“I bury here a secret deep,
      For centuries long to lie concealed;
  Yet while this stone its trust shall keep,
      To all the secret stands revealed.”

He also made an eloquent address, setting forth the details of the plans and the purposes of the new temple of art.  The undertaking was now fairly inaugurated.  The erratic King of Bavaria had from the first been Wagner’s steadfast friend and munificent patron; but not to him alone belongs the credit of the colossal project and its remarkable success.  When Wagner first made known his views, other friends, among them Tausig, the eminent pianist, at once devoted themselves to his cause.  In connection with a lady of high rank, Baroness von Schleinitz, he proposed to raise the sum of three hundred thousand thalers by the sale of patronage shares at three hundred thalers each, and had already entered upon the work when his death for the time dashed Wagner’s hopes.  Other friends, however, now came forward.  An organization for the promotion of the scheme, called the “Richard Wagner Society,” was started at Mannheim.  Notwithstanding the ridicule which it excited, another society was formed at Vienna.  Like societies began to appear in all the principal cities of Germany, and they found imitators in Milan, Pesth, Brussels, London, and New York.  Shares were taken so rapidly that the success of the undertaking was no longer doubtful.  Meanwhile the theatre itself was under construction.  It combined several peculiarities, one of the most novel of which was the concealment of the orchestra by the sinking of the floor, so that the view of the audience could not be interrupted by the musicians and their movements.  Private boxes were done away with, the arrangement of the seats being like that of an ancient amphitheatre, all of them facing the stage.  Two prosceniums were constructed which gave an indefinable sense of distance to the stage-picture.  To relieve the bare side walls, a row of pillars was planned, gradually widening outward and forming the end of the rows of seats, thus having the effect of a third proscenium.  The stage portion of the theatre was twice as high as the rest of the building, for all the scenery was both raised and lowered, the incongruity between the two parts being concealed by a facade in front.  “Whoever has rightly understood me,” says Wagner, “will readily perceive that architecture itself had to acquire a new significance under the inspiration of the genius of Music, and thus that the myth of Amphion building the walls of Thebes by the notes of his lyre has yet a meaning.”