Nothing came of this correspondence, and Wagner's "Rienzi" was not permitted to astonish the Parisians. Nevertheless he began himself to write the libretto at Riga in the summer of 1838. In the spring of 1839 he had composed the music of the first two acts, and with this uncompleted score he set out from Riga on the voyage which ultimately landed him in Paris. Of his meeting with Meyerbeer at Boulogne, his exhibition of his manuscript to the great dictator, his completion of the work in the days of his hardship in Paris (in 1841), and the sending of the bulky score to Dresden the story has been told in the biographical part of this book. It need not now be repeated. Of the instantaneous success of the opera at Dresden there is plentiful evidence. It was in the style which the public of the time admired and it heaped up effects enough to dazzle the crowd. But it must be said for Wagner that he had some dim thought when he began this work of producing something really artistic. He was simply mistaken as to the method. At this point I must ask the reader to accept Wagner's own words as a better exposition of himself and his purposes than anything which I can invent. In the "Autobiographic Sketch" he says:

Further, let the reader note well these passages from "A Communication to My Friends":

The reader will now understand the artistic ideas which governed Wagner in the production of his only "grand opera." He was, as he himself declares, true to the artistic creed which he cherished at that time, but that creed was opposed to the one afterward formulated in his mind. His first artistic beliefs were founded on the theory that not the ground-plan, but the external treatment, of the grand opera was at fault. He fancied that he could preserve the element which he has called "art-formalistic" and yet reach dramatic verity. He aimed at a consistent embodiment of character in his hero; he sought to give to all the factors of the opera, even such accessories as the ballet, a direct and powerful dramatic significance; but it had not yet come to him that he must, in order to make a consistent drama in music, sacrifice form to content, and get rid of the whole mechanical apparatus of the spectacular opera. Here, then, let me quote the most significant passage of all, one from the "Autobiographic Sketch":

The frequent iteration of such statements shows how anxious Wagner was in subsequent years lest he should be accused of deliberately pandering to that depraved public taste which he decried. In his endeavour to treat the grand-opera form honestly he accepted as his musical models several of his predecessors. In "Die Feen" he believed that he was following the lead of Beethoven, Weber, and Marschner, and in "Das Liebesverbot" he turned for help to Auber and Bellini. In "Rienzi" he utilised elements from all of these, and added to them the pomp of Spontini and the external glare of Meyerbeer. The libretto, as he says, is simply a good opera book. One looks in vain through it for more than traces of the dramatic power and real poetry to be found in the later works. Similarly the music is just good opera music of the most pretentious kind. It glitters, but seldom glows. It astonishes, but seldom moves. The instrumentation shows many of the idiosyncrasies of the later Wagner, but it is generally without inner strength. The whole work is superficial, and calls for precisely the same sort of criticism as the operas of Meyerbeer do. And this result came in spite of the fact that Wagner, according to his own account, was appalled by the very thought of being consciously weak or trivial for a moment. That he was weak and trivial often will be patent to any hearer of the opera. Indeed, one need not go so far as that. The overture is played often in concert and a novice can easily detect the bombastic emptiness of its resounding finale, even at the same time as he notes the resemblance of the sequences of chords in the brass to some afterward heard in "Der Fliegende Holländer." But Wagner himself tells us that before he had completed "Rienzi" he became doubtful as to the possibility of bringing about any real success by the methods which he was employing. He began to foresee the future with its wide departure for him from the traditions of opera. He began to realise that he could not cater to the extant public taste, but must create for himself a new one. But it was not till despair made him withdraw himself from all relations to the outer world that he entered upon the development of the true Wagnerian music drama.

"Rienzi," then, must be viewed simply as a grand opera of the old-fashioned sort. We must regard its libretto as an exemplification of the clever ground-plan of Meyerbeer, its music as the artistic offspring of the "Jewish banker to whom it occurred to write music," of Spontini, Rossini, and other composers of the pseudo-grand style. The story of the opera is substantially that of Bulwer's novel, and needs no review here. In the making of this book Wagner was simply an adapter. He re-created nothing. In his other works we shall find that he added to the literary substance of every subject which he treated. But such was not the case with "Rienzi." The joints are plainly visible. The carpenter work is creditable, but it is not architecture. One might almost say the same thing about the music. It is in the main good, workmanlike music, with inspiration carefully fanned by the breaths of older composers. Occasionally the real Wagner peeps out and there are some passages of fine vigour and even expressiveness. But this is an opera in which one can go through the score and pick out the "good things," just as one could from the old scores of Donizetti and Bellini.

The reader of Bulwer, for instance, will miss from the opera the figure of Nina, the wife of Rienzi, but he will find that her place is well filled by the sister, Irene, of whom Wagner makes a conspicuously noble character. Furthermore Wagner in drawing the character of his hero went to the original historical sources and so made him a stronger personage than Bulwer did. "Un signor valoroso, accorto, e saggio" is this Rienzi, as Petrarch called him. He speaks in broad and commanding accents, as in his address to the nobles and in the prayer. And it is at such points that we find the best music. The prayer is set to one of the finest melodies in all opera. Again we see that in the chorus and solo of the messengers of peace Wagner found material for good writing of both verse and music. The prayer opens the fifth act, when Rienzi, feeling that the end is near, calls on the Lord to preserve the work which he has achieved.

