Listen!"
It was good counsel. There are dilettanti who pretend that at a concert
the best way to enjoy Beethoven's last works--where the sonority is
defective--is to stop the ears and read the score. One might say with
less of a paradox that the best way to follow a performance of Wagner's
operas is to listen with the eyes shut. So perfect is the music, so
powerful its hold on the imagination, that it leaves nothing to be
desired; what it suggests to the mind is infinitely finer than what the
eyes may see. I have never shared the opinion that Wagner's works may
be best appreciated in the theatre. His works are epic symphonies. As a
frame for them I should like temples; as scenery, the illimitable land
of thought; as actors, our dreams.
* * * * *
The first act of _Siegfried_ is one of the most dramatic in the
Tetralogy. Nothing satisfied me more completely at Bayreuth, both as
regards the actors and the dramatic effects. Fantastic creatures like
Alberich and Mimi, who seem to be out of their element in France, are
rooted deep down in German imaginations. The Bayreuth actors surpassed
themselves in making them startlingly lifelike, with a trembling and
grimacing realism.
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