How differently Wagner goes to work! In "Siegfried," for instance, there is no chorus at all. The first act ends with _Siegfried's_ cleaving of the anvil with the sword which he has just forged before the eyes of the audience; and the third ends with the love duo. In these cases there are only two persons on the stage; and at the end of the second act _Siegfried_ is _entirely alone_, and the curtain falls as he mutely follows the bird to the fire-girdled rock on which _Bruennhilde_ lies asleep, amid the intoxicating and promising strains of the orchestra. The ending of "Die Walkuere" is equally quiet and poetic. _Wotan_ has placed poor _Bruennhilde_ on a mound of moss, for disobeying his orders, and covered her with her helmet, after plunging her into a magnetic sleep which is to last until a hero shall come to wake her. He strikes the rock with his spear, whereupon a flame breaks out that quickly becomes a sea of fire encircling the rock. Then he disappears in the fire toward the background, and for several minutes there is no one on the stage but the sleeping Valkyrie, and nothing to be heard but the crackling and roaring of the flames, re-echoed in the orchestra; and this is the end of the opera. One more illustration: The greater part of the second act of "Die Meistersinger" is taken up with _Beckmesser's_ serenade, comically interrupted by the songs and the hammering of _Hans Sachs_ the cobbler. Toward the end the apprentice _David_ sees _Beckmesser_, and imagining he is serenading _his_ sweetheart, assaults and beats him most unmercifully. The noise attracts the neighbors, who all take part in the affray, and the scene culminates in a perfect pandemonium of noise. Now there is hardly an operatic composer who would not have closed the act with this exciting and tumultuous chorus. Not so Wagner. The sound of the watchman's horn suddenly clears the street, and no one is left but the watchman himself, who timorously toddles up the street with his lantern, while the moon rises above the roofs of the houses, and the muted strings of the orchestra softly and dreamily recall a few of the motives of the preceding scenes. I was sitting next to Professor Paine, of Harvard, at a performance of this opera at the Metropolitan, one evening. He had not seen it before, and I shall never forget the expression of surprise on his face when he saw the curtain descending on this dreamy moonlight scene, with _a deserted stage_. He considered it a bold deviation from established operatic customs, and yet he could not for a moment deny that it was infinitely more poetic than the traditional final chorus, with its meaningless noise and pomp.