With the second stanza comes the fine melody heard in the overture:

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M. Schuré has said:

In the last sentence M. Schuré has nearly touched the truth, but I am inclined to think that he and Mr. Hueffer somewhat overrate the importance of this work. It is most probable that the melody of the prayer will come to be accepted as the one inspired thing in the whole score. Certainly the air of Adriano, so often sung on the concert stage, is but a weak and bombastic imitation of a Weber grand aria of the style of "Ocean, thou mighty monster," with leanings toward the manner employed in the monologue of Ortrud in Act II. of "Lohengrin."

We may therefore dismiss "Rienzi" as a mistake of Wagner's youth. He had not yet found himself. He might have achieved popularity and made money with this sort of writing, and knowing his great vanity and love of luxury we should not have been surprised if he had continued to produce works of this pattern if the first one had brought him immediate success. We ought, perhaps, to be very grateful to the years of privation in Paris which developed the real Wagner, though it is possible that his own ambition to stand alone would have had the desired result in the course of time, even had the years 1840 and 1841 been easier for him.

DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER

Romantic Opera in Three Acts.

First performed at the Royal Saxon Court Theatre, Dresden, Jan. 2, 1843.

Original Cast.

Conductor, Richard Wagner.

Riga and Cassel, 1843; Berlin, 1844; Zurich, 1852; Schwerin, Weimar, and Breslau, 1853; Frankfort and Wiesbaden, 1854; Hanover, Carlsruhe, and Prague, 1857; Mayence and Vienna, 1860; Königsberg, 1861; Lucerne, 1862; Munich, 1864; Stuttgart, 1865; Olmütz, 1866; Rotterdam and Dessau, 1869; Hamburg, Darmstadt, Mannheim, Gratz, 1870; London (Italian), July 23, 1870; Vienna, Brunswick, and Brünn, 1871; Brussels and Stockholm, 1872; Budapesth, Stettin, Augsburg, Magdeburg, Sondershausen, and Baden, 1874; Strassburg, 1875; Lübeck, Freiburg, and Salzburg, 1876; Philadelphia, 1876; Dublin and Bologna, 1877; Würzburg, 1877; New York, Jan. 26, 1877; Innspruck, 1880.

First performed in America as "Il Vascello Fantasma," in Philadelphia, Nov. 8, 1876, by the Pappenheim Company.

First performed in New York at the Academy of Music, Jan. 26, 1877, by the Kellogg English Opera Company.

Cast.

Conductor, S. Behrens.

First performed in New York in German at the Academy of Music, Mar. 12, 1877.

Cast.

Conductor, A. Neuendorff.

THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

“Der Fliegende Holländer” is the first of the works of Wagner which shadow forth the style, the system, and the mastery of lyrico-dramatic art found in his later works. All these elements of this master's art, however, are here found in an embryonic and experimental stage. Nothing is developed, and nothing is definite. Wagner himself did not realise the significance or possible extent of his movement. He was at this time wholly unconscious of the fact that he was laying the foundations of a new method of composition in musical drama. He was aiming only at writing an expressive score, in which the characters of his play, their emotions and their actions, should be drawn with all the powers of music.

The work was written at Meudon in the spring of 1841. All except the overture was completed in seven weeks. Of the fate of the first sketch of this lyric drama, of the hardships of the composer's life at the time of its execution, of the first performances, the reader has already been told. He has seen also how the stormy voyage to London impressed upon his mind the legend of the "Flying Dutchman" with which he had already made acquaintance. It now becomes our duty to examine the sources from which Wagner derived the poetic materials of this play and to ascertain how he treated them. In the "Flying Dutchman" the poetic ability of the master was first exhibited. He ceased to be a mere libretto-writer and became a dramatic poet. His version of the famous old legend is a lovely one, and much of its increased beauty is the product of his own genius. It was, as he himself said in the oft-quoted "Communication," the "first folk-poem that forced its way into my heart, and called on me as man and artist to point its meaning, and mould it in a work of art."

It was while in Riga that he made his first acquaintance with the story. "Heine takes occasion to relate it," he says, "in speaking of the representation of a play founded thereon, which he had witnessed—as I believe—at Amsterdam. This subject fascinated me, and made an indelible impression upon my fancy; still it did not as yet acquire the force needful for its rebirth within me." The story of Heine was in "The Memoirs of Herr Schnabelewopski." It is not certain whose play it was that Heine meant. Francis Hueffer, in his "Richard Wagner,"[33] expresses the belief that the play was that of Fitzball, which was running at the Adelphi Theatre in 1827, when Heine visited London. Mr. Hueffer bases his argument largely on the fact that two features of Fitzball's play, both additions to the old legend, are mentioned by Heine as appearing in the drama which he saw. These are the pictures of the Dutchman on the wall of Daland's house, and the taking of a wife by the wandering seaman.

