Life — November 10, 1904 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

INCE Herr Heinrich Conried has generously presented to the world at larve the singing, act- ing and publishing rights to the opera of |" Parsifal,”” which formerly belonged to one Richard Wagoner, his heirs and assigns, there seems to be no reason why we should not have an English version of the great sacred tone-drama, This Col, Henry W. Savage has attempted to supply. It is impossible not to make a comparison between this effort and the original much-advertised and much-dis- cussed production at the Metropolitan Opera With all the handicaps incident to making this a traveling version of the work, it is to be admitted that Col. Savage gives to House. SAVAGE'S PRODUCTION OF ‘* PARSIFAL.” ita worthy and impressive presentation, He has not the advantage of the great stage of the Metropolitan, and his public is not the Wagner-worshiping multitude which fre- quents that house, Besides, he has to some extent brought “ Parsifal”” out from its mystic and mystifying German gutturals and put it into the vernacular, so far as that can be done by artists who model their whole delivery on German originals. These three thing: impressive stage, an already impressed public, and a text unintelligible to a large proportion of its Metropolitan hearers—to +which was added the prestige of complete novelty in America, were advantages of the earlier pro- duction which are denied to the present one. It is given in the New York Theatre, a com- mercial theatre of many imperfections, his audiences are drawn from the public at large, and the words are English, so far as the artists can make them so, It is a high tribute to the genius of Wagner and to the management of Col. Savage, that even so, the work, which it was long held could not be adequately ren- dered outside the sacred precincts of Bayreuth, still exerts an almost reverence-compelling in- fluence. The solemnity of the theme, of an course, has much to do with this, as well as the greater familiarity of the public at large with the once laugh-provoking, but now much better understood, Wagnerian methods of musical treatment. Scenically this production, although on a smaller scale, is for the most part quite as well, aud in some instances much better, done than at the Metropolitan, The Grail scene is so admirably proportioned and the perspec- tive is so well handled, that it loses very little of its impressiveness, The detail connected with the adoration carries perfectly the in- tended idea of reverence, and provokes none of the smiles sometimes roused by the curious stage properties at the house across the way. The color scheme is also better carried out, The enchanted garden scene was not on so large a scale, but the Flower Maidens had been more skilfully rehearsed, and lent far more actuality to the atmosphere, The vocal and interpretive work of Col, Savage's principals and chorus— judging from the first performance given here —ison a sufficiently high plane to entitle the production to the serious interest of Wag- ner’s most ardent disciples and admirers, All things considered, Colonel Savage is entitled to quite as much honor—and profit— as Herr Conried, so far as the production of ** Parsifal” is concerned, . . . HAT on earth is the Theatrical Trust going to do if both the dramas and musical plays of England cease to be fortheom- ing as commodities for American consump- tion? The French supply seems to have given out, too, That organization has done every- thing in its power to discourage American pro- ductiveness, but the Trust has got to have some way of separating the public from its dollars, It is having trouble to find acting material for its machine-made stars, and the general public is awaking to the fact that a veneered actor or actress in an imitation of a play is not quite PARSIFAL AND KUNDRY. comicbooks.com