ws me that the old game is being pursued as busily as ever.
Since Wagner's death the world has been carefully and persistently
taught that only Bayreuth can do justice to "Parsifal"; and since the
world believes anything if it is said often enough, it has come to
think it sheer blasphemy to dream of giving "Parsifal" elsewhere than
at Bayreuth. "Parsifal" is not an opera--it is a sacred revelation;
and just as the seed of Aaron alone could serve as priests in the
sacred rites of the temple at Jerusalem, so only the seed of Wagner
can serve as priests--that is to say, as chief directing priests--when
"Parsifal" is played. Thus declare the naive dwellers in Villa
Wahnfried, modestly forgetting the missing link in the chain of
argument which should prove them alone to be the people qualified to
perform "Parsifal"; and I regret to observe the support they receive
from a number of Englishmen and Scotchmen, who are grown more German
than the Germans, and just as religiously forget to make any reference
to this missing link of proof. But these Germanised Scotchmen and
Englishmen work hard for Bayreuth: now they whisper in awestruck tones
of the beauty and significance of "Parsifal"; now they howl at the
unhappy writers in the daily and weekly Press who dare to find little
significance and less beauty in the Bayreuth representation; and, to
do them bare justice, until lately they have been fairly successful in
persuading the world to think with them. Verily, they have their
reward--they partake of afternoon tea at Villa Wahnfried; they enjoy
the honour of bowing low to the second Mrs. Wagner; Wagner's legal
descendants cordially take them by the hand. And they go away
refreshed, and again spread the report of the artistic and moral and
religious supremacy of Bayreuth; and the world listens and goes up
joyfully to Bayreuth to be taxed--one pound sterling per head per
"Parsifal" representation. The performances over, the world comes away
mightily edified, having seen nothing with its own eyes, heard nothing
with its own ears, having understood nothing at all;--having, in fact,
so totally miscomprehended everything as to think "Parsifal" a
Christian drama; having been too deaf to realise that the singers were
frequently out of the key, and too blind to observe that the scenery
in the second act resembled a cheap cretonne, and that many of the
flower-maidens were at least eight feet in circumference. On the way
home the world whiles