Bayreuth

Excerpt from Bayreuth (1876-1896)

Yet one other occurrence of the 1894 Festival must be mentioned here, and alas! It also concerned Parsifal. One fine day Frau Nordica threatened to leave the place if her future husband did not sing Parsifal  and he did sing Parsifal  certainly only once, but in such a manner that even friendly critics characterized his performance with a word which I dare not here repeat. If one reads in the piquant court memaw of earlier times that the ruler of some in significant principality allowed his mistress to manage his theatre, one can console oneself from the experience, that love generally does get the better of reason. But if this happens in Bayreuth, the place where the works of one of the greatest geniuses found their home, so that his own wife has to sacrifice his sacred injunctions to the caprice of a prima donna, then that 15 a method of proceeding that cannot be too strongly denounced.