Mr. Hueffer adds:

It should be noted that Mr. W. Ashton Ellis, whose translation of Wagner's prose works has been so often quoted, wrote a paper to disprove the theory of Mr. Hueffer as to the play having been Fitzball's. The matter, after all, is not one of great importance. Wagner got his materials from Heine's book, which contained a version of a very old legend, and in making the text of his lyric drama, he altered and improved that material as Mr. Hueffer has indicated.

The late Mr. John P. Jackson, formerly musical editor of The New York World, in the admirable introduction to his translation of the text of this opera, at one time used at the Metropolitan Opera House, says that the Fitzball play was founded on a version of the legend printed in Blackwood's Magazine in May, 1821. That version runs thus:

This is practically the original story of the "Flying Dutchman." It is no new tale, but, like nearly all myths, a development. In the literature of Greece we find the wanderer in the person of Ulysses, yearning for hearth and home and the joys of domestic love. In the early period of Christianity the myth entered and gave us the gloomy figure of the Wandering Jew, accursed and hopeless of all save the end in oblivion. With the Dutch the legend in the Middle Ages was easily transferred to their own favourite element, the sea, whereon at that time they were among the most daring and skilful. The struggle of the Dutchman against contending winds and waves typified their own battles with the powers of Old Ocean, and their determination to conquer at all hazards.

Later writers than those of the dark ages endeavoured to give this legend an end. In its original form it stands suspended with the Dutchman a creature without hope. Captain Marryatt, in his "Phantom Ship," releases the wanderer from his ceaseless journeyings by means of an amulet, or religious charm. Sir Walter Scott's version of the tale—wherever he found it—is a curiously poor one. According to him, the vessel was laden with precious metal. A murder was committed on board, and as a punishment for it a plague fell upon the crew. No port would permit the ship to enter, and it was doomed to float about aimlessly forever. There is no poetry and a total absence of the personal tragedy in that version. The idea of the salvation of the wanderer through the self-sacrificing love of woman, an idea to be found in literatures much older than this, was introduced into the story before Heine saw the play of which he wrote. It is quite possible that Heine never saw such a play, yet the fact remains that in the Fitzball drama the Dutchman did take a wife, only, however, to make an offering of her to a sea monster—a grotesque and utterly unpoetical idea.

Wagner got his beautiful ending from Heine. Mr. Hueffer has taken the trouble to retail the story as told in "The Memoirs of Herr von Schnabelewopski." The sentence of Van der Decken is that he shall wander till doomsday unless he shall be released by a woman faithful until death. The Devil does not believe in the existence of women of that sort, and therefore allows the wanderer to go ashore once every seven years to see if he can find such a one. (How was it that the Devil was so often mistaken about women?) He meets with failure after failure, till finally he falls in with a Scotch merchant, whose daughter has already learned his story and formed a romantic attachment for him. She has his picture in her room, and when her father, having accepted the Dutchman's offer for her hand, brings him home, she at once recognises him and determines to sacrifice herself to save him. Just at this point Herr von Schnabelewopski is called away for a short time, and when he returns he sees the Dutchman about to sail away without his wife. He loves her and would save her from his fate. But she, true to her vow, ascends a high rock, whence she throws herself into the sea. The spell is broken and the united lovers enter eternal rest. The reader will now see that it was the void occasioned by the temporary absence of von Schnabelewopski which Wagner filled with the interview between Senta and Erik. Except for the introduction of this character, a tenor, necessary to afford both dramatic and musical contrast to the story, Wagner has followed Heine closely, as lovers of the dramatist's works will at once perceive.

Out of this material Wagner constructed a drama which at the time of its production was as novel as "Tristan und Isolde" was in later years. In it we first meet with this master's remarkable power of concentrating in each scene the emotional moods and pouring them out to us in the music, while in those portions of the score devoted to musical description, such as the sea music and the sailors' choruses, we may note his ability to make dramatic atmosphere. How these powers reveal themselves to us in the grand duo of the last scene of Siegfried and the Waldweben! It is worth while hearing "Der Fliegende Holländer" occasionally, if only to study the embryonic Wagner. Now let us see how Wagner himself regarded the subject-matter of his story.

"The figure of the Flying Dutchman," he says, "is a mythical creation of the folk. A primal trait of human nature speaks out from it with a heart-enthralling force. This trait, in its most universal meaning, is the longing after rest from amid the storms of life." He traces the older forms of the legend as seen in the stories of Ulysses and the Wandering Jew, and then says:

With this broad, poetic view of his subject-matter Wagner set out to write a text book which should be a real drama and not a mere libretto. "From here," he says, "begins my career as poet, and my farewell to the mere concoctor of opera texts." In this drama are embodied the fundamental ideas of the entire Wagnerian system. Here they appear to us in their first stage of development, incomplete, unformed, and scarcely recognised by their own creator. The value of the mythologic matter, however, already forced itself upon the mind, and the conviction of its suitability to musical embodiment, because freed from hampering accessories, came to him at this period of his career. I have already quoted his words as to the employment of myths as subjects for music dramas. I may be pardoned for quoting here a passage from my introductory essay in the Schirmer vocal score of the drama:

In the structure of this drama the reader will find that Wagner did not abandon the old operatic forms. He employed duets, solos, choruses, etc., as an opera composer would. He did not use the leitmotiv system, but only hit upon its fundamental idea. He did not use the staff-rhyme. In fact we find in this work only a perfectly sincere attempt to make a good play and to express its feelings in music. He says himself of this work:

In the "Autobiographic Sketch" he tells us how, after disposing of the first sketch to Pillet, he set to work to compose his own music.

