The music of the last act presents little novel thematic material. In the gloomy prelude we find epitomized the wandering of Parsifal in search of the Grail domain, in conjunction with the funeral music of Titurel. Again the static and contemplative forms a contrast to the rapid action of the preceding scene. The very pauses seem pregnant with music. And I must halt here a moment to lay my tribute of admiration at the feet of Milka Ternina, whose Kundry is a dramatic and musical creation of rare imagination and technical skill. She presents three different women—we are perplexed to say whether Kundry defiant, or Kundry seductive, or Kundry repentant is the most wonderful. But Ternina is always wonderful! It is in this scene, with its sun-smitten meadows, its worshipping knight and mournful penitent, that I agree with those commentators who perceive the profound influence exerted upon Wagner by early German and Flemish religious pictorial art. Parsifal’s attitudes here would suit a Gothic triptych—as M. Charles Tardieu so happily expresses it. There is little movement, all gesture has been transferred to the orchestra, and the spectator seems to be participating in one of those miracle plays or viewing the stiff pictures of a Cimabue or a woodcut after Dürer. The moving forest and the final scene lose because of repetition. But what was the poet to do? Only in Act II does he escape the lack of variety. For instance, in Act I Parsifal stands for a long time immobile, with his back to the audience, while Kundry, in the last act, utters but two words. She is a pantomimic lay figure kept on the stage to emphasize the resemblance between Jesus and Parsifal. And the feet washing episode is absolutely unnecessary. It does not help the story. Nowhere but in Wagner would all this mish-mash of gospel narrative, mediæval romance, and Teutonic philosophy be tolerated. Yet the Wagnerites sit through it all as if listening to a new evangel of art, philosophy, and religion. Perhaps they are. In America, where new religions sprout daily as do potatoes in a dark cellar, slighter causes have led to the foundation of a religion—witness the rise and growth of Mormonism. If religion could ever become moribund, perhaps in Wagner’s Parsifal would be found the crystallization of many old faiths, presented in a concrete, though Wagnerized, form. “I know of but one thing more beautiful than Parsifal,” wrote Alfred Ernest, and approvingly quoted by M. Kufferath, “and that is any low mass in any church.” And in this sentence the French author puts his finger on the weak spot of Parsifal—its lack of absolute sincerity. No matter how great an art work it may be, it yet lacks the truthful note that is to be found at any low mass in a Roman Catholic church—about the most unadorned service I can remember. With all its grandeur, its pathos, its conjuring of churchly and philosophical motives, its ravishing pictures and marmoreal attitudes, Parsifal falls short of