CHAPTER IV

THE SYSTEM AS COMPLETED

Wagner, in striving for a complete and natural revelation of the emotional content of his dramas, discovered that the continual flow of music which he had adopted was not possible if fixed verse-figures were employed. The verse-figure prescribes and limits the musical figure. Nevertheless there must be some rhythmic principle in the verse. Wagner found that which was most suited to his needs in the ancient staff-rhyme, or alliterative verse. The fundamental basis of this verse is consonance of sounds, not confined to the final rhyme but employed in the body of the verse and thus made a part of its inner nature. Not a little excellent information as to the exact nature of the alliterative verse may be obtained from the introductory essay to the second volume of Percy's "Reliques." It should be mentioned that Percy was acquainted with Icelandic literature and first made it known in England when he translated Mallet's "Northern Antiquities." He tells us that the Icelandic language is of the same origin as the Anglo-Saxon, and that was the reason why both employed the staff-rhyme. The alliteration consisted in "a certain artful repetition of sounds in the middle of the verses. This was adjusted according to their rules of prosody, one of which was that every distich should contain at least three words beginning with the same letter or sound. Two of these correspondent sounds might be placed either in the first or second line of the distich, and one in the other; but all three were not regularly to be crowded into one line. This will best be understood by the following examples:

"Meire og Minne Gab Ginunga Moga heimdaller. Enn Gras huerge."

This verse was used by the old poets of the Saxons in Britain. The epic of "Beowulf" is written in this style and so are the poems of Caedmon, the noted paraphraser of the scriptures. An authoritative writer says:

"The poetry of the Anglo-Saxons was neither modulated according to foot-measure, like that of the Greeks and Romans, nor written with rhymes, like that of modern languages. Its chief and universal characteristic was a very regular alliteration, so arranged that in every couplet there should be two principal words in the first line beginning with the same letter, which letter must also be the initial of the first word on which the stress of the voice falls in the second line. The only approach to a metrical system yet discovered is that two risings and two fallings of the voice seem necessary to each perfect line."

A specimen of this alliterative verse from the works of Caedmon shows the peculiarity of the construction.

"Se him cwom to frofre. & to feorh-nere. Mid lufan & mid lisse. Se thone lig tosceaf. Halig and heofon-beohrt. Hatan fyres. Tosweop hine & toswende. Thurh tha swithan miht. Ligges leoma."[31]

[Footnote 31:

Who to them came for comfort, And for their lives' salvation, With love and with grace; Who the flames scattered (Holy and heaven-bright) Of the hot fire, Swept at and dashed away, Through his great might, The beams of flame. --Paraphrase of the Song of Azariah.

Thorpe's translation.]

The reader will note the alliteration of the l's in the third and fourth lines, and the h's in the next two. The change in vowel sounds following the consonants was deemed by Wagner as of especial value in music.

As the English language developed, this method of rhythmic construction remained in use, and we find that it is used in such old poems as "Piers Plowman's Vision" (about 1350).

"In a Somer Season when hot was the Sunne, I Shope me into Shroubs as I a Shepe were; Habite as an Harmet, unHoly of werkes, Went Wyde in thys world Wonders to heare."

Wagner, however, modelled his verse on that of the original writers of it, as their language was more closely affiliated with German than the early English was. He made an exhaustive study of the constitution of the staff-rhyme, and saw in its conservation of the elementary principles of poetic speech the factor necessary to the perfection of an organic union with music. For those who have studied the conventional formulas of musical expression--the major and minor modes, chromatic progressions, the declamatory style as opposed to the pure cantilena, the crescendo and diminuendo, the agitato--know that all these have been transferred from the natural employment of vocal tone and articulation in speech as influenced by the emotions which these musical symbols are intended to represent. And we know, too, that the reflex action of music in producing in the hearer the emotions which it aims to depict is due to its adoption of methods founded on man's oral expression of his feeling. Wagner saw in the staff-rhyme the first attempt to systemise into poetry the elevated speech of emotion, and he discerned in it technical features admirably suited to his plan. In "Opera and Drama" he says:

"In Stabreim the kindred speech-roots are fitted to one another in such a way that, just as they sound alike to the physical ear, they also knit like objects into one collective image in which the Feeling may utter its conclusions about them. Their sensibly cognisable resemblance they win either from a kinship of the vowel sounds, especially when these stand open in front without any initial consonant ('Erb und eigen.' 'Immer und ewig'); or from the sameness of the initial consonant itself, which characterises the likeness as one belonging peculiarly to the object ('Ross und Reiter.' 'Froh und frei'); or again, from the sameness of the terminal consonant that closes up the root from behind (as an assonance), provided the individualising force of the word lies in that terminal ('Hand und Mund.' 'Recht und Pflicht')."

The fruits of these philological considerations reveal themselves to the hearer of the works in a wonderfully delicate perfection of accentuation and cadence, which simulates that of the spoken line in a vivifying manner. One has only to read, as one would naturally speak, such words as "Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond," and then sing them to the opening notes of "Siegmund's Love Song" to see how beautifully this staff-rhyme adapts itself to the needs of what Wagner called "Word-tone-speech," an expression which explains itself. Furthermore, these lines of staff-rhyme have no metrical domination over the music. A single reading of any familiar passage in the later works will show the reader that the lines of the verse do not set the limits for the phrases of the music as they do in the old song forms, but that the composer is entirely free in his phraseology, while he can never quite obliterate the rhythmic basis of the verse. This plasticity was of inestimable importance in the Wagnerian system, with its endless melody, its independent accompaniments, and its disuse of the old forms.

We have now made an examination of the artistic aims and methods of Wagner. The reader should now be able to grasp the basic truth that his mature works are not to be viewed as operas but as poetic dramas. The argument is frequently made that no serious criticism of opera is necessary because it is an absurdity throughout. People do not sing; therefore all attempts at dramatic verity in the lyric drama are useless. And from this is drawn the conclusion that it makes no difference whether composers write pretty tunes merely for their own sake, and use the set forms and conventions of the old opera, or write an endless recitation with an orchestral background. The object should be to please, and since the entertainment is musical, let us have pretty tunes at all costs.

