Liszt was there. His tall dark silhouette loomed up from the orchestra stalls. I hastened to salute the Great Man, now become the friend, and I asked if he would permit me to remain near him during the rehearsal, that he might explain to me some things in the opera, the score of which I did not sufficiently know. The permission was very graciously accorded.
Now the musicians began to arrive and to take their places! How solemn and almost religious was the emotion we felt!
"For very many years I have waited for this moment," said Liszt, "and I have feared, indeed, that it would never come.... If you but knew the miseries, the wrecked and perished hopes despite which this work has germed and flowered! I have seen it all and I have suffered too because of it. I do not know how Wagner has been able to preserve his divine inspiration intact. He seems to me like a traveller who bore a cup full of water through the midst of a whirlwind without being forced to spill a single drop. But even in harbour, you see, he finds no shelter.... Dining his exile he was for many years the only German who had not heard Lohengrin. To-day, the tones of his great orchestra revealing his new work to the world, will sound for the first time and he will not hear them. Ah, what a ransom ought to be paid to genius!"
Now came Richter, pale and grave, and mounted to his desk.
We were hardly a dozen listeners in the dark audience hall. I caught a glimpse of the blond, almost white locks of Servais, and I divined the form of Edouard Schuré beside him. I also saw a shadow, climbing over the orchestra chairs: it was Villiers hastening to seat himself farther back, in order to be quite alone, quite undistracted.
They drew the curtain before the stage. Richter gave two or three quick blows on the desk, then with a serious and proud gesture raised his baton.
And now a deep, muffled tone rises from the orchestra, it vibrates almost imperceptibly in the lowest depths of the scale, indistinct, without form, it trembles in a limpid motion, then seems to dilate, to spread out, a slow sweet gliding movement floats up and loses itself, soon another ripples up along the same path and floats away, as one wave follows another.
Very soon these musical waves swell out and follow each other continuously upward; from above spheres of light seem to fall, spreading and diffusing like drops of milk in clear water. The curtain is drawn to reveal mysterious abysses seen through the blue transparency of the Rhine. On the stage there is nothing but a confused shadow, but how clearly the imagination inspired by the music, evokes the picture! Better, perhaps, than could the scenery itself.
Now a gentle undulation sways the tranquil water and suddenly a crystal voice resounds through the crystal fluid, a nymph glides from the heights and swims below, stirring the water to new motion. The words of her song form sliding syllables:
Weïa! Waga! Woge, du Welle,
Walle zur Wiege! Wagala Weïa
Wallala Weiala Weïa!