Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/186

 the rides of the Valkyrs, the combat of Siegfried and the dragon, Brünnhilde sleeping surrounded by a rampart of flames, the crumbling of Valhalla and its fall through space, all these combinations of marvels and landscape, of magic and nature, lent themselves to rich and wondrous imagery mounted on cardboard and wire, and promised rich entertainment to the eyes of spectators.

It is true that we French have also had spectacular opera, under the name of opera-ballet, and the works of the greatest and most exquisite of our musicians, Rameau, belong partly to this class. But the element of the marvellous in Rameau's operas is taken from classical mythology, that is to say from the most imaginative and most artistic nation in the world, from the inventions of the greatest poets of antiquity, Hesiod, Homer, Vergil, Ovid; it is permeated throughout with humanity, grace, irony and wit. The traditional figures and images by which it is represented are full of style, having been modelled by the genius of the Italian painters of the renaissance. The marvellous element in Wagner is taken, and taken raw, from a barbarous literature. It has indeed its own savour and colour; it is by no means lacking in a certain heavy humour. But it has a character of exaggeration and childishness, and the result is that for French taste (and we have I take it no reason for abjuring in honour of Wagner a taste which is our pride) it would be more in place at the Châtelet theatre, where we take our children, than in works that aim at grandeur of style and nobility of moral impression. We should take far more pleasure in it did not the author by mixing philosophy with it ask us to contemplate such scenes in a more serious spirit than is possible for us who are not