The Diva's Ruby by F. Marion Crawford

In the sanctuary of Wagnerians the famous lyric Diva was a somewhat less important personage than in any of those other places which are called 'musical centres. ' Before the glories of the great Brunhilde, or the supreme Kundry of the day, the fame of the 'nightingale soprano' paled a little, at least in the eyes of more than half the people who filled the Bayreuth theatre. But she did not pass unnoticed by any means. There were distinguished conductors of Wagner's music who led the orchestra for other operas too; there were Kundrys and Brunhildes who condescended to be Toscas sometimes, as a pure matter of business and livelihood, and there were numberless people in the audience who preferred _Cavalleria Rusticana_ to the _Meistersinger_ or the _Goetterdaemmerung_, but would not dare to say so till they were at a safe distance; and all these admired the celebrated Cordova, except the few that were envious of her, and who were not many.

Indeed, for once it was the other way. When Margaret had come back to her own room after hearing _Parsifal_ the first time, she had sat down and hidden her face in her hands for a few moments, asking herself what all her parts were worth in the end compared with Kundry, and what comparison was possible between the most beautiful of Italian or French operas and that one immortal masterpiece; for she thought, and rightly perhaps, that all the rest of Wagner's work had been but a preparation for that, and that _Parsifal_, and _Parsifal_ alone, had set the genius of music beside the genius of poetry, an equal, at last, upon a throne as high. On that night the sound of her own voice would have given her no pleasure, for she longed for another tone in it; if by some impossible circumstance she had been engaged to sing as Juliet that night, she would have broken down and burst into tears.