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Updated: May 20, 2025
I don't know what the "Scena with Aria" may be; a "declamatorium" seems to be a fine term for a recitation or evening of spouting; the C major Symphony was the last work of Wagner's to appear on a Gewandhaus programme. At the same concert Clara Wieck afterwards Schumann played a piano-concerto by Piscio.
How that solitary figure at the side, merely looking on, though, unknown to himself, he is the centre of the action, also gives one the sense of remoteness, which it was Wagner's desire to produce, throwing back the action into a reflected distance, as we watch someone on the stage who is watching it! The beauty of this particular kind of acting and staging is of course the beauty of convention.
A few of these will be welcome to the ordinary citizen visiting the theatre to satisfy his curiosity, or his desire to be in the fashion, by witnessing a representation of Richard Wagner's famous Ring of the Niblungs.
Both Wagner and Jordan are ardent admirers of Darwin and his theory of natural selection, but both believe that it is necessary to add the idea of isolation in order to make natural selection effective. George John Romanes, a British naturalist, has added to Wagner's idea of isolation, the expanded conception that there may be isolations that are not geographical.
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.
It is sometimes said that the repertory is at fault; but I am convinced that if there were plenty of good singers in the field, many of the operas that were formerly in vogue might be revived successfully always excepting the flimsy productions of Bellini and Donizetti. It was formerly believed for years that "Lohengrin" was the only one of Wagner's early operas that American audiences cared for.
In Germany the length of Wagner's and Meyerbeer's operas is not so objectionable as here, because there the opera commences at seven, or even at six thirty, and six, if it is a very long one; hence it is all over shortly after ten, and everybody has time to take supper before going to bed.
Despite the triviality of Da Ponte's book, the impetus of the music carries along the action at a tremendous speed; the moments of relief occur just when relief is necessary, and never retard the motion; the climaxes are piled up with incredible strength and mastery, and have an emotional effect as powerful as anything in "Fidelio" and equal to anything in Wagner's music-dramas; and most stupendous of all is the finale, with its tragic blending of the grotesque and the terrible.
"How can explanations pass between you and me? Have I not spoken plainly enough already? In my position, I say again, your conditions are impossibilities especially the first of them." There was something in the bitterly ironical manner which accompanied this reply that was almost insolent. Mrs. Wagner's color began to rise for the first time.
It is only when Wagner's music is sung to excess that it injures the voice, according to Fräulein Lehmann, because it requires such extraordinary power to cope with the orchestra.
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