No excellence in the staging and general interpretation could obviate or appreciably soften the unsatisfactoriness of "Götterdämmerung." The final drama of the "Ring" series remains a terrible monster among the dramatic works of mankind, with a dreary first and second act, in which little seems to occur besides the heaping up of gloomy storm-clouds. The fierce animation of the retainers' muster in the Hall of the Gibichungs produced on Thursday the utmost effect of which it is capable; but the atmosphere of these scenes in which the tragedy of the curse resting on the Ring is worked out remained, as before, almost intolerable; and, despite the ravishing Rhine-daughter music in the third act, the romantic beauty of the "Erzählung" (story of Siegfried's youth), and the monumental grandeur of the funeral scenes, the last day of the trilogy left one with the old sense of oppression. As most persons are aware, the whole "Ring" drama began in the composer's mind with "Siegfried's Death"--that part which is now called "Götterdämmerung,"--and the other three parts were written to lead up to it. Nevertheless the original nucleus remains the monstrous product of a disordered imagination, while the three parts, conceived as something secondary, form a series of masterpieces. Books, we know, have their fates, and the fate of this one is not the least curious. The experience of this year, while tending to show that the supposed defects of "Rheingold," "Walküre," and "Siegfried" almost entirely vanish in a rendering that is harmonious on all sides, leaves one with a greatly increased sense of the final drama's inherent unsatisfactoriness. CHAPTER VI. TCHAÏKOVSKY. [Sidenote: =Symphony No. 5 and other Works.= _January 21, 1898._]