The same arguments, of course, apply in a way to all forms of the poetic drama. People do not speak blank verse, nor talk in metaphors. It is altogether improbable that Henry V. or Richard II. or Macbeth even rose to such heights of speech as Shakespeare's personages. The ground upon which the poetic drama rests is that of symbolism, and in the lyric play this, by reason of the flexibility of music, may reach its highest elevation. The symbolism of the Wagnerian drama is both poetic and musical. With the former I shall attempt to deal in the study of the individual plays; but of the musical symbolism it may here be said that while technically the speech of the Wagnerian drama is but blank verse raised by song to its highest power, the representation of emotional moods by the musical symbols, vocal or orchestral, is cast in a mould far grander than that of the spoken drama, and its influence upon the auditor is immeasurably larger. If by the employment of these musical symbols the dramatist can cause the auditor to throb with the emotions of the personages in the drama, he has accomplished the ultimate aim of his art and justified his form.

To achieve this result requires perfect sincerity on the part of the dramatist and the most exquisite adaptation of the theatrical means to the end in view. The old opera had abandoned all but a shallow pretence of these, and had given itself to the easy business of tickling the ear. Wagner's work is an appeal to the intelligence through the feeling. His ambition was to give the lyric theatre vitality and an influence with the public. To do this he was forced to abandon all that he found ready to hand, and to build again from the foundations. In doing so he restored some of the outward semblance of the conventions. He wrote duets, as in the second act of "Tristan und Isolde." But he did this with a perfect comprehension of the power of music to symbolise an emotional state shared by two lovers. On the other hand, he raised the orchestra to the position of an exponent of the dramatic thought, and this, again, was done with a masterly conception of the potency of absolute music in painting mood-pictures. Here he found an agency for symbolism in the poetic drama far beyond the loftiest dreams of the poet of the spoken play.

The motto of the attendant at Wagner performances, then, must be, "The play's the thing," and he must measure their value and estimate their influence upon him wholly from that point of view. A drama in music was the conception of the originators of what came to be called Opera; but it had been, as we have seen, lost to sight in Wagner's youth by reason of the immense popularity of the easily made productions of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini, in which the music was the ultimate object and the libretto only a means toward its production. Wagner's ideal was a drama in which music should be a factor valuable wholly because of its power to embody and convey emotions. That such a form of drama departed from the more material realism of the spoken play was not a matter to trouble a profoundly æsthetic intellect. Wagner, like the greatest masters in all forms of art, was opposed to that kind of realism which bases its claims on its copying of mere objects or external phenomena. This is the cheap realism of the sensational drama, which puts fire engines and hansom cabs and professional burglars on the stage, and holds that it thus reproduces human life. It is, perhaps, a form of art, but it is a low one, because it has not the imaginative or symbolical elements which are essential to high art. It is the art which copies, not that which creates. The painter who reproduces on his canvas a group of flowers or a human form may be a master of the technics of painting, but the fervid imagination of Turner's "Slave Ship," with its ill-drawn figures, is worth a thousand copies of real things.

As art rises in the scale of nobility, it appeals more and more to the imagination, till it reaches that point at which, in Schumann's words, "only genius understands genius." Advancing along this path, art tends always toward the employment of symbolism. Poetry is in every nation the first and most convincing demonstration of the feeling of humanity for symbolical expression. Poetic forms are in themselves symbolic, and the figures of speech employed in them are word-symbols meant to awaken the imaginative powers of the reader. The drama in its earliest phases was purely artistic, coupling, as it did, the symbolism of a highly organised mythology with poetic speech. The blank-verse plays of Shakespeare are filled with the noblest symbolism of the spoken play, and those who decry them as unreal because of their poetic form and diction show an utter inability to understand artistic design.

In its inception the opera was, as we have seen, an attempt to revive the form of the antique drama of Greece. Its originators cherished an honest purpose, but their knowledge was not sufficient to carry it to a successful issue. Neither had they at their command a rich enough _materia musica_, for until their day composers had devoted themselves to the expression of contemplative religious feeling and the musical symbols of human passion were yet undeveloped. Unfortunately for the "Drama per musica," as the early masters called it, the first attempts at the construction of definite operatic forms led directly away from the honesty of dramatic art and turned opera into a series of tunes, each complete in itself, and strung upon a slender thread of recitative. Wagner, setting out as he did to build a national drama, had no reason whatever for following the methods of the Italian composers. His aim was to embody certain national thoughts, as projected in the great folk-legends of the Teutonic people, in artistic plays, and to use for that embodiment the most influential means at his command. Music was his vocal instrument instead of speech, not simply because he was a musician, but also because he was convinced that it would afford him the loftiest utterance for the emotional substance of his dramas.

For these were not to be dramas in which the mere telling of a story was the object in view. The drama was to be, not a series of incidents of pictorial efficiency, but a development of feelings and an exhibition of typical humanity, embracing those wonderful world-heroes and heroines into whose conception have been poured the concentrated imaginings of several races and centuries. For such a play as "Tristan und Isolde," in which the movement is entirely emotional and not incidental, the spoken form would have been prolix and wearisome. This play, given without music, would become a dreary stretch of talk. On the other hand, the simplicity of the action and the intensity of the emotions permit the composer to expend his entire force upon the musical expression of feeling, thereby confining himself strictly to the province of music and raising the symbolism of the drama to the highest power. Herein lies one of the principal differences between the spoken and the sung play. Yet in it also is to be seen a demonstration of the indisputable fact that the works of Wagner are dramas. So, then, we must view them; and, so doing, we shall approach the contemplation of Wagner's art work from the point desired by him. We shall enter into his domain in the spirit of sympathetic understanding, and it will be to us not a valley of shadows, as it is to those who enter with closed eyes, but a sea of splendour and sunlight, where the spirit may

"Burst all links of habit--there to wander far away On from island unto island at the gateways of the day."

## PART III

THE GREAT MUSIC DRAMAS

INTRODUCTORY

It is customary to divide the artistic career of Wagner into three periods, the first embracing the production of the early works and "Rienzi," the second that of "Der Fliegende Holländer," "Tannhäuser," and "Lohengrin," and the third that of the remaining works. It is the opinion of the present writer that the recognition of four periods would make the matter clearer to the lover of this master's creations. The early works, which are not heard except in one or two places, may be left out of consideration. We may then classify "Rienzi" as the production of the first period. "Der Fliegende Holländer" should stand in a period by itself, as representing the purely embryonic epoch of the true Wagner, while "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" may properly be allotted to a third or transition period. The remaining works may be regarded as belonging to the period of the mature Wagner, though there would be no serious difficulty in subdividing this part of his artistic career. It seems to me, however, that no satisfactory end would be gained by doing so.

