THURSDAY.--They keep two teams of singers in stock for the chief roles, and one of these is composed of the most renowned artists in the world, with Materna and Alvary in the lead.Isuppose a double team is necessary; doubtless a single team would die of exhaustion in a week, for all the plays last from four in the afternoon till ten at night.Nearly all the labor falls upon the half-dozen head singers, and apparently they are required to furnish all the noise they can for the money.If they feel a soft, whispery, mysterious feeling they are required to open out and let the public know it.Operas are given only on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, with three days of ostensible rest per week, and two teams to do the four operas; but the ostensible rest is devoted largely to rehearsing.It is said that the off days are devoted to rehearsing from some time in the morning till ten at night.Are there two orchestras also? It is quite likely, since there are one hundred and ten names in the orchestra list.
Yesterday the opera was "Tristan and Isolde." I have seen all sorts of audiences--at theaters, operas, concerts, lectures, sermons, funerals--but none which was twin to the Wagner audience of Bayreuth for fixed and reverential attention.Absolute attention and petrified retention to the end of an act of the attitude assumed at the beginning of it.You detect no movement in the solid mass of heads and shoulders.You seem to sit with the dead in the gloom of a tomb.You know that they are being stirred to their profoundest depths; that there are times when they want to rise and wave handkerchiefs and shout their approbation, and times when tears are running down their faces, and it would be a relief to free their pent emotions in sobs or screams; yet you hear not one utterance till the curtain swings together and the closing strains have slowly faded out and died;then the dead rise with one impulse and shake the building with their applause.Every seat is full in the first act; there is not a vacant one in the last.If a man would be conspicuous, let him come here and retire from the house in the midst of an act.
It would make him celebrated.
This audience reminds me of nothing I have ever seen and of nothing I have read about except the city in the Arabian tale where all the inhabitants have been turned to brass and the traveler finds them after centuries mute, motionless, and still retaining the attitudes which they last knew in life.Here the Wagner audience dress as they please, and sit in the dark and worship in silence.At the Metropolitan in New York they sit in a glare, and wear their showiest harness; they hum airs, they squeak fans, they titter, and they gabble all the time.In some of the boxes the conversation and laughter are so loud as to divide the attention of the house with the stage.In large measure the Metropolitan is a show-case for rich fashionables who are not trained in Wagnerian music and have no reverence for it, but who like to promote art and show their clothes.
Can that be an agreeable atmosphere to persons in whom this music produces a sort of divine ecstasy and to whom its creator is a very deity, his stage a temple, the works of his brain and hands consecrated things, and the partaking of them with eye and ear a sacred solemnity? Manifestly, no.Then, perhaps the temporary expatriation, the tedious traversing of seas and continents, the pilgrimage to Bayreuth stands explained.These devotees would worship in an atmosphere of devotion.It is only here that they can find it without fleck or blemish or any worldly pollution.In this remote village there are no sights to see, there is no newspaper to intrude the worries of the distant world, there is nothing going on, it is always Sunday.The pilgrim wends to his temple out of town, sits out his moving service, returns to his bed with his heart and soul and his body exhausted by long hours of tremendous emotion, and he is in no fit condition to do anything but to lie torpid and slowly gather back life and strength for the next service.This opera of "Tristan and Isolde" last night broke the hearts of all witnesses who were of the faith, and I know of some who have heard of many who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away.I feel strongly out of place here.Sometimes I feel like the sane person in a community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven.
But by no means do I ever overlook or minify the fact that this is one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life.Ihave never seen anything like this before.I have never seen anything so great and fine and real as this devotion.
FRIDAY.--Yesterday's opera was "Parsifal" again.The others went and they show marked advance in appreciation; but I went hunting for relics and reminders of the Margravine Wilhelmina, she of the imperishable "Memoirs." I am properly grateful to her for her (unconscious) satire upon monarchy and nobility, and therefore nothing which her hand touched or her eye looked upon is indifferent to me.I am her pilgrim; the rest of this multitude here are Wagner's.
TUESDAY.--I have seen my last two operas; my season is ended, and we cross over into Bohemia this afternoon.I was supposing that my musical regeneration was accomplished and perfected, because I enjoyed both of these operas, singing and all, and, moreover, one of them was "Parsifal," but the experts have disenchanted me.They say:
