A MUSICIAN’S DREAM
If these comparatively simple operas were so badly sung and played, what would happen to the more advanced and ultra-Wagnerian work which now began to ripen in his brain,—the four music dramas constituting the “Ring”? Their performance, he realized, would be impossible in the opera houses of Berlin, Dresden, Leipsic, and other cities, as managed and manned at that time. He had to fall back on his “dream-life.” And he dreamt a wonderful dream,—a dream of Bayreuth, of a specially built theater with singers and players selected by himself for their correct performance of his next work. This dream was not realized till twenty-six years later!
This next work was at first intended to be a music drama complete in itself, to be called “Siegfried’s Death.” On thinking the matter over, however, Wagner concluded that the poem was too full of matter for one play. Consequently he wrote a “Young Siegfried” to precede—and prepare for—“Siegfried’s Death” (the name of which was changed to “Götterdämmerung,” or “Dusk of the Gods”); then for the same reason he wrote “Die Walküre,” to precede “Siegfried”; and finally “Rheingold,” as a prelude to the other three.
SIEGMUND AND SIEGLINDE. FROM DIE WALKÜRE. Photographed from the stage performance
BRÜNNHILDE’S SUMMONS TO SIEGMUND
From Die Walküre
While the poems were thus written in inverse order, the plot of the whole cycle had been in his mind, and written down, before he wrote any of the verses; and the music, of course, was composed in proper order, beginning in 1853 with “Rheingold.”
Wagner not only wrote the poems of all his stage works, but he was a great dramatic poet. The full value of his poems, however, can be appreciated only in connection with the music, just as the music makes its deepest appeal in connection with the poem and the action. And yet his music alone is compelling enough; for Wagner concerts, at which the music is played without the words, are among the most popular of concerts.
ALBERT NIEMANN
Noted tenor who created the role of Siegmund in the original performances of Die Walküre at Bayreuth in 1876
What we should specially bear in mind is that the music in ordinary operas is simply associated with the dramatic poem, or libretto, whereas in the Ring the two are identified; or, as Wagner once expressed it, in the music drama the poem and the music are “like two pairs of lips in a kiss, each giving to and taking from the other.”
To practical persons Wagner’s life in Switzerland must seem deplorable. He spent six years writing theoretical essays the sales of which hardly paid for his paper and ink. Then he began to write and compose his cycle of four Nibelung dramas, which he felt sure would never bring him in a penny, even if he succeeded (which he doubted) in ever getting them performed. But Wagner was not a practical man,—he was a genius,—he could no more help creating the Ring of the Nibelung than a volcano can help erupting when the time comes.
He finished “Rheingold”; he finished “Die Walküre”; he began “Siegfried,” and got as far as the middle of it when he was compelled to stop because of lack of funds. The royalties from his operas (which since his death have netted his heirs over a million dollars) were at that time trifling. Liszt and other friends helped him; but all his efforts to help himself failed. For rehearsing and conducting the London Philharmonic concerts during the season of four months he got one thousand dollars, or half what in recent times Jean de Reszke used to earn in four hours by singing one of the Wagner roles! He finally concluded that in order to finish the Ring he must write a separate opera that might be performed at once and bring him in some money. The result was “Tristan and Isolde”; but this was as far ahead of the times as the Ring, and no opera house attempted it till six years after its completion in 1859.