The reader of this book has already seen that in writing "Rienzi" Wagner was actuated by purposes entirely different from those which moved him in the creation of "Der Fliegende Holländer." The first of the lyric dramas presently to be examined was, as its maker said, a grand opera pure and simple. Then came the days of despair in Paris, when Wagner, hoping nothing for the future, gave free rein to his artistic impulses and produced the dramatic story of the unhappy Vanderdecken. In the creation of this drama nothing influenced Wagner's mind but the desire to write according to the dictates of his own artistic conscience. But he had not yet worked out a scheme of dramatic composition. He had only just come upon the fundamental ideas of his plan. Its details were still far away from his conception. "Embryonic," then, is the term to apply to this period of his productivity.

With "Tannhäuser" there entered into the field of his artistic vision those broader musical and ethical conceptions of the lyric drama which afterward developed themselves into a complex and influential system. With "Lohengrin" we see these ideas taking more definite shape. The literary and musical plan of the drama is more closely organised, and the musical style is more clearly defined. The diction becomes more akin to that of later works, and the methods show more certainty and more mastery. "Lohengrin" is a long advance beyond "Der Fliegende Holländer." It prepares us for such a work as "Die Meistersinger," though hardly in full for "Parsifal." It must be borne in mind that the original conception of "Die Meistersinger" belongs to the same period as "Lohengrin," and that although the music was not written till long afterward, the score must naturally have been coloured by the first thoughts of the work and so have come somewhat under the influence of the "Lohengrin" style.

In the early dramas we meet with Wagner's inclusion of ethical ideas in his designs. One seeks in vain among the old popular operas of the Rossini or Meyerbeer schools for a drama with a moral. But owing to Wagner's adoption of the myth as the material from which to erect his dramatic structures, the inclusion of an ethical lesson in each of his schemes followed almost inevitably. For mythology is essentially ethical. Wagner, however, humanised the teachings of the mythologies into which he delved by emphasising the beautiful idea of the saving grace of woman. He did not, perhaps, deliberately adopt as the motto of his works the line of Goethe, "The woman-soul leadeth us ever upward and on," but it may be inscribed upon them without violence to their intent. We may see by an examination of the original sources of the dramas how the importance of this thought in the works is due to the deliberate purpose of Wagner himself to bring it to the front. In some of the original stories it plays little or no part, but in the Wagner music drama the "Ewig-Weibliche" is always impressed upon the imagination of the auditor with all the skill of the dramatist and all the eloquence of the musician.

In "Lohengrin," as the reader can see for himself, the master made a special point of excluding the operation of this principle, because he desired to bring forward a study of a woman who had no love in her nature. With Wagner the woman-soul could be influential for good only when acting under the guidance of love. Ortrud acted under the dictates of hate, and her influence was therefore destructive, but ultimately futile. The reader will readily perceive the dramatic, poetic, and musical value of this thought. In all the Wagnerian dramas we are confronted with studies of the warring of good and evil principles. When the good principle is identified or associated with the love of woman, and that love is made the saving grace of its object, the dramatic force of the story is splendidly intensified, the scope of the poetry and the music immeasurably widened. Especially is the music benefited by the possibility of identifying the highest ethical idea of the poem with the most beautiful and potent of its emotions; for it is the peculiar privilege of the music to voice the emotional content of the drama, and when this becomes one with the ethical idea, the auditor is led by the music into the very shrine of the poet's imagination. The reader will note, too, that in those dramas in which the love of a woman does not figure as a saving influence, the tragic fate of the hero is accentuated, and the woman herself is made a more conspicuous embodiment of grief.

In most of the works of Wagner there is to be found a philosophical or metaphysical basis, and this is most easily discovered in the later dramas. The poet-composer was at different times deeply influenced by the writings of Feuerbach and Schopenhauer. From the former he obtained some of the vaguer conceptions of his philosophy, but the latter supplied him with definite ideas. It was in the early fifties that Wagner was a student of Feuerbach, and his mind eagerly caught at the thoughts contained indefinitely in such phrases as "highest being--the community of being," "death, the fulfilment of love," and such declarations as "only in love does the finite become the infinite." These ideas later took clearer shape in his mind when he gathered from Schopenhauer the sharply cut description of the negation of the will to live as the highest abstraction and elevation of thought.

With love figuring as a community of being, with death as its highest fulfilment, and with the absolute effacement of the desire of life as the loftiest aspiration of human passion, Wagner was equipped with a philosophical background for several of his most dramatic conceptions, notably for "Tristan und Isolde." Yet one has no difficulty in understanding his own assertion that the negation of the will to live and the community of being had entered his mind in an indefinite shape long before he read the works of the two philosophers, for they may be traced in the story of "Der Fliegende Holländer."

Some of Wagner's biographers, notably Houston Stewart Chamberlain, to whom this master was little short of a divinity, have devoted much space to the consideration of Wagner as a philosopher. The truth is that he was never a philosopher at all in the strict sense of that term. He was a groper after philosophies. He sought for a rational foundation for his artistic theories and endeavoured to found them upon metaphysical tenets borrowed from works which seemed to meet his needs. But there is no difficulty in perceiving that what always appealed to him in a philosophy was its poetic or dramatic material. That he was sometimes mistaken as to the real value of that material is not astonishing. The best text-books of Wagner's philosophy are his dramas. Therein one finds that the ethical side of a philosophy was what touched him most directly, and that it did so because of its close relation to the principles underlying the tragic in human experience. This is paying a higher compliment to Wagner than to call him a philosopher, for it is practically asserting that his dramatic nature was his guiding star.

It is easy to note that in "Der Fliegende Holländer" Wagner more nearly rid himself of those hampering historical details to which he objected than he did in "Tannhäuser," and more especially than in "Lohengrin." The legend of the "Flying Dutchman" was not one of the great world-thoughts, but it had the advantages of being founded on an incident which might be repeated at any time and in any place--namely, the periodical landing of the wanderer. In "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin," and in "Parsifal," Wagner used material found in the great cycle of tales belonging to the Christian mythology of Germany, England, and France. He found himself unable to avoid introducing some of the historical details contained in the original stories. Because of their sources and nature these three dramas have been classed as the Christian trilogy of Wagner in contradistinction to the Nibelung works, which are called the pagan trilogy. While this classification is justified by the nature of the works, it should be remembered that Wagner himself repudiated any intention to produce works charged with a religious purpose. Ethical ideas, indeed, he always cherished, but he denied that he taught Christianity. He recognised the assistance which art had given to religion, and he saw that in Greece the dramatisation of national religious beliefs had given to the stage a power unknown in modern times. But he himself was too wise to dream of making the lyric drama a mere corollary or illustration to the pulpit text. A passage in "A Communication to My Friends," quoted in the account of his resumption of work on "Tannhäuser," explains the mood which governed him in the composition of the score. He says that at the time he was yearning for a pure and unapproachable ideal of love. "What, in fine," he continues, "could this love-yearning, the noblest thing my heart could feel, what other could it be than a longing for release from the present, for absorption into an element of endless love, a love denied to earth and reachable through the gates of death alone?... How absurd, then, must those critics seem to me, who, drawing all their wit from modern wantonness, insist on reading into my 'Tannhäuser' a specifically Christian and impotently pietistic drift!"

