It has been stated that Wagner assumes to have taken up music where Beethoven left off, and in accordance with this assumption Wagner himself conducted a remarkable performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at Baireuth, when the foundation-stone of the theatre was laid on May 22nd, 1872. Since the completion of the structure only Wagner's music has been heard within its walls. The first performance of the Trilogy was in August, 1876, and resulted in a success beyond the most sanguine expectations of its warmest supporters.
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The triumph of Baireuth was followed in the next year by a Wagner festival in London, when six concerts were given in the Albert Hall, in the presence of Wagner, conducted by Herr Hans Richter, the director at Baireuth, with an orchestra led by Herr Wilhelmj. Here the delight of the audience found full vent in the selections from the early works, but although the Wagner school is now strong in England, there was a manifest difference in the reception accorded to the works composed before the opus magnum " The Trilogy," and to the selections from the " Ring of the Nibelung ;" the reaction set in with the second part, and after the prelude to " The Rhinegold " many left the hall. The dulness of the vocal parts, away from the stage, is undeniable to all but a fanatic Wagnerian. Nor can it be said that an English audience would accept the Baireuth plan, and attend four successive performances in the dark, even with the admirable stage appointments. Experience goes to prove that Wagner's later works are unfit for the concert-room ; and a very powerful faction believe that the present Wagner idolatry is to be reckoned among epidemic mental diseases, and that with Wagner himself the fever will end, since no other can wield the sceptre he has swayed.
The production of " Parsifal " has not with the majority improved the position attained by Wagner. In this work, first given at Baireuth July, 1882, Wagner has boldly embodied the Christian mysteries. He names his opera the " Stage-consecrative Festival Play." He brings religion on the stage, and exhibits his knights at prayer ; in the support of the Knights of the Graal he represents the celebration of the Eucharist, using the very words which occur in the service of the Christian Church ; Kundry, the heroine, anoints and washes the feet of Parsifal ; Parsifal baptises Kundy ; there is the observance of Good Friday and other biblical and religious matters introduced. The worshippers of Wagner see no impropriety in this, and many maintain that, so far from there being any indelicacy, the holy awe of religion, with all its heavenly enlightening inspiration overpowered the heart even in the theatre ; and one German clergyman writes that the production of " Parsifal " at Baireuth had nothing offensive, but that in such performances the stage fulfils its proper task. "In God's name, then," he adds, " let religion, with her symbols and ceremonies, speak and preach to the people upon the stage, provided only that the same protection be accorded to her as at Baireuth ; then there would be good hope of their being weaned from a taste for operas a la Offenbach, with their French glorification of broken marriage vows.'' The music is mainly given to the chorus, and there are some beautiful hymns founded upon the accompaniments of the Roman liturgy: but as a whole the interest is far below that of Tristan or Die Meistersinger, and the Wagnerian peculiarities are stretched until it is hard to decide between style and mannerism. There was much in the dresses and in the enchanted gardens which outraged the refined taste which ruled in the Nibelung Festival; a tawdry exaggeration and glare that was offensive. By an English audience it is scarcely possible that Parsifal would be tolerated it would be as much out of place in London as the passion play of Oberammergau , and the extravagance with which it has been discussed by the violent Wagnerians has already brought it and the composer to ridicule in many places. Common sense is outraged when a would be critic fills 62 pages on an essay on " The Significance of the Morning Summons to awake in R. Wagner's Parsifal," and then apologises for the " scant form of his work, as the result of a superabundant intellectual purport."
One writes that the effect of Parsifal was like that of the Passion Play plus music by Wagner; that only twice had even similar emotions been excited —viz at the funeral of the Duke of Wellington, when the military bands placed the " Dead March in Saul," and, secondly, during the rendering of Croft's musical service at Sterndale Bennett's burial.
