Minna Planer, as she was called, was the daughter of a spindle-maker, and according to Praeger,[8] who knew her well, went on the stage not because she was endowed with histrionic talent, but because it was necessary for her to contribute to the support of her father's family. Wagner had become engaged to her while at Magdeburg, and he married her on Nov. 24, 1836, at Königsberg. He was twenty-three years old and the wisdom of his marriage was what might have been expected of a boy. From all the testimony it appears that the first wife of Richard Wagner was a good, gentle, loving woman, devoted to him in a mild, unimpassioned manner, and utterly incapable of understanding him. At the outset of their married life, she was almost as improvident as he, and the burden of debt which he had accumulated at Magdeburg grew larger at Königsberg. Later at Riga these two poor children lived in a house in the outskirts of a town and had to take a cab whenever they went to the theatre!

In later years Minna learned the meaning of economy, and she struggled bravely to make both ends meet, when there was nothing but ends. But never did she perceive the genius of her husband, and for that reason she was always impatient with his dreams of great achievements, when money could have been earned by prosaic labour at the expense of hazy aspirations. A woman of tender eye and sweet speech, she commanded the sympathy of Wagner's friends, and it was indeed a fatal misfortune for this gentle dove that she was mismated with an eagle. Certainly she suffered much and bore with patience, not only the privations of domestic life in straitened circumstances, but also the waywardness and eccentricities of a mind beyond her comprehension. Praeger says:

"As years rolled by and the genius of Wagner assumed more definite shape and grew in strength, she was less able to comprehend the might of his intellect. To have written the 'Novice of Palermo' at twenty-three and to have been received so cordially was to her unambitious heart the zenith of success. More than that she could not understand, nor did she ever realise the extent of the wondrous gifts of her husband. After twenty years of wedded life it was much the same. We were sitting at lunch in the trimly kept Swiss châlet at Zurich in the summer of 1856, waiting for the composer of the then completed 'Rienzi,' 'Dutchman,' 'Tannhäuser' and 'Lohengrin' to come down from his scoring of the 'Nibelungen,' when in full innocence she asked me, 'Now, honestly, is Richard such a great genius?' On another occasion, when he was bitterly animadverting on his treatment by the public, she said, 'Well, Richard, why don't you write something for the gallery?'"

That there was another side to the story is certain. From the beginning, though tender and considerate of his wife when at her side, and fully awake to her excellencies, Wagner was a victim of those irregularities of temperament which seem inseparable from genius, especially musical genius. He was inconstant as the wind, a rover, a faithless husband. His misdoings amounted to more than peccadilloes. He was guilty of many liaisons and the Sybaritic character of his self-indulgences increased as the years went by. It is not possible to give the details of these secrets of Wagner's life; but it must suffice to say that while Minna was unsuited to him through her inability to understand him, she was more sinned against than sinning. She was a faithful and devoted wife, patient in adversity and modest in prosperity. It is impossible to say the same of him as a husband. For twenty-five years they struggled along together, and the history of their existence makes one sympathise deeply with this sweet little woman. Enduring the most bitter privations, she saw a husband, who could have earned a good living by writing for the popular taste, deliberately refusing to do so and following the promptings of what must have seemed to her the wildest dreams. This same husband was also luxurious in habit, and was always deeply in debt. The wolf was continually at the Wagner door, even when the master had what to a less fastidious person would have seemed abundance. Wagner, on the other hand, must have hungered and thirsted for a companion who would understand his ideals and his purposes, and be willing to wait with him for the triumph that was sure to come. That these two ill-mated persons would separate was almost inevitable. It may be briefly recorded at this point that they did separate in August, 1861. Minna went to live in Dresden, where she died on Jan. 25, 1866.

The grip of poverty in Königsberg seems to have strangled the voice of Wagner's muse. He says in the Autobiography: "The year which I spent in Königsberg was completely lost to my art by reason of the pressure of petty cares. I wrote one solitary overture: 'Rule Britannia.'" He wrote also about this time an overture entitled "Polonia." The former is lost, but the Wagner family has the manuscript of the latter. The state of the composer's mind, and the actions to which it led are now best told in the "Communication to My Friends":

The history of Wagner's first attempt to reach the goal of the opera composer of his day, the stage of the Grand Opéra in Paris, is worthy of particular note. He despatched the manuscript and a letter for Scribe to his brother-in-law, Friedrich Brockhaus, to send to Paris. Hearing nothing, he wrote again six months later, and sent to Scribe a copy of the score of "Das Liebesverbot" as a specimen of his work. Scribe answered this letter courteously and expressed interest in Wagner and his music. The composer again sent him a copy of the scenario of "Die Hohe Braut," but put it into the post without any stamps and so never heard of it again, nor received an answer from Scribe. These facts were recorded in an old note book in which Wagner made first draughts of his letters. The letter giving this information was addressed to one Lewald, a Leipsic journalist who had lived in Paris, and, after reciting the facts, Wagner asked him to find out whether Scribe had received the second letter and whether he was still favourably inclined. If so, Wagner said, he had another operatic plan in his mind, the book of "Rienzi," which was just the thing for Paris. This letter was published in the Frankfurter Zeitung, and will be found quoted in Mr. Finck's "Wagner." Nothing came of this correspondence, and Wagner was fated not to enter Paris till some time later, and then to find it a city of continual disappointment.