We may now proceed to the study of the great dramas which have for so many years been the joy of the artistic mind and the torture of the indolent. The last word of this author on the subject of studying these dramas is this: Learn the text. By the text the music must be measured. By the text the music must be understood. By the music the text is illuminated and made vital. But every measure of Wagner's music is explained by the poetry. It is useless to go to the performance of a Wagner drama with your mind charged with thoughts of the music. Think of the play and let the music do its own work. That is what Wagner himself asks you to do, and it is the only fair test to which to put him. If his music vitalises the drama for you, it matters not whether you know the leading motives or the harmonic scheme or the orchestration. The work of the music is accomplished. But that work cannot be accomplished if you are in the dark as to its purpose. And in the dark you must always be unless you have a full knowledge of "what is going forward on the stage." To gain that you must know the entire text. Therefore the written word of the drama is your guide to its comprehension.

RIENZI

THE LAST OF THE TRIBUNES

Grand Tragic Opera in Five Acts.

First performed at the Royal Saxon Court Theatre, Dresden, October 20, 1842.

_Original Cast._

Cola Rienzi Tichatschek. Irene Fräulein Wüst. Steffano Colonna Dettmer. Adriano Mme. Schroeder-Devrient. Paolo Orsini Wächter. Raimondo Vestri. Baroncelli Reinhold. Cecco del Vecchio Risse. A Messenger of Peace Thiele.

Hamburg, 1844; Königsberg, 1845; Berlin, Oct. 26, 1847; Prague, 1859; Hanover, 1859; Weimar, Wiesbaden, and Darmstadt, 1860; Mayence, 1863; Stockholm, 1864; Bremen, Gratz, and Stettin, 1865; Würzburg, 1866; Schwerin, 1867; Rotterdam, 1868; Leipsic, 1869; Paris (in French translation by Charles Nuitter and J. Guillaume), April 6, 1869; Cassel, 1870; Augsburg, Carlsruhe, Vienna, and Munich, 1871; Mannheim and Magdeburg, 1872; Brunswick, 1873; Venice, 1874; Strassburg and Breslau, 1875; Bologna and Madrid, 1876; Cologne and Florence, 1877; Riga, 1878; New York, in German by the Pappenheim-Adams Co., Mar. 4, 1878, and in English, Jan. 27, 1879; London, Italian and English, 1879; St. Petersburg, 1879; Rome, Innspruck, Freiburg, and Ghent, 1880; Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1881, and Basle, 1882.

First performance in New York, Academy of Music, March 4, 1878, by the Pappenheim-Adams Company.

_Cast._

Adriano Mme. Eugenia Pappenheim. Irene Miss Alexandre Human. Cola Rienzi Charles Adams. Paolo Orsini A. Blum. Steffano Colonna H. Wiegand. Raimondo F. Adolphe. A Messenger of Peace Miss Cooney.

Conductor, Max Maretzek.

The names of the singers of Baroncelli and Cecco del Vecchio were not advertised nor mentioned in the newspapers.

RIENZI

The first of the series of great musical works by which the fame of Wagner was made does not call for extended discussion. Its source is familiar to every reader of English literature, and its method of construction and style of composition are those employed in the operas of the Meyerbeerian school. In the fact that Wagner wrote his own libretto, which awakened the interest even of Hector Berlioz, and in the immense vigour and wonderful colour of the score, lie the chief indications of the Wagner of the future. The reader has already learned how Wagner undertook this work with the deliberate purpose of making it a lever to pry open the doors of the Paris Grand Opéra. With that idea in mind it is not at all astonishing that he should have followed the model of Meyerbeer, who was in Wagner's early days the master spirit of the world of French music.

Wagner in subsequent years was extremely particular to keep before the minds of his friends the fact that it was not simply pecuniary success that he sought. He was eager to shine as an artist. That we must concede. He was, indeed, ambitious, and had a profound conviction of his own genius. But in these early days, when the inner artistic struggle found its companion piece in the outward fight for existence, Wagner had not reached the æsthetic convictions which afterward came to him. Therefore his conception of Bulwer's "Rienzi" was wholly as material for the libretto of a grand opera of the Meyerbeerian school. We have seen how his first attempt to enter Paris was with the scenario of "Die Hohe Braut," which was sent to Scribe, but lost in the mail for want of proper prepayment of the postal charges. We then find that Wagner wrote in 1837 to his Leipsic friend Lewald, who had some acquaintance in Paris, telling him that he had in his mind the book of "Rienzi."

"I intend," he said, "to compose it in the German language, to make an attempt whether there is a possibility of getting it performed in Berlin in the course of fifty years, if God grant me so long a life. Perhaps Scribe will like it, in which case Rienzi will learn to sing French in a moment; or else this might be a way to goad Berliners into accepting the opera if they were told that Paris was ready to bring it out, but that preference was for once to be given to Berlin; for a stage like that of Berlin or Paris is absolutely necessary to bring out such a work properly."

Nothing came of this correspondence, and Wagner's "Rienzi" was not permitted to astonish the Parisians. Nevertheless he began himself to write the libretto at Riga in the summer of 1838. In the spring of 1839 he had composed the music of the first two acts, and with this uncompleted score he set out from Riga on the voyage which ultimately landed him in Paris. Of his meeting with Meyerbeer at Boulogne, his exhibition of his manuscript to the great dictator, his completion of the work in the days of his hardship in Paris (in 1841), and the sending of the bulky score to Dresden the story has been told in the biographical part of this book. It need not now be repeated. Of the instantaneous success of the opera at Dresden there is plentiful evidence. It was in the style which the public of the time admired and it heaped up effects enough to dazzle the crowd. But it must be said for Wagner that he had some dim thought when he began this work of producing something really artistic. He was simply mistaken as to the method. At this point I must ask the reader to accept Wagner's own words as a better exposition of himself and his purposes than anything which I can invent. In the "Autobiographic Sketch" he says:

"Since I was so completely bare of Paris prospects, I took up once more the composition of my 'Rienzi.' I now destined it for Dresden: in the first place, because I knew that this theatre possessed the very best material--Devrient, Tichatschek, etc.; secondly, because I could more reasonably hope for an entrée there, relying upon the support of my earliest acquaintances. My 'Liebesverbot' I now gave up almost completely; I felt that I could no longer regard myself as its composer. With all the greater freedom I followed now my true artistic creed in the prosecution of the music to my 'Rienzi.'"

