All the Year Round was a Victorian periodical, being a British weekly literary magazine founded and owned by Charles Dickens, published between 1859 and 1895 throughout the United Kingdom.
All the year round, october 9, 1869
CHAPTER II. IN THE MIST.
Hyperbole soars too high, or sinks too low,
Exceeds the truth things wonderful to show,
says the old schoolboy's rhyme. We have made
an attempt to sketch modern comic opera,
as dragged in the mire, for the delectation of many refined and noble personages.
We may now look at the condition of the
musical drama when it is forced upwards into
the mist, beyond any powers of common-sense
or legitimate admiration to follow it or bear it
company. The one extreme could, perhaps, not
have been reached without its being counterbalanced by another one, of its kind, no less
strange. Slang is, after all, only a familiarised
and vulgar form of bombast.
Among the strangest appearances ever seen in
the world of Music, are the existence of Herr
Richard Wagner and his acceptance by a band
of enthusiasts, many of whom are infinitely superior in gifts to himself. These bow down
to worship him as a prophet, whose genius has
opened a new and precious vein in a mine already
wrought out. The wonder is as complete a one
as any already enrolled in that sad but fascinating book the Annals of Charlatanry.
How, subsequent to the partial success of
his heavy but not altogether irrational Rienzi,
Herr Wagner bethought himself of entering
the domain of supernatural and transcendental
eccentricity, has been shown in the successive
production of his Tannhäuser, Fliegende Holländer (which contains an excellent spinning
song and chorus), and his best opera, Lohengrin. The first and the third of these have
gained what may be called a contested position
in some of the opera houses of Germany ; but
in those of no other country. This is a noticeable fact ; seeing that the taste for and understanding of music, becomes year by year less
exclusive, and more and more cosmopolitan
in England, France, and even Italy. The
names of Mozart, Weber, and Beethoven, are
now so many household words in every land
where music is known. The silly folks who
pretend that the limitation of Herr Wagner's success is the inevitable consequence of
the nationality of the subjects treated by
Herr Wagner, forget, that, in their stories,
neither Tannhäuser nor Lohengrin have more
local colour than Weber's Der Freischütz, Euryanthe, Oberon, or Meyerbeer's Robert.
But any paradox is easier to fanatical believers
than to admit the fact, that if Herr Wagner's
operas deserve the name of music, those by
the masters referred to, do not ; than to confess that the case is one not of principles in art
carried out, but of the same utterly annulled :
not of progress, but of destruction.
The progress of destruction has rarely, if
ever, been more signally exemplified than in
the history of Das Rheingold, the last work by
Herr Wagner prepared at Munich, not produced in a hurry, or a fit of desperation, but
deliberately as an experiment, to be followed
by other similar freaks. For festival purposes,
to delight a monarch willing to believe in and
to uphold a favourite who has only thriven by
favour of court notice, Herr Wagner has devised a trilogy of operas based on the Nibelungen Lied. To these Das Rheingold is a
preface, and the four operas, or instalments,
are intended to be performed on four successive
evenings. It is not too much to assert that a
year of preparation, were the entire resources
of a court theatre placed at the disposal of the
composer, would be entirely insufficient to insure the result of which Herr Wagner dreamed :
even supposing the same to be worth insuring.
Eight months or more have been habitually
devoted at the Grand Opera of Paris to the
production of Meyerbeer's operas, yet these
are child's play compared with Herr Wagner's
visions.
His choice of subject, it must be owned,
was a singularly perilous one for even a German
among Germans. It may be boldly asserted
that a large portion of opera-goers have never
read the Nibelungen Lied, and that the dim
beliefs and superstitions of Eld, shadowed
forth in that legend, with a rude yet poetic
grandeur, appeal but distantly to the sympathies of the most open-minded. It may be
doubted whether the frescoes of Schnorr and
Cornelius, by which the poem was illustrated
in the new palace at Munich, at the instance
of the late King of Bavaria, have yet come
home to the people as works of art should,
though almost half a century has elapsed since
they were painted ; and though everything
that the encouragement and instruction of
comment could do, has been done, to make
them understood, if not enjoyed. It is, further,
hardly needful to point out that a picture on a
wall, and a picture on the stage, run chances
of acceptance entirely different, the one from
the other. Audiences will not willingly frequent representations which are mystical, indistinct, and wanting in beauty. It is true
that the absurdity of the stories of Idomeneo
and Die Zauberflöte have not prevented those
operas from holding the stage ; but the magic
was Mozart's, who lavished over every tale he
touched melodies so exquisite in fascination
and fancy, that the will and the power to find
fault with the librettist, must surrender themselves to the charm of the musician. Nothing
analogous is to be found in Herr Wagner's
productions. The music is to be subservient
to the story and the scenery : the three com-
bining to produce a whole. And this will be
felt at every attempt which could be made to
separate his music from the stage business and
the scenery. Whereas Mozart's opera music has
been the delight of every concertgoer, since
the day when it was written and this irrespective of the scenes to which it belongs, Herr
Wagner's vocal phrases, detached from the
pictures they illustrate, can only strike the ear
as so much cacophonous jargon, in which every
principle of nature and grace has been outraged, partly owing to poverty of invention,
and absence of all feeling for the beautiful,
partly owing to the arrogant tyranny of a false
and forced theory.
