However, luck began to favor him, and Rienzi (1842) was accepted by the Dresden Opera and was so successful that he became conductor in Dresden, which saved him for a while from money worries, and The Flying Dutchman, which had gone begging so long, was loudly demanded. Strange to say, this wonderful legend did not succeed, for the people missed the little tricks of Meyerbeer and they could not understand the flowing music in new form. Wagner was very disappointed for the story was one of the old German (Teuton) legends and he thought the German people would love it.
Later, however, Spohr gave it with great success at Cassel, and won Wagner’s gratitude for his understanding and kindness.
Now comes Tannhäuser, an entrancing legend which inspired him to study more deeply into the Teutonic legends. This he produced in Dresden, and other German cities played it later. Everything became topsy-turvy in the musical and political world. Wagner was writing fiery things about freedom in music and politics, nothing to amount to much, but enough to rouse his enemies, who became hateful and hissed Tannhäuser,—calling it nerve-killing, distressing music without melody. How could anyone fail to find melody in Oh Thou Sublime Sweet Evening Star, the Pilgrim’s Chorus, the Venusburg music and the colorful overture with themes of the whole opera? Yet music affects people this way when it is new in structure. “There is no melody” is said today when the so-called modern music is played. This should make us stop and listen carefully and look back on what happened to the writers of the past when they dared differ from the crowd. Perhaps calling your attention to this will make you listen with open ears and open minds to the new, which so soon becomes the familiar.
So Wagner, while conducting other operas in Dresden, began on Lohengrin and finished it in 1847. But he was impetuous and his written articles irritated the people. His ideas were fiery and his musical speech so odd, that even Schumann, who was very sympathetic, only partially understood him or his music. However he did say that Wagner would have a great influence on German opera, but Mendelssohn, after hearing Tannhäuser, only liked the second finale. Even his friend Madame Devrient, though she loved and admired him, said: “You are a man of genius but you write such eccentric stuff, it is hardly possible to sing it.”
Never did Wagner feel that he was at fault, so great was his faith in his ideas of doing away with arias, of not having stopping places in an opera, just to begin some other song, and of making the words equally important to the music.
The Nibelungen Ring
While working at Lohengrin he had started his studies of the Icelandic and Germanic Saga, the Nibelungenlied. These tales changed under his pen into the story of Siegfried, which he wove into the trilogy known as The Nibelungen Ring or Trilogy with a Prologue, as he called it, and as we call it now—The Tetralogy (in four parts).
The four dramas of the Ring of the Nibelung are:
(1) The Rhine Gold (Das Rheingold)
(2) Valkyrie (Die Walküre)