The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wagnerian Romances, by Gertrude Hall

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Title: The Wagnerian Romances

Author: Gertrude Hall

Release Date: November 15, 2008 [EBook #27265]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAGNERIAN ROMANCES ***

Produced by Robert J. Hall

[Illustration: THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH OF RICHARD WAGNER]

THE WAGNERIAN ROMANCES

BY

GERTRUDE HALL

NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY, MCMVII

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD

_To_

_My Friend_

JOHN SANBURN PHILLIPS

_this book_

_is_

_gratefully dedicated._

INTRODUCTION

The attempt has been made in the following to give an idea of the
charm and interest of the original text of the Wagner operas, of
Wagner's extraordinary power and fertility as a dramatist. It is
not critique or commentary, it is presentation, picture, narrative;
it offers nothing that is not derived directly and exclusively
from the Wagner libretti and scores.

The stories of the operas are widely known already, of course.
As literature, however, one may almost say they are not known at
all, unless by students of German. The translators had before them
a task so tremendous, in the necessity to fit their verse-rendering
of the master's poetry to extremely difficult music, that we respect
them for achieving it at all. None the less must the translations
included in our libretti be pronounced painfully inadequate. To
give a better, more complete knowledge of the original poems is
the object of these essays. The poems form, even apart from the
music, a whole beautiful, luminous, romantic world. One would not
lose more by dropping out of literature the Idylls of the King
than the Wagnerian romances.

CONTENTS

PARSIFAL
THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG
THE RHINE-GOLD
THE VALKYRIE
SIEGFRIED
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS
THE MASTER-SINGERS OF NUREMBERG
TRISTAN AND ISOLDE
LOHENGRIN
TANNHAEUSER
THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

PARSIFAL

PARSIFAL

I

The story of the Holy Grail and its guardians up to the moment
of Parsifal's appearance upon the scene, is--we gather it from
Gurnemanz's rehearsal of his memories to the youthful esq