This statement affords sufficient evidence that nothing revolutionary was in Wagner's mind when he sat down to compose "Der Fliegende Holländer." No vision of the polyphonic web of "Tristan und Isolde" rose in his brain; no conception of an operatic score in which every melodic idea should have a direct message. He began with two purely lyric numbers, and it was not till he reached the ballad of Senta in the second act that the first principles of the leitmotiv system dawned upon him, and then only in such shape as they had occurred to others before him. The ballad as a whole is a purely lyric number, written in a plain song form; but in it occur the two principal typical themes of the drama. The first is that designed to represent the Dutchman as a wanderer without rest:

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The second theme, a broad, flowing, tender melody, is designed to typify the redeeming principle, the self-sacrificing love of the woman.

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In the "Communication to My Friends" he says:

One other musical thought in this work must here be enumerated because of a special meaning which it had for its composer. In 1866 Ferdinand Praeger was dining with Wagner in Munich, when the conversation turned upon "the weary mariner, his yearning for land and love, and Wagner's own longing for his fatherland at the time he composed the 'Dutchman.'" Wagner went to the piano, and said, "The pent-up anguish, the homesickness that then held possession of me, were poured out in this phrase":

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"At the end of the phrase," continued Wagner, "on the diminished seventh, in my mind I brooded over the past, the repetitions, each higher, interpreting the increased intensity of my sufferings."

The "Flying Dutchman," then, is the product of Wagner's genius in its embryonic stage. The grasp of tradition and operatic convention upon his mind is not yet shaken off. The chorus of sailors in the first finale is in a popular, rhythmical, melodic vein and might almost have been written by a Frenchman. The opening of Act II. is constructed on wholly operatic lines, with its gay chorus followed by the dramatic ballad. Then follow two purely operatic scenes, the duets of Senta and Erik and Senta and the Dutchman. In the last act the paucity of material forced Wagner to spin his web very thin indeed. He consumes as much time as possible with his theatrically contrasting choruses of merry-making betrothal guests and ghostly wanderers of the sea. The machinery of the stage creaks through the whole scene till the entrance of Senta and Erik brings us once more face to face with human nature. The scene is brief, and it is not to be praised. It would have been more beautiful to make the Dutchman depart out of sheer love for Senta and unwillingness to win salvation through her sacrifice. But the act ends effectively. Perhaps the most striking proof in all this curious score that Wagner had not yet found himself is in the duet of Daland and the Dutchman in Act I. The Dutchman asks if Daland has a daughter and on receiving an affirmative reply, says, "Let her be my wife." Daland, "joyful yet perplexed," exclaims:

And with this Wagner ushers in a very Italian duet:

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On the other hand, there are not a few manifestations in "Der Fliegende Holländer" of the future Wagner. In the first place, the overture is a splendid exemplification of his musical style and his method of construction and it employs some of the materials of the opera in a masterly manner. Again the solo of the steersman, succeeded by the outburst of the storm and the appearance of the Dutchman's ship upon the raging deep, produces an effect similar to that of the song of the sailor followed by the passionate utterances of Isolde in the first scene of "Tristan und Isolde." The solo of the Dutchman in Act I., while more conventional in its melodic manner than Wagner's later music, gives a foretaste of the power exhibited in the second act of "Lohengrin" in expressing dark and bitter moods. In the musical and dramatic characterisation of Daland one may discern something of the facility which afterward made so much of Hans Sachs. Indeed in characterisation more than in anything else does this opera herald the coming master, for Van der Decken, Senta and Daland are clearly and completely drawn musically and dramatically. They are living figures in the gallery of Wagner portraits; and while we may not deny that "Der Fliegende Holländer" is a comparatively weak production, we would not readily part with the dreamful, devoted, ill-fated Senta.

In the instrumentation, also, one finds evidences of the real Wagner. The high, shrieking brass chords of the diminished seventh, heard in the "Rienzi" overture, are here repeated; the rich use of divided strings is found; and the beautiful employment of wide harmonies in the wood wind leads the mind forward toward the final exit of Elizabeth in "Tannhäuser" and the entrance of Elsa in "Lohengrin." But, view this work as we may, we cannot regard it as standing beside the two lyric dramas of the transition period. It is the work of an independent and gifted mind of 28, a work of radiant promise, but not of mature genius.

TANNHÄUSER UND DER SÄNGERKRIEG
AUF WARTBURG

Grand Romantic Opera in Three Acts.

First performed at the Royal Saxon Court Theatre, Dresden, October 19, 1845.

Original Cast.

