The style of acting which Wagner demands is, essentially, that which the best modern taste requires in heroic spoken drama. The meaningless, merely conventional gesticulation of the traditional opera-singer is to be replaced by all the subtile, natural-seeming, and dramatically effective histrionism which has hitherto been more especially associated with the non-lyric stage in its best estate. The actors are not to address themselves to the front benches, or to the chandelier—that time-honored repository of heroic aspirations—but to one another. There is, however, one point which actors of Wagner's music-dramas are, almost everywhere, too prone to overlook, and which is of the most vital importance. This is the intimate and indissoluble connection, which exists throughout, between the music in the orchestra and the dramatic action on the stage. The anecdote about "Lohengrin," that I told at the beginning of this article, is a fair example of what I mean. It is not enough for the singing actor to know the text and music of his own part in a scene; not enough, even, for him to know the parts of those who play with him; he must know the orchestral score of the scene—or, at worst, the piano-forte transcription thereof—by heart. The Wagnerian actor who does not know the score of all the scenes in which he takes part is in as bad a case as the pianist who knows only the solo part in the concerto he is to play. This complete knowledge is necessary not merely to insure the perfection of certain realistic details, as when Wagner wrote, as a foot-note to Tannhäuser's song to Venus, in the first act of the opera: "This harp accompaniment must be copied into the part given to the singer, that he may learn it, and seem to play it on the mock instrument he carries on the stage." It is necessary for a far more important purpose—the actor's by-play is often to be regulated by what music is going on in the orchestra. In the spoken drama an actor's by-play is conditioned by one of two things—by what goes on around him, or by the emotions that arise in the breast of the character he impersonates. The same is true in Wagnerian music-drama, only that here the actor is less free to put in what by-play he chooses and, especially, when he chooses. In Wagner's music-dramas there is not a little dumb-show, and this dumb-show is, in every case, accompanied by appropriately expressive and illustrative orchestral music. The actor is in duty bound, not only to assume the required expression of face, and perform the proper pantomimic action, but, also, so to regulate his acting that every change of facial expression, every gesture and movement, shall fall pat with the corresponding musical phrase or accent in the orchestra. There must be this quasi-Leibnitzian harmonia præstabilita between the orchestral music and the histrionic act if the illusion is to be produced that both music and act are essentially one, only apprehended by us simultaneously through two different senses. Without such "pre-established agreement" the full realization of Wagner's dramatic ideal is impossible; and to what minutiæ of detail he wished it carried can be appreciated only after a very careful study of certain scenes in his works. Here is one of the points where the average actor of Wagnerian music-drama is weakest; and, it must be admitted, even the Bayreuth performances leave much to be desired in this respect. I remember saying to a high authority on matters Wagnerian, after first seeing "Parsifal," at Bayreuth, in 1884, that, of all the members of the double cast of the drama, Frau Materna and Herr Scaria seemed to me the only ones who had completely grasped, digested, and assimilated Wagner's idea. The answer was: "Na! between you and me, you are perfectly right!" (Sie haben vollkommen recht.) And, if Bayreuth is not quite perfect in this matter, what shall be said of performances of Wagner's works elsewhere? If any of my readers should have the curiosity to see for themselves (in their mind's eye, of course) what effect can be produced by this accurate agreement between the actor's pantomime and the music in the orchestra, let them turn to "Die Meistersinger," Act III., beginning of Scene 3, and to "Die Walküre," Act I, Scene l, and compare the elaborate stage-directions with the music. A pretty accurate knowledge of the various leading motives is to be presupposed.

