Titan

From Boston, from Baltimore, from Rochester, from all the outlying districts of Manhattan came pilgrims last week for the opening of the Wagner Matinee Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera House. Ever since the Mad Ludwig allowed him Bayreuth, it has been the way of musical folk to take the midsummer pilgrimage to bask in the glory of Richard Wagner. In the U. S. his glory spread more slowly. At first it was the matter of importing a great new musical idea, a new school of conductors, singers. There came the day then of Lehmann, of Ternina, Fremstad, Schumann-Heink, of Jean de Reszke, Anton Seidl, of Toscanini--and Wagner was indeed a Titan. There came the War, and German singers, German music were in disfavor, but Wagner grew even in exile. His operas crept back into the repertoire one by one until Lohengrin had arrived, Tannhaeuser, Tristan, Meister singer, the four Ring operas--Rheingold, Walkuere, Siegfried, Goetterdaemmerung--and the valedictory Parsifal. Today enthusiasm has reached the pitch where box-office plenty is direct sequel to the announcement of special Wagner matinees.

Credit goes in part to the German-singers now at the Metropolitan, to Conductor Artur Bodanzky who holds tight reins over them all. There is Maria Jeritza who gave last week her most gracious performance of the season as Elizabeth (Tannhaeuser), whose Elsa (Lohengrin) and Sieglinde (Walkuere) are compelling flesh-and-blood women worthy of the music given them to sing. There is Karin Branzell, worthy successor to Schumann-Heink as Erda (Rheingold and Siegfried), Fricka (Walkuere), Waltraute (Goetterdaemmerung), Brangaene ( Tristan), Baritone Friedrich Schorr vocally unequalled as Wolfram (Tannhaeuser), Sachs (Meistersinger), Gunther (Goetterdaemmerung); Basso Michael Bohnen, big, commanding as King Marke (Tristan), as Hagen (Goetterdaemmerung); Baritone Clarence Whitehill, impressive always for the kindness, the dignity of his Amfortas (Parsifal), his Hans Sachs. Many of the routine artists make much of lesser opportunities--George Meader with his David (Meister singer), Gustav Schuetzendorf with his Beckmesser (Meister singer), Florence Easton with whatever she does in her cool, intelligent way, be it Sieglinde (Walkuere), Eva (Meistersinger), Brunnhilde (the Ring). There is now most important of all Soprano Gertrude Kappel who arrived recently from Munich, gave such beautiful performances of Isolde, of Brunnhilde in Walkuere and Gotterdammerung as to make die-hards swallow their last struggling complaints of "no Wagnerian sopranos'' and set her down reverently as one of the Fremstad ilk.

But the lion's share of credit must go now, as it always has, to the Mighty Richard Himself. Not for his stories--they have little to do with it. Tannhaeuser is an incredible tale of a profane love in Venusberg matched against a sacred love for the girl back home. Lohengrin is a silver knight who will not give his name and Elsa a willy-nilly creature who dies for her "own curiosity. Tristan und Isolde depends on a magic potion for its very ecstasy of madness. Meister singer is a comedy of better stuff but Parsifal floats off again in a complicated fancy. The Ring too is a jumble--of gods, men, giants, women from the river's depths, mean little men from the bowels of the earth. The ring is a toy of the Rhine maidens. . . . A greedy dwarf steals it and pays by renouncing love. The great Wotan hears of it, forgets his godhead and stoops to trickery to gain it for himself. And the punishment passes on, fearfully, inevitably to the second and the third generation--to Siegmund, slain by Hunding before his father's eyes for loving his sister Sieglinde; to the young Siegfried, their son, stabbed in the back by Hagen; to Brunnhilde who is loved and betrayed; to everyone who lusts for the ring from the time it leaves the Rhine maidens until it goes back to them and Valhalla has fallen.

In a literal, little way Wagner's librettos are, like most of his mental doings, a hodge-podge of politics, ethics, poetry. It is by his music that they have been made immense, and enduring, in their scope. Elizabeth may have been the goody daughter of the Landgraf Hermann but her music has forgiven her. Sachs was a shoemaker, a long-winded fellow, but audiences know him as the wisest of men, and the swaggering young Siegfried as the very buoyancy of youth. Love, fear, hate, ecstasy, fire, water, sunlight, the vapors of the underworld, the utter darkness of destruction--all these have been spent fiercely, lavishly in the making of the Wagner music dramas.

* That is, singers who specialize in German opera, whether or not of German nationality. Clarence Whitehill is, for instance, an American, Karin Branzell a Swede, Florence Easton a Britisher, Maria Jeritza an Austrian.