Weimar, 1849; Schwerin and Breslau, Freiburg and Wiesbaden, 1852; Königsberg, Hamburg, Darmstadt, Elbing, Cassel, Frankfort, Posen, Leipsic, Riga, Barmen, Bremen, Bromberg, Cologne, Danzig, Düsseldorf, Prague, and Stralsund, 1853; Wolfendbüttel, Rostock, Reval, Neisse, Magdeburg, Glogau, Mayence, Gumbinnen, Gratz, Aix-la-Chapelle, Augsburg, and Stettin, 1854; Strassburg, Lübeck, Coburg, Bamberg, Munich, Mannheim, Antwerp, Zurich, Würzburg, Carlsruhe, Hanover, 1855; Berlin, 1856; Vienna, Dessau, and Sondershausen, 1857; Stuttgart, 1859; New York, April 4, 1859; Rotterdam, 1860; Paris, 1861; Brunswick, 1861; Olmütz and Amsterdam, 1862; Munich, Paris version, 1867; The Hague, 1870; Budapesth, 1871; Bologna, 1872; Brussels, 1873; Lucerne, 1874; Copenhagen, 1875; London (Italian), May 6, 1876; New York (Italian) and Moscow, 1877; Trieste, 1878; Innspruck and Salzburg, 1880; Ghent and London (English), 1881.

First performed in America at the Stadt Theater, New York, April 4, 1859.

Cast.

Conductor, Carl Bergmann.

TANNHÄUSER

With "Tannhäuser" we enter upon what may fairly be called the transition period of the genius of Wagner. While in certain passages this work is quite as much indebted to older opera as "Der Fliegende Holländer," and in others falls into a cheap and tawdry style of melody quite unworthy of its composer, it nevertheless contains parts which rise to heights never before attained except perhaps in Beethoven's "Fidelio." The book will especially repay study, for in it we find the first complete demonstration of Wagner's powers as a dramatist and a dramatic poet. His skilful weaving of the dramatic web out of materials scattered and apparently unrelated places him among the masters of theatrical writing. It will be our pleasure first to examine the sources of the drama and the manner in which Wagner employed them.

"Tannhäuser" was first conceived by Wagner in 1841, and the scenic sketches, with the provisional title "Venusberg, Romantic Opera," were made in 1842. The poem was finished on May 22, 1843. Owing to his being occupied with the preparations for the production of "Der Fliegende Holländer" and with other matters, Wagner did not complete the score till April 13, 1845. When the work was in preparation for performance at the Paris Grand Opéra in 1861, Wagner rewrote some portion of the score. The reader will recall that the members of the Jockey Club demanded their usual terpsichorean titbit, but that Wagner would not consent to write an ordinary ballet and thrust it into his drama at a certain hour. He insisted that the ballet should take its proper place in the dramatic scheme and that it should have a meaning.

He accordingly wrote a new and careful elaboration of the scene in the Venusberg at the opening of Act I. In the first, or Dresden, version of the work the overture is a complete number, and as such is frequently heard on the concert platform. In the Parisian version the overture does not come to an end, but at the second appearance of the bacchanalian music the curtain rises and the ballet begins. It is descriptive of the revels of the realm of Venus—"a wild and yet seductive chaos of movements and groupings, of soft delight, of yearning and burning, carried to the most delicious pitch of frenzied riot."[34] He then extended the dialogue between Venus and Tannhäuser to a scene of considerable dimensions, its chief purpose being a further revelation of the character of Venus. Undoubtedly this Parisian version was nearer to Wagner's heart than his first one, but its music does not well bear critical examination, for the style of the added part is that of the "Tristan" period, while the old "Tannhäuser" music is of a much more primitive sort.

So much for the writing of the opera. It is a curious fact that Wagner has recorded as his sources of inspiration a book which cannot be found and a condition which did not exist. He says that while "Rienzi" was in preparation at Dresden, the German "Volksbuch" of "Tannhäuser" fell into his hands. Now no one has ever been able to find such a book, and learned authorities declare that there never was one. But Wagner further says that he had made the acquaintance of Tannhäuser in Tieck's narrative, which he now reread. He read also the "Tannhäuserlied." He says: "What most irresistibly attracted me was the connection, however loose, between Tannhäuser and the 'Singer's Tourney in the Wartburg,' which I found established in that Folk's book." With this second subject he had already made some acquaintance in a tale of Hoffmann, and he now decided to read the mediæval epic, "The Sängerkrieg." There is no connection at all between the incidents of the old Tannhäuser legend and "The Sängerkrieg." This is a condition which Wagner himself created, and his error in supposing that he had discovered it in the legend is an amusing instance of the occasional inability of genius to analyse its own workings. What Wagner did was to accept Lucas's identification of Tannhäuser with one of the personages in the epic, thus bringing the two stories together, as we shall presently see.