Nor are the dramatic and scenic portions of
Das Rheingold, if considered apart from the
music, in any way successful. The giants and
water nymphs, and "the human mortals," whose
weal and woe they influence, are manoeuvred
with a reckless clumsiness and disdain of contrast
and stage effect which are wearifully dreary,
save in a few places where their sublime sayings and doings are perilously ridiculous. The
stage is more than once peopled by mute
persons without any intelligible purpose. The
author-musician has not allowed himself,
throughout a work which lasts a couple of
hours, a single piece of concerted music ; the
trio of the swimming Rhine nymphs excepted.
There is no chorus. The words at least correspond to the story in their inflated eccentricity.
Euphuistic alliteration and neologisms have of
necessity neither "state nor ancientry," and
could be only defended were the writer's object
to raise stumbling-blocks or dig pitfalls in the
way of the sayers and singers who have to unfold
his wondrous tale. The result of the combination may be conceived by all who, not having
" eaten nightshade," are still in possession of
their sane senses. Even the most credulous of
Herr Wagner's partisans become tepid, vague,
apologetic, and scarcely intelligible, if they are
called on to defend or explain Herr Wagner's
text.
The above remarks and characteristics, not
put forward without the best consideration in
the power of their writer, are less tedious than
would be the narration, scene by scene, of the
dull absurdities of Das Rheingold. The scenery
they accompany (for the success of the work
is held by the congregation of the faithful to
depend on its scenery) has necessary peculiarities no less remarkable. The "mystery"
opens in a scene beneath the Rhine, where the
nymphs who guard the treasure swim and
sing ; and, inasmuch as they must have resting
places while they do their spiriting, are provided with huge substantial peaks of rock,
while the stage, almost up to the " sky border,"
is filled with what is meant to represent the
swiftly-flowing river. There is a final grand
effect of a rainbow, not greatly larger than a
canal bridge, which keeps close to the earth
for the convenience of the dramatis personae,
who are intended to mount upwards on it to
"the empyreal halls of celestial glory," as the maker of a pantomime bill might phrase it.
The absurdity of such an invention was
lessened at the rehearsal by the recusancy
of the actors and actresses to take the required responsibility. Add to these wonders
mists that come and go on the open landscape without any apparent rhyme or
reason, clouds, darkness, sunbursts, all so
many hackneyed effects dear to our children
and "groundlings" at Christmas time ; and some
idea may be formed of the shows to exhibit
which the music has been bent and broken.
The congregation declare that the utter want
of success which attended the rehearsal was
owing to the stupidity of the Munich machinists and painters. Yet these till now have
borne a deservedly high character throughout Germany; and the stage of the Bavarian
capital is one notoriously convenient for any
purposes of change or effects of space. After
all, Herr Wagner's devices and designs to carry
off a dreary story and more dreary music, are
neither stupendous nor new, howbeit difficult
to realise.
In the early days of opera, a great sensation was made by crowds, and chariots,
and horses, and descending and dissolving
globes, from which came forth singing and
dancing angels, in the Costanza e Fortezza
of Fux. It was not later than the early
part of the present century, that Spontini,
in his "pride of place" at Berlin, laid himself open to the bitter sarcasms of German
composers and critics, stung into a slanderous jealousy of the court-favour lavished
on an Italian, by introducing on the stage
in one opera, anvils, in another, elephants.
