What Is Man? and Other Essays
very ends of the earth to worship their prophet in his own Kaaba in his
own Mecca.
If you are living in New York or San Francisco or Chicago or anywhere
else in America, and you conclude, by the middle of May, that you would
like to attend the Bayreuth opera two months and a half later, you must
use the cable and get about it immediately or you will get no seats,
and you must cable for lodgings, too. Then if you are lucky you will
get seats in the last row and lodgings in the fringe of the town. If
you stop to write you will get nothing. There were plenty of people in
Nuremberg when we passed through who had come on pilgrimage without
first securing seats and lodgings. They had found neither in Bayreuth;
they had walked Bayreuth streets a while in sorrow, then had gone to
Nuremberg and found neither beds nor standing room, and had walked
those quaint streets all night, waiting for the hotels to open and
empty their guests into the trains, and so make room for these, their
defeated brethren and sisters in the faith. They had endured from
thirty to forty hours’ railroading on the continent of Europe—with all
which that implies of worry, fatigue, and financial impoverishment—and
all they had got and all they were to get for it was handiness and
accuracy in kicking themselves, acquired by practice in the back
streets of the two towns when other people were in bed; for back they
must go over that unspeakable journey with their pious mission
unfulfilled. 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 apiece 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 they 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 sounds 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, of 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; I only 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.
I trust that I know as well as anybody that singing is one of the most
entrancing and bewitching and moving and eloquent of all the vehicles
invented by man for the conveying of feeling; but it seems to me that
the chief virtue in song is melody, air, tune, rhythm, or what you
please to call it, and that when this feature is absent what remains is
a picture with the color left out. I was not able to detect in the
vocal parts of “Parsifal” anything that might with confidence be called
rhythm or tune or melody; one person performed at a time—and a long
time, too—often in a noble, and always in a high-toned, voice; but he
only pulled out long notes, then some short ones, then another long
one, then a sharp, quick, peremptory bark or two—and so on and so on;
and when he was done you saw that the information which he had conveyed
had not compensated for the disturbance. Not always, but pretty often.
If two of them would but put in a duet occasionally and blend the
voices; but no, they don’t do that. The great master, who knew so well
how to make a hundred instruments rejoice in unison and pour out their
souls in mingled and melodious tides of delicious sound, deals only in
barren solos when he puts in the vocal parts. It may be that he was
deep, and only added the singing to his operas for the sake of the
contrast it would make with the music. Singing! It does seem the wrong
name to apply to it. Strictly described, it is a practicing of
difficult and unpleasant intervals, mainly. An ignorant person gets
tired of listening to gymnastic intervals in the long run, no matter
how pleasant they may be. In “Parsifal” there is a hermit named
Gurnemanz who stands on the stage in one spot and practices by the
hour, while first one and then another character of the cast endures
what he can of it and then retires to die.
During the evening there was an intermission of three-quarters of an
hour after the first act and one an hour long after the second. In both
instances the theater was totally emptied. People who had previously
engaged tables in the one sole eating-house were able to put in their
time very satisfactorily; the other thousand went hungry. The opera was
concluded at ten in the evening or a little later. When we reached home
we had been gone more than seven hours. Seven hours at five dollars a
ticket is almost too much for the money.
While browsing about the front yard among the crowd between the acts I
encountered twelve or fifteen friends from different parts of America,
and those of them who were most familiar with Wagner said that
“Parsifal” seldom pleased at first, but that after one had heard it
several times it was almost sure to become a favorite. It seemed
impossible, but it was true, for the statement came from people whose
word was not to be doubted.
And I gathered some further information. On the ground I found part of
a German musical magazine, and in it a letter written by Uhlic
thirty-three years ago, in which he defends the scorned and abused
Wagner against people like me, who found fault with the comprehensive
absence of what our kind regards as singing. Uhlic says Wagner despised
“_jene plapperude music_,” and therefore “runs, trills, and _Schnorkel
_are discarded by him.” I don’t know what a _Schnorkel _is, but now
that I know it has been left out of these operas I never have missed so
much in my life. And Uhlic further says that Wagner’s song is true:
that it is “simply emphasized intoned speech.” That certainly describes
it—in “Parsifal” and some of the other operas; and if I understand
Uhlic’s elaborate German he apologizes for the beautiful airs in
“Tannhauser.” Very well; now that Wagner and I understand each other,
perhaps we shall get along better, and I shall stop calling Waggner, on
the American plan, and thereafter call him Waggner as per German
custom, for I feel entirely friendly now. The minute we get reconciled
to a person, how willing we are to throw aside little needless
punctilios and pronounce his name right!
Of course I came home wondering why people should come from all corners
of America to hear these operas, when we have lately had a season or
two of them in New York with these same singers in the several parts,
and possibly this same orchestra. I resolved to think that out at all
hazards.
TUESDAY.—Yesterday they played the only operatic favorite I have ever
had—an opera which has always driven me mad with ignorant delight
whenever I have heard it—“Tannhauser.” I heard it first when I was a
youth; I heard it last in the last German season in New York. I was