e rest,
at the end of the first act; at the end of the second they scarcely
understand Mark's passionate affection--they only know it is an enemy of
their love; and, finally, they are glad when death frees them from life,
which means an incessant trouble and interruption to them. The tragedy
deepens and grows more intense with each successive scene; each
separates them more widely from life and all that life means, until in
the last act the divorce is complete. This is the purpose of the drama;
this _is_ the drama, and those who do not like it must turn to another
opera.

If the drama is clear, so is the music. Wagner's powers were now at
their fullest and ripest; in invention, technical skill, mastery of the
colours of the orchestra, he towers far above every composer born in the
nineteenth century. Nietzsche, in one of his many quarrelsome diatribes,
says Wagner _determined_ to be a musician and made himself one by sheer
will-power. But not by taking much thought, nor by determination, nor by
exercise of will-power, does any man become an artistic inventor, as
Nietzsche would have perceived had he himself been capable of more than
spasmodic, fragmentary thought. _Tristan_ is full of great melodies:
gigantic themes, like that which is played while Isolda awaits Tristan's
entrance; tender ones, like the music given to Brangaena; passionate and
intolerably sweet, like the duet of the pair after the drinking of the
philtre. The other acts contain even more amazing things, and to them we
shall come in due time. First let us note how Wagner sustains his
background and atmosphere throughout the first act. At times, when our
attention has to be concentrated on the personages on the opening stage,
the sea song theme, with its smell of the pungent, salt sea air,
disappears; then, as I have remarked, it gradually creeps in again, so
that we do not realize that it has ever been absent; or, again, as
during the conversation between Isolda and Brangaena, it breaks in
abruptly, with the roar of the seamen's voices and Kurvenal's savage
orders. It is managed with the most consummate skill. Though the tent
blots out a view of the ocean, yet the mast and bellying sail (which
ought to be visible), and the miraculous music, preserve an ever-present
sense of the sea, and in that atmosphere of keen freshness and ozone the
characters begin to work out their destiny. To understand Wagner's real
greatness and the personal quality that differe