or was some variation of the sentiment once expressed by Mr.
Edgar W. Nye ("Bill Nye") who, after giving the subject his mature
consideration, said he came to the conclusion that Wagner's music was
not so bad as it sounded. But I own that since I went to Bayreuth and
heard and saw the operas as there given, I began not only to see that
they are beautiful, but why they are beautiful.

Wagnerian opera is a poetical and musical idealization of speech.

The fault that I, like many others, have fallen into, was that of
listening to the voices instead of listening to the orchestra. The fact
is, the voices could almost be dispensed with altogether. The orchestra
gives you the beautiful poem in music, and the personages on the stage
are really little more than illustrative puppets. They play about the
same part in the work that pictures play in a book. Wagner's method was
something so new, so different to all we had been accustomed to, that it
naturally provoked much indignation and enmity--not because it was bad,
but because it was new. It was the old story of the Classicists and
Romanticists over again.

If you wanted to write a symphony, illustrative of the pangs and
miseries of a sufferer from toothache, you would, if you were a disciple
of Wagner, write your orchestral score so that the instruments should
convey to the listener the whole gamut of groans--the temporary relief,
the return of the pain, the sudden disappearance of it on ringing the
bell at the dentist's door, the final wrench of extraction gone through
by the poor patient. On the boards you would put a personage who, with
voice and contortions, should help you, as pictorial illustrations help
an author. Such is the Wagnerian method.

[Illustration: "A TERRIBLE WAGNERITE."]

After the play I met a terrible Wagnerite. Most Wagnerites are terrible.
They will not admit that anything can be discussed, much less
criticised, in the works of the master. They are not admirers,
disciples; they are worshipers. To them Wagner's music is as perfect as
America is to many a good-humored American. They will tell you that
never have horses neighed so realistically as they do in the "Walkuere."
Answer that this is almost lowering music to the level of ventriloquism,
and they will declare you a profane, unworthy to live. My Wagnerite
friend told me last night that Wagner's work constantly improved till it
reached perfection in "Parsifal." "There," he said, quite seriously,