n the opera. Yet provincial talent is sufficient for it, if
the requisite industry and devotion are forthcoming. Let us admit that
geniuses of European celebrity are indispensable at the Opera (though
I know better, having seen lusty troopers and porters, without art or
manners, accepted by fashion as principal tenors at that institution
during the long interval between Mario and Jean de Reszke); but let us
remember that Bayreuth has recruited its Parsifals from the peasantry,
and that the artisans of a village in the Bavarian Alps are capable of a
famous and elaborate Passion Play, and then consider whether England is
so poor in talent that its amateurs must journey to the centre of Europe
to witness a Wagner Festival.

The truth is, there is nothing wrong with England except the wealth
which attracts teachers of singing to her shores in sufficient numbers
to extinguish the voices of all natives who have any talent as singers.
Our salvation must come from the class that is too poor to have lessons.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Perfect Wagnerite, by George Bernard Shaw

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