it begin?" Ulick sang the opening phrase, and she continued the music for some bars.
Since her performance at Carnegie Hall several years ago of the Liebestod from Tristan, which Walter Damrosch hailed as an extremely interesting experiment, she has attempted to express something more than the joy of melody and rhythm.
She must have been very old and very sorry for the past. Let the orchestra play the 'Liebestod." Judging from external evidences, there is reason enough to accept such a theory of the relations of Wagner and this sympathetic, beautiful woman. In fact, it stretches credulity to the bursting point to accept any other opinion.
Instead of the perfect expression of perfect thoughts a gift enjoyed only by Shakespeare they reveal the extreme difficulty of metrically voicing his "trouble." It is in a way like the music of the Liebestod. He is struggling to say what is in his mind, he approaches it, falls away comes near again, only to be finally baffled. In 1918 Mr.
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