They told him the
feather was out of place--it made him appear ridiculous, and so on.
Maurel retorted that he was playing the part of a fierce barbarian
chief who would not look, he thought, like a gilded butterfly, and
that his notion was to look as ferocious as he could. Now the odd
thing is, that though Maurel was right, we critics were in a sense
right also. As the music used to be played, a Telramund one degree
nearer to a man than the average Italian baritone seemed ludicrously
out of place; and when, in addition, the Lohengrin was a would-be
lady-killer without an inch of fight in him, Henry the Fowler a
pathetic heavy father, and Elsa a sentimental milliner, there was
something farcical about Maurel's red feather and generally militant
aspect. What we critics had not the brains to see was that the playing
of the music was wrong, and that Maurel was only wrong in trying to
play his part in the right manner when Lohengrin, Elsa, King, and
conductor were all against him in their determination to do their
parts wrong. Mr. Bispham follows in Maurel's footsteps, as he
frequently does, in a modified costume, but when for the first time
the orchestra played right he would not have seemed ridiculous had he
stuck Maurel's red feather into his helmet.
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