Meyerbeer is to this day by some and
these even the defenders of Herr Wagner's
proceedings stigmatised as an empiric, be-
cause he connived at the resuscitation of the
dead nuns in Robert ; contrived the ballet
of bathing ladies at Chenonceau, in Les Huguenots, and combined the three marches
in Le Camp de Silesie. Herr Wagner has
denounced such appeals to the eye, with the
sharpness of an unscrupulous pen dipped in
verjuice. Those who venture to possess me-
mories, and bring them into the service of
critical and historical comparison, must pre-
pare to be abused for the blindness of their
antiquated prejudices. That which used to
be called a murder, is to-day too often de-
scribed as a vagary of misdirected insanity or
enthusiasm, arising from weariness of life
and its burdens, and hatred of conventionalisms.
Last of all in accordance with the natural
order of precedence, it should have been
first a few words remain to be said of
"the sound and fury," which signify little or
nothing as music, though they fill its place in
this strange piece of work. The absence of
melody is, of course, in accordance with Herr
Wagner's avowed contempt for everything that
shall please the ear. This being the condition
of matters, it is not wonderful that a common
four-bar phrase of upward progression, repeated some thirty times or more in the prelude, should please, and (to be just) its effect
at representing the ceaseless flow of water, is
picturesque and happy. The river nymphs
are next announced by a phrase borrowed
from Mendelssohn's overture to Melusine.
There is a pompous entry for the principal
bass voice, there is an effect of nine-eight
rhythm, borrowed from Meyerbeer's scene in
the cloisters of Saint Rosalie (Robert) ; and
these are all the phrases that can be retained
by those who do not believe in what has been
described by the transcendentalists, as "concealed melody." The recitative in which the
scenes are conducted is throughout dry, unvocal, and uncouth. One Gluck might never
have written to show how truth in declamation
may be combined with beauty of form, variety
of instrumental support, and advantageous
presentment of the actors who have to tell the
story. Then, Herr Wagner's orchestral portion of the work is monotonous and without
variety. If his score be compared with those
by Weber, Meyerbeer, Berlioz, and M. Gounod
(whose ghost scene, in La Nonne Sanglante,
and procession of river-spirits in Mireille, come
as freshly back to the ear as if they had been
only heard yesterday) it will be found as ineffective as it is overladen.
It may be said that such a judgment as the
above is one too sweeping in its condemnation,
after a single hearing, to be just. But with some
persons first impressions of music, especially be
that music theatrical, are last ones. Of course
curiosities of detail are not to be apprehended
and retained, under such circumstances ; but
if not the slightest desire to return, on the contrary a positive aversion, be engendered, in
persons not unused to listen, not devoid of
memory, the fault may not altogether lie in
their arrogance or prejudice. The beauties of
Beethoven's latest compositions say his Ninth
Symphony, and latest quartetts seize the ear
in the first moment of acquaintance ; though no
time or familiarity may clear up the ugly and
obscure crudities which, also, they unhappily
contain. It will not avail to plead that it is
ungenerous or unjust to judge from a rehearsal ;
when, as in the case of Das Rheingold, such re-
hearsal was tantamount in correctness and spirit
to any first performance ever attended by
European critic. Guests, and some at no
small sacrifice, came to Munich from places
as far distant as London, Paris, Florence,
to ascertain what the newest production of
the newest Apostle and Iconoclast of his
day might prove. The majority of these
would hardly have spent time, money, and
fatigue, without expectation of pleasure ; the
more so, as it had been largely circulated
that this Nibelungen Prologue was to mark
a complete change in Herr Wagner's manner,
being clear, simple, and melodious. The
majority returned to the places whence they
came, rather relieved than otherwise, by the
fact that Das Rheingold was withdrawn indefinitely for further rehearsal (not alteration ;
such, indeed, being impossible), and that they might go on their ways, homewards, spared
another dismal evening, to be spent in wonder-
at the mouse brought forth by the mountain,
at the pigmy production of the self-styled
Musician of the Future.
********** ********* *********
Invitation à la présentation bayreuthoise de mes Voyageurs de l'Or du Rhin
Le lundi 29 juillet à 14 heures au Musée Richard Wagner de Bayreuth. Présentation en allemand par l'auteur. Plus d'infos : voir le site du Musée.
Luc-Henri ROGER, Les Voyageurs de l'Or du Rhin. La réception française de la création munichoise de l'Or du Rhin de Richard Wagner à l'été 1869, BoD 2019 .
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