His public at first fought him with stubborn determination, but he conquered it in the end. Yet his influence on the operatic stage was not permanently felt outside of France. The impetus given to Italian opera by the easily attained popularity of the aria writers and the bent imparted to it by their style remained. The applause of the unthinking, who constitute the vast majority of theatre-goers in all countries, is much more readily obtained by the agile delivery of a brilliant air with a simple dance rhythm as its basis than by a seriously conceived dramatic piece, which demands that the auditor shall bring both intelligence and sensibility into the presence of the singer. The Italian writers sought for this easy applause, and the famous Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini, who were the princes of the Italian stage when Wagner was born, wrote wholly for the pleasure of the ear. The Italian opera was in its entirety a musical product, making but the shallowest pretence at representation of the thought of the text, and scorning real dramatic sincerity. The old forms prevailed and the librettist was but a purveyor to the composer.
In France some outward pretence of adhering to the long-established dramatic principles of the French lyric drama remained, but here the musical dictator of the day was Meyerbeer, a man who sought popular applause as ardently as any Italian, but who adopted a slightly different plan of gaining it. Whereas the Italian appealed to his public chiefly by musical sweet-meats, Meyerbeer deftly aimed at a combination of showy musical effects with all the resources of theatricalism. He brought to its perfection the ground-plan of the French grand opera, in which a striking succession of scenes is one of the most potent elements of attractiveness. Here the librettist must not only provide for the usual alternation of solos with duets, trios or quartettes, and ensembles, but must also plan the story of his book so that a simple cottage or moonlight love scene shall be followed by a grand pageant or a glittering ballet. One has only to recall the progress of the scenes in "L'Africaine" or "Les Huguenots" to see how the Meyerbeerian plan is worked out, and to realise how it has dominated the modern opera in such creations as Gounod's "Faust" and Verdi's "Aida."
The theatricalism of the ground-plan infused itself into the music with Meyerbeer. He was always planning for the immediate theatrical effect, never thinking of the deep dramatic truthfulness which might be imparted to music. For this reason his music is hollow and the bones of it rattle. Occasionally he is carried away by a really noble dramatic situation and writes greatly, as in the final duet of "Les Huguenots." But the problem of Meyerbeer was precisely the same as that of Rossini, namely, how best to tickle quickly the fancy of the great unthinking masses and to fill the theatre. Thus Wagner found the opera established on a purely commercial basis, with art degraded to the dust. It was this which filled him with disgust, and against which he fought throughout his life. It is not to be denied that in the beginning he tried to reach the public by the same means as Meyerbeer. He tried to serve both art and Mammon, but he speedily discovered that real success could not be thus gained. He learned in writing "Rienzi" that he was following the wrong path. In entering upon this path, however, he was certainly led astray partly by the victories of Weber.
This master had in his "Der Freischütz" produced in 1821 a work which not only was essentially German, but which abandoned much of the outward appearance of opera. He announced his position by the definition of opera as "an art work complete in itself, in which all the parts and contributions of the related and utilised arts meet and disappear in each other, and, in a manner, form a new world by their own destruction." It was his belief that a libretto should not be made simply as a framework for the old-fashioned sequence of tunes, but should have an organic union with the music, and he said, "It is the first and most sacred duty of song to be truthful with the utmost fidelity possible in declamation." He had no respect for the established forms, but held that the form of the music should be prescribed by the poem. Nevertheless one finds that in its outward aspects the Weber opera, by reason of its employment of the German folk-song style, treads a path not remote from that of the aria. For Weber did not discover any principle of musical design which would enable him to free himself from some restraint by the cyclical song form. Spoken dialogue takes the place of recitative in his works, but the vocal numbers, introduced in much the same way as in the older works, are of the song family, and in spite of an immensely widened and deepened expression, the dominance of a purely musical pattern is not escaped.
Such was the condition of operatic art and such the natural attitude of the public toward it when Richard Wagner began to look beyond the narrow boundaries of his small estate and dream of fame as an artist. The burning desire of the Königsberg and Riga period was, as he has expressed it in the "Communication to My Friends," "to extricate myself from the petty commerce of the German stage, and straightway try my luck in Paris." But it was only the puny huckstering of the little theatres which offended him. He had yet to learn that the commercial element was just as conspicuously present in more pretentious undertakings. He fell in love with Bulwer's "Rienzi," and at once saw in it material for an opera.
"This Rienzi with great thoughts in his head, great feelings in his heart, amid an entourage of coarseness and vulgarity, set all my nerves a-quivering with sympathy and love; yet my plan for an art work based thereon sprang first from a perception of the purely lyric element in the hero's atmosphere. The Messengers of Peace, the Church's summons to awake, the battle hymns—these were what impelled me to make an opera: 'Rienzi.'"
In trying to make this opera he learned that the impulse of a true art work must come not from without, but from within; that an opera which might be truly called a lyric drama could not be created out of the desire of some one to set the tempting portions of a lyric book to tuneful music, but only out of the demand of a great drama for the musical form of speech. In writing the book of "Rienzi" he thought only of producing an effective opera libretto, and to this end he followed the Meyerbeerian ground-plan. His goal was the Paris Grand Opéra, and a grand opera was what he wrote. The materials of the story he saw "in no other light than that of a five-act opera, with five brilliant finales, and filled with hymns, processions, and the musical clash of arms." But even while fashioning this material for purely theatrical effect, he sought to make contributions toward real art, and it was the impossibility of combining the Meyerbeerian make-believe with the fruit of his artistic nature that showed him how far he was astray from the path leading to substantial and permanent success. Nevertheless he would no doubt have struggled on to force himself to travel the highway toward the Grand Opéra, had he not found the gates locked against him. It was in his despair that he at last resolved to write that which was in him and take no thought of external success. And it was of this first travail of freed genius that were brought to birth the fundamental tenets of his dramatic creed, previously cherished only in the secret womb of his mind.