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Page 36
BAYREUTH IN 1897
To Bayreuth again, through dirty, dusty, nasty-smelling, unromantic
Germany, along the banks of that shabby--genteel river known as the
Rhine, watching at every railway station the wondrously bulky
haus-fraus who stir such deep emotions in the sentimental German
heart; noting how the disease of militarism has eaten so deeply into
German life that each railway official is a mere steam-engine,
supplied by the State with fuel in case he should some day be needed;
eating the badly and dirtily cooked German food,--how familiar it all
seems when one does it a second time! One week in Bayreuth was the
length of my stay in 1896; yet I seem to have spent a great part of my
younger days here. The theatre is my familiar friend in whom I never
trust; the ditch called the river has many associations, pleasant and
other; I go up past the theatre into the wood as to a favourite haunt
of old time; I lunch under the trees and watch the caterpillars drop
into my soup as though that were the commonest thing in the world; I
wander into the theatre and feel more at home than ever I do at Covent
Garden; I listen to the bad--but it is not yet time for detailed
criticism. All I mean is, that the novelty of Bayreuth, like the
novelty of any other small lifeless German town, disappears on a
second visit; that though the charm of the wood, of the trumpet calls
at the theatre, of the greasy German food, and the primitive German
sanitary arrangements, remains, it is a charm that has already worn
very thin, and needs the carefullest of handling to preserve. Whether,
without some especial inducement, the average mortal can survive
Bayreuth a third time, is, to me, hardly a question. As for my poor
self, it suits me admirably--certainly I could stand Bayreuth half a
dozen times. I like the life--the way in which the hours of the day
revolve round the evening performance, the real idleness, passivity,
combined with an appearance of energy and activity; I like to get warm
by climbing the hill and then to sit down and cool myself by drinking
lager from a huge pot with a pewter lid, dreamily speculating the
while on the possibility of my ever growing as fat as the average
German; I like to sit in a caf� with my friends till three in the
morning, discussing with fiery enthusiasm unimportant details of the
performance we have lately endured; I like being hungry six times a
day. All these trifles please me, and please others. But the majority
of the crowd of visitors are not pleased by them; and what can they do
in Bayreuth after the freshness of novelty is worn off? They go to
Villa Wahnfried and look for a few seconds at the spot where Wagner is
buried--as I heard it said, like a cat in a back garden; they look for
a few seconds at the church; they lunch; they buy and partly read the
English papers; and then? Inevitably the intelligent reader will say,
the opera in the evening. And I, who have been to the opera in the
evening, gasp and remark, Really!
Lest this ejaculation be entirely misinterpreted by the irreverent,
let it be said at once that the performances are not, on the whole,
very bad. But I wish to consider whether they are of a quality and
distinction sufficient to drag one all the way from England, and to
compensate those who find the day dull for the dulness of the day,
whether they are what Bayreuth claims them to be--the best operatic
representations in the world, the best that could possibly be given at
the present time. The circular sent out by amiable Mr. Schulz-Curtius
states that, "while not guaranteeing any particular artists, the aim
of Bayreuth will be to secure the best artists procurable" (or words
to that effect). Is this genuinely the aim of Bayreuth, and does
Bayreuth come near enough to the mark to make some thousands of
English people think they have spent their time, money, and energy
well in coming here? For my part I say Yes: even were the
representations a good deal poorer, they form, as I have said, a
centre for the day; I rise in the morning with them before me, and
make all my arrangements--my lunches, discussions, and lagers--so as
to reach the theatre at four o'clock; they save me from a life without
an object, and add a zest to everything I do; they correspond to the
trifling errand which renders a ten-mile walk in the country an
enjoyment. But those who come here for nothing but the theatre, who
do not feel the charm of the Bayreuth life, will, I am much afraid,
answer No. Had I no friends here, or did I not enjoy their company and
conversation, if my stomach refused lager and I could not smoke
ten-pfennig German cigars, if I were not violently hungry every two
hours, I am very much afraid I should answer No. The working of the
scenic arrangements is, of course, as perfect as ever. Of course there
are one or two mistakes,--stage machinists, after all, are built of
peccable clay,--but these occur so seldom that one can sit with a
feeling of security that is not possible at Covent Garden. In "The
Valkyrie" the fire does not flare up ten minutes late; the coming of
evening does not suggest an unexpected total eclipse of the sun; the
thing that the score indicates is done, and not, as generally happens
