ago; instead of which
there continue to this day to open a performance against a deadly
competition in the form of noise, confusion, and a scattered interest.

Finally, out of darkness and distance and mystery soft rich notes rose
upon the stillness, and from his grave the dead magician began to
weave his spells about his disciples and steep their souls in his
enchantments. There was something strangely impressive in the fancy
which kept intruding itself that the composer was conscious in his grave
of what was going on here, and that these divine souls were the clothing
of thoughts which were at this moment passing through his brain, and
not recognized and familiar ones which had issued from it at some former
time.

The entire overture, long as it was, was played to a dark house with
the curtain down. It was exquisite; it was delicious. But straightway
thereafter, or course, came the singing, and it does seem to me that
nothing can make a Wagner opera absolutely perfect and satisfactory to
the untutored but to leave out the vocal parts. I wish I could see a
Wagner opera done in pantomime once. Then one would have the lovely
orchestration unvexed to listen to and bathe his spirit in, and the
bewildering beautiful scenery to intoxicate his eyes with, and the dumb
acting couldn't mar these pleasures, because there isn't often anything
in the Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as
acting; as a rule all you would see would be a couple of silent people,
one of them standing still, the other catching flies. Of course I do not
really mean that he would be catching flies; I only mean that the usual
operatic gestures which consist in reaching first one hand out into
the air and then the other might suggest the sport I speak of if the
operator attended strictly to business and uttered no sound.

This present opera was "Parsifal." Madame Wagner does not permit its
representation anywhere but in Bayreuth. The first act of the three
occupied two hours, and I enjoyed that in spite of the singing.

I trust that I know as well as anybody that singing is one of the most
entrancing and bewitching and moving and eloquent of all the vehicles
invented by man for the conveying of feeling; but it seems to me that
the chief virtue in song is melody, air, tune, rhythm, or what you
please to call it, and that when this feature is absent what remains is
a picture with the color left out. I was not able to detect in the vocal