bore. I never go to see it. The Fricka music in the second scene is as
effective on the piano as in the theatre, and the last scene is as
effective on a concert orchestra as in the theatre; in fact, in the
theatre the device of a pasteboard rainbow, coloured to suit German
taste, detracts from the effect. Only a fool would dare to say that
Wagner should have done this, that or the other; but I venture to say
that if he had not suffered from that very German malady, a desire to
work back to the beginning of things, and to embody the result in his
art, Wagner would have found a better means than a two-hour long
"fore-evening" to prepare for the real drama of the _Ring_.

That drama opens in earnest with _The Valkyrie_--the story of how, in
pursuing his ambitious plan, Wotan is forced to sacrifice first his own
son, then his daughter Brunnhilde, who is the incarnation of all that is
sweet and beautiful in his own nature. She shares, it is true, his
curiously limited immortality--an immortality that may be, and finally
is, curtailed--but she can suffer a punishment worse to her than
extinction. The prelude opens with the roar and hoarse scream of the
storm as it dashes through the forest--- the plash of the rain, the
flashing of lightning and the roll of the thunder. The musical idea was
obviously suggested by Schubert's "Erl-king." In each we have the same
rapidly-reiterated notes in the upper part, and Wagner's bars are simply
a variant of Schubert's. The curtain rises on Hunding's hut; the door is
burst open, and Siegmund tumbles in exhausted, and falls before the
fire. Sieglinda gives him mead, and one sees it is a case of love at
first sight. Hunding enters, and, finding Siegmund to be an enemy of
his, gives him until morning, and tells him that then he must fight.
Sieglinda drugs her husband's night-draught, and, while he is sleeping,
tells Siegmund of how, when she was abducted, and compelled against her
will to marry Hunding, a gray-bearded stranger came in, with his hat