Wagner to refuse to take tickets for the performances that are to be conducted by Wagner’s son.  Bayreuth promises us the best artists.  Whether some of the singers are or are not the best artists is largely a matter of taste.  But that Siegfried Wagner is the best conductor procurable in Germany is too preposterous a proposition to be considered for a moment.  He may be some day; but that day is far off.

As for the representation of “Parsifal,” I should not trouble to discuss it had not Mr. Chamberlain’s book on Wagner lately come my way.  It shows me that the old game is being pursued as busily as ever.  Since Wagner’s death the world has been carefully and persistently taught that only Bayreuth can do justice to “Parsifal”; and since the world believes anything if it is said often enough, it has come to think it sheer blasphemy to dream of giving “Parsifal” elsewhere than at Bayreuth.  “Parsifal” is not an opera—­it is a sacred revelation; and just as the seed of Aaron alone could serve as priests in the sacred rites of the temple at Jerusalem, so only the seed of Wagner can serve as priests—­that is to say, as chief directing priests—­when “Parsifal” is played.  Thus declare the naive dwellers in Villa Wahnfried, modestly forgetting the missing link in the chain of argument which should prove them alone to be the people qualified to perform “Parsifal”; and I regret to observe the support they receive from a number of Englishmen and Scotchmen, who are grown more German than the Germans, and just as religiously forget to make any reference to this missing link of proof.  But these Germanised Scotchmen and Englishmen work hard for Bayreuth:  now they whisper in awestruck tones of the beauty and significance of “Parsifal”; now they howl at the unhappy writers in the daily and weekly Press who dare to find little significance and less beauty in the Bayreuth representation; and, to do them bare justice, until lately they have been fairly successful in persuading the world to think with them.  Verily, they have their reward—­they partake of afternoon tea at Villa Wahnfried; they enjoy the honour of bowing low to the second Mrs. Wagner; Wagner’s legal descendants cordially take them by the hand.  And they go away refreshed, and again spread the report of the artistic and moral and religious supremacy of Bayreuth; and the world listens and goes up joyfully to Bayreuth to be taxed—­one pound sterling per head per “Parsifal” representation.  The performances over, the world comes away mightily edified, having seen nothing with its own eyes, heard nothing with its own ears, having understood nothing at all;—­having, in fact, so totally miscomprehended everything as to think “Parsifal” a Christian drama; having been too deaf to realise that the singers were frequently out of the key, and too blind to observe that the scenery in the second act resembled a cheap cretonne, and that many of the flower-maidens were at least eight feet in circumference.  On the way