We are all familiar with the Bayreuth version of Wotan in _Die Walküre_ which makes of that tragic father-figure a boisterous, silly old scold (so good an artist as Carl Braun, whose Hagen portrait is a masterpiece, has followed this tradition literally); we all know too well the waking Brünnhilde who salutes the sun in the last act of _Siegfried_ with gestures seemingly derived from the exercises of a Swedish _turnverein_, following the harp arpeggios as best she may; we remember how Wotan, seizing the sword from the dead Fasolt’s hand, brandishes it to the tune of the sword _motiv_, indicating the coming of the hero, Siegfried, as the gods walk over the rainbow bridge to Walhalla at the end of _Das Rheingold_; we smile over the tame horse which some chorus man, looking the while like a truck driver who is not good to animals, holds for Brünnhilde while she sings her final lament in _Götterdämmerung_; we laugh aloud when he assists her to lead the unfiery steed, who walks as leisurely as a well-fed horse would towards oats, into the burning pyre; we can still see the picture of the three Rhine maidens, bobbing up and down jerkily behind a bit of gauze, reminiscent of visions of mermaids at the Eden Musée; we all have seen Tristan and Isolde, drunk with the love potion, swimming (there is no other word to describe this effect) towards each other; and no perfect Wagnerite can have forgotten the gods and the giants standing about in the fourth scene of _Das Rheingold_ for all the world as if they were the protagonists of a fantastic minstrel show. (At a performance of _Parsifal_ in Chicago Vernon Stiles discovered while he was on the stage that his suspenders, which held his tights in place, had snapped. For a time he pressed his hands against his groin; this method proving ineffectual, he finished the scene with his hands behind his back, pressed firmly against his waist-line. As he left the stage, at the conclusion of the act, breathing a sigh of relief, he met Loomis Taylor, the stage director. “Did you think my new gesture was due to nervousness?” he asked. “No,” answered Taylor, “I thought it was Bayreuth tradition!”)