In the spring the Königsberg Theatre failed and again Wagner was out of employment. Like many other theatrical folk, the moment his salary stopped he was in straits. So once more he called upon Dorn for help. This critic had written of the "Rule Britannia" overture that it was a medley of Bach, Beethoven, and Bellini, but he still had faith in the genius of Wagner. So through his influence Wagner was appointed director of music in the theatre at Riga, on the Russian side of the Baltic, under Karl von Holtei as manager. Wagner's wife and her sister, Theresa Planer, were also engaged for the comedy performances. Riga was a more prosperous town than either Magdeburg or Königsberg and at first Wagner, delighted with the higher salary, set to work with evident pleasure. The material in the company was good, and the composer was sufficiently interested in the singers to write several airs for them. He also conducted ten orchestral concerts, at which his overtures, "Rule Britannia" and "Columbus," were performed. He began to write a comic opera entitled "Die Glückliche Bärenfamilie" ("The Happy Bear Family") for which he found the material in a story in the "Arabian Nights." "I had only composed two numbers for this," he says, "when I was disgusted to find that I was again on the high road to music-making à la Adam. My spirit, my deeper feelings, were wounded by this discovery, and I laid aside the work in horror. The daily studying and conducting of Auber's, Adam's, and Bellini's music contributed its share to a speedy undoing of my frivolous delight in such an enterprise."

That inexpressible dissatisfaction with the extant state of the theatre, which finally made Wagner the reformer of the lyric drama, was already at work. The purely commercial spirit of the play-house was rapidly becoming intolerably antagonistic to him. He held himself aloof from the actors. He lived far away from the theatre. He shut himself up within himself, and he began to cherish dreams of breaking the sordid bondage of the German stage and reaching out into a broader and more vigorous artistic atmosphere. He laboured assiduously at Riga for good performances. The manager begged him not to overwork the singers, but the singers liked his enthusiasm and seconded his efforts. At this time, in his unsettled state of mind, he worshipped Bellini, and exalted the Italian song above all other forms of operatic music. He had "Norma" performed for his benefit on Dec. 11, 1837. He wrote articles praising Bellini, and his enemies delighted to quote these forty years later as evidence of Wagner's inconsistency. This undeveloped youth of twenty-four was groping for the path toward which his genius impelled him. That he could not find it at once was not remarkable. He needed the discipline of a larger experience and a closer contact with the great world. As yet he had been but playing in the nursery. His first pointed lessons were about to be received.

In the spring of 1839 his contract with Holtei expired. He could not find employment. He even wrote to the director of the theatre offering to return as assistant director or copyist, in fact, to do anything except, as he ironically said, black boots or carry water. Nothing came of all this, and debts began to press heavily on this most improvident of men. He had a grand opera partly written. It was made on the Meyerbeerian last, and that was fashionable in Paris. Thither he determined to go. But when he endeavoured to leave Riga, he could not get a passport because of his debts. So with his wife and his dog, he stole away like a thief in the night. Minna went across the border into Germany disguised as the wife of a lumberman. Wagner himself was aided by a Königsberg friend, Abraham Möller, who hid him in an empty sentry box till he could slip past the pickets on the boundary line. This same Möller went with him to the port of Pillau, where he, his wife, and his dog embarked on a sailing vessel for London, thence to descend upon Paris.[9] Paris was to be assailed with one opera completed and another half done. This second work was "Rienzi." During the years of struggle at Magdeburg, Königsberg, and Riga, while searching for material for a grand opera book, he had read Bulwer's novel, "Rienzi," and the subject seemed to him to be promising. The grandeur of the plan and the opportunities for operatic effects fired his mind, and in the summer of 1838 he began the libretto. At Riga, when he was holding himself aloof from the surroundings of the theatre, he was at work composing the music, and in the spring of 1839 the first two acts were finished. He had aimed to make this an imposing work, too grand in plan for production at a provincial German theatre. So it was with this uncompleted score that he put to sea, a sea far vaster than he at the time imagined it to be. For before leaving Riga he had fallen upon Heine's version of the legend of the "Flying Dutchman," and this sea voyage was to make the story vital in his mind and inspire him with the music for the first work in which the Wagner of the immortal dramas was revealed. He says in the autobiography:

"This voyage I never shall forget as long as I live; it lasted three and a half weeks and was rich in mishaps. Thrice did we endure the most violent of storms, and once the captain found himself compelled to put into a Norwegian haven. The passage among the crags of Norway made a wonderful impression on my fancy; the legends of the Flying Dutchman, as I heard them from the seamen's mouths, were clothed for me in a distinct and individual colour, borrowed from the adventures of the ocean through which I was then passing."

