Everything is beautiful in this time of the year, and the days are long. What could be more enchanting I leave to your imagination.
In Munich we galleried from morning to night, and were utterly exhausted and hardly had the courage to dress for the opera; but, having tickets, economy got the better of prudence, and we sat through the long performance of "Don Giovanni" with _Geduld_.
Andrada, the Portuguese barytone, was very good and looked the part to perfection. In real life I am told he is a Don Juan himself. If the list of his victims has not yet reached _mille et un_ the fault cannot be laid at his door. His stage victims were all fat German _Frauen_. Zerlina wore a blond wig, showed very black eyebrows and red lips. Her golden molars showed from afar. Our visit to the artist Lenbach and his wife was followed by an invitation to tea the next day. Lenbach is divorced from his first wife, married to a Countess Arnim (also divorced). They have a dear little girl whom Lenbach has painted several times. The studio is in a charming garden, arranged in the most artistic manner, full of broken columns and antique relics resembling the gardens on the Venice canals. Lenbach seen in the bosom of his family is a different Lenbach from the one we knew in Rome and Paris--half society man, half artist. Here he is simply _all papa_.
We motored over the mountain to Oberammergau. I do not dare to say that I was disappointed in the performance. I suppose years ago, when people began to go to Oberammergau, it was more interesting, but now it is simply an enterprise, speculation kept alive by travelers and sight-seers. As a representation it is impressive in a way, but your illusions are dimmed by the prosaic manner in which everything is done. I felt a little queer when I met Jesus Christ smoking and wiping his muddy sandals with a dirty handkerchief, and saw Mary Magdalene flirting with the chauffeurs. When we sat at a _café_, enjoying a mug of beer and a sausage, we were surrounded by St. Joseph and a brood of angels, all drinking beer. People may rave about the _Stimmung_, the poetry, and the romance of it, but I saw beauty neither in the acting nor in the play. I do not speak of the music, there was so little of it. Physical comfort goes a long way with yours lovingly. To sleep in a narrow bed having a piece of flannel buttoned between two coarse pieces of linen, to eat bad food, to sit on hard benches for hours under an open heaven which lets down occasionally a mild shower--this is what the Germans call _Stimmung_ and others call "local color" and what I call discomfort. Still, it is one of the things one must do once in ten years. For a European to say, "I have not been to Oberammergau," is like an American saying, "I have never been to Niagara."