“The genuine music-lover may accept the
carnal husk of opera to get at the kernel of
actual music within, but that is no sign that
he approves the carnal husk or enjoys gnawing
through it. Most musicians, indeed, prefer to
hear operatic music outside the opera house;
that is why one so often hears such lowly
things, say, as ‘The Ride of the Valkyrie’ in
the concert hall. ‘The Ride of the Valkyrie’
has a certain intrinsic value as pure music;
played by a competent orchestra it may give
civilized pleasure. But as it is commonly
performed in an opera house, with a posse of
fat beldames throwing themselves about the
stage, it can only produce the effect of a
dose of ipecacuanha. The sort of person who
actually delights in such spectacles is the
sort of person who delights in gas-pipe
furniture. Such half-wits are in a majority
in every opera house west of the Rhine. They
go to the opera, not to hear music, not even
to hear bad music, but merely to see a more
or less obscene circus. A few, perhaps, have
a further purpose; they desire to assist in
that circus, to show themselves in the
capacity of fashionables, to enchant the
yokelry with their splendor. But the majority
must be content with the more modest aim.
What they get for the outrageous prices they
pay for seats is a chance to feast their eyes
upon glittering members of the superior
demi-monde, and to abase their groveling souls before magnificoes on their own side of
the footlights. They esteem a performance,
not in proportion as true music is on tap,
but in proportion as the display of notorious
characters on the stage is copious, and the
exhibition of wealth in the boxes is lavish.
A soprano who can gargle her way up to F
sharp in alt is more to such simple souls
than a whole drove of Johann Sebastian Bachs;
her one real rival in the entire domain of
art is the contralto who has a pension from a
former grand duke and is reported to be
enceinte by several stockbrokers.”
H.L. Mencken, “Opera,” Prejudices: Second Series