It is, however, in their handling of mechanical problems that the Russians could assist the new producer of the Wagner dramas to his greatest advantage. In Rimsky-Korsakow’s opera, _The Golden Cock_, for instance, the bird of the title has several appearances to make. Now there was no attempt made, in the Russians’ stage version of this work, to have this bird jiggle along a supposedly invisible wire, in reality quite visible, flapping his artificial wings and wiggling his insecure feet, as in the usual productions of _Siegfried_. Instead the bird was built solid like a bronze cock for a drawing-room table; he did not flap his wings; his feet were motionless; when the action of the drama demanded his presence he was let down on a wire; there was no pretence of a lack of machinery. The effect, however, was vastly more imaginative and diverting than that in _Siegfried_, because it was more simple. In like manner King Dodon, in the same opera, mounted a wooden horse on wheels to go to the wars, and the animals he captured were also made of wood, studded with brilliant beads. In Richard Strauss’s ballet, _The Legend of Joseph_, the figure of the guardian angel was not let down on a wire from the flies as he might have been in a Drury Lane pantomime; the naïve nature of the work was preserved by his nonchalant entrance across the _loggia_ and down a flight of steps, exactly the entrance of all the human characters of the ballet. I do not mean to suggest that these particular expedients would fit into the Wagner dramas so well as they do into works of a widely different nature. They should, however, indicate to stage directors the possibility of finding a method to suit the case in each instance. And I do assert, without hope or fear of contradiction, that Brünnhilde with a wooden horse would challenge less laughter than she does with the sorry nags which are put at her disposal and which Siegfried later takes down the river with him. It is only down the river that one can sell such horses. As for the bird, there are bird trainers whose business it is to teach pigeons to fly from pillar to post in the music halls; their services might be contracted for to make that passage in _Siegfried_ a little less distracting. The difficulties connected with this particular mechanical episode (and a hundred others) might be avoided by a different lighting of the scene. If the tree-tops of the forest were submerged in the deepest shadows, as well they might be, the flight of the bird on a wire might be accomplished with some sort of illusion. But why should one see the bird at all? One hears it constantly as it warbles advice to the hero.