Letters of Richard Wagner to Emil Heckel - With a Brief History of the Bayreuth Festivals (Book)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ... As late as February 10--three days before her husband's death--Frau Wagner wrote me without any apprehension of a crisis. I had expressed a hope that the master would return through the Gothard, so as to visit me at Mannheim. It fell out otherwise. His homeward road was taken, as a corpse, over the Brenner again to his beloved German Bayreuth. If I abstained from depicting the profound impressions made upon me by the Festspiels, with still more justice may I withhold my feelings at the news of the great master's death, my sensations at his solemn burial in Bayreuth. Here, as so often in life, applies that deeply earnest word from the first act of Parsifal: -- "That ne'er is told."-- * * * Frau Wagner's condition remained so precarious for a long time after the master's death, that it was impossible for her to take any personal part in the festival of 1883. The sense of mourning was universal. How quiet every movement On the stage, what an earnest hush among the audience when it took its customary promenade before the playhouse in the entr'actes. The thought of the departed master was manifest on every face. Scaria undertook the stage-management. Every effort was directed to preserving the master's intentions down to the smallest detail. Remarks and observations of witnesses of the 1882 and 1883 performances, alike executants and spectators, were collected in a volume to be kept at Wahnfried. Forty pages here record those notes on the master's own rendering, and subsequent deviations, all tabulated under act and person. This chronicle has proved of the greatest service for retention of the original character of the performances. The Verwaltungsrath, reinforced by Friedrich Schon as administrator of the "Richard Wagner Stipendiary - fund, ..".