I have seen Wagner’s Walküre. The performance was excellent. The orchestra was superb, and the best singers did everything within their power – and yet it was tiresome. What a Don Quixote Wagner is! He expends all his energy pursuing the impossible, and if all this time he would only follow the natural bent of his extraordinary gift, he could evoke a whole world of musical beauty. I believe Wagner is, by nature, a symphonist. He is gifted with genius, but he is ruined by his tendencies; his inspiration is paralysed by the theories that he invented himself and that he insists on putting into practice at any cost. In his efforts to achieve reality, truth, and rationalism in opera, he lets music slip quite out of sight, and in his four latest operas it is conspicuous chiefly by its absence. I cannot consider music something that consists of kaleidoscopic, shifting phrases that succeed one another without a break and never come to an end; that is, never give the ear the slightest opportunity to rest upon musical form. Not a single broad, rounded melody, nor one moment of repose for the singer! The singer must always follow the orchestra and be careful not to miss his note, which has no more importance in the score than some note for the fourth horn. / But there is no doubt that Wagner is a magnificent symphonist. I will prove to you by just one example how far the symphonic prevails over the operatic in his operas. You have probably heard his celebrated Ride of the Valkyries. What a great and marvellous picture! We actually seem to see these fierce giants flying on their magic steeds through thunder and lightning. In the concert hall this piece makes an extraordinary impression. On the stage, the view of cardboard rocks, canvas clouds, and the soldiers who run about awkwardly in the background – in short, when you see this very inadequate theatrical heaven, which makes a poor pretence of realizing the infinite realm above, the music loses all power of expression. There the stage does not enhance the effect, but helps to spoil it. Finally, I cannot understand, and never shall, why the Nibelungen should be considered a literary masterpiece. As a national saga, perhaps, but as literature – certainly not! / Wotan, Brúnnhilde, Fricka, and the rest are all so impossible, so inhuman, that is very difficult to feel any sympathy with their destinies. And so little life! For three quarters of an hour Wotan reproaches Brünhilde for her disobedience. How boring! And with it all there are many fine and beautiful passages of purely symphonic character. << less