Chapter 5 Wagnerian Motif¹

Sir Stafford Nye adjusted himself more comfortably in his seat andlistened to the persistent² hammering of the Nibelungen, with which theprogramme began.
Though he enjoyed Wagnerian opera, Siegfried was by no means his fa-vourite of the operas composing the Ring. Rheingold and G?tterd?mmer-ung were his two preferences. The music of the young Siegfried, listeningto the songs of the birds, had always for some strange reason irritated himinstead of filling him with melodic³ satisfaction. It might have been be-cause he went to a performance in Munich in his young days which haddisplayed a magnificent tenor⁴ of unfortunately over-magnificent propor-tions, and he had been too young to divorce the joy of music from thevisual joy of seeing a young Siegfried that looked even passably young.
The fact of an outsized tenor rolling about on the ground in an access ofboyishness had revolted him. He was also not particularly fond of birdsand forest murmurs⁶. No, give him the Rhine Maidens⁷ every time, althoughin Munich even the Rhine Maidens in those days had been of fairly solidproportions. But that mattered less. Carried away by the melodic flow ofwater and the joyous⁸ impersonal⁹ song, he had not allowed visual appreci-ation to matter.
From time to time he looked about him casually¹⁰. He had taken his seatfairly early. It was a full house, as it usually was. The intermission came.
Sir Stafford rose and looked about him. The seat beside his had remainedempty. Someone who was supposed to have arrived had not arrived. Wasthat the answer, or was it merely a case of being excluded becausesomeone had arrived late, which practice still held on the occasions whenWagnerian music was listened to.

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