It will be admitted, I think, by any one who has seen the setting in question that it is wholly inadequate to express the meaning of the drama. The scenes could be sung with a certain effect in a Christian Science temple, but no one will deny, I should say, that the effect of the music may be greatly heightened by proper attention to the stage decoration and the movement of the characters in relation to the lighting and decoration. (I have used the Metropolitan Opera House, in this instance, as a convenient illustration; but the scenery there is no worse, on the whole, than it is in many of the other theatres named.) The secret at the bottom of the whole matter is that the directors of the singing theatres wish to save themselves trouble. They will spend neither money nor energy in righting this wrong. It is easier to trust to tradition on the one hand and expediency on the other than it would be to engage an expert (one not concerned with what had been done, but one concerned with what to do) to produce the works. _Carmen_ was losing its popularity in this country when Emma Calvé, who had broken all the rules made for the part by Galli-Marié, enchanted opera-goers with her fantastic conception of the gipsy girl. Bizet’s work had dropped out of the répertoire again when Mme. Bressler-Gianoli arrived and carried it triumphantly through nearly a score of performances during the first season of Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera House. Geraldine Farrar and Toscanini resuscitated the Spanish jade a third time. An Olive Fremstad or a Lilli Lehmann or a Milka Ternina can perform a like office for _Götterdämmerung_ or _Tristan und Isolde_; but it is to a new producer, an Adolphe Appia or a Gordon Craig, that the theatre director must look for the final salvation of Wagner, through the complete realization of his own ideals. It must be obvious to any one that the more completely the meaning of his plays is exposed by the decoration, the lighting and the action, the greater the effect.