But at length London was reached, and Wagner, Minna, and the great Newfoundland dog were set down at a comfortless little hotel in Old Compton Street, Soho, a dozen doors from Wardour Street, with the purlieus of Seven Dials on one side of them and Oxford and Regent Streets within a few minutes' walk.[10] His first experience in the capital of Great Britain was the loss of his magnificent Newfoundland dog, to which he was much attached. Fortunately the intelligent beast found its master. Wagner was not far away from the house in which Weber had lived when he was in London, and "to that shrine he made his first pilgrimage." He visited the Naval Hospital at Greenwich and was duly impressed by the sight of the shipping on the Thames. He went over the hospital ship Dreadnaught, one of Nelson's old fleet, and he visited Westminster Abbey, where he paid special attention to the Poets' Corner. Standing before the statue of Shakespeare, he was carried away into a long reverie on the manner in which this master had triumphed by throwing aside all the rules of the old classic writers, and Praeger sees in this one of the germs of Wagner's daring reforms. The reverie ended when the patient Minna plucked him by the sleeve and said, "Come, dear Richard, you have been standing here for twenty minutes like one of these statues and not uttering a word." And that was about the substance of Wagner's first experience in London. He says in his autobiography that nothing interested him so much as the city itself and the Houses of Parliament. He did not visit a single theatre.

He now set out for Paris by way of Boulogne, and at the latter place he tarried four weeks, because the most influential man in the operatic world of France, Giacomo Meyerbeer, was there enjoying his summer rest. It was of vital importance to Wagner to make the acquaintance of this great personage, and he did not think that the expense of a month's stay was too much to pay for the advantage. Meyerbeer, who was not averse to playing the dictator, received the poor German kindly, and after reading the libretto of "Rienzi," praised it highly. He was also flattering in his commendation of the two acts of the music which Wagner had finished. He was dubious as to the future of this young man, who had nothing on which to live while he lingered about the gates of the mighty in Paris, but he promised to do what he could for him. He said that letters of introduction were well enough in their way, but that persistence was the most valuable lever to success. With this advice he gave Wagner letters to Anténor Jolly, director of the Théâtre Renaissance, which produced musical works as well as plays; to Léon Pillet, director of the Grand Opéra; to Schlesinger, the publisher, and to Habeneck, the famous conductor.

Armed with these letters, and with that naïve trust in the future which deserted him only in his equally naïve periods of utter despondency, Wagner set out for Paris, where he arrived in September, 1839. Only twenty-six years old, he had already produced two operas, partly written a third, and conceived the germ of a fourth, which was to make him famous. His experiences in Paris were to be of the bitterest kind, but of the most vital importance to his future career. He remained in the French capital till April 7, 1842, and in the intervening time disclosed himself as an artist, although as a man he nearly starved. Out of trials and tribulations are great spirits moulded. It was necessary for Wagner to despair of pecuniary success before he found the true path to immortal fame.

CHAPTER IV
“THE END OF A MUSICIAN IN PARIS”

On arriving in Paris Wagner took a furnished apartment in the Rue de la Tonnelerie. This was in an unfrequented quarter, but the house was said to have been occupied once by Molière. The apartment was cheap, a matter of much moment to Wagner. The young man at once started out with his letters from Meyerbeer. They not only secured him an offer for the immediate performance of one of his operas, but they also opened many doors to him and insured him a pleasant welcome. It is quite true, as Jullien[11] notes, that he owed all he ever accomplished in Paris to Meyerbeer and the men to whom he had Meyerbeer's letters. In the beginning everything was most promising. The director of the Renaissance agreed to accept "Das Liebesverbot," and Dumersan, a maker of vaudevilles, was set to work translating it. Schlesinger, the publisher, induced Habeneck, the conductor of the Conservatoire concerts, to promise to try a new overture, which Wagner had just completed. This was the work afterward known as "Eine Faust Ouvertüre." Wagner, delighted with his prospects, moved to No. 25, Rue du Helder, in the "heart of elegant and artistic Paris."

But suddenly the horizon became overclouded. The Conservatory orchestra did, indeed, try the overture, and Schlesinger inserted in his paper, the Gazette Musicale, a paragraph saying, "An overture by a young German composer of very remarkable talent, M. Wagner, has just been rehearsed by the orchestra of the Conservatoire, and has won unanimous applause. We hope to hear it immediately and we will render an account of it." As a matter of fact, the Conservatory orchestra had not been able to make head or tail of the overture, and the Théâtre de la Renaissance, instead of producing the "Liebesverbot," suddenly failed and the manager closed its doors. Quite disheartened by these reverses Wagner laid aside the "Faust" music, which he had intended to make the first movement of a "Faust" symphony. In 1855, when he was living at Zurich, he altered this familiar and admired overture to its present form.

