de her from the spectators' sight.

After a short time the flames die down, the bright light fades,
the stage darkens, and the river rises and overflows its banks,
until its waves come dashing over the funeral pyre. They
bear upon their swelling crests the Rhine maidens who have
come to recover their ring, Hagen, standing gloomily in the
background, becomes suddenly aware of their intention, wildly
flings his weapons aside, and rushes forward, crying, 'Unhand
the ring!' But he is caught in the twining arms of two of the
Rhine maidens, who draw him down under the water, and drown
him, while the third, having secured the Nibelung ring, returns
in triumph on the ebbing waves to her native depths, chanting
the Rhinegold strain. As she disappears, a reddish glow like
the Aurora Borealis appears in the sky. It grows brighter and
brighter, until one can discern the shining abode of Walhalla,
enveloped in lurid flames from the burning world-ash, and in
the centre the assembled gods calmly seated upon their thrones,
to submit to their long predicted doom, the 'Goetterdaemmerung.'[3]

[3] See Prof. G.T. Dippold's 'Ring of the Nibelung.'

[Illustration: PARSIFAL IN THE ENCHANTED GARDEN.]

PARSIFAL.

It was while he was searching for the material for Tannhaeuser,
that Wagner came across Wolfram von Eschenbach's poems of
'Parsifal' and 'Titurel,'[4] and, as he reports, 'an entirely
new world of poetical matter suddenly opened before me.' Wagner
made no use of this idea, however, until 1857, some fifteen
years later, when he drew up the first sketch of his Parsifal,
during his residence at Zurich; twenty years later he finished
the poem at Bayreuth. He then immediately began the music,
although he was sixty-five years of age. That same year, while
he was making a concert tour in London, he read the poem to a
select audience of friends, by whose advice it was published.

Although the music for this opera, which is designated as 'a
solemn work destined to hallow the stage,' was finished in 1879,
the instrumentation was completed only in 1882, at Palermo,
a few months before its first production at Bayreuth.

This opera, which Wagner himself called a religious drama, is
intended as the 'Song of Songs of Divine Love, as Tristan and
Ysolde is the Song of Songs of Terrestrial Love.' The performance
was repeated sixteen times at Bayreuth, where many people had
come from all parts of the world to hear and see it, and has