A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

and took the chances, preferring the loss of a train

to a breach of good manners and the discomfort of being

unpleasantly conspicuous during a stretch of three or four hours.

CHAPTER X

[How Wagner Operas Bang Along]

Three or four hours. That is a long time to sit in one place,

whether one be conspicuous or not, yet some of Wagner’s

operas bang along for six whole hours on a stretch!

But the people sit there and enjoy it all, and wish it

would last longer. A German lady in Munich told me

that a person could not like Wagner’s music at first,

but must go through the deliberate process of learning

to like it–then he would have his sure reward;

for when he had learned to like it he would hunger

for it and never be able to get enough of it. She said

that six hours of Wagner was by no means too much.

She said that this composer had made a complete revolution

in music and was burying the old masters one by one.

And she said that Wagner’s operas differed from all others

in one notable respect, and that was that they were not

merely spotted with music here and there, but were ALL music,

from the first strain to the last. This surprised me.

I said I had attended one of his insurrections, and found

hardly ANY music in it except the Wedding Chorus.

She said “Lohengrin” was noisier than Wagner’s other operas,

but that if I would keep on going to see it I would find

by and by that it was all music, and therefore would

then enjoy it. I COULD have said, “But would you advise

a person to deliberately practice having a toothache

in the pit of his stomach for a couple of years in order

that he might then come to enjoy it?” But I reserved

that remark.

This lady was full of the praises of the head-tenor

who had performed in a Wagner opera the night before,

and went on to enlarge upon his old and prodigious fame,

and how many honors had been lavished upon him by the

princely houses of Germany. Here was another surprise.

I had attended that very opera, in the person of my agent,

and had made close and accurate observations. So I

said:

“Why, madam, MY experience warrants me in stating

that that tenor’s voice is not a voice at all,

but only a shriek–the shriek of a hyena.”

“That is very true,” she said; “he cannot sing now;

it is already many years that he has lost his voice,

but in other times he sang, yes, divinely! So whenever

he comes now, you shall see, yes, that the theater

will not hold the people. JAWOHL BEI GOTT! his voice

is WUNDERSCHO”N in that past time.”

I said she was discovering to me a kindly trait in the

Germans which was worth emulating. I said that over

the water we were not quite so generous; that with us,

when a singer had lost his voice and a jumper had lost

his legs, these parties ceased to draw. I said I had been

to the opera in Hanover, once, and in Mannheim once,

and in Munich (through my authorized agent) once, and this

large experience had nearly persuaded me that the Germans

PREFERRED singers who couldn’t sing. This was not such

a very extravagant speech, either, for that burly Mannheim

tenor’s praises had been the talk of all Heidelberg for

a week before his performance took place–yet his voice

was like the distressing noise which a nail makes when you

screech it across a window-pane. I said so to Heidelberg

friends the next day, and they said, in the calmest and

simplest way, that that was very true, but that in earlier

times his voice HAD been wonderfully fine. And the tenor

in Hanover was just another example of this sort.

The English-speaking German gentleman who went with me

to the opera there was brimming with enthusiasm over that tenor.

He said:

“ACH GOTT! a great man! You shall see him. He is so celebrate

in all Germany–and he has a pension, yes, from the government.