CONDUCTS ORCHESTRAL CONCERTS.
But before accompanying the weary artist to his new home some mature reflections of Wagner on his Magdeburg period are worthy of notice. His elevation to the post of music director of the Magdeburg theatre was a joyful moment. For the first time he would be sole controller of operatic performances. When a youth he had been revolted by the slatternly manner in which theatre conductors had led the performances. Even the Gewandhaus concerts had not been altogether satisfactory. Something then was lacking in the ensemble. Now was his opportunity. The mechanical time-beating prevalent among conductors of opera houses would find no place with the ardent youthful composer. He first secured the affection of the singers by evincing a personal interest in their public success. His born actor’s skill enabled him to illustrate how such a character should move, whilst with the orchestra he would sing passages and rehearse one phrase incessantly until he was satisfied. He was indefatigable. The secret of his success was his earnestness. He knew what he wanted, which was half-way to securing it. The company seems to have been fairly intelligent and to have responded freely to his wishes, but the audiences were phlegmatic. Magdeburg was a garrison city, and the audiences were domineered by the cold reserve observed by the military. Wagner thought of all publics the worst was a military one. Effusive exhibitions of joy they regard as indecorous and unseemly, and the absence of spontaneous enthusiasm exercises a depressing effect on artists. Among the operas he conducted were Auber’s “Masaniello” and Rossini’s “William Tell.” Both of them were favourites of his. At that period, 1836, they stood out in bold relief from modern and ancient operas. Their melodies were fresh and graceful, and a dramatic truthfulness pervaded them which to the embryo imitator of the Greek tragedy was a strong recommendation. Further, the revolutionary subjects were congenial to the outlaw of 1848. But Auber and Rossini were soon to be eclipsed by the clever Hebrew, Meyerbeer, and it is this last writer who in a couple of years impels Wagner to leave his fatherland for Paris. It is Meyerbeer’s works that he is now about to conduct at Königsberg, where we shall at once follow him.
The time he spent in Königsberg was a prolongation of the miserable existence which had followed the breaking up of the Magdeburg company, intensified now, alas, by anxiety for his young wife. It was unenlivened by any gleam of even passing sunlight. The time dragged heavily, and was never referred to without a shudder. In later years, in the presence of his first wife, he has compassionately remarked, “Yes, poor Minna had a hard time of it then, and after the first few months of drudgery no doubt repented of her bargain.” To which the gentle Minna would reply by a look full of tender affection. Wagner’s references to the devotion and untiring energy of his wife during the Königsberg year of distress always affected him.
He began his public life at Königsberg by conducting orchestral concerts in the town theatre. This led to his appointment as music director of the theatre. The operatic stage was then governed almost entirely by Meyerbeer, “Robert le Diable” and “Le Prophète,” both recent novelties, being the great attraction. They met with an enormous success everywhere. Meyerbeer was in Paris, the idol of the populace. A man possessed of undeniable genuine merit, he bartered it away for gold. The real merit was over-laden with a thick coat of meretricious glitter. Attractive and dazzling show was what he set before the light-hearted public of the French capital, and they mistook the tinsel for pure gold. But, for all that, Meyerbeer was the hero of the hour, and what was fashionable in Paris was immediately reproduced in the fatherland towns and cities. In matters of art Paris was the acknowledged leader of Germany. From afar, the young ambitious music director of Königsberg heard of the fabulous sums which Meyerbeer received for his works. He was in the direst distress. The troubles of Magdeburg had followed him to his new home, and he looked with longing eyes towards Paris, the El Dorado of his dreams. He became haunted with visions of luxurious independence, startling in their contrast to his present penurious position. He looked about him and bestirred himself. With his accustomed boldness, not to say audacity, he promptly wrote to Scribe, hoping by one effort to emerge from all his trouble. What he sent to the famous French librettist was a plan he had sketched of a grand five-act opera based on a novel by König, “Die Hohe Braut” (“The Noble Bride”). He was anxious for the collaboration of Scribe, since in that he saw the open sesame of the Grand Opera House, Paris. The French writer did not reply. Wagner felt the slight. This was the second time the assistance of an acknowledged litterateur had been solicited, and it was the last. Laube did not satisfy him. Scribe did not notice him. Henceforth he would rely on himself.
