Wagner as Revolutionist

Before leaving this explanation of The Rhine Gold, I must have a
word or two about it with the reader. It is the least popular of
the sections of The Ring. The reason is that its dramatic moments
lie quite outside the consciousness of people whose joys and
sorrows are all domestic and personal, and whose religions and
political ideas are purely conventional and superstitious. To
them it is a struggle between half a dozen fairytale personages
for a ring, involving hours of scolding and cheating, and one
long scene in a dark gruesome mine, with gloomy, ugly music, and
not a glimpse of a handsome young man or pretty woman. Only those
of wider consciousness can follow it breathlessly, seeing in it
the whole tragedy of human history and the whole horror of the
dilemmas from which the world is shrinking today. At Bayreuth I
have seen a party of English tourists, after enduring agonies of
boredom from Alberic, rise in the middle of the third scene, and
almost force their way out of the dark theatre into the sunlit
pine-wood without. And I have seen people who were deeply
affected by the scene driven almost beside themselves by this
disturbance. But it was a very natural thing for the unfortunate
tourists to do, since in this Rhine Gold prologue there is no
interval between the acts for escape. Roughly speaking, people
who have no general ideas, no touch of the concern of the
philosopher and statesman for the race, cannot enjoy The Rhine
Gold as a drama. They may find compensations in some exceedingly
pretty music, at times even grand and glorious, which will enable
them to escape occasionally from the struggle between Alberic and
Wotan; but if their capacity for music should be as limited as
their comprehension of the world, they had better stay away.

And now, attentive Reader, we have reached the point at which
some foolish person is sure to interrupt us by declaring that The
Rhine Gold is what they call "a work of art" pure and simple, and
that Wagner never dreamt of shareholders, tall hats, whitelead
factories, and industrial and political questions looked at from
the socialistic and humanitarian points of view. We need not
discuss these impertinences: it is easier to silence them with
the facts of Wagner's life. In 1843 he obtained the position of
conductor of the Opera at Dresden at a salary of L225 a year,
with a pension. This was a first-rate permanent appointment in
the service of the Saxon State, carrying an assured professional
position and livelihood with it In 1848, the year of revolutions,
the discontented middle class, unable to rouse the
Churchand-State governments of the day from their bondage to
custom, caste, and law by appeals to morality or constitutional
agitation