Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1898-05-14
TOLsTOI AT TIE OPERA.
will wasnerites Laugh, Weep or Rsge
0var His Innressior,s2

will Wasnerites Laugh. Weep or Nsge
Over His Impressions:
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 a surprise that Tolstoi has been in
side theater within recent years. lie
went. however, at the urgent entreaty
Of friends who assured him that he
could not understand Wagner without
seeing him. Tolstoi was OF different
opinion, and that opinion, apparently,
tie 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 the extreme diff
Guilty with which his friends kept him
from escaping at the end of the first act.
We could imagine that il such sur
ropndings the simple living ascetlc
would be Ill at ease, whatever the opera
on the stage. Tolstoi's preconceived an
tipathy to Wagner, his distrust of his
method, his disbelief in the possibility
of the music poem, and his conviction
that the whole Of the Ring" was one
stupendous counterfeit are expressed IL
lively terms enough.
The thing that impresses him most
about Mime-indeed he cannot shake
it offs that he was dressed i'll "trico-
tights "He opened his mouth il a
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
chat he saw an exceptionally bad Mime.
The scene between Siegfried and Mime
bored him to death When Wotan APP
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.
1.-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 "Siegfried seizes one OF
the pieces of what is meant to represent
the broken sword saws it up, puts it
Oh what is meant to represent the forge,
melts it, and then FORCES it and sings:
'Heaho, heaho, hobo! Hobo hobo, hobo,
hoho Hoheo, haho, haheo, hobo. -
Surely if ever there was q song that
would carry away an opera house not OF
abnormals, OF dccalents, or hypnotizcd
cultured people, but of Covent 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 IA
youth with horn shouting "Hoheo!"
The best that Tolstoi will admit as to
Wagners musical capacity is that he
was not destitute of talent. Somehow
the old Titan rage seems to have
blinded and deafened him. By one oil
those ironies so common where great
men are working by different roads to-
ward the same end Tolstoi does not seq
that Wagner's art was as religious il
it's bent as his own; that two masters,
neither knowing where the other WAS
going, have unconsciously been working
toward the same goal.-London Chron-
icle