Adolphe Jullien in his life of Wagner says that "If we have only an overture instead of a complete score of 'Faust,' we are indebted for this loss to the gold-laced musicians of the Conservatoire in 1840." Jullien appears to have supposed that Wagner contemplated an opera, but this is certainly an error. On Jan. 1, 1855, Franz Liszt wrote to Wagner and told of the completion of his "Faust" symphony. In his reply to this letter Wagner said:

"It is an absurd coincidence that just at this time I have been taken with a desire to remodel my old 'Faust' overture. I have made an entirely new score, have rewritten the instrumentation throughout, have made many changes, and have given more expansion and importance to the middle portion (second motive). I shall give it in a few days at a concert here under the title of 'A Faust Overture.' The motto will be:

But I shall not publish it in any case."

In December of the same year, nevertheless, he wrote to Liszt confessing that the fiasco of the work was "a purifying and wholesome punishment" for having published it in spite of his better judgment.

Another failure of the unfortunate Paris period was in connection with a grand entertainment which Parisians were organising in aid of the Poles. The entertainment was to consist of the performance of an opera, on the subject of the Duc de Guise, the libretto written by "a noble amateur and set to music by the young Flotow." Wagner took the score of his overture, "Polonia," to M. Duvinage, the director of the orchestra, but this gentleman had no time to examine it. It may as well be recorded here that this overture was lost for forty years, and after passing through various hands came to rest in 1881 in the possession of M. Pasdeloup, the famous Parisian conductor, from whom Wagner recovered it. He had it played in that year to celebrate his wife's birthday.

Wagner was now in dire distress. He had expended all his resources, and he could not pay for the furniture of his apartment, which he had bought on credit. Schlesinger came to his aid once more, and took from him several articles for the Gazette Musicale. The first of these, "On German Music," appeared on July 12 and 26, 1840. A translation of it will be found in Vol. VII. of W. Ashton Ellis's edition of Wagner's prose works. Schlesinger had also at this time bought the score of Donizetti's "La Favorita," and Wagner was set to work making a piano arrangement of the music. Through the help of M. Dumersan, who had begun the abandoned translation of "Das Liebesverbot" into French, he obtained a commission to write music to a vaudeville, entitled "La Déscente de la Courtille," which Dumersan and Dupeuty had written. Gasparini[13] says that the bouffe singers of that time were incapable of singing anything more difficult than the music of "La Belle Hélène" and they quickly decided that the score "of the young German was quite impossible of execution." Gasparini also notes that there was one chanson, "Allons à la Courtille," which had "its hour of celebrity." M. Jullien is probably right in saying that this song was not the work of Wagner, and Mr. Edward Dannreuther in his excellent article in Grove's "Dictionary of Music" says that it has not been traced. He next endeavoured to earn a few francs by writing songs. He made a setting of a translation of Heinrich Heine's "Two Grenadiers," but it was not so good as that made by Schumann in the previous year, and singers did not take to it kindly. He composed also at this time "L'Attente" by Victor Hugo, "Mignonne" by Ronsard, and "Dors, mon enfant." Much as we like these songs now, at the time of their composition Wagner could not get them sung or published. "Mignonne" was printed in the Gazette Musicale, and with two others was afterward reprinted in Lewald's Europa. Wagner wrote the editor a letter begging that he might be paid for them at once. They brought him in from $2 to $3.75 each.

It was in the midst of these trials that Wagner wrote his famous story entitled "A Pilgrimage to Beethoven," which attracted the attention of Hector Berlioz. In a review of a concert organised by the Gazette Musicale the distinguished Frenchman spoke of the articles in that paper, and said: "For a long time to come will be read one by M. Wagner, entitled 'A Pilgrimage to Beethoven.'" As M. Jullien says, "Little did Berlioz know how truly he spoke." In the intervals of his labours at breadwinning Wagner worked at his "Rienzi." But he sank deeper and deeper into the mire of poverty. His few friends, Laube, Heine, and Schlesinger, could do little to cheer him, though the last named furnished him with the means of life. Berlioz, whom he had met, was not sympathetic to him, though he always cherished a high regard for the Frenchman's talent.

Schlesinger again came to the rescue and decided to produce at one of the Gazette Musicale concerts a composition by Wagner. The "Columbus" overture was accordingly thus performed on Feb. 4, 1841. Schumann made a note of the performance in his paper, and Wagner, encouraged by this remembrance of him in Germany, sent the score to London to Jullien. But the manuscript, postage unpaid, came home to its maker, and he was too poor to take it from the postman. Accordingly that official put it back into his bag and walked off with it. And that was the last that was seen of this overture. Wagner's cup of misery seemed now to be brimming over. He abandoned all hope of success in the volatile French capital. He fled from his accustomed haunts, shunned the society of musicians, all mercenary and insincere as they seemed, and sought that of scholars and literary men, who at least had artistic ideals. He gave up all hope of having "Rienzi" produced at the Grand Opéra, and turned his weary eyes toward Dresden. There was an opera with an inspiring history; a theatre with a long established routine; and a company which included such artists as Tichatschek and Schroeder-Devrient.

