The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1913-05-10
WAGNER SEASON IS
ALMOST OVER NOW
Society People Will Begin to
Visit Opera After Wag-
ner Centenary.
National News AssociatIon)
BY Herbert Temple.

ny ICTpSII ISf1PtS'
LONDON, May 1O.-The Wagner
season at Convent Garden this year is
almost over. Another week and So
ciety people will begin to visit opera.
Owing to the Wagner centenary, the
German season has been an unusually
long one, and several works by the
worlds greatest composers have been
taken up besides the Ring, but al
though the audiences have been big,
they have consisted mostly of music
loving foreigners.
Londoners, even those who pretend
to love music, do not like Wagner,
whom they understand no better than
they do Ibsen; they are much more
fond of ragtime, though they can bear
Italian opera.
There is something indescribably in
congruous in London having its Wag-
ner season each year. The greatest
Wagner singer that Germany and Den
mark have produced are engaged at
salaries, which, in some cases, are
enormous. The orchestra, which con-
sists mostly of Germans, plays Won
derfully under the conductorship of
men like DR.. Rottenberg and DIR.
Shuck, both Of Germany, and less
wonderfully when conducted by Ar
thur Nikisch, who Is excellent when
conducting a concert, but who gets
nervous when he can not give his full
attention to the orchestra but has to
divide it between it and the artists of
the stage.
he IF he
press are in despair, for their sense
and knowledge of music are as poor
as their technical vocabulary, and
their criticisms show it, having the
appearance of having been written by
public schoolboys with the aid Of
dictionary. They never praise or con-
denim the foreign singers straight out,
for they know them all to be artists
of international reputation, but give
them a judicious mixture of praise and
condemnation, just to show that they
are real experts whose eyes are not
'dazzled by the continental halos
around the heads of the singers.
But they drew a breath of relief
when they have to make comments on
THE ducal exertions of the few English
artists whom nobody outside of this
little island has ever heard of. Then
their hearts swell with British nation
al pride and praise flows unstintingly
from their pencils and they go into
raptures at the singing of the English
choruses who always sing out of time
and call forth beads of cold perspira-
ton on the foreheads of every conduc-
+o- ord ,kifIoI on Tho
lips of every musical German in orces-
ira and audience.
London society, of course, buys up
all the expensive boxes to get their
names into the papers. But they do
not carry the sacrifice any farther.
They give away their early bought
seats to their governess and poor re-
lations, for you cannot sleep comfort
ably in an opera box. your jewels can
not be seen, admired and enyied, be-
cause that fool of Richard Wagner,
who was childish enough. to believe
that people went to the opera ito lis
ten to music, issued decree that his
works must be played with no light
appearing except on the stage, and his
disciples, the imported conductors, re-
fuse to play under any other condi-
tons.
On the day when the Wagner sea-
son opened King George and Queen
Mary ran away from London to look
at English potteries and set the exam
pie to all London society.
For quite while the outside world
has heard nothing of Smyth Piggott
and his once famous Abode of Love.
Nevertheless this institution is still
'prospering and Smyth Piggott has as
many wives as he could possibly care
| for.
! A man like this up-to-date Mes
tsiah" of course. could not bear living
without being in the public eye, so
he has just sent out a book which he
Icalls Defense" and which he hopes
shall, for a time at least, place him in
the center of the limelight.
A most remarkable book it is in
deed, not because it is written with
lRny talent, but because it tries to con-
vince you that all you have hereto.
fore been taught to believe was NOR
ally black, is in reality spotlessly
white.
+ Especially interesting is the chap
ter which he devotes to love, a sub
Iject on which he certainly ought to
be able to speak with authority not
because he has ever loved himself or
ever will, but because he has had I'M
usual opportunities to study women
in love,
Knowing that there are more than
enough women to go around, he gen
erously points out to his less fortu.
nate fellows members of the male sex:
i"Tht reason | succeeded where all
else would fail is because l love grace
fully. Most men are Billingsgate fish
porters in their love affairs. Women
love love that is delicate, because in
the deep of their souls they are deli
cately voluptuous. All the sweet sis
tiers who have Consoled me have yield
ed because | charmed them with the
graces that came pleasantly into the
hollow places of their hearts and sat
isfied ideals. mystical longings, or
spiritual aspirations. Men usually
give violent, crude. animal passion
where the woman asks for soft
dreamy idealisms as elusive as moon
light. There are men who satisfy
hunger with bunch of bread and a
wedge Of cheese wolfed while sitting