The legend of Tannhäuser is found in old folk tales, mostly in the popular form of ballads. An English translation of one of these, printed with the original music in Böhme's "Altdeutsches Liederbuch," is reproduced in Jessie Weston's excellent work, "Legends of the Wagner Drama." The story contained in this is that Tannhäuser, a knight, has spent much time in the cave of Venus, but has grown weary and would depart. Venus tells him that he has sworn a solemn oath with her "for aye to dwell." He denies that he has so sworn. She offers him her fairest maid as wife if he will stay, but he declines, saying,

Venus still pleads with him and bids him think upon her charms and the joys of life in the Venusberg. He declares that his "life is waxen sick and faint," and again begs for leave to go. Finally he calls upon the Virgin to aid him. Then Venus tells him to go, but adds that wherever he goes he shall sing her praise. He departs, and determines to seek Pope Urban at Rome and ask absolution. The Pope, who holds in his hand a withered staff, says:

Tannhäuser in despair returns to the arms of Venus. On the third day after his departure from Rome the staff buds and blossoms. The Pope seeks for Tannhäuser, but it is too late; he has returned to his sin, and for this Pope Urban's soul is to be counted lost on the Judgment Day.

There is absolutely nothing in that story to suggest any connection with the contest of minnesingers in the Castle of Wartburg in 1204 A.D., the year in which Wolfram von Eschenbach is known to have been the guest of Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia. This contest is described in the poem, or collection of poems called the "Wartburgkrieg," which dates from the 13th century and gives us an interesting view of the Court of Hermann of Thuringia. It is not certain that all of this poem has come down to us, nor do we know who wrote it. Simrock, the German editor of the work, believed that its earliest part was written about 1233. Some verses, believed to have been by Walther von der Vogelweide, appear in the work. The latest part of it probably dates from 1287.

The poem contains no such contest in song as that which takes place in the second act of Wagner's drama, but it does describe a debate as to the glories of certain princes. Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Heinrich der Schreiber, Walther von der Vogelweide, Biterolf, and Reimar von Zweter take part in the discussion, while Wolfram von Eschenbach, the famous author of "Parzival," is the umpire. It was in reading this poem that Wagner's attention was called to Wolfram and his works, and thus he discovered the legendary world of "Lohengrin" and "Parsifal." The "Wartburgkrieg" contains other matter, but that just summarised is all that Wagner found for his "Tannhäuser." He got from the mediæval epic the atmosphere of Hermann's Court, for this potentate was famous in his day as a patron of poetry and an encourager of the art of the knightly minnesinger. He obtained also the idea of the contest of song—which in history was rather one of poetry—and the names of the historical minnesingers. In adopting this material to his dramatic purpose Wagner omitted Heinrich of Ofterdingen and substituted Tannhäuser for him. He furthermore changed the subject of the controversy.

Whence came the lovely character, one of the noblest of all Wagner's heroines, Elizabeth, the Landgrave's niece? She is not to be found in the Tannhäuser legend nor in the "Wartburgkrieg." It is altogether certain that Wagner found the suggestion for this beautiful character in the story of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, the daughter-in-law of Hermann of Thuringia. She was affianced in childhood to the Landgrave's eldest son Ludwig; and when married the pair led a rigorously monastic life and devoted themselves to holiness. Ludwig died young and his brother Heinrich was harsh to Elizabeth. The pure and lofty stature of this saintly princess furnished Wagner with the personality which he needed as the element of opposition to the baneful influence of Venus.

We have now before us the sources from which Wagner drew the materials for this noble drama. Let us see how he utilised his matter. In the first scene we behold Tannhäuser in the arms of Venus, sick and weary of sensual delight and eager to return to the smell of the green grass and the song of birds, and still more to the rhythmic alternation of pain and pleasure which makes the song of human life. His senses are nauseated with their own ceaseless gratification. Who, then, is this Venus, and what is she doing in the subterranean world of the 12th century? She is plainly the Venus of Roman mythology, the Aphrodite of the Greeks, the Astarte of the Phœnicians. The atmosphere which surrounds her is that of the classic Venus. She is further identified by the pictures of Leda and the Swan and Europa and the Bull, taken from classic fable and illustrating stratagems of the passion over which Venus presided. Before the Romans pushed their way into Germany, the old Teutonic mythology had its goddess Freya, the wife of Odin, queen and leader of the Valkyrs. But the Scandinavian myth made Frigg, or Fricka, the queen, and Freya the second in rank. She was the goddess of love and beauty. The South German races confounded the two and added qualities not known in the northern mythology. They made Freya coincident on one side with Hel, the goddess of the underworld and of the dead, and on the other with Holda, the goddess of the spring, of budding and fructification. Thus when the Romans carried their mythology into Germany it was not at all extraordinary that the attributes of Freya and Venus should have become mingled in the minds of the people.

