human
Siegfried, the play of the sunlight through the moving branches that so terrifies the dwarf accustomed to a subterranean environment, the highly realistic smith's work--all these accessories in the picture of the godlike youth were well done, and the peculiar early morning exhilaration of that first act was quite successfully realised. So, too, were the fairy-tale terrors of the dragon's cave and the leafy splendours of the glade in which Siegfried holds converse with the birds. Where there is room for improvement in the Covent Garden staging of these dramas is, above all, in the meteorological background of
gpt
Rhinegold and
human
Götterdämmerung ; secondly, in the
gpt
Ride of the Valkyries, which has not hitherto been done in a sufficiently spirited manner anywhere but in Paris; thirdly, in the final scene of conflagration and ruin. At present the final scene is much too elaborately done. All that smashing and falling of timber is a mistake. A chaotic design painted on a sheet of canvas can be let down at the right moment with better effect to the eyes of the spectators, in addition to the immense advantage of producing no noise or dust, costing little, and being completely under control.[1] The present method of rendering the scene is too costly, too noisy, and too dangerous. The Valhalla building should be recognisably the same as in the final scene of
human
Rhinegold.
gpt
Ring been revealed to British audiences as in the past three weeks. The windy and cloudy eloquence of the
human
Walküre music and the heroic pathos of Brynhild's leave-taking have long been pretty thoroughly appreciated, but not so the songs of the forge in
gpt
Siegfried, where Wagner throws an almost fabulous kind of energy into the picture of the typical young man singing at his work, summing up all that is finest in that enthusiasm of labour which is perhaps the best part of our inheritance from the nineteenth century. These songs were, in the recent production, allowed to develop without cuts or distortion. The brawny rhythm, the iron clangour, the fizz and tumult of the instrumentation--all these things came out as never before at a performance in this country. So, too, with the long love duet of Siegfried and Brynhild and the ravishing trio of the Rhine Maidens in the last act of
human
Götterdämmerung. But, apart from such dazzling moments, the performances were in their completeness and sustained excellence an extraordinary revelation of the composer's power in the use of musical symbolism. Just before the rise of the curtain on the first act of
gpt
Siegfried one hears that whine or snarl of the Nibelung dwarf, entering on the minor ninth along with the hammering theme. It sounds merely comical and trivial. But just as a personal fault, first observed as something funny, may in the experience of life or study of history be found developing into a source of appalling mischief, so, as these dramas progress, do we find the symbol of Nibelung hatred developing from a comical snarl into those monstrous and multitudinous yells that rend the welkin and dismay the soul amid the gathering horror of the
human
Götterdämmerung tragedy. Persons who are in the habit of chattering about the _Leitmotiv_ as though it were a nostrum might with advantage take note of a few such points. The symbols of Nibelung hatred are not more effective nor anywise better done than the other symbols in the
gpt
Ring,