at Covent Garden, the reverse thing. The colours of the scenery are
likewise as intolerably German as ever--the greens coarse and rank,
the yellows bilious, the blues tinged with a sickly green, the reds as
violent as the dress of the average German frau. On the other hand,
many of the effects are wonderful--the mountain gorge where Wotan
calls up Erda, Mime's cave, the depths of the Rhine, the burning of
the hall of the Gibichungs. But the most astounding and lovely effects
in the setting of the drama will not avail for long without true,
finished, and beautiful art in the singing and acting; and, with a
few exceptions, the singers do not give us anything approaching true,
finished, and beautiful art. The exceptions are Van Rooy, Brema,
Gulbranson, Brema, and Schumann-Heink. Van Rooy has a noble voice,
admirably suited to Wotan, and he both sings and acts the part with a
majesty and pathos beyond anything dreamed of by any other Wotan I
have heard. He appears to have been the success of the Festival; and
certainly so strong and exquisite an artist deserves all the success
he can gain in Bayreuth. Brema's Fricka is noble and full of charm;
Schumann-Heink sings the music of Erda with some sense of its mystery
and of Waltraute in "Siegfried" with considerable passion; and
Gulbranson has vastly improved her impersonation of Br�nnhilde since
last year. She is still unmistakably a student, but no one can doubt
that she will develop into a really grand artist if she avoids ruining
her fine voice by continually using it in a wrong way. Her Br�nnhilde
is just now very beautiful and intensely pathetic, but it owes less to
her art than her personality. She does not interpret Br�nnhilde--rather
she uses the part as a vehicle for her private emotions; to an
inordinate degree she reads into it her real or imaginary experience;
and she has not learnt the trick of turning her feelings into the
proper channels provided, so to say, by the part--of so directing
them that Gulbranson disappears behind Br�nnhilde. Still, it is a
great thing to find an artist of such force and passion and at the
same time such rare delicacy; and I expect to come here in 1899 and
hear an almost perfect rendering of Br�nnhilde. As for the rest of
the singers, the less said about most of them the better. They have no
voices worth the mentioning; the little they do possess they have no
notion of using rightly; and their acting is of the most rudimentary
sort. We hear so much of the fine acting which is supposed to cover
the vocal sins of Bayreuth that it cannot be insisted on too strongly
that the acting here is not fine. I can easily imagine how Wagner,
endeavouring to get his new notion into the heads of the stupid
singers who are still permitted to ruin his music because they are now
veterans, would fume and rage at the Italian "business"--the laying of
the left hand on the heart and of the right on the pit of the
stomach--with which incompetent actors always fill up their idle
intervals, and how he would beg them, in Wotan's name, rather to do
nothing than do that. But to take the first bungling representation of
the "Ring" as an ideal to be approached as closely as possible, to
insist on competent actors and actresses standing doing nothing when
some movement is urgently called for, is to deny to Wagner all the
advantages of the new acting which modern stage singers have learnt
from his music. The first act of "The Valkyrie," for example, will be
absurd so long as Sieglinde, Hunding, and Siegmund are made to stand
in solemn silence, as beginners who cannot hear the prompter's voice,
until Sieglinde has mixed Hunding's draught. And some of the gestures
and postures in which the singers are compelled to indulge are as
foolish as the foolishest Italian acting. Who can help laughing at the
calisthenics of Wotan and Br�nnhilde at the end of "The Valkyrie," or
at Wotan's massage treatment of Br�nnhilde in the second act? The
Bayreuth acting is as entirely conventional as Italian acting, and
scarce a whit more artistic and sane. Even the fine artists are
hampered by it; and the lesser ones are enabled to make themselves and
whole music-dramas eminently ridiculous. On the whole, perhaps, acting
and singing were at their best in "Siegfried." In "The Rheingold" some
of the smaller parts--such as Miss Weed's Freia--were handsomely done;
the Mime was also excellent; but I cannot quite reconcile myself to
Friedrichs' Alberich. "The Dusk of the Gods" was marred by
Burgstaller, and "The Valkyrie" by the two apparently octogenarian
lovers. That is Bayreuth's way. It promises us the best singers
procurable, and gives us Vogl and Sucher, who undoubtedly were
delightful in their parts twenty years ago; and it would be shocked to
learn that its good faith is questioned so far as lady artists are
concerned. Whether it is fair to question it is another matter. In
Germany feminine beauty is reckoned by hundredweights. No lady of
under eighteen stones is admired; but one who is heavier than that,
instead of staying at home and looking after her grandchildren, is put
into a white dress and called Sieglinde, or into a brown robe and
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