Meyerbeer was master of the operatic world in Paris, and Wagner, who found him amiable as a man, could not sympathise with the blatant theatricalism of his "Les Huguenots" and "Robert le Diable." Halévy, he felt, had suffered his pristine enthusiasm to fade before the easy temptation of monetary success. Auber, whom he had once loved for his "Muette," he now despised for his unblushing search after popular approval. Only Berlioz pleased him, and he not fully. "He differs by the whole breadth of heaven," he says in the autobiography, "from his Parisian colleagues, for he makes no music for gold. But he cannot write for the sake of purest art; he lacks all sense of beauty. He stands completely isolated upon his own position; by his side he has nothing but a troupe of devotees, who, shallow, and without the smallest spark of judgment, greet in him the creator of a brand new musical system and completely turn his head;—the rest of the world avoids him as a madman." In Paris he met Liszt, who was afterward his best friend, but at first was not pleasing to him. He heard him play a fantasia on airs from "Robert le Diable" at a concert in honour of Beethoven, and his sincere German heart was outraged at such desecration. He felt that the virtuoso was dependent on the public fancy and shallowness, and he compared his own independence with this state in an article entitled "Du Métier de Virtuose et de l'Indépendence des Compositeurs: Fantasie Esthétique d'un Musicien," which he published in the Gazette Musicale of Oct. 18, 1840.

On Nov. 19 of the same year the score of "Rienzi" was completed, and on Dec. 4 he sent it to Von Lüttichau, the director of the opera at Dresden, accompanied by two letters, one to the director himself and the other to Friedrich August II, King of Saxony. Neither of these letters seems to have effected anything, and Wagner then applied to Meyerbeer, who on returning to Paris in the summer of 1840 had found his young friend in dire distress. Meyerbeer wrote to the intendant, Von Lüttichau. "Herr Richard Wagner of Leipsic," he said, "is a young composer who has not only a thorough musical education, but who possesses much imagination, as well as general literary culture, and whose predicament certainly merits in every way sympathy in his native land." Three months after the writing of this letter Wagner received word that his opera had been accepted at Dresden, but it was sixteen months later when it was produced. Although he knew that in Fischer, the chorusmaster, Reissiger, the conductor, and Tichatschek, the tenor, who saw golden opportunities in the title rôle, he had friends at court, yet he suffered intense anxiety during the period between the acceptance and the production of the work. The correspondence with Fischer and Heine well shows the extent of this.[14]

Meanwhile Meyerbeer, wishing to do something to give immediate help to the unfortunate young man, placed him in communication with Léon Pillet, the director of the Grand Opéra. "I had already," says Wagner in the autobiography, "provided myself for this emergency with an outline plot. The 'Flying Dutchman,' whose acquaintance I had made upon the ocean, had never ceased to fascinate my phantasy; I had also made the acquaintance of H. Heine's remarkable version of this legend in a number of his 'Salon'; and it was especially his treatment of the redemption of this Ahasuerus of the seas—borrowed from a Dutch play under the same title—that placed within my hands all the material for turning the legend into an opera subject." Wagner rushed to Pillet with this sketch for the book of the "Flying Dutchman," and the suggestion that a French text-book be prepared for him to set to music.

Pillet accepted the sketch and there was much talk about the choice of a person to make a suitable French arrangement. Suddenly Meyerbeer left Paris again, and no sooner was his back turned than Pillet told the young German that he liked "Le Vaisseau-Fantôme" so well that he would be glad to sell it to a composer to whom he had long ago promised a libretto. Wagner naturally declined to accede to such a proposition and asked for the return of his manuscript. But Pillet was unwilling to part with it. Wagner left the manuscript in his hands, hoping that Meyerbeer would return and straighten out the affair. Pursued by creditors and harassed by want, he now left Paris and went to reside in the suburb of Meudon. Here he heard by chance that his sketches for "Der Fliegende Holländer" had been placed in the hands of M. Paul Foucher for arrangement, and that he was in a fair way to be cheated out of his book. So in the end he accepted $100 for it, and was thankful to get that.

"Le Vaisseau-Fantôme," libretto by Foucher and Revoil, music by Pierre Louis Phillipe Dietsch, chorusmaster and afterward conductor at the opera, was produced Nov. 9, 1842. It was a distinguished failure and was speedily consigned to oblivion. Meanwhile Wagner, who was not forbidden by the terms of his agreement with Pillet to write a German book of his own after his sketches, sat down to pen the text of "Der Fliegende Holländer," which still lives. In seven weeks he had written the whole work except the overture, and then his $100 were gone, and he had to revert to hack work to earn bread. He returned to Paris and lived most humbly at No. 10 Rue Jacob, where he made piano scores of Halévy's "Guitarréro" and "La Reine de Chypre."

It was at this time, too, in the beginning of the year 1841, that he wrote his pathetic sketch, "The End of a Musician in Paris," in which he delineated his own hopes and disappointments, and made the poor man die with the words, "I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven." When the score of the "Dutchman" was completed, he hastened to send it to his fatherland, but from Munich and Leipsic came the answer that it was not suitable to Germany. "Fool that I was!" he says; "I had fancied it was fitted for Germany alone, since it is struck on chords that can only vibrate in the German breast." Once more he turned for help to the musical dictator, Meyerbeer, who was in Berlin. He sent the new work to him with a request that he get it taken up by the opera in that city. The opera was accepted speedily, but there was no prospect of immediate production. Nor did Wagner see any prospects of any kind, except starvation, in Paris.

