We regret, for her sake, there
are so few smiles in Wagner: very few indeed--not one in 'Senta' nor
in 'Elizabeth.'" The newspaper cutting slipped from Owen's hand, and
he talked for a long time about her walk and her smile, and then
about her "Iphigenia," which he declared to be one of the most
beautiful performances ever seen, her personality lending itself to
the incarnation of this Greek idea of fate and self-sacrifice. But
Gluck's music was, in Owen's opinion, old-fashioned even at the time
it was written--containing beautiful things, of course, but somewhat
stiff in the joints, lacking the clear insight and direct expression
of Beethoven's. "One man used to write about her very well, and
seemed to understand her better than any other. And writing about
this performance he says--Now, if I could find you his article." The
search proved a long one, but as it was about to be abandoned Owen
turned up the cutting he was in search of.
"'Her nature intended her for the representation of ideal heroines
whose love is pure, and it does not allow her to depict the violence
of physical passion and the delirium of the senses. She is an artist
of the peaks, whose feet may not descend into the plain and follow
its ignominious route,' And then here: 'He who has seen her as the
spotless spouse of the son of Parsifal, standing by the window, has
assisted at the mystery of the chaste soul awaiting the coming of
her predestined lover,' And 'He who has seen her as Elizabeth,
ascending the hillside, has felt the nostalgia of the skies awaken
in his heart,' Then he goes on to say that her special genius and
her antecedents led her to 'Fidelio,' and designed her as the
perfect embodiment of Leonore's soul--that pure, beautiful soul made
wholly of sacrifice and love,' But you never saw her as Leonore so
you can form no idea of what she really was,"
"I will read you what she wrote when she was studying 'Fidelio':
'Beethoven's music has nothing in common with the passion of the
flesh; it lives in the realms of noble affections, pity, tenderness,
love, spiritual yearnings for the life beyond the world, and its joy
in the external world is as innocent as a happy child's.
Pages:
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174