What kind of impression did this drama make upon the unprejudiced and equipoised mind? What is the real truth about this huge ragoût of mysticism and orchestration which in the looming shadows of the Festspielhaus is called "sacred"? The story of "Parsifal" has been told over and over again. The themes are becomingly catalogued in the handbooks of Wolzogen, Heinz, and Kufferath. The very boarding-school girls smirk at one another as they hum "Der Reine Thor," and rosy-cheeked boys can whistle the Klingsor theme. There is no need to rehearse here either the story or the music. But let us come at once to some conclusions drawn from a cool, dispassionate study of a dozen performances of "Parsifal" beyond the factitious influences created by the Baireuth exaltation. "Parsifal" is the child of Wagner's artistic decrepitude. It is a decrescendo in inspiration, a ritardando in invention. More than any other drama of Wagner does it rely upon the dazzling of the eye to dull the keenness of the musical ear. It is a most imposing pageant set to unimposing music. Wagner fired heaven once with the immolation of Brünnhilde. It was not to be done again. The light on the Holy Grail is white and cold. The entire machinery of the familiar Wagnerian drama is here; but the scene painter, the stage manager, the mechanician, and the electrician bravely hold up the hands of the musician. Cast any aged rags of scenery on the stage; let the lights be as dim and flickering as the dying fancies of Adrian; let the actors be of the breed of the subsidized provincial German theatre, and yet the last act of "Tristan und Isolde" will peal its eloquence into the heart and blast the soul with the lightnings of genius. Give the first act of "Die Walküre," most hackneyed of all great acts, the tottering timbers of battered scenes, a moonlight of such Prussian blue as never was on sea or land, and still the might and power of its pulsating passion will conquer. But strip "Parsifal" of its scenic and mechanic glories, and you will lay bare the skeleton of a system with only a few shreds of the flesh left upon it. The poem of "Parsifal" is almost utterly devoid of those great basic elements which make human life dramatic for men and women. Nowhere in it do we see, as in Wagner's other works, the primeval man and woman at gaze upon each other in the naked barbaric splendor of desire. Instead of the one passion which makes plays, we are asked to consider the suffering of a man who is as remote from our common sympathies as his figure is from our eyes when it lies recumbent in the seat behind the altar of the Grail.