All through the winter of 1841-42 he hoarded his money in the hope of going to Germany for the production of his "Rienzi." In the same winter began the voluminous correspondence with his Dresden friends, Wilhelm Fischer and Ferdinand Heine. The former was addressed ceremoniously in the first letters as a new acquaintance. The latter was an old friend of the Wagner family. In his letters to these two men the poet-composer poured out the tortured anxiety of his soul over the promised production of "Rienzi." He gave invaluable suggestions as to the cast and the performance. He besought first one and then the other of the friends to let him know how and when the work would at length be given. He wrote to the artists, Tichatschek and Schroeder-Devrient. They paid no attention to him. Who was he, this unknown young composer, to trouble the darlings of the public? He grovelled before them and they spurned him. Reissiger's "Adèle de Foix" must be given before "Rienzi," for Reissiger was the conductor at Dresden. Then came Halévy's "Guitarréro," which Wagner knew well indeed. And finally when "Rienzi" seemed likely to get a hearing, Mme. Schroeder-Devrient decided that she needed a revival of Gluck's "Armida." Poor Wagner! He wrote of Schroeder-Devrient to Heine:

At length patience became impossible. He was eager to be on the spot and to exert his personal influence. Furthermore he wished his wife to take the baths at Teplitz. So on April 7, 1842, he was able to turn his face from Paris, the scene of so much achievement, so much disappointment, and move toward his native land. "For the first time," he says at the end of the autobiographic sketch, "I saw the Rhine. With hot tears in my eyes, I, poor artist, swore eternal fidelity to my German fatherland." But a little later the poor artist's name was on every tongue, in every print; and the great Wagner war broke over Germany. For genius always arouses opposition, and there are few who can follow the seven league strides of a creative mind.

CHAPTER V
BEGINNING OF FAME AND HOSTILITY

The excursion to Teplitz in the early summer of 1842 for his wife's health was of great importance in the development of Richard Wagner, for it was there and then that he completed the outline of the book of "Tannhäuser." When he had finished "Der Fliegende Holländer," he searched for a new subject. That he had not yet discovered in what direction his genius called him is demonstrated by the fact that he was attracted by the story of the conquest of Apulia and Sicily by Manfred, the son of the Emperor Friedrich II. He made a plan for a book to be called "Die Sarazener." In this Mme. Schroeder-Devrient was to have the rôle of a half-sister of Manfred, a prophetess, who led the Saracens to victory and secured Manfred's coronation. The plot was shown to Mme. Schroeder-Devrient some years later, but it did not please her, and the work was dropped. And now there fell into Wagner's hands a version of the "Tannhäuser" legend, and his mind went flying back to Hoffmann's "Sängerkrieg," which he had read in his youth. He started to run down the different versions of the story, and in so doing came upon the legends of "Parzival" and "Lohengrin." But it was the "Tannhäuser" legend which first absorbed him, and at once he began the plan which he completed at Teplitz.

The general rehearsals for "Rienzi" began in Dresden in July, for in spite of the anxiety of Wagner and his lack of information, the preparations for the production of his work had been going on very well. The summer past, the rehearsals were again pushed forward, and the composer found valuable allies in Tichatschek, who was enamoured of the title rôle, and Fischer, who saw the power and splendour of the glowing score. For though "Rienzi" is a work entirely opposed to the true Wagnerian methods and style, it is one of the greatest creations of the real French school, to which it strictly belongs. So on Oct. 20, 1842, the first of the Wagnerian works which still hold the stage, was produced at the Dresden opera and Wagner awoke the next morning to find himself famous. The performance was an almost startling success. Singers, orchestra, public, and critics were alike amazed and overwhelmed by the enormous breadth of style, mastery of technic, and maturity of methods shown in the work. Although the performance occupied six hours, the enthusiasm of the audience was not abated. The next morning Wagner went to the theatre to indicate the cuts which should be made in the over-long work, and was met with a storm of protests by the singers. Tichatschek declared that he would not spare a measure. "It is heavenly!" he exclaimed. A second and a third performance were given with growing receipts. At the third Reissiger resigned the conductor's bâton to the young composer, and the public went wild with approval. All the wretchedness of Paris was gone and forgotten. The star of genius was in the ascendant; the Rhine had been Wagner's Rubicon.

In subsequent performances the work was divided into two parts, the first and second acts being given on one evening, and the other three on another. It was five years, however, before the opera travelled as far as the stage of the opera at Berlin. Thence it went out into all the world. But it was the end of what may be called Wagner's first artistic period. The work was planned and executed on the conventional lines of the Meyerbeerian grand opera, and the music was a compound of French and Italian styles, with here and there a burst of the real Wagner of the future. The artistic convictions which were to develop into a complete theory of the music drama in the mind of Wagner had come to him in the composition of the "Flying Dutchman," and this work became the starting point of what is commonly called his second period, in which he produced it, together with "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin."