Further, let the reader note well these passages from "A Communication to My Friends":

"My home troubles increased; the desire to wrest myself from a humiliating plight now grew into an eager longing to begin something on a grand and inspiring scale, even though it should involve the temporary abandonment of any practical aim. This mood was fed and fostered by my reading Bulwer's 'Rienzi.' From the misery of modern private life, whence I could nowhere glean the scantiest stuff for artistic treatment, I was borne away by the picture of a great historico-political event, in lingering on which I needs must find a salutary distraction from the cares and conditions that appeared to me as nothing else than absolutely fatal to art. In accordance with my particular artistic bent, however, I still kept more or less to the purely musical, or rather, operatic standpoint. 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 the perception of a 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 an opera: 'Rienzi.'"...

"To write an opera for whose production only the most exceptional means should suffice--a work, therefore, which I should never feel tempted to bring before the public amid such cramping relations as those which then oppressed me, and the hope of whose eventual production should thus incite me to make every sacrifice in order to extricate myself from those relations,--this is what resolved me to resume and carry out with all my might my former plan for 'Rienzi.' In the preparation of this text also I took no thought for anything but the writing of an effective operatic libretto. The 'Grand Opéra' with all its scenic and musical display, its sensationalism and massive vehemence, loomed large before me; and not merely to copy it, but with reckless extravagance to outbid it in its every detail became the object of my artistic ambition. However, I should be unjust to myself did I represent this ambition as my only motive for the conception and execution of my 'Rienzi.' The stuff really aroused my enthusiasm, and I put nothing into my sketch which had not a direct bearing on the grounds of this enthusiasm. My chief concern was my Rienzi himself; and only when I felt quite contented with him did I give rein to the notion of a 'grand opera.' Nevertheless from a purely artistic point of view this 'grand opera' was the pair of spectacles through which I unconsciously regarded my Rienzi-stuff; nothing in that stuff did I find enthrall me but what could be looked at through these spectacles. True, that I always fixed my gaze upon the stuff itself, and did not keep one eye open for certain ready-made musical effects which I might wish to father on it by hook or crook; only, I saw it 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. Thus I bestowed no greater care upon the verse and diction than seemed needful for turning out a good and not trivial opera-text. I did not set out with the object of writing duets, trios, &c., but they found their own way in here and there because I looked upon my subject exclusively through the medium of 'Opera.' For instance, I by no means hunted about in my stuff for a pretext for a ballet; but with the eyes of the opera-composer I perceived in it a self-evident festival that Rienzi must give to the People, and at which he would have to exhibit to them in dumb show a drastic scene from their ancient history: this scene being the story of Lucretia and the consequent expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome. Thus in every department of my plan I was certainly ruled by the stuff alone; but, on the other hand, I ruled this stuff according to my only chosen pattern, the form of the Grand Opera. My artistic individuality, in its dealings with the impressions of life, was still entirely under the influence of purely artistic, or rather art-formalistic, mechanically operating impressions."[32]

[Footnote 32: Prose Works, Vol. I., W.A. Ellis's translation.]

The reader will now understand the artistic ideas which governed Wagner in the production of his only "grand opera." He was, as he himself declares, true to the artistic creed which he cherished at that time, but that creed was opposed to the one afterward formulated in his mind. His first artistic beliefs were founded on the theory that not the ground-plan, but the external treatment, of the grand opera was at fault. He fancied that he could preserve the element which he has called "art-formalistic" and yet reach dramatic verity. He aimed at a consistent embodiment of character in his hero; he sought to give to all the factors of the opera, even such accessories as the ballet, a direct and powerful dramatic significance; but it had not yet come to him that he must, in order to make a consistent drama in music, sacrifice form to content, and get rid of the whole mechanical apparatus of the spectacular opera. Here, then, let me quote the most significant passage of all, one from the "Autobiographic Sketch":

"When in the autumn [of 1838] I began the composition of my 'Rienzi,' I allowed naught to influence me except the single purpose to answer to my subject. I set myself no model, but gave myself entirely to the feeling which now consumed me, the feeling that I had already so far progressed that I might claim something significant from the development of my artistic powers, and expect some not insignificant result. The very notion of being consciously weak or trivial--even in a single bar--was appalling to me."

The frequent iteration of such statements shows how anxious Wagner was in subsequent years lest he should be accused of deliberately pandering to that depraved public taste which he decried. In his endeavour to treat the grand-opera form honestly he accepted as his musical models several of his predecessors. In "Die Feen" he believed that he was following the lead of Beethoven, Weber, and Marschner, and in "Das Liebesverbot" he turned for help to Auber and Bellini. In "Rienzi" he utilised elements from all of these, and added to them the pomp of Spontini and the external glare of Meyerbeer. The libretto, as he says, is simply a good opera book. One looks in vain through it for more than traces of the dramatic power and real poetry to be found in the later works. Similarly the music is just good opera music of the most pretentious kind. It glitters, but seldom glows. It astonishes, but seldom moves. The instrumentation shows many of the idiosyncrasies of the later Wagner, but it is generally without inner strength. The whole work is superficial, and calls for precisely the same sort of criticism as the operas of Meyerbeer do. And this result came in spite of the fact that Wagner, according to his own account, was appalled by the very thought of being consciously weak or trivial for a moment. That he was weak and trivial often will be patent to any hearer of the opera. Indeed, one need not go so far as that. The overture is played often in concert and a novice can easily detect the bombastic emptiness of its resounding finale, even at the same time as he notes the resemblance of the sequences of chords in the brass to some afterward heard in "Der Fliegende Holländer." But Wagner himself tells us that before he had completed "Rienzi" he became doubtful as to the possibility of bringing about any real success by the methods which he was employing. He began to foresee the future with its wide departure for him from the traditions of opera. He began to realise that he could not cater to the extant public taste, but must create for himself a new one. But it was not till despair made him withdraw himself from all relations to the outer world that he entered upon the development of the true Wagnerian music drama.

