Not that Wagner despised the chorus, as is sometimes said. He showed in the third act of this same opera, in the scene of the folk-festival, that when a chorus is called for by the situation no one can supply a more inspired and inspiring volume of concerted sound than he. With the possible exception of the last number in Bach's Passion music, I regard the choral music of this act as the most sublime ever written. Here, at any rate, the _vox populi_ is divine. The magnificent quintet in this act of "Die Meistersinger" also affords proof that if Wagner banished concerted music from his later works, it was not because he lacked inspiration for that kind of work. Although extremely Wagnerian in its harmonies, it is one of those numbers which even Wagner's enemies admire. Some years ago I witnessed a curious scene in the Berlin Opera House. According to Wagner's directions, the curtain goes down after this quintet, but the music continues until the scene is changed. Now, on the occasion in question, the quintet evoked so much enthusiasm that a storm of applause arose. The extreme Wagnerites resented this interruption of the music, and began to hiss; whereupon the others redoubled their applause and their calls for an "encore," which finally had to be granted, as the only way of appeasing this paradoxical disturbance in which Wagnerites hissed while the others applauded! At the Metropolitan Opera House the stage arrangements are so clumsy that it is necessary to have an intermission of over a quarter of an hour, in order to change this scene. Consequently the last and most popular part of this master-work is never seen till after midnight; and many leave the house annoyed by the long intermission. And this brings us to the weakest part of modern opera. It lasts too long. Wagner is not the only guilty composer. Gounod's "Faust," Weber's "Euryanthe," and most of Meyerbeer's operas, if given without cuts, would last over four hours. But in these cases no irreparable harm is done by a few cuts, whereas in Wagner's operas there are very few bars that can be spared, both on account of their intrinsic beauty and because they are required to keep up the dramatic continuity of the story. Nevertheless, Wagner's operas must be cut, in some cases most unmercifully, as in "Die Goetterdaemmerung," in which Herr Seidl was obliged to omit the whole of the first prelude--the weirdly grand scene of the three Fates, and the scene between the two Valkyries--merely to prevent the opera from lasting till one o'clock.