there are times when Wagner carries me along with him, when I exult
in the crash and whirl of his contending harmonies. But, alas! there
are those other moods—those after dinner moods—when my desire is
for something distinctly resembling a tune. Still, there are other
composers of grand opera besides Wagner. I grant to the late Herr
Wagner, that, in so far as music is concerned, opera can supply us
with all we can need.

   But it was also Wagner's argument that grand opera could supply us
with acting, and there I am compelled to disagree with him. Wagner
thought that the arts of acting and singing could be combined. I
have seen artists the great man has trained himself. As singers they
left nothing to be desired, but the acting in grand opera has never
yet impressed me. Wagner never succeeded in avoiding the operatic
convention and nobody else ever will. When the operatic lover meets
his sweetheart he puts her in a corner and, turning his back upon
her, comes down to the footlights and tells the audience how he
adores her. When he has finished, he, in his turn, retires into the
corner, and she comes down and tells the audience that she is simply
mad about him.

   Overcome with joy at finding she really cares for him, he comes down
right and says that this is the happiest moment of his life; and she
stands left, twelve feet away from him, and has the presentiment that
all this sort of thing is much too good to last. They go off
together, backwards, side by side. If there is any love-making, such
as I understand by the term, it is done "off."  This is not my idea
of acting. But I do not see how you are going to substitute for it
anything more natural. When you are singing at the top of your
voice, you don't want a heavy woman hanging round your neck. When
you are killing a man and warbling about it at the same time, you
don't want him fooling around you defending himself. You want him to
have a little reasonable patience, and to wait in his proper place
till you have finished, telling him, or rather telling the crowd, how
much you hate and despise him.

   When the proper time comes, and if he is where you expect to find him
while thinking of your upper C, you will hit him lightly on the
shoulder with your sword, and then he can die to his own particular
tune. If you have been severely wounded in battle, or in any other

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