Against this the famous critic, E. Hauslick, of Vienna, writes : —" The Wagner Cultus has reached if it has not passed its culminating point. Reason and experience teach us that after such unparalleled inebriation people generally sober down extremely. Many with us in Baireuth thought they had already perceived and remarked signs of this, and even warm adherents of Wagner became impatient over the trying game of catching the guiding motives. " At present the romantic school on which Wagner mainly depends are devoted to him but the most pernicious and, at the same time, the most humiliating feature of Wagner worship is the absolute surrender of all beyond the Wagnerian school, and the endowment of " the master " with little short of omnipotence.
"Die Bayreuther Blaetter," a monthly periodical, in which for the last five years Wagner has personally co-operated with the editor, is the most authoritative public document, and the best proof of this assertion. In its pages Wagner, " the master, " is made a teacher and redeemer of mankind. His opinions on politics, philosophy, morals or religion are recorded and accepted as infallible. The principal utterances relate, firstly to Schopenhauer's philosophy and its connection with Wagner's operas, secondly, to the religious, social, and political regeneration of the human race thirdly, to the agitation against vivisection of animals and, fourthly, to the propaganda of vegetarian views and bills of fare. The true Wagnerite must be, in addition to a worshipper of every bar of music, a pessimist, an opponent of vivisection, an enemy of the Jews, and a vegetarian. Wagner is said to have transferred Schopenhauer into art when transferring Christianity into Parsifal. And among the public announcements of Parsifal appears a request from the editor that those who agree with him will attend the " vegetarian dinner." Yet Wagner in practice was no vegetarian. " No one could compose ' Tannhauser ' or depict Lohengrin on sour milk and beans. " How much the beauty of the language and the clearness of the text suffers by Wagner's peculiar alliterative style has been allowed by his warmest friends, and when such a jargon as " Weia, Waga ! Woge du Welle, Walle zur Weige, Wagalaweia! " is accepted as verse, we cannot wonder that many try in vain to understand Wagner's poetry. One courageous critic declares that Wagnerian worship has become " a sad trade; this incredible false coinage of philosophic thoughts in the heat of enthusiastic æstheticising excitement, lamentable, ridiculous, and odious when we reflect that a school able to produce such apostles dares to strive after intellectual sway, and actually exerts a sway over many weak minds and empty heads." Now that the indomitable spirit of Wagner is at rest we may safely affirm that posterity alone will estimate Richard Wagner rightly. Unlike Mozart and Beethoven, he has been made too much of in life. By his early works he exercised a vivifying, exciting, and purifying influence on opera but his later works have caused a cessation of operatic composition. As the most brilliant and original genius which has arisen for German opera in the last 10 years, he has imposed his system with coercive might upon the world, but it is a system only adapted to his own endowments. It is false and onesided, and we believe it will die with its originator. Wagner is undoubtedly great, but his greatness will not, we think, descend to any of his disciples. " Aida " is on the Wagnerian model ; Gounod, Thomas and Bizet have felt the Wagnerian spoil, but the magician is far above his imitators, and will, we think, stand alone. Of Wagner a theoretical and literary works it may be truly said they are valuable but the latter are smudged by his arrogance and pitiless invective, and his virulent hatred of the Jews is only matched by his perpetual ingratitude. . . . . . .
In 1835 Wagner was appointed conductor of the London Philharmonic Society, and came to England accordingly. Some of his most violent attacks on contemporary musicians had been read with indignation, he had singled out Mendelssohn, so beloved by English musicians and people as an object for special aversion, his revolutionary tendencies were suspected, the public did not care for him, and the press, headed by Chorley, the fearless, independent, and also the most able critic of the Athenæum then musically more powerful than now, is violently opposed to him. Some numbers of "Tannhauser " and "The flying Dutchman" were performed and received with derision and Wagner at the end of the season left in disgust. No one now justifies or sympathises with the treatment he then received, on the other hand, Wagner did nothing to conciliate the English, while his personal vanity, his arrogance, and his inordinate self- worship made him very objectionable.
The Sydney Morning Herald 21 February 1883,
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