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Ring here in 1896 the impersonation of Loge by the late Vogel of Munich was a brilliant feature. Vogel was at the time recognised as the best Loge, and his mantle has now fallen on Dr. Otto Briesemeister, who, with a much less effective costume than his predecessor's, dances very cleverly through his long and important part. But among the stage performers it was Mr. Hans Breuer, the representative of the dwarf Mime, to whom the principal honours of Monday's performance fell. Already in 1896 Mr. Breuer was the Bayreuth Mime, and he seems to have been steadily improving his presentation ever since. It is now beyond all expression brilliant. Mime (or Mimmy, as the name has been well Anglicised) is perhaps the best invented of Wagner's purely grotesque figures--better individualised than his master, the sinister Alberich, representing gold as a world-power, for whom Mimmy is compelled to do smith's work. From beginning to end the part presents unfamiliar problems to the actor, for never before was the attempt made to give a musical vehicle to such whining and cringing and snarling. But those problems have all now been solved by Mr. Breuer in a manner suggesting finality. He has penetrated to the very marrow of the composer's conception, and he gives us a figure that glows with imaginative power at every moment. Almost equally good in its very different way is the mighty elemental brutality of Mr. Johannes Elmblad's Fafner--another case of an actor completely identified with the particular part,--and the second giant (Mr. Hans Keller) fairly matched his colleague and Messrs. Breuer and Briesemeister in expressive pantomimic interpretation of the music. The enchanting
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Rhine Daughter