If the too common lapses in the matters of stage-setting, stage-management, and acting, that are to be deplored in most performances of Wagner's works, give the unguarded spectator an incomplete idea of the character of these works themselves, and enable him to form only an approximate notion of their dramatic beauty and power, the equally frequent lapses from correctness of style in the matter of musical performance (singing and playing) place him in a still more helpless predicament, for they give him an absolutely wrong idea. Few of Wagner's ideas on the subject of musico-dramatic performance have been so generally misunderstood, it seems to me, as his ideas on the art of singing, and the demands he made upon singers, as such. Many critics, even of acknowledged Wagnerian proclivities, seem to have the haziest notions on this head. That there is a certain excuse for this must be admitted. In reading such theoretical works as "Oper und Drama," and others that came from Wagner's pen, it is, perhaps, not unnatural to hold fast by that upon which he threw the greatest stress, and to forget, or undervalue, that which he emphasized less strongly. Again, it is natural for the average art-lover, who does not, as a rule, care to dabble in theoretical reading, to get his ideas of Wagnerian performance from the practical examples that have come within the scope of his own experience. But it should be remembered that, because this or that singer is famous in Wagnerian rôles, and has been highly praised by the master himself, it does not necessarily follow that he is a model of all the artistic virtues that Wagner prized. No more does it necessarily follow, because Wagner valued a fine stage-presence, good acting, distinct enunciation, and correctness of rhetorical accent more than he did singing, in its purely musical aspect, that he did not value fine singing at all. Wagner, like the rest of us, had to put up with the best he could get; the artists he had to do with were Germans, who, as he himself admitted, "have, as a rule, but little talent for singing." The notion that Wagner cared nothing for fine singing, and was willing, and even glad, to dispense with it in performances of his works, seems to me utterly without foundation. That he strongly deprecated that somewhat foppish preciosity of style which belongs to "Bellini-and-Donizetti opera," and of which Bubini was probably the most perfect exponent, is true enough. But between this and the almost total absence of musical phrasing, the mere declamatory shouting that we have heard from some loudly acclaimed singers in Wagnerian rôles, there lies a considerable distance; and it is, to me at least, indubitable that Wagner's ideal lay somewhere between these two limits. Frau Materna once told me that Wagner's own singing of passages in the "Nibelungen" and "Parsifal," when he showed his singers how this or that phrase ought to go, as he often had occasion to do at the Bayreuth rehearsals, was literally the despair of all the artists present. She said that his voice was bad and his vocalization very defective, but that the lyric purity, perfection, and poignant expressiveness of his musical phrasing were simply astounding. If, for the Bayreuth festivals, he chose some artists because they had a fine stage-presence and were good actors, apparently overlooking the fact that they were poor singers and often sang out of tune, it was simply because, with him, good acting was a sine qua non; and eye-witnesses at the rehearsals report, quite credibly, that he, more than once, expressed himself in no measured terms about the singing of these very artists. Indeed, it is said that, after the first "Nibelungen" festival, in 1876, Wagner was sorry that he had given the part of Siegfried to Georg Unger, with all his superb stage-presence, instead of to Heinrich Vogl, who would have sung it better. Whether this be true or not, it may safely be asserted that, in general, the often ungainly singing, false intonation, and poor vocal phrasing of some, even of the famous singers of Wagnerian rôles, were things that Wagner had, perforce, to put up with, but which neither pleased nor satisfied him.

