to come here in 1899 and
hear an almost perfect rendering of Bruennhilde. As for the rest of
the singers, the less said about most of them the better. They have no
voices worth the mentioning; the little they do possess they have no
notion of using rightly; and their acting is of the most rudimentary
sort. We hear so much of the fine acting which is supposed to cover
the vocal sins of Bayreuth that it cannot be insisted on too strongly
that the acting here is not fine. I can easily imagine how Wagner,
endeavouring to get his new notion into the heads of the stupid
singers who are still permitted to ruin his music because they are now
veterans, would fume and rage at the Italian "business"--the laying of
the left hand on the heart and of the right on the pit of the
stomach--with which incompetent actors always fill up their idle
intervals, and how he would beg them, in Wotan's name, rather to do
nothing than do that. But to take the first bungling representation of
the "Ring" as an ideal to be approached as closely as possible, to
insist on competent actors and actresses standing doing nothing when
some movement is urgently called for, is to deny to Wagner all the
advantages of the new acting which modern stage singers have learnt
from his music. The first act of "The Valkyrie," for example, will be
absurd so long as Sieglinde, Hunding, and Siegmund are made to stand
in solemn silence, as beginners who cannot hear the prompter's voice,
until Sieglinde has mixed Hunding's draught. And some of the gestures
and postures in which the singers are compelled to indulge are as
foolish as the foolishest Italian acting. Who can help laughing at the
calisthenics of Wotan and Bruennhilde at the end of "The Valkyrie," or
at Wotan's massage treatment of Bruennhilde in the second act? The
Bayreuth acting is as entirely conventional as Italian acting, and
scarce a whit more artistic and sane. Even the fine artists are
hampered by it; and the lesser ones are enabled to make themselves and
whole music-dramas eminently ridiculous. On the whole, perhaps, acting
and singing were at their best in "Siegfried." In "The Rheingold" some
of the smaller parts--such as Miss Weed's Freia--were handsomely done;
the Mime was also excellent; but I cannot quite reconcile myself to
Friedrichs' Alberich. "The Dusk of the Gods" was marred by
Burgstaller, and "The Valkyrie" by the two apparently octogenarian
lovers. That is Bayreuth's way. It promises us the