These simple-minded people did not readily part with their poetic mythology when Christianity mastered their hearts. The old deities were supposed to have retired into caves or mountains, there to dwell till recalled to activity. Venus, according to various traditions, lived in more than one cave, but her favourite abode was the Hörselberg in Thuringia. The propinquity of this cave to the Castle of Wartburg naturally led Wagner to choose it as the scene of Tannhäuser's retirement. In the drama the knight's feelings and desires are precisely the same as those of the hero of the old legend. Wagner adds the beautiful poetic touches of his yearning to hear the song of birds and once more to suffer pain. Furthermore he makes it clear to us that the Venus of his imagination was not without womanly feeling, and that her passion for Tannhäuser was a very real one. She scornfully gives him leave to go, but it is finally his despairing cry to the Virgin for aid which acts as a charm to remove the spell of enchantment. He instantly finds himself in the valley before the Wartburg, and hears the tinkling of sheep-bells, while a young shepherd carols a lay to the May and to Holda, the representative of the beneficent side of the evil goddess just left. It is in such details of fancy as these that Wagner demonstrates his right to consider himself a poet.

With the disappearance of the red and glittering cave of Venus and the appearance of the cool, fresh greens of the landscape—a striking pictorial contrast, full of theatrical effectiveness, and showing Wagner's employment of the combined arts of poetry, music, painting, and action in the new dramatic form—we enter the domain of the "Wartburgkrieg." The Tannhäuser of the old legend steps into the shoes of Heinrich of Ofterdingen. The adventure which has befallen him is not unsuited to his character, for the real Tannhäuser was a bit of a Don Juan and had many "affairs." It seems that he repented and became a wiser and a better man in later life. In the ballad Venus foretold that he would sing her praises wherever he went, but in the drama this prediction is made by Tannhäuser in the first scene. That Wagner had a purpose in the change is shown by Tannhäuser's outbreak in the hall of song. Efforts have been made to prove that Heinrich of Ofterdingen and Tannhäuser were one and the same person, for the existence of the former is problematical, and also to prove that Tannhäuser did really visit the Court of Hermann. Neither has been established as a fact. The matter is of little importance to us. The personages in the song contest, except Tannhäuser, are historical, and Wagner has been faithful in his representation of their characters. He has chosen for dramatic purposes to accentuate the poetic side of Wolfram's character. Wolfram was celebrated as a champion of Christianity, and was an ardent advocate of nobility of heart in woman in preference to merely external beauty. In the very beginning of his "Parzival" he says:

In the hall of song the contest is on a similar theme, and Wolfram was well chosen by Wagner to oppose the passionate ideas of the wandering Tannhäuser. Walther von der Vogelweide has little importance in Wagner's "Tannhäuser," but is mentioned again in "Die Meistersinger," when young Walther von Stolzing claims him as master. Vogelweide was a poet of renown in his day, a contemporary of Wolfram, a Tyrolean by birth and a lyric singer. He was a man of station and had an estate near Würzburg, where he was buried. Reimar was also a notable poet in his day, but of Biterolf little is known except that there was such a man.

These are the personages who greet Tannhäuser when Wagner's wonderful transformation scene has closed, when the effect of the beautiful pictorial change has died away, and the solemn strains of the pilgrims' chorus, so gently beneficent after the passionate witcheries of the wild bacchanal, have melted into the distance. And with the advent of these historic figures there begins the operation of the elevating principle of the drama, the influence of Elizabeth. With their simple and yet aspiring spirits they furnish a beautiful contrast to the carnal creatures whom we have just left in the Hörselberg. The latter typified the gratification of the senses, while these are an expression of the higher desires of man, presently to be shown to us in their loftiest embodiment, the eternal woman-soul, which "leadeth us ever upward and on."

In the experience of Tannhäuser Wagner has set before us the struggle of the pure and the impure, the lusts and the aspirations of man's nature. It is essentially the tragedy of the man. We may try as we please to exalt the importance of Elizabeth as a dramatic character, but the truth is that she is merely the embodiment of a force. Tannhäuser is typical of his sex, beset on the one hand by the desire of the flesh, which satiates and maddens, and courted on the other by the undying loveliness of chaste and holy love. If ever a sermon was preached as to the certainty with which the sins of the flesh will find a man out it is preached in the second act of this tremendous tragedy, when the flame of old passions sears the front of new happiness and drives the errant out of paradise.

Here Wagner has risen far above his material. In the pomp and circumstance of the mediæval contest of song he has displayed active fancy, for the scene as presented is his rather than history's. In the culmination of the catastrophe he has wrought with the craft of genius, for in the period of which he wrote the yielding of a man to sensual temptation would never have caused such a stir. Tannhäuser would have been damned rather for worshipping a heathen goddess, an enemy of the Christian Church, than for slumbering in the soft embraces of a wanton. Hence, though struck to the heart by more than mortal wound, Elizabeth thinks first of her lover's sin:

"What matters it for me? But he—his salvation! Would you rob him of his eternal salvation?" With this beautiful plea of the stricken Elizabeth Wagner shows how perfectly he understood the tragic elements of his story, for he makes the saving principle again, as in "Der Fliegende Holländer," one of self-effacement, a love faithful unto death.