THE LOST OVERTURE.
His stay at Königsberg is marked by an event of peculiar interest to Englishmen. Wagner had heard “Rule Britannia.” He gave me his impressions of it. He thought the whole song wonderfully descriptive of the resolute, self-reliant character of the English people. The opening, ascending passage, which he vigorously shouted in illustration, was, he thought, unequalled for fearless assertiveness. The dauntless expressiveness of its themes seemed admirably adapted for orchestral treatment, and he therefore wrote an overture upon it. This he sent to Sir George Smart, one of the most prominent of English musicians, justly appreciated, among other things, for having introduced Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” to England at the Liverpool festival of 1836. When Wagner related this incident to me in 1855, on his visit to London, he said that, having received no reply, he inquired and ascertained that the score seemed to have been insufficiently prepaid for transmission, and that Sir George Smart had refused to pay the balance, “and for all I know,” continued Wagner, “it must still be lying in the dead-letter office.”
A digest of Wagner’s impressions of the world beyond the footlights, after his intimate connection with the provincial theatres of Würzburg, Magdeburg, and Königsberg, will explain how so serious a thinker could adapt himself to the slipshod existence of thoughtless, light-hearted play-actors. Among modern stage reformers Richard Wagner stands in the front rank. He was earnest. He was practical. He had experienced all evils arising from the shortcomings of the theatre, and he knew where to place his finger on the plague spot. His drawings and prescriptions were those of the practical worker; and he was enabled to make them so through the knowledge acquired during his early life behind the scenes.
What a curious medley stage life introduces one to! “My first contact with the theatre seems like the fantastic recollection of a masked ball,” was Wagner’s vivid description of his early stage experiences. The stage in Germany has too frequently, for the advance of dramatic art, been the last resort for gaining a livelihood. People of all ranks, highly educated, or with no more than the thinnest smattering of education, as soon as they find themselves without the means of existence, fly to the stage. To one individual endowed by nature for the histrionic vocation who thus adopts the profession, there are ten with absolutely no gifts and whose appearance is due to failure in other walks of life, or to want. All this motley group is, by the restricted stage precincts, brought nolens volens into daily contact and cannot avoid constantly elbowing each other. Their private affairs, their friendships, are an open secret. A special jargon is current coin among them. Cant phrases abound and their very occupation familiarizes them with sententious quotations on almost every subject. In no profession is there such an ardent catering for momentary praise. It is the food, the absolute nourishment of the actor; hence jealousy and envy exist stronger here than anywhere else, and Byron does not exaggerate when he speaks of “hate found only on the stage!”
READS BULWER’S “RIENZI.”
To Wagner’s impressionable and pageant-loving nature, the stage possessed fascinating attractions. The free and easy intercourse that existed between all the members of the company, actors, singers, and orchestral performers, the existence of a sort of masonic equality, and the general light-hearted exterior, was in accordance with the jocular temperament of the chorus master. He was familiarly joking and laughing with all his surroundings, a habit he retained to the day of his death. His self-esteem would at all times insist on a certain deference to his opinion, nor would he brook with equanimity any infraction of his ruling as music director. From the age of twenty, when he first ruled the chorus girls at Würzburg, down to the Bayreuth rehearsals for “Parsifal,” at which he would illustrate his intention by gesture, speech, and song, he was eminently the commander of his company. His lively temperament, his love of fun, and remarkable mimetic gifts made him a general favourite. In the supervision of operas, musically distasteful to him, he was earnest and energetic, attending to detail and appropriate gesture in a manner that demanded the respectful admiration of all under his bâton. Respect and submission to his rule he exacted as due to his office, and he rarely had difficulty in securing it.