The winter at Dresden passed happily, for the young composer was enjoying the first fruits of success. Heinrich Laube, the old friend of Wagner and editor of the Journal for the Polite World, asked the composer to furnish material for an autobiographic sketch, and this Wagner wrote. This sketch will be found in the first volume of the collected prose writings of the master. It ends with the start from Paris for Dresden. The music of "Rienzi" began to be heard on the concert stage, and the name of Wagner, to be noised about as that of a man of high promise. It would have been extremely easy for him to achieve pecuniary success by writing more works on the popular lines of "Rienzi," but it was not in the man to sacrifice his artistic conscience to public favour. Already the ideas which were to make him famous in time, but which were first to throw musical Europe into a ferment of dispute, had taken firm possession of his mind. In March, 1843, August Roeckel, second music director at Dresden, and a lifelong friend of Wagner, wrote to Ferdinand Praeger in London:

This theory of a combination in one organic whole, of all the arts tributary to the drama, each part to be as important, as essential as the other, was the theory which Wagner now began to practice, which he first attempted to illustrate in his "Flying Dutchman," and which he subsequently preached in his principal prose writings. It was the theory which met with active and obstinate opposition from those who either would not or could not climb to Wagner's artistic altitude, and who preferred to see in the opera nothing but a field for the display of pretty vocal pieces and voices trained to sing them. Wagner's theory made the music and the singing subordinate to the dramatic design, transformed them from ultimate objects into means of expression; and this was to his contemporaries a revolutionary idea for which they were not prepared.

"Der Fliegende Holländer" was produced at the Dresden opera on January 2, 1843, with Mme. Schroeder-Devrient as Senta, and Wagner in the conductor's chair. The work proved to be a disappointment to the public, which had looked for another "Rienzi" with glittering processions, splendid scenery, and groupings, and imposing action coupled with brilliant music. The simple story and action of the "Dutchman," interpreted largely by music of a purely emotional character, was too serious for the Dresden audience, and at that period for audiences elsewhere. To us of the present day this work is the essence of simplicity, and much of its music seems trivially light. But to the Germans of 1843 it was a most sombre tragedy.

"My friends," Wagner says, "were dismayed at the result; they seemed anxious to obliterate this impression on them and the public by an enthusiastic resumption of 'Rienzi.' I was myself in sufficiently ill humour to remain silent and leave the 'Flying Dutchman' undefended." The critics of the day were nonplussed by the total departure from the recognised conventions of the contemporaneous stage, and they talked a deal of nonsense about the lack of melody in the work, a sort of nonsense which some old-fashioned persons have not done talking even yet. But we must remember that this new work was an artistic revelation; and the general public never likes these. It desires only to be amused in the theatre, and only after much struggling yields to the power of genius, and renders homage to true works of art. Wagner himself realised that the general public could not be looked to for support in his radical departure from the easy path of tuneful dalliance, in which it was accustomed to travel. In his "Communication to My Friends" he says:

On May 22 the opera was given at Riga, and on June 5 at Cassel under direction of the famous composer, violinist, and conductor, Ludwig Spohr. The poem had been submitted to him and he had spoken of it as a little masterpiece. He had sent for the music, and at once decided to produce the work. It seems strange that Spohr, a composer of tendencies so different from Wagner's and so old a man (he was sixty-nine), should have been one of the first to perceive the power of the new genius. But in a letter to his friend Lüders he wrote:

The completeness of the popular failure of the "Flying Dutchman" may be estimated from the fact that after the first performances in Dresden it disappeared from the répertoire of that opera for twenty years. It was produced in Berlin in 1844, and it was ten years after that when it was heard again anywhere. Wagner himself did not realise either the fulness or the significance of the failure of this work. He had only begun to experiment with his reformatory ideas, and that the public was not ready to accept them with acclaim could not have amazed him, though it doubtless brought him from the rosy heights of sanguinity down to the shadier levels of dull fact. To awaken from a hopeful dream, however illusive, is painful; and Wagner was momentarily shocked and hurt. But as he had not yet grasped all the details of his own theories, so he failed to perceive the utterness of the public inability to comprehend his dawning purposes. It was not till after the production of his "Tannhäuser," which some of his most ardent admirers still regard as poetically his noblest tragedy, that he realised the solitariness of his genius, the shallowness of a public trained up to be lightly pleased.

Meanwhile he was appointed to a very important professional post. The deaths of Kapellmeister Morlacchi in 1841 and "Musik-director" Rastrelli in 1842 had made two vacancies in the Dresden Theatre. Wagner was one of those who applied for the secondary position at a salary of 1200 thalers (about $900) a year. Von Lüttichau, the Intendant (manager), excited by the success of "Rienzi," thought he had found a rare jewel, and supported Wagner, with the result that the composer was appointed Hofkapellmeister at 1500 thalers (about $1125). The position of Hofkapellmeister also carried with it life incumbency, and a pension on retirement. On January 10, 1843, he conducted Weber's "Euryanthe," this being the customary public "trial" representation. He then made an unsuccessful trip to Berlin to try to push his "Rienzi." Before the close of the month his appointment was formally made, and his first duty was to assist Hector Berlioz, who arrived in Dresden on February 1, in the rehearsals for his concerts.[16]

He served seven years as conductor at Dresden and in that time rehearsed and conducted works by Weber, Spohr, Spontini, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Beethoven, Marschner, Gluck, and others, gaining an immense amount of valuable experience. The arrangement of Gluck's "Iphigenie in Aulis," which he made for the performance of February 22, 1847, is published and approved by critical authorities.