And, upon the whole, it should be said, emphatically, that good singing and musical phrasing are of importance in the Wagnerian music-drama; of less importance than good acting and a distinct enunciation of the text, but by no means valueless for all that. What Wagner did deprecate in singing was anything that tended merely to display the singer's voice; the prolonged sustaining of high notes, after the Italian fashion, was his pet abhorrence. Many a Lohengrin has come in for a sound rating from him for dwelling too long on "Elsa, ich liebe dich!" He abominated all those "heroic" vocal effects with which Italian singers are wont to bring down the house. His first demand was that every word and syllable of the text should be distinctly heard by the listener. And this brings me to a point in which almost all performances of Wagner's dramatic works that I have heard, in Germany, England, and America, agree in being sadly incorrect. The orchestra almost everywhere plays too loud, either drowning the singers' voices or else forcing them to inordinate vocal exertions to make themselves heard. Nothing could have been more un-Wagnerish than the almost continual shouting that marred the otherwise fine performances of "Tristan" at the Metropolitan Opera House last winter; and what was worst of all was that this strenuous vocal effort was necessary. The reckless way in which Herr Seidl threw the reins upon the neck of his orchestra made it so; and Herr Seidl is not alone in this—it is done almost everywhere where Wagner's operas and music-dramas are given. It may possibly be objected here, that if Wagnerian opera is given "almost everywhere" in this way, in the most famous opera-houses and by the most noted conductors and singers, is it not likely that this way is right? A thousand times No! Hear what Wagner himself says about the manner in which his works are usually given in Germany. I may change the phraseology, for I quote from memory, but of the purport I am sure. Some years ago, when the proposed scheme of giving the complete cyclus of Wagner's works at Bayreuth had to be abandoned for lack of the needful funds, Wagner wrote to a friend: "Perhaps it is, after all, better as it is. It is quite possible for me to mount the 'Nibelungen' and 'Parsifal' at Bayreuth; these works are new. But for the 'Holländer,' 'Tannhäuser,' 'Lohengrin,' and 'Die Meistersinger '—perhaps even for 'Tristan'—I should have to employ absolutely green hands, who, as such, might be unable to cope with their task. For there is hardly a singer of any experience or eminence, in Germany, who has not repeatedly sung in these works; and as such singers I have thus become accustomed to doing almost everything wrong, it would be hopeless for me to try to lead them into the right path." But the best reply is furnished by Bayreuth itself. There you hear little or no shouting; the beautifully moderate playing of the orchestra makes it possible for the singers to use the mezza voce almost everywhere, except in passages of extreme passionate violence. Hardly a word is lost; and the singers sing easily and humanly, without excessive exertion. Even for the "Ride of the Valkyrior" (in "Die Walküre"), which we know here as a rather striking example of powerful orchestration, Wagner said to the orchestra, at one of the Bayreuth rehearsals, in 1876: "Gentlemen, I want a great deal of accent here, but little noise" (sehr viel Accent, aber wenig Lärm). Indeed, not a little of the bad singing we too often hear in Wagner's operas is quite sufficiently accounted for by the fact that the singers are too hard pushed by the orchestra. Of the specifically un-Wagnerian singing, of which we hear not a little, much comes, doubtless, from an ingrained and inveterate operatic habit. The effective "final cadence that brings down the house" is something that few singers can be prevailed upon to forego. I wonder how many habitual opera-goers, who are familiar with "Die Walküre," are aware that Siegmund's love-song, in the first act, really ends piano; I, for one, have never heard it sung so. Upon the whole, it may be said that just those vocal effects which are so telling, stirring, and perfectly in place in operas like "Aïda," or the "Prophète," are precisely the ones Wagner did not wish for in his own works. But it is not merely the ordinary "heroic" effects, and the "final cadence that brings down the house," so dear to the hearts of case-hardened opera-singers, that Wagner deprecated. Foreign as such things are to the spirit of his music, there is still another thing which he held in equal abhorrence. This is the rhythmic liberties habitually taken by opera-singers—the whole unrhythmic style of singing prevalent on the operatic stage.

In the old, traditional Italian opera the lyrical numbers had, as a rule, so simple, strongly marked, and perspicuous a rhythm that no irregularity in the singing, no rubato phrasing, could very well make it incomprehensible, if the singer was only possessed of a decent rhythmic sense. Retarding here, and hurrying there, imparted a certain expressive vivacity to the phrase, besides allowing the singer to make play with his voice at effective points. And this was all the more legitimate that the phrase itself was usually so simple in outline that this quasi-distortion did not hinder its being readily grasped by the listener. In the recitatives, on the other hand, there was no question of any rhythm at all; the singer was free to give the notes what value he pleased.

Now, what Wagner wrote for his singers, especially in his later works, is equally far removed from the regular rhythmic carrure of the lyrical numbers, and from the absolutely unrhythmic character of the recitatives, in Italian opera. No doubt there is not a little in his music-dramas that might be called recitative without an inordinate stretching of terms. But he was far from intending the singer to take any marked rhythmic liberties even here. As far back as "Tannhäuser," Wagner writes:

If this principle holds good in "Tannhäuser," it is of threefold weight in the later music-dramas. At the beginning of Wotan's long narrative: "Als junger Liebe Lust mir verblich, etc.," in the second act of "Die Walküre," we accordingly find the direction, "streng im Zeitmaass" (in strict time)—a direction which probably recurs oftener in Wagner's scores than in those of any other dramatic composer. Shamefully as this principle is disregarded by most singers who have to do with Wagner's music-dramas, we have had here at least one noteworthy example of its complete application—Albert Niemann. Whatever this distinguished artist's singing may not be, it is thoroughly Wagnerian in its persistently rhythmic quality.

I have shown here what seem to me the most important elements of correct musico-dramatic performance according to Wagner's ideas, laying especial stress upon such principles and details as are oftenest neglected, and in the practical following-out of which the Bayreuth Theatre stands, as yet, solitarily alone. And, as I have said, it is by this faithful adherence to Wagnerian principles that the importance of Bayreuth, as the headquarters of Wagner's art, still maintains itself.