Richard Wagner His Life and His Dramas / A Biographical Study of the Man and an Explanation of His Work

by W. J. Henderson

“My King, thou rarest shield of this my living.”—Wagner

Wagner went from Paris to Vienna, where he hoped that a production of "Tristan und Isolde" might be arranged. The manager of the opera house, when he learned that the composer was about to visit the city, prepared a special performance of "Lohengrin." This took place on May 15, 1861, and for the first time Wagner himself heard the work which has touched the hearts of so many thousands of his fellow-creatures. At the end of each act the audience forced him to acknowledge its applause, and at the conclusion of the performance he was called before the curtain three times and compelled to make a brief speech. Many times afterward did he refer to the intoxication of that wondrous May night. Think of it! Thirteen years after it was written, and eleven years after its first performance, the writer of the most popular opera in the world heard it for the first time. And even then this master, who had already written "Rienzi," "The Flying Dutchman," "Tannhäuser," "Lohengrin," "Das Rheingold," "Die Walküre," part of "Siegfried," and "Tristan und Isolde," was a wanderer on the face of the earth, an outcast, and could not make a living from his music.

His early works were now beginning to find their way to the stage, but the royalties paid in the German theatres were too small and the performances too infrequent to bring him in a satisfactory income. His first effort, therefore, was to get "Tristan und Isolde" produced, and to his great joy the manager of the Vienna opera accepted the score. Preparations were at once made for the production. But, alas! that was still far away. The rehearsals began in the fall, but the tenor, Ander, was taken sick, and the whole winter was lost. When the work was resumed, it dragged along at a snail's pace, and finally, after fifty-four rehearsals, the drama was abandoned as impossible. Ander, the Tristan, told Dr. Hanslick that as fast as he learned one act he forgot another. Wagner, on the contrary, asserted in after years that all the singers went through the whole work with him at the piano. However, it is not difficult to conceive that the artists of that day may have found "Tristan und Isolde" impracticable, seeing that the work never was really sung until within the last half-dozen years, when the greatest vocal artists of the world appeared in it.

While the Viennese were floundering, Wagner found it necessary to do something toward earning money, and so he undertook a concert tour. In Carlsruhe, Prague, and Weimar negotiations for the production of Tristan fell through, but in the last-named place Wagner was royally received in the summer by Liszt and the other musicians. The general amnesty which had been granted some years before to the rebels of 1848 made it possible for him to go openly to Germany, except the kingdom of Saxony, and even that was soon opened to him. He planned a tour, and reluctantly prepared to produce excerpts from his own works, as the only means of advertising them. He confesses that dire necessity forced him to this step so inconsistent with his theories, and his enemies did not hesitate to taunt him with the inconsistency. He was alone in his travels, for the winter of 1861 in Paris had been the last straw on the back of the patient Minna. She could no longer endure her life with this "monster of genius," who would not be a faithful husband, who wrote works ridiculed by the world, and could not earn bread and butter. She left him and went back to Leipsic to live with her relatives. She and her husband never came together again, though they occasionally referred to one another with tolerance in their letters to third persons. Minna died in 1866.

The concert tour began in the winter of 1862, and Wagner travelled in Germany and even into Russia. In the latter country alone did his entertainments bring him in any substantial pecuniary returns. He was in Moscow when he learned that the rehearsals of "Tristan und Isolde" had been abandoned at Vienna. He had become indifferent on the subject. He was almost convinced that he ought to give up his attempt to be a composer. Mr. Finck notes that at one time he seriously thought of going to India as a tutor in an English family. Let it be borne in mind that in 1863, while he was still wandering about, giving these concerts, he was fifty years old, and that, with a surging consciousness within him that he had created immortal works, he was stared at by people wherever he went as a freak and a madman, and was caricatured and ridiculed by almost the whole press of Europe. And all this because he had dared to say that an opera was a poetic drama, and should be so written, so performed, and so received by the public.

Yet in these years of hardship, sorrow, and discouragement he wrote the text of his most humorous work. He took up and completed the book of "Die Meistersinger," of which he had made a sketch in 1845, just after the production of "Tannhäuser." This work was done in the course of a temporary residence in Paris in the winter of 1861-62. The text was published, or rather printed for circulation among his friends, in 1862. The version now known to all music lovers shows many changes. The copyright of the drama was sold to Messrs. Schott, of Mainz, and accordingly Wagner went to Biebrich, a little town opposite Mainz, to compose the music. He subsequently continued his labours at Penzing, near Vienna, and there also he published the text of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" as a piece of literature. He declared that he did not expect to finish the music, and that he had no hope of living to see the work performed. It was at this time that Wagner's affairs sank into such a state that he was overwhelmed. He decided to go to Russia and remain there the rest of his life. But first he must finish the score of "Die Meistersinger." So he wrote to his old friend, Mme. Wille, at Zurich, and asked her to receive him for a short time. Like the familiar man in the play, he arrived on the heels of his letter, and Frau Wille had to exert herself to make all ready for the great man. But she realised that all Wagner's doings and sayings would have historical importance, and she made notes from which she afterward published a valuable article.

From this we learn that the great musician while in her home was the prey of conflicting emotions, but was most frequently plunged in despair. He had a deep, a passionate conviction of his own powers. He was inspired with an absolute prevision of the worldwide glorification that would come to his name when once his works were adequately made known. And because of this he suffered agonies of mind and heart while the scores lay silent in his desk. He cried out against the niggardliness of a world which refused him a few luxuries when he was preparing joy for so many thousands. He felt that the time would come when the world would be ready to heap all kinds of honours on his head, but he feared that it would come too late.

Yet in this state of mind the genius of production would not sleep within him. He worked unceasingly at the score of "Die Meistersinger," and, according to Mme. Wille's own account, with a perfect satisfaction as to its greatness. Wagner had what has frequently been called the vanity of men of genius. He spoke with childish naïveté of his works. He spoke of himself without hesitation as a great man, and he had not even the slightest consciousness that a difference of opinion was possible. But such vanity is pardonable in a man who so thoroughly justifies it. Cicero, Napoleon, and Beethoven had a similar sort of vanity. The world has learned to smile indulgently upon it. And whereas in Wagner's lifetime his vanity and love of luxury made him perhaps not an altogether agreeable companion, they detract in no way from his claims to recognition as one of the most remarkable men ever born.