Concerts were given by the court orchestra, and in these he conducted the leading orchestral works, making a special study of the Beethoven symphonies. To this labour he applied all the results of his early studies of Beethoven, and his own ideas about conducting, together with some thoughts formed in listening to the Conservatoire concerts in Paris. The results of these studies and experiences he subsequently embodied in a book called "Ueber das Dirigen." (On Conducting). Among his other duties a certain amount of attention had to be given to the music of the Hofkirche. The choir consisted of fourteen men and twelve boys, and there was a full orchestra of fifty, including trumpets and trombones. Wagner said to Mr. Edward Dannreuther, "The echoes and reverberations in the building were deafening. I wanted to relieve the hard-working members of the orchestra and female voices, and introduce true Catholic church music a cappella. As a specimen I prepared Palestrina's 'Stabat Mater,' and suggested other pieces, but my efforts failed." Wagner was as true an artist in the matter of church music as he was in that of the stage, and he returned with joy to the glorious treasure-house of Roman art; but he found his public just as unfit for that as for his new dispensations in the drama.

Wagner was made conductor of the Liedertafel, a chorus of men organised in 1839, and also of the Saengerfest of 1843. It took place in July of that year and the composer wrote for it "Das Liebesmahl der Apostel," a biblical scene. The story of this celebration of the Lord's Supper by the Apostles was this: The disciples being assembled for the feast, the Apostles arrive with the information that the penalty of death has been prescribed for teaching the Christian faith. Alarm fills every breast and the assembly prays to the Father to send them the Holy Spirit. Heavenly voices sound from above, telling the supplicants that their prayer has been granted. Then follows a convulsion of nature, caused by the descent of the Spirit, and the Apostles and Disciples go forth to preach the Gospel. A chorus of forty men represented the Disciples, and the heavenly voices were consigned to an invisible choir singing in the dome of the building. This bit of stage management, repeated in "Parsifal," was the only feature of the work that attracted special attention.[17] The correspondent of the Paris Gazette Musicale, Schlesinger's paper, wrote, "This last work, the conception of which is most daring, has produced an extraordinary effect, and one which it is impossible to describe. The King after the concert was over summoned the young author to him, and testified his satisfaction in the most affectionate terms." But the Gazette Musicale's Dresden correspondent trusted much to the effect of distance in magnifying the size of a popular demonstration. Wagner himself thought well of this work, and lamented in a letter to Liszt in 1852 that choral societies did not perform it. But the truth is that the most noticeable qualities of the composition are purely theatrical, showing that Wagner's genius was entirely for the stage and not for the concert platform.

Spontini, the aged composer of "La Vestale," visited Dresden when his work was produced under Wagner's direction, and was treated by the young conductor with great veneration in spite of his troublesome demands for adherence to his old manner of performing the work. Wagner also entered heart and soul into a project which the Liedertafel had long cherished, namely, to carry the remains of Weber from London to Germany and inter them in the family vault at Dresden. The Liedertafel had raised some money by concerts, and now after Wagner had overcome the opposition of both the King and the Intendant, an operatic performance was given for the aid of the plan. The receipts, added to the funds already secured and augmented by the proceeds of a benefit given in Berlin by Meyerbeer, enabled the Liedertafel to send Weber's oldest son to London for the remains. He returned in December, and on the fourteenth of that month the ceremony of reinterment took place. The funeral music was arranged by Wagner from two passages in "Euryanthe," and he delivered the funeral oration, which was pronounced a masterly effort. It may be read in his collected prose writings. Taken all in all, the work of Wagner outside of the field of operatic composition was important while he was in Dresden. He certainly amazed the Germans themselves by his puissant revelations of the possibilities of the Beethoven symphonies, and his interpretations of the works of other composers were so striking and so far out of the conventional ruts into which the easy-going kapellmeisters of the country had fallen that a coterie of bitter opponents to him arose. Among them he was known as Wagner, the iconoclast, and this deceptive appellation, applied to him because he was not satisfied with indolent mediocrity and slothful error, clung to him for many years, an empty formula which its users could not justify.

It was at this time that, smarting under the failure of his public to understand him, and half inclined to return to the easy path of popular success indicated by the triumph of "Rienzi," he showed to Mme. Schroeder-Devrient the sketch of "Manfred." She, however, was not pleased with the story and dissuaded him from attempting to develop it. That his own artistic conscience was at work, too, is shown by the words written by him in the "Communication to My Friends."