August 11 Tuesday – The Clemens party left Bayreuth for Marienbad, Bohemia (Germany). Sam wrote of his last attendances at the Wagner festival operas:

TUESDAY. — I have seen my last two operas; my season is ended, and we cross over into Bohemia this afternoon. I was supposing that my musical regeneration was accomplished and perfected, because I enjoyed both of these operas, singing and all, and, moreover, one of them was “Parsifal,” but the experts have disenchanted me. They say:

“Singing! That wasn’t singing; that was the wailing, screeching of third-rate obscurities, palmed off on us in the interest of economy.”

Well, I ought to have recognized the sign — the old, sure sign that has never failed me in matters of art. Whenever I enjoy anything in art it means that it is mighty poor. The private knowledge of this fact has saved me from going to pieces with enthusiasm in front of many and many a chromo. However, my base instinct does bring me profit sometimes; I was the only man out of thirty-two hundred who got his money back on those two operas [“At the Shrine of St. Wagner”]. Notes: the only Wagner opera performed that Sam did not mention was “Die Miestersinger,” listed in the NY Times, Dec. 31, 1891, “Foreign Dramatic News.”

“At the Shrine of St. Wagner” ran in McClure’s syndicated newspapers on Dec. 6, 1891, which included the N.Y. Sun, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, and others.

The Boston Globe on Dec. 7, 1891 ran a short paragraph on p.10 under “Editorial Points”:

Mark Twain heard “Parsifal” at the home of Wagnerian opera and came away disappointed at finding no trace of Annie Rooney in any of the classic arias. There’s nothing touches an “innocent abroad” like sounds from home.