These are a few of the Bayreuth precepts which are followed. There are others. There are indeed many others. We all know the tendency of conductors who have been tried at Bayreuth, or who have come under the influence of Cosima Wagner, to drag out the _tempi_ to an exasperating degree. I have heard performances of _Lohengrin_ which were dragged by the conductor some thirty minutes beyond the ordinary time. (Again the Master is held responsible for this tradition, but though all composers like to have their own music last in performance as long as possible, the tradition, perhaps, is just as authentic as the story that Richard Strauss, when conducting _Tristan und Isolde_ at the Prinz-Regenten-Theatre in Munich, saved twenty minutes on the ordinary time it takes to perform the work in order to return as soon as possible to an interrupted game of Skat.) But it is not tradition alone that is killing the Wagner dramas. In many instances and in most singing theatres silly traditions are aided in their work of destruction by another factor in hasty production. I am referring to the frequent liberties which have been taken with the intentions of the author. For, when expediency is concerned, no account is taken of tradition, and, curiously enough, expediency breaks with those traditions which can least stand being tampered with. The changes, in other words, have not been made for the sake of improvement, but through carelessness, or to save time or money, or for some other cognate reason. An example of this sort of thing is the custom of giving the _Ring_ dramas as a cycle in a period extending over four weeks, one drama a week. It is also customary at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York to entrust the rôle of Brünnhilde, or of Siegfried, to a different interpreter in each drama, so that the Brünnhilde who wakes in _Siegfried_ is not at all the Brünnhilde who goes to sleep in _Die Walküre_. Then, although Brünnhilde exploits a horse in _Götterdämmerung_, she possesses none in _Die Walküre_; none of the other valkyries has a horse; Fricka’s goats have been taken away from her, and she walks to the mountain-top holding her skirts from under her feet for all the world as a lady of fashion might as she ascended from a garden into a ballroom. At the Metropolitan Opera House, and at other theatres where I have seen the dramas, the decorations of the scenes of Brünnhilde’s falling asleep and of her awakening are quite different.