"Rienzi," then, must be viewed simply as a grand opera of the old-fashioned sort. We must regard its libretto as an exemplification of the clever ground-plan of Meyerbeer, its music as the artistic offspring of the "Jewish banker to whom it occurred to write music," of Spontini, Rossini, and other composers of the pseudo-grand style. The story of the opera is substantially that of Bulwer's novel, and needs no review here. In the making of this book Wagner was simply an adapter. He re-created nothing. In his other works we shall find that he added to the literary substance of every subject which he treated. But such was not the case with "Rienzi." The joints are plainly visible. The carpenter work is creditable, but it is not architecture. One might almost say the same thing about the music. It is in the main good, workmanlike music, with inspiration carefully fanned by the breaths of older composers. Occasionally the real Wagner peeps out and there are some passages of fine vigour and even expressiveness. But this is an opera in which one can go through the score and pick out the "good things," just as one could from the old scores of Donizetti and Bellini.

The reader of Bulwer, for instance, will miss from the opera the figure of Nina, the wife of Rienzi, but he will find that her place is well filled by the sister, Irene, of whom Wagner makes a conspicuously noble character. Furthermore Wagner in drawing the character of his hero went to the original historical sources and so made him a stronger personage than Bulwer did. "Un signor valoroso, accorto, e saggio" is this Rienzi, as Petrarch called him. He speaks in broad and commanding accents, as in his address to the nobles and in the prayer. And it is at such points that we find the best music. The prayer is set to one of the finest melodies in all opera. Again we see that in the chorus and solo of the messengers of peace Wagner found material for good writing of both verse and music. The prayer opens the fifth act, when Rienzi, feeling that the end is near, calls on the Lord to preserve the work which he has achieved.

"Allmächt'ger Vater, blick' herab, Hör mich im Staube zu dir fleh'n! Die Macht, die mir dein Wunder gab, Lass jetzt noch nicht zu Grunde geh'n!"

Almighty Father, look on me! Hear thou my humble fervent prayer! Let not the power I had from Thee Pass from me in this dark despair.

With the second stanza comes the fine melody heard in the overture:

[Music:

Du stärktest mich, du gabst mir hohe Kraft, du liehest mir erhab'ne Eigenschaft, zu helfen dem, der niedrig denkt, zu heben, was im Staub versenkt. &c.]

Thou gavest me of Thy all-wondrous might, High gifts, O Lord, didst Thou on me bestow, To light up those who live in night, To raise up those who bend so low.

M. Schuré has said:

"'Rienzi' is a work of the composer's youth, unequal, but already full of force and strength, brilliant and full of fire. The reformatory ideas of the author are not yet apparent. The libretto is cut according to the rules of tradition--choruses, ensembles, resounding marches, grand airs, trios, septets, ballet--nothing is wanting. The music, without betraying any imitation in particular, has a strong Italian colouring, but the individuality of the composer is shown as well in the heroic grandeur of his broad melodies as in the warmth and riches of his instrumentation. In short, 'Rienzi' is already the work of an independent master without being that of an innovator."

In the last sentence M. Schuré has nearly touched the truth, but I am inclined to think that he and Mr. Hueffer somewhat overrate the importance of this work. It is most probable that the melody of the prayer will come to be accepted as the one inspired thing in the whole score. Certainly the air of Adriano, so often sung on the concert stage, is but a weak and bombastic imitation of a Weber grand aria of the style of "Ocean, thou mighty monster," with leanings toward the manner employed in the monologue of Ortrud in Act II. of "Lohengrin."

We may therefore dismiss "Rienzi" as a mistake of Wagner's youth. He had not yet found himself. He might have achieved popularity and made money with this sort of writing, and knowing his great vanity and love of luxury we should not have been surprised if he had continued to produce works of this pattern if the first one had brought him immediate success. We ought, perhaps, to be very grateful to the years of privation in Paris which developed the real Wagner, though it is possible that his own ambition to stand alone would have had the desired result in the course of time, even had the years 1840 and 1841 been easier for him.

DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER

Romantic Opera in Three Acts.

First performed at the Royal Saxon Court Theatre, Dresden, Jan. 2, 1843.

_Original Cast._

Senta Mme. Schroeder-Devrient. The Dutchman Wächter. Daland Risse. Erik Reinhold. Mary Mme. Wächter. Helmsman Bielezizky.

Conductor, Richard Wagner.

Riga and Cassel, 1843; Berlin, 1844; Zurich, 1852; Schwerin, Weimar, and Breslau, 1853; Frankfort and Wiesbaden, 1854; Hanover, Carlsruhe, and Prague, 1857; Mayence and Vienna, 1860; Königsberg, 1861; Lucerne, 1862; Munich, 1864; Stuttgart, 1865; Olmütz, 1866; Rotterdam and Dessau, 1869; Hamburg, Darmstadt, Mannheim, Gratz, 1870; London (Italian), July 23, 1870; Vienna, Brunswick, and Brünn, 1871; Brussels and Stockholm, 1872; Budapesth, Stettin, Augsburg, Magdeburg, Sondershausen, and Baden, 1874; Strassburg, 1875; Lübeck, Freiburg, and Salzburg, 1876; Philadelphia, 1876; Dublin and Bologna, 1877; Würzburg, 1877; New York, Jan. 26, 1877; Innspruck, 1880.

First performed in America as "Il Vascello Fantasma," in Philadelphia, Nov. 8, 1876, by the Pappenheim Company.

First performed in New York at the Academy of Music, Jan. 26, 1877, by the Kellogg English Opera Company.

_Cast._

Senta Clara Louise Kellogg. The Dutchman W.T. Carleton. Daland Mr. Conly. Erik Mr. Turner.

Conductor, S. Behrens.

First performed in New York in German at the Academy of Music, Mar. 12, 1877.

_Cast._

Senta Mme. Eugenia Pappenheim. The Dutchman A. Blum. Daland Mr. Preusser. Erik Christian Fritsch. Mary Miss Cooney. Steersman Mr. Lenoir.

Conductor, A. Neuendorff.

THE FLYING DUTCHMAN

"Der Fliegende Holländer" is the first of the works of Wagner which shadow forth the style, the system, and the mastery of lyrico-dramatic art found in his later works. All these elements of this master's art, however, are here found in an embryonic and experimental stage. Nothing is developed, and nothing is definite. Wagner himself did not realise the significance or possible extent of his movement. He was at this time wholly unconscious of the fact that he was laying the foundations of a new method of composition in musical drama. He was aiming only at writing an expressive score, in which the characters of his play, their emotions and their actions, should be drawn with all the powers of music.

