Yet, in spite of Jimmie and the heat and the ache
in our backs and the hard unyielding bench, that afternoon
at “Parsifal” is one of the experiences
of a lifetime.
People tell us now that we were there on an “Off
day.” By that they mean that no singers
with great names took part. How like Americans
to think of that! Germans go to the opera for
the music. Americans go to hear and see the operatic
stars.
Happily unvexed by my ignorance, I heard a perfect
“Parsifal” without knowing that, from
an American point of view, I ought not to have been
so delighted. The orchestra was conducted by Siegfried
Wagner, and Madame Wagner sat in full view from even
our eyrie.
And then—the opera! Perfection in
every detail! I believed then that not even the
Passion Play could hold my spirit, so in leash with
its symbolism, its deep devotion, and its enthralling
charms.
The day on which I saw “Parsifal” at Bayreuth
was a day to be marked with a white stone.
THE PASSION PLAY
Jimmie came into the sitting-room this morning (for,
by travelling with the Jimmies, Bee and I can be very
grand, and share the luxury of a third room with them),
but I suspected him from the moment I saw his face.
It was too innocent to be natural.
“What you got, Jimmie?” I said. Jimmie’s
manner of life invites abbreviated conversation.
“Only the letter from the Burgomeister of Oberammergau,
assigning our lodgings,” he replied, carelessly.
He yawned and put the letter in his pocket.
“Oh, Jimmie!” we all cried out. “Have
they—”
“Have they what?” asked Jimmie, opening
his eyes.
“Don’t be an idiot,” I said, savagely.
“You know I have hardly been able to sleep,
wondering if we’d have to go to ordinary lodgings
or if they would assign us to some of the leading
actors in the play. Tell us! Let me see
the letter!”
“Now wait a minute,” said Jimmie, and
then I knew that he was going to be exasperating.
“Don’t you let him fool you,” said
Bee, who always doubts everybody’s good intentions
and discounts their bad ones, which worthy plan of
life permits her to count up at the end of the year
only half as many mental bruises as I, let me pause
to remark. “You know that not one in ten
thousand has influence enough to obtain lodgings with
the chief actors, and who are we, I should
like to know, except in our own estimation?”
“Well,” said Jimmie, meekly, “in
the estimation of the Burgomeister of Oberammergau,
my wife is an American princess, travelling incognito
as plain Mrs. Jimmie, to avoid being mobbed by entertainers.
He promises in solemn German, which I had Franz translate,
not to betray her disguise.”
“That makes a prince of you, Jimmie,”
I said, sternly. “A pretty looking prince
you are.”
“Not at all,” said Jimmie modestly.
“I felt that I could not do the princely act
very long either as to looks or fees, so I said that
the princess had made a morganatic marriage, and that
I was it.”
