embarrasses the performers or distracts the spectator's attention, and one has unimpeded enjoyment of the story, with all its rich imaginative play and its Aristophanic quality, as it is interpreted by a group of actors and actresses who have thoroughly mastered their peculiar business. "Rheingold" one now perceives to be a comedy big with tragedy. Notwithstanding the undertow of forces making for monstrous mischief, it is as thoroughpaced an Aristophanic comedy as anything having Norse instead of Hellenic characters and imagery could be. The scene in which the different uses of gold are explained by Loge, with exquisitely humorous interpolated comments by Fricka (the Mrs. Grundy of Valhalla) and others, is worth the attention of any philosopher; and yet that and other passages of similar merit used to pass unnoticed. Together with the mention in my former message of Messrs. Briesemeister's, Breuer's, and Elmblad's achievements as Loge, Mimmy, and Fafner respectively, there should have been some reference to the Fricka of Mme. Reuss-Belce, who was simply perfect in the scene where that dignified lady sidles up to Loge to inquire whether the gold cannot also be used to make nice ornaments for ladies. In regard to "Walküre" and "Siegfried," which have long been in the repertory of London, Paris, and other capitals, the superiority of Bayreuth is very much less certain--that is to say, of Bayreuth as represented by this year's performances. There was serious weakness in two out of the three great protagonists, Wotan and Brünnhilde, and for that weakness no degree of skill in the presentation of the finely fantastic and ever-shifting backgrounds could compensate, nor even the superb orchestral interpretation. The Siegfried of Mr. Ernst Kraus was, however, on the whole a very striking performance, as it was at Covent Garden in 1903. It was best in Acts i. and ii. of "Siegfried"--the forging of the sword and the slaying of the dragon, preceded and followed by the wonderful forest _rêverie_,--and it was least good in the "Götterdämmerung" scene, where the hero tells the story of his youth to his hunting companions. Here a certain lack of resource in purely lyrical expression was a serious defect. But on the whole Mr. Kraus would seem to be the best Siegfried of the present day--best, at any rate, of those who can be induced to enact the part without mutilation.