it
is in New York and at Covent Garden, its convulsive shudders announce
impending death, and already one hears the wail of those who mourn a
departing order of things.

"PARSIFAL" (1882).

This disastrous and evil opera was written in Wagner's old age, under
the influence of such a set of disagreeably immoral persons as has
seldom if ever been gathered together in so small a town as Bayreuth.
The whole drama consists in this: At Montsalvat there was a monastery,
and the head became seriously ill because he had been seen with a lady.
In the long-run he is saved by a young man--rightly called a "fool"--who
cannot tolerate the sight of a woman. What it all means--the grotesque
parody of the Last Supper, the death of the last woman in the world, the
spear which has caused the Abbot's wound and then cures it--these are
not matters to be entered into here. Some of the music is fine.

TO SUM UP.

Wagner died suddenly at Venice February 13, 1883, and a few days later
was buried in the garden of Villa Wahnfried, Bayreuth. For a really
great composer he had quite a long life, and he lived it out
strenuously; and if he struggled and suffered during a great portion of
it, at any rate his last years brought him peace, undisturbed by the old
nightmare dread of poverty.

His activity manifested itself in three forms: the reforms he effected
in the theatre and the concert-room, his own music dramas, and the prose
writings, in which he both advocated the reforms and argued for his
theories. The prose, I have said, is of very small account now, and,
with the exception of the essays mentioned earlier, his essays and
articles have only a curious interest. His theatrical reforms consisted
in making the artistes sing intelligently and with care, and in
demanding realistic scenery. Intelligence and pains--these are the two
new elements he introduced into the theatre; and if most operatic
performances to-day are not absolutely ridiculous, we owe this
miraculous change to Wagner alone. The notion that anything, however
slovenly and stupid, is good enough for opera was dissipated by him
alone. A book of an interesting gossipy sort might be compiled to show
the difference between opera representations before Bayreuth and those
of a post-Bayreuth date, but there is no space for any such excursions
here. At the risk of turning this sketch into something like an
analytical programme, I have concentrated my attention on his ope