The new Wagner producer must possess many qualities if he wishes to place these works on a plane where they may continue to challenge the admiration of the world. Wagner himself was more concerned with his ideals than he was with their practical solution. Besides, it must be admitted that taste in stage art and improvements in stage mechanism have made great strides in the last decade. The plaster wall, for instance, which has replaced in many foreign theatres the flapping, swaying, wrinkled, painted canvas sky cyclorama (still in use at the Metropolitan Opera House; a vast sum was paid for it a few years ago) is a new invention and one which, when appropriately lighted, perfectly counterfeits the appearance of the sky in its different moods. (So far as I know the only theatre in New York with this apparatus is the Neighborhood Playhouse on Grand Street.) In Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s “Richard Wagner,” published in 1897, I find the following: “Wagner foresaw that in the new drama the whole principle of the stage scenery must undergo a complete alteration but did not particularize in detail. The _Meister_ says that ‘music resolves the rigid immovable groundwork of the scenery into a liquid, yielding, ethereal surface, capable of receiving impressions’; but to prevent a painful conflict between what is seen and what is heard, the stage picture, too, must be relieved from the curse of rigidity which now rests upon it. The only way of doing this is by managing the light in a manner which its importance deserves, that its office may no longer be confined to illuminating painted walls.... I am convinced that the next great advance in the drama will be of this nature, in the art of the eye, and not in music.” (The passage quoted further refers to Appia’s first book, published in French. Chamberlain was a close friend of Appia and “Die Musik und die Inscenierung” is dedicated to him.)