The Lexington dispatch. [volume] (Lexington, South Carolina) 1870-1917, 1898-05-18
TOlSTOI AT THE OPERA.
Will Wagnerites Laugh. Weep or Rage
Over His Impressions?

oScE hS AHpTessious.
One hardly knows whether to laugh
or weep over Tolstoi's account of his
impressions of rendering of "Sieg.
fried" To the great world it will come
as surprise that Tolstoi has been in
side theater within recent years. He
went, however, at the urgent entreaty
Of friends wi:n assured him that he
could not understand Wagner without
seeing him. Tolstoi was of different
opinion, and that opinion, apparently,
he retained.
He tells Us in the new section of his
essay on art how he went rather late,
how he found the great Moscow theater
crowded with grand dukes and persons
OF distinction, and Of tne extreme diff
Guilty with which his friends kept him
from escaping at the end of the first act.
We could imagine that in such sur
roundings the simple living ascetio
would be i'll at ease, whatever the opera
on the stage. Tolstoi's preconceived an.
tipathy to Wagner, his distrus. Of his
method, his disbelief in the possibility
of the music poem, and E.s conviction
that the whole of the Ring" was one
stupendous counterfeit are expressed in
lively terms enough.
The thing that impresses him most
about MINI indeed he cannot shake
it offs that he was dressed in "trico-
tights" "He opened his mouth in
strange way. He sang something incom-
prehensible. The music Of various in
struments accompanied the strange
sounds which he emitted" The rest he
gathers from the libretto-which shows
that he saw an exceptionally bad Mime.
The scene between Siesfried and Mime
bored him to death. When Wotan ap-
peared, he notes that he stood in stu
pid pose, with spear-which was very
likely true-and that be was dressed up
in wig and tights at the same time.
"The riddles have no meaning except
to tell the audience what the Nible.
lungs are, what the giants are, what
the gods are and what has happened be-
FORE
And this is how Tolstoi was impress
ed by the foregoing scene and the song
of the sword "Siegfred seizes one Of
the pieces of what is meant to represent
the broken sword, saws it up, puts it
on what is meant to represent the forge,
melts it, and then forges it and sings:
'Heaho, heaho, hobo! Hobo, hobo, hoho,
hobo! Hoheo, habo, haheo, hoho. ;"
Surely if ever there was song that
would carry away an opera house not OF
abnormals, or decadents, or hypnotized
cultured people, but of Coyent Garden
porters, or even Tolstoi's own simple
natured peasants, it is that song. But
not bit Of it. He sees no humor in one
of the greatest of comedies, and at any
rate in the caricature he has given to
the world the whole business suggested
to his mind nothing but gnome In one
sort Of tights, god in another and
youth with a horn shouting 'Hoheo"
The best that Tolstoi will admit as to
Wagner's musical capacity is that he
was not destitute of talent Somehow
the old Ttan's rage seems to have
blinded and deafened him. BY one of
those ironies so common where great
men are working by different roads to.
ward the same end Tolstoi does not see
that Wagner's art was as religious IN
its bent as his own; that two masters,
neither knowing where the other was
going, have unconsciously been working
toward the same goal.-London Chron-
;,1o