These humiliated outcasts had the frowsy and unbrushed and apologetic look of wet cats, and their eyes were glazed with drowsiness, their bodies were adroop from crown to sole, and all kind-hearted people refrained from asking them if they had been to Bayreuth and failed to connect, as knowing they would lie.
We reached here (Bayreuth) about mid-afternoon of a rainy Saturday.We were of the wise, and had secured lodgings and opera seats months in advance.
I am not a musical critic, and did not come here to write essays about the operas and deliver judgment upon their merits.
The little children of Bayreuth could do that with a finer sympathy and a broader intelligence than I.I only care to bring four or five pilgrims to the operas, pilgrims able to appreciate them and enjoy them.What I write about the performance to put in my odd time would be offered to the public as merely a cat's view of a king, and not of didactic value.
Next day, which was Sunday, we left for the opera-house--that is to say, the Wagner temple--a little after the middle of the afternoon.The great building stands all by itself, grand and lonely, on a high ground outside the town.We were warned that if we arrived after four o'clock we should be obliged to pay two dollars and a half extra by way of fine.We saved that; and it may be remarked here that this is the only opportunity that Europe offers of saving money.There was a big crowd in the grounds about the building, and the ladies' dresses took the sun with fine effect.I do not mean to intimate that the ladies were in full dress, for that was not so.The dresses were pretty, but neither sex was in evening dress.
The interior of the building is simple--severely so; but there is no occasion for color and decoration, since the people sit in the dark.The auditorium has the shape of a keystone, with the stage at the narrow end.There is an aisle on each side, but no aisle in the body of the house.Each row of seats extends in an unbroken curve from one side of the house to the other.There are seven entrance doors on each side of the theater and four at the butt, eighteen doors to admit and emit 1,650 persons.The number of the particular door by which you are to enter the house or leave it is printed on your ticket, and you can use no door but that one.Thus, crowding and confusion are impossible.Not so many as a hundred people use any one door.This is better than having the usual (and useless)elaborate fireproof arrangements.It is the model theater of the world.It can be emptied while the second hand of a watch makes its circuit.It would be entirely safe, even if it were built of lucifer matches.
If your seat is near the center of a row and you enter late you must work your way along a rank of about twenty-five ladies and gentlemen to get to it.Yet this causes no trouble, for everybody stands up until all the seats are full, and the filling is accomplished in a very few minutes.Then all sit down, and you have a solid mass of fifteen hundred heads, making a steep cellar-door slant from the rear of the house down to the stage.
All the lights were turned low, so low that the congregation sat in a deep and solemn gloom.The funereal rustling of dresses and the low buzz of conversation began to die swiftly down, and presently not the ghost of a sound was left.This profound and increasingly impressive stillness endured for some time--the best preparation for music, spectacle, or speech conceivable.I should think our show people would have invented or imported that simple and impressive device for securing and solidifying the attention of an audience long ago; instead of which there continue to this day to open a performance against a deadly competition in the form of noise, confusion, and a scattered interest.
Finally, out of darkness and distance and mystery soft rich notes rose upon the stillness, and from his grave the dead magician began to weave his spells about his disciples and steep their souls in his enchantments.There was something strangely impressive in the fancy which kept intruding itself that the composer was conscious in his grave of what was going on here, and that these divine souls were the clothing of thoughts which were at this moment passing through his brain, and not recognized and familiar ones which had issued from it at some former time.
The entire overture, long as it was, was played to a dark house with the curtain down.It was exquisite; it was delicious.
But straightway thereafter, or course, came the singing, and it does seem to me that nothing can make a Wagner opera absolutely perfect and satisfactory to the untutored but to leave out the vocal parts.I wish I could see a Wagner opera done in pantomime once.Then one would have the lovely orchestration unvexed to listen to and bathe his spirit in, and the bewildering beautiful scenery to intoxicate his eyes with, and the dumb acting couldn't mar these pleasures, because there isn't often anything in the Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting; as a rule all you would see would be a couple of silent people, one of them standing still, the other catching flies.Of course I do not really mean that he would be catching flies; Ionly mean that the usual operatic gestures which consist in reaching first one hand out into the air and then the other might suggest the sport I speak of if the operator attended strictly to business and uttered no sound.
This present opera was "Parsifal." Madame Wagner does not permit its representation anywhere but in Bayreuth.The first act of the three occupied two hours, and I enjoyed that in spite of the singing.