The Van Buren press., 1896-02-01
Ole were good and the music chlmed


with both delightfully."-. Siegfried is
good blacksmith and ought to follow
the trade in my opinion. wish they
would sing in English. Pill bet there
were not ten in hundred of that audi
ence who understood a word that was
sung. They go there because it is con-
sidered the thing to do. 1t is fashion
able. OF course there was some sweet
music and so there is in a church or in
the parlor or in minstrel show and it
don't drag along for hours Siegfried
had to kill dragon and it took him a
half an hour. 1t was a drag on sure
enough. l could have. killed him in a
minute with that magic sword. But the
birds did sing most sweetly and that
lady that was hidden up in the trees
ah, that was delicious. [ liked that.
Ihe drums and horns all hushed for
that Sometimes when the whole or
chestra was in full blast fddling and
blowing and drum beating for dear life
and stopped all of sudden it scared
me. | thought something had bursted
or the boiler had collapsed or the air
brake come uncoupled. The sudden
ness always awaked mo and once |
jumped so my wife noticed it and asked
what was the matter. told her l had
slight palpitation and was threatened
with heart failure, which | am. At
times it seemed to me the musicians
fHr inn To- 4 E1,at t,1tn Of hot
woman that Siegfried found asleep or
dead in the woods and sang her to life
again, but they couldn't do it. I never
heard such a voice in my life, but was
sorry that she was lame. She couldn't
walk at all hardly. My wife says she
was just tangled up in her shroud or
maybe she had been dead so long she
had lost the use of her extremitIes. She
was the star-one of the great singers
of the world they say, but she couldn't
do justice to herself with all those
horns blowing Siegfried had found
her asleep in the woods reclining on a
messy bank, and as he had never be-
fore seen woman he thought she was
an angel and wanted to wake her but
was afraid. For long time he tiptoed
and eircled and at last ventured to touch
her and his plaintive voice seemed to
plead with her to awake, but she didn't
BY and by he got bolder and leaning
over pressed his lips to hers and drew
back as If he had committed the un-
pardonable sin. Well, of course, that
walked her-of course it did; and after
she had come to herself she looked
lovingly toward him and began to sing
and oh, such notes. [ don't know
what she said and don't care, but there
was love in it-lots of love and he
caught the malady and sang back at her
just such melody l never heard. 1t
took him too long to wake her up,
though, think would have walked her
in half the time.
But tall operas have an end somewhere,
and this one finally closed just in time
for us to lose our train and we had to
wait nearly three hours for the next
one. This veXed me and | considered
myself the injured person, but l didn't
complain-no | never complain. My
wife and daughter say that it was grand,
and as | went there to please them it is
all right with me. 1t was grand, gloomy
and peculiar They had read the opera
before and knew what the singing was
about, and they told me how Tam
hauser and Lohengrin were composed
nearly fifty years ago and were intro
duced in Paris and Vienna and nobody
liked them, and they went dead and
slept for thirty years until Liszt took
hold of them and revived them out Of
his great regard for Wagner, He edu-
Gated the musical world up to Wagner's
standard and now they are played by
the week in Baireuth, the greatest
musical center in the world, BY the
week is meant that it takes a whole
week to go through one opera, for it is
not cut or abridged like it is over here,
The company will play all the morning
and have a recess for dinner and con-
tinue in the afternoon and again at
night and the next day and so on until
the whole thing is finished. Merciful
fathers-what would become of me if
had to endure the like of that. Bill
Arp in Atlanta Constitution.