The work was written at Meudon in the spring of 1841. All except the overture was completed in seven weeks. Of the fate of the first sketch of this lyric drama, of the hardships of the composer's life at the time of its execution, of the first performances, the reader has already been told. He has seen also how the stormy voyage to London impressed upon his mind the legend of the "Flying Dutchman" with which he had already made acquaintance. It now becomes our duty to examine the sources from which Wagner derived the poetic materials of this play and to ascertain how he treated them. In the "Flying Dutchman" the poetic ability of the master was first exhibited. He ceased to be a mere libretto-writer and became a dramatic poet. His version of the famous old legend is a lovely one, and much of its increased beauty is the product of his own genius. It was, as he himself said in the oft-quoted "Communication," the "first folk-poem that forced its way into my heart, and called on me as man and artist to point its meaning, and mould it in a work of art."

It was while in Riga that he made his first acquaintance with the story. "Heine takes occasion to relate it," he says, "in speaking of the representation of a play founded thereon, which he had witnessed--as I believe--at Amsterdam. This subject fascinated me, and made an indelible impression upon my fancy; still it did not as yet acquire the force needful for its rebirth within me." The story of Heine was in "The Memoirs of Herr Schnabelewopski." It is not certain whose play it was that Heine meant. Francis Hueffer, in his "Richard Wagner,"[33] expresses the belief that the play was that of Fitzball, which was running at the Adelphi Theatre in 1827, when Heine visited London. Mr. Hueffer bases his argument largely on the fact that two features of Fitzball's play, both additions to the old legend, are mentioned by Heine as appearing in the drama which he saw. These are the pictures of the Dutchman on the wall of Daland's house, and the taking of a wife by the wandering seaman.

[Footnote 33: The Great Musicians Series, Charles Scribner's Sons.]

Mr. Hueffer adds:

"Here, however, his indebtedness ends. Fitzball knows nothing of the beautiful idea of woman's redeeming love. According to him the Flying Dutchman is the ally of a monster of the deep, seeking for victims. Wagner, further developing Heine's idea, has made the hero himself to symbolise that feeling of unrest and ceaseless struggle which finds its solution in death and forgetfulness alone. The gap in Heine's story he has filled up by an interview of Senta with Erik, her discarded lover, which the Dutchman mistakes for a breach of faith on the part of his wife, till Senta's voluntary death dispels his suspicion."

It should be noted that Mr. W. Ashton Ellis, whose translation of Wagner's prose works has been so often quoted, wrote a paper to disprove the theory of Mr. Hueffer as to the play having been Fitzball's. The matter, after all, is not one of great importance. Wagner got his materials from Heine's book, which contained a version of a very old legend, and in making the text of his lyric drama, he altered and improved that material as Mr. Hueffer has indicated.

The late Mr. John P. Jackson, formerly musical editor of _The New York World_, in the admirable introduction to his translation of the text of this opera, at one time used at the Metropolitan Opera House, says that the Fitzball play was founded on a version of the legend printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in May, 1821. That version runs thus:

"She was an Amsterdam vessel and sailed from port seventy years ago. Her master's name was Van der Decken. He was a staunch seaman, and would have his own way in spite of the devil. For all that, never a sailor under him had reason to complain; though how it is on board with them nobody knows. The story is this: that in doubling the Cape they were a long day trying to weather the Table Bay. However, the wind headed them, and went against them more and more, and Van der Decken walked the deck, swearing at the wind. Just after sunset a vessel spoke him, asking him if he did not mean to go into the bay that night. Van der Decken replied, 'May I be eternally damned if I do, though I should beat about here till the day of judgment.' And to be sure, he never did go into that bay, for it is believed that he continues to beat about in these seas still, and will do so long enough. This vessel is never seen but with foul weather along with her."

This is practically the original story of the "Flying Dutchman." It is no new tale, but, like nearly all myths, a development. In the literature of Greece we find the wanderer in the person of Ulysses, yearning for hearth and home and the joys of domestic love. In the early period of Christianity the myth entered and gave us the gloomy figure of the Wandering Jew, accursed and hopeless of all save the end in oblivion. With the Dutch the legend in the Middle Ages was easily transferred to their own favourite element, the sea, whereon at that time they were among the most daring and skilful. The struggle of the Dutchman against contending winds and waves typified their own battles with the powers of Old Ocean, and their determination to conquer at all hazards.

Later writers than those of the dark ages endeavoured to give this legend an end. In its original form it stands suspended with the Dutchman a creature without hope. Captain Marryatt, in his "Phantom Ship," releases the wanderer from his ceaseless journeyings by means of an amulet, or religious charm. Sir Walter Scott's version of the tale--wherever he found it--is a curiously poor one. According to him, the vessel was laden with precious metal. A murder was committed on board, and as a punishment for it a plague fell upon the crew. No port would permit the ship to enter, and it was doomed to float about aimlessly forever. There is no poetry and a total absence of the personal tragedy in that version. The idea of the salvation of the wanderer through the self-sacrificing love of woman, an idea to be found in literatures much older than this, was introduced into the story before Heine saw the play of which he wrote. It is quite possible that Heine never saw such a play, yet the fact remains that in the Fitzball drama the Dutchman did take a wife, only, however, to make an offering of her to a sea monster--a grotesque and utterly unpoetical idea.

Wagner got his beautiful ending from Heine. Mr. Hueffer has taken the trouble to retail the story as told in "The Memoirs of Herr von Schnabelewopski." The sentence of Van der Decken is that he shall wander till doomsday unless he shall be released by a woman faithful until death. The Devil does not believe in the existence of women of that sort, and therefore allows the wanderer to go ashore once every seven years to see if he can find such a one. (How was it that the Devil was so often mistaken about women?) He meets with failure after failure, till finally he falls in with a Scotch merchant, whose daughter has already learned his story and formed a romantic attachment for him. She has his picture in her room, and when her father, having accepted the Dutchman's offer for her hand, brings him home, she at once recognises him and determines to sacrifice herself to save him. Just at this point Herr von Schnabelewopski is called away for a short time, and when he returns he sees the Dutchman about to sail away without his wife. He loves her and would save her from his fate. But she, true to her vow, ascends a high rock, whence she throws herself into the sea. The spell is broken and the united lovers enter eternal rest. The reader will now see that it was the void occasioned by the temporary absence of von Schnabelewopski which Wagner filled with the interview between Senta and Erik. Except for the introduction of this character, a tenor, necessary to afford both dramatic and musical contrast to the story, Wagner has followed Heine closely, as lovers of the dramatist's works will at once perceive.

Out of this material Wagner constructed a drama which at the time of its production was as novel as "Tristan und Isolde" was in later years. In it we first meet with this master's remarkable power of concentrating in each scene the emotional moods and pouring them out to us in the music, while in those portions of the score devoted to musical description, such as the sea music and the sailors' choruses, we may note his ability to make dramatic atmosphere. How these powers reveal themselves to us in the grand duo of the last scene of Siegfried and the Waldweben! It is worth while hearing "Der Fliegende Holländer" occasionally, if only to study the embryonic Wagner. Now let us see how Wagner himself regarded the subject-matter of his story.

