this is to be flippant, well
then, I am flippant. The drama of _Parsifal_ is the least intelligent,
the most pretentious to intellectuality,-the most absurd and
ridiculous and mirth-provoking drama ever set to music. Or, if we must
needs oblige the Wagnerites by regarding it as a lofty contribution to
ethics and a philosophy, no words are strong enough to describe its
infamy. At the moment these lines are penned eager controversy is
going on in every European capital as to whether _Parsifal_ can or
cannot be produced this year without the permission of the Bayreuth
clique; and my devout hope is that it will be given everywhere as soon
as possible. Once it is seen without the quasi-religious, or rather
mock-religious, character of the Bayreuth performances, the
hollowness, trumpery staginess and evil tendency of the work will be
only too obvious, and if Bayreuth wants a monopoly of it no one will
wish to say Bayreuth nay.

These oscillations of mood were very frequent, the changes often very
abrupt, with Wagner; also he rarely worked at only one opera at a
time. The _Dutchman_ was conceived before _Rienzi_ was finished;
_Tannhaeuser_ and _Lohengrin_ were slowly shaping themselves in his
imagination while he scored the _Dutchman_; the _Mastersingers_
libretto, in its first form, was drafted immediately after
_Tannhaeuser_ was finished, and before _Lohengrin_ was begun; the
composition of the _Ring_, _Tristan_ and the _Mastersingers_ went on
simultaneously. He did not totally exhaust one group of ideas and
emotions before proceeding to another, and the result is twofold.
First, the moods belonging of right to one opera often found their way
for moments into another, so that the description I have given above
of his various alternations is very rough, though it is in the main
accurate; second, the true antipodes of one opera may not be that
which stands next to it in chronological arrangement, but one which he
did not complete till years afterwards. I have just digressed a little
about _Parsifal_, because it, and not the _Mastersingers_, is the true
contrary and complement to _Tannhaeuser_. _Parsifal_ is pitilessly
logical, _Tannhaeuser_ wildly illogical; _Parsifal_ preaches the gospel
of renunciation, of the will to dwarf and stunt one's physical, mental
and moral growth: _Tannhaeuser_ preaches nothing at all, but is an
affirmation of the necessity and moral loveliness of healthy relations
between the two sexes, with a t