In the final act Elizabeth, her last hope of the return of Tannhäuser gone, consecrates her soul to heaven, relinquishes the desire of life, and ascends to her last home. Wolfram, who has loved her, and who thus becomes, in his self-sacrifice, a foil to the passionate and self-gratifying Tannhäuser, sits at the foot of the Hörselberg and philosophises to the evening star. Tannhäuser returns, cursed by Rome, and plunged in despair. His narrative is the climax of power in the opera, one of the most intensely tragic pieces of writing in all dramatic literature. His senses reel; the old world of lusts and passions opens the portals of its rosy dreamland, and the songs of its sirens again lure him back to the arms of Venus and bury the newly awakened soul in the depths of sensual debauchery. But no; the eternal feminine still strives to save. The sainted Elizabeth, dead, is yet the guardian angel of this poor wanderer, and as her funeral bier is laid before him he sinks beside it with the last unutterably pathetic supplication of a still repentant spirit:

"Heilige Elizabeth, bitte für mich!"

"Holy Elizabeth, pray for me." And Wolfram pronounces the benediction in the words, "Er ist erlöst" ("he is redeemed"). The sprouting staff of the Pope, which has followed him from Rome, is laid upon his dead body, and the solemn chorus of the pilgrims chant the entrance of his purified spirit into its eternal rest. Thus did Wagner, out of the simple and unrelated materials of the old Tannhäuser myth and the "Wartburgkrieg," fashion the tragedy of a man's soul. Women never find in "Tannhäuser" all that a man finds there. The experience of the story lies beyond the pale of the feminine nature, but every man must bow his head in reverence to the genius which thus made quick the battle of passion against purity for the possession of the masculine soul. Wagner wrote no mightier tragedy than this.[36]

The music of "Tannhäuser" commands less admiration than the book. Some of it is worthy of the mature Wagner, but much is trivial and some is positively weak and puerile. Wagner had not yet grasped a new conception of the lyric drama; he had thus far only enlarged and extended the old one. He was not yet ready to set aside all the old formulæ; but he was striving to give them a new significance. Hence in "Tannhäuser" there are passages of a familiar operatic cut, such as the scene of Tannhäuser and the courtiers in the first act, ending with the finale of that act, the duet between Tannhäuser and Elizabeth in Act II., and Wolfram's address to the evening star in Act III. On the other hand, most of the score shows wide departures from the older operatic manner. There is a sincere attempt to make the musical forms follow the poem. There is an abundance of real dialogue, in which the setting of the text is constructed on the purest dramatic lines. This is especially true of the scene between Tannhäuser and Venus, the debate in the hall of song, and the narrative of Tannhäuser. But such admirable pieces of writing as the address of the Landgrave to the contestants and the pathetic prayer of Elizabeth have also a large dramatic value because of their perfect embodiment of the feeling of the scene.

The leitmotiv is not employed in "Tannhäuser." Arthur Smolian wrote a pamphlet on the music of this opera. It was prepared for the Bayreuther Taschenbuch of 1891 and translated into English by the indefatigable Ashton Ellis. It professes to name and catalogue the leading motives of "Tannhäuser," but what it really does is to prove that there are none. The author quotes Wagner: "The essential feature of Tannhäuser's character is his instant and complete saturation with the emotions called up by the passing incident, and the lively contrasts which the sudden changes of situation produce in his utterance of this fulness of feeling. Tannhäuser is never a 'little' anything, but each thing fully and completely." Mr. Smolian says: "With the foregoing words, in which Wagner defines the nature of his hero, we might also most fittingly describe the individuality of the 'Tannhäuser' music." Here, then, he should have stopped, for he had spoken the truth, and his thematic catalogue is misleading. The music of "Tannhäuser" is nearly all written freely for the investiture of the passing mood, and those portions which are accorded special meaning and are used for repetition may speedily be enumerated and dismissed.

These divide themselves naturally into two classes, representing respectively the good and the evil principle of the action. These themes, which have such significance that they are repeated in the exposition of the drama, are first heard and most easily identified in the magnificent overture. This opens with a serene statement of the theme typifying the holy thought, the religious mood of the good characters in the play. This thought is employed as the melody of a chorus of pilgrims, and it reappears in a triumphant proclamation at the end of the drama when the good principle emerges victorious from the battle against the evil:

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The intoning of this solemn melody is interrupted in the overture by the intrusion of the music of the bacchanalian orgies in the cave of Venus, which begins with this phrase, given out by the violas:

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Tannhäuser's hymn in praise of Venus appears in the overture and is, of course, again heard in the first scene of the drama. It is repeated with immense significance, but not at all in the manner of a leitmotiv, in the scene of the hall of song.

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Dir töne Lob! Die Wunder sei'n gepriesen.

In the overture the listener will hear after one of the passages of turbulence this theme intoned by a clarinet.

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Later he will recognise its significance, when in the first scene he hears it sung by Venus with the words of pleading. The reader is now in possession of all the thematic ideas of the score of "Tannhäuser" which approach in their nature the musical phrases employed by Wagner in later works. And yet it is only an approach. In the second act, when Wolfram is preaching the beauties of ideal love, thoughts of the unbridled gratifications of the Hörselberg flash through Tannhäuser's mind and we are informed of it by the repetition of the bacchanale motive. And when at length, taunted into recklessness by the words of his opponents, Tannhäuser launches into the praise of sensual love, he naturally does so in the hymn to Venus from the first scene. And that is the extent of the repetition of primary material in the second act.