What Bayreuth accomplishes at a "Parsifal" performance, in the smooth and harmonious working of infinitely complex scenic resources, is without parallel, and the almost miraculous stage management was last week at its best. The slow transformations of the first and last acts were carried out in faultless correspondence with the musical suggestions. The sudden collapse of Klingsor's garden into ruin and desolation was also perfectly done, and in all the elaborate evolutions of the knights' retainers and scholars there was never the semblance of a false move. A specially admirable feature was the fine co-ordination of the dangerously complicated musical scheme in the latter part of the first act, where the conductor has to keep together a body of singers and players who are spaced out at four different levels--the orchestra below the stage, the knights seated at the love-feast or manoeuvring about on the stage, the older scholars on the first gallery of the dome, and the younger scholars at the top. All the multifarious choir-singing of boys and men was beautifully done; the only mistakes were made by Amfortas and Titurel. The conductor was Dr. Muck, of Berlin, whose _tempi_ seem to have been considered too slow by some of the _habitués_, though his interpretation was admitted to be in all other respects above reproach. [Sidenote: ="The Ring."= _July 28, 1904._] This year's festival includes two complete presentations of the "Ring" tetralogy, of which the first began on Monday. It seems to be generally admitted here that the performance of the Prologue ("Rheingold") given on that day was the best that has yet been achieved. Dr. Richter was at the helm for the first time this year, and the generalship that has been one great factor in Bayreuth's reputation ever since the opening of the Wagner Theatre in 1876 soon became perceptible in the plastic force of the orchestral rendering and the consummate knowledge with which everything was disposed in such a manner as to give each performer the best possible chance of doing justice to himself and his part. Moreover, "Rheingold" is, of all the Wagnerian dramas, the one best adapted to display the art of Bayreuth advantageously. The staging is of the most extraordinary kind. All the action takes place up in the clouds, down in the waters, or where the forges resound in the fiery caverns of Nibelheim, and not one of the characters is a plain human being. Gods, goddesses, giants, dwarfs, and water nymphs make up the _dramatis personæ_, and the whole drama is more completely outside the range of ordinary operatic art than any other musical and dramatic work. It is therefore natural that Bayreuth, which alone among theatres devoted to musical drama is not hampered by the operatic traditions, should establish pre-eminence in the staging and dramatic presentation of "Rheingold." There is no part for a prima donna or leading tenor, and everything depends on a kind of extraordinary character-acting created