Music: At Bayreuth

To many a musician and many a dramatist, the Bayreuth Festival in Germany partakes of the nature of a ceremony in honor of a saint. The saint is Richard Wagner, who stated—and lived according to his statement—that the artist's function is a religious one, to lead the public mind "by ideal representation of the allegorical picture to the comprehension of the inner essence, the divine, unspeakable Truth." To that end, he composed his series of operas, drama-music spectacles called Der Ring des Niebe-lungen, knowing full well that they could never be adequately...