"The figure of the Flying Dutchman," he says, "is a mythical creation of the folk. A primal trait of human nature speaks out from it with a heart-enthralling force. This trait, in its most universal meaning, is the longing after rest from amid the storms of life." He traces the older forms of the legend as seen in the stories of Ulysses and the Wandering Jew, and then says:

"The sea in its turn became the soil of Life; yet no longer the landlocked sea of the Grecian world, but the great ocean that engirdles the earth. The fetters of the older world were broken; the longing of Ulysses, back to home and hearth and wedded wife, after feeding on the sufferings of the 'never-dying Jew' until it became a yearning for Death, had mounted to the craving for a new, an unknown home, invisible as yet, but dimly boded. This vast-spread feature fronts us in the mythos of the 'Flying Dutchman,' that seaman's poem of the world-historical age of journeys of discovery. Here we light upon a remarkable mixture, a blend, effected by the spirit of the Folk, of the character of Ulysses with that of the Wandering Jew. The Hollandic mariner, in punishment for his temerity, is condemned by the Devil (here obviously the element of Flood and Storm) to do battle with the unresting waves to all eternity. Like Ahasuerus, he yearns for his sufferings to be ended by Death; the Dutchman, however, may gain this redemption, denied to the undying Jew, at the hands of--a Woman who, of very love, shall sacrifice herself for him. The yearning for death thus spurs him on to seek this Woman; but she is no longer the home-tending Penelope of Ulysses, as courted in the days of old, but the quintessence of Womankind; and yet the still unmanifest, the longed-for, the dreamt-of, the infinitely womanly Woman--let me out with it in one word: the _Woman of the Future_."

With this broad, poetic view of his subject-matter Wagner set out to write a text book which should be a real drama and not a mere libretto. "From here," he says, "begins my career as poet, and my farewell to the mere concoctor of opera texts." In this drama are embodied the fundamental ideas of the entire Wagnerian system. Here they appear to us in their first stage of development, incomplete, unformed, and scarcely recognised by their own creator. The value of the mythologic matter, however, already forced itself upon the mind, and the conviction of its suitability to musical embodiment, because freed from hampering accessories, came to him at this period of his career. I have already quoted his words as to the employment of myths as subjects for music dramas. I may be pardoned for quoting here a passage from my introductory essay in the Schirmer vocal score of the drama:

"Wagner divined clearly the necessity of subordinating mere pictorial movement to the play of emotion, and it will easily be discerned that the three acts of 'The Flying Dutchman' reduce themselves to a few broad emotional episodes. In the first our attention is centred upon the longing of the Dutchman, and in the second upon the love of Senta. In the third we have the inevitable and hopeless struggle of the passion of Erik against Senta's love. All music not designed to embody these broad emotional states is scenic, such as the storm music and choruses of the sailors and the women. Furthermore the student will do well to note that the chief personages of the story are types. Van der Decken is typical of the man struggling under the burden of his own follies, while Senta is the embodiment of the woman-soul, which, according to Goethe, 'leadeth us ever upward and on.'"

In the structure of this drama the reader will find that Wagner did not abandon the old operatic forms. He employed duets, solos, choruses, etc., as an opera composer would. He did not use the leitmotiv system, but only hit upon its fundamental idea. He did not use the staff-rhyme. In fact we find in this work only a perfectly sincere attempt to make a good play and to express its feelings in music. He says himself of this work:

"In it there is so much as yet inchoate, the joinery of the situations is for the most part so imperfect, the verse and diction so often bare of individual stamp, that our modern playwrights--who construct everything according to a prescribed formula, and, boastful of their formal aptitude, start out to glean that matter which shall best lend itself to handling in the lessened form--will be the first to count my denomination of this as a 'poem' a piece of impudence that calls for strenuous castigation. My dread of such prospective punishment would weigh less with me than my own scruples as to the poetical form of the 'Dutchman,' were it my intention to pose therewith as a fixed and finished entity; on the contrary I find a private relish in here showing my friends myself in the process of 'becoming.' The form of the 'Flying Dutchman,' however, as that of all my later poems, down even to the minutiæ of their musical setting, was dictated to me by the subject-matter alone, insomuch as that had become absorbed into a definite colouring of my life, and in so far as I had gained by practice and experience on my own adopted path any general aptitude for artistic construction."

In the "Autobiographic Sketch" he tells us how, after disposing of the first sketch to Pillet, he set to work to compose his own music.

"I had now to work post-haste to clothe my own subject with German verses. In order to set about its composition I required to hire a pianoforte; for, after nine months' interruption of all musical production, I had to try to surround myself with the needful preliminary of a musical atmosphere. As soon as the piano had arrived, my heart beat fast for very fear; I dreaded to discover that I had ceased to be a musician. I began first with the 'Sailors' Chorus' and the 'Spinning Song'; everything sped along as though on wings, and I shouted for joy as I felt within me that I was still a musician."

This statement affords sufficient evidence that nothing revolutionary was in Wagner's mind when he sat down to compose "Der Fliegende Holländer." No vision of the polyphonic web of "Tristan und Isolde" rose in his brain; no conception of an operatic score in which every melodic idea should have a direct message. He began with two purely lyric numbers, and it was not till he reached the ballad of Senta in the second act that the first principles of the leitmotiv system dawned upon him, and then only in such shape as they had occurred to others before him. The ballad as a whole is a purely lyric number, written in a plain song form; but in it occur the two principal typical themes of the drama. The first is that designed to represent the Dutchman as a wanderer without rest:

[Music]

The second theme, a broad, flowing, tender melody, is designed to typify the redeeming principle, the self-sacrificing love of the woman.

[Music]

In the "Communication to My Friends" he says:

"In this piece I unconsciously laid the thematic germ of the whole music of the opera: it was the picture _in petto_ of the whole drama such as it stood before my soul; and when I was about to betitle the finished work, I felt strongly tempted to call it a 'dramatic ballad.' In the eventual composition of the music the thematic picture, thus evoked, spread itself quite instinctively over the whole drama as one continuous tissue; I had only without further initiative to take the various thematic germs included in the ballad and develop them to their legitimate conclusions, and I had all the chief moods of this poem, quite of themselves, in definite shapes before me. I should have had stubbornly to follow the example of the self-willed opera-composer had I chosen to invent a