The following is an account of the festival at Bayreuth on the occasion of the foundation-stone of the Wagner Theatre being laid. It has been thought worth inserting here, as bearing in general upon the subject of this book, and still more, as exhibiting the vivid impression which the wonderful conducting of Wagner made on all those present.

Bayreuth, May 22nd, 1872.

It is now scarcely ten years ago since Wagner, in the preface to his dramatic version of the Nibelungen Saga, first hinted at the possibility of having his great work performed by the voluntary assistance of the friends of his art. The chances of such an enterprise were at that time the most unfavourable that could be imagined. Although the success of Wagner's first four operas, wherever they had been adequately performed, was an undeniable fact, still his more advanced ideas of the fundamental reorganisation of the music-drama had found so little responsive sympathy amongst the German nation—if such a nation could be said to exist at all—that the utter derision with which his appeal was received by the hostile press seemed but too well justified.