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Wagner by John F. Runciman
page 69 of 75 (92%)
than anything devised for pills and patent soaps. Hundreds who went to
Bayreuth to pass the time, or at most in a spirit of intelligent
curiosity, came away converted to the new faith; many who went to sponge
remained to pay; and all preached the doctrine of Wagnerism wherever
they went. Well they might. As I was an infant at the time, my
recollections of the first performances and of Wagner's speech are not
so vivid as those of some of my younger colleagues, who, like myself,
were not there; but, according to all creditable accounts, the
representations must have been a nearer approach to perfection in all
respects, save the singing, than anything seen before. In one sense
Wagner had attempted no revolution in stage-craft; but in another sense
it was, perhaps, the best sort of revolution to secure the ablest men,
and make them take care, pains, with their work. Anyhow, if tolerable
operatic representations can now be seen in every country of Europe save
Italy, the credit must go to Wagner, who first taught the impresarios
what to aim at and how to achieve their aim, and gave the accursed star
system a blow from which it is slowly dying. Carefully nursed though it
is in New York and at Covent Garden, its convulsive shudders announce
impending death, and already one hears the wail of those who mourn a
departing order of things.




"PARSIFAL" (1882).


This disastrous and evil opera was written in Wagner's old age, under
the influence of such a set of disagreeably immoral persons as has
seldom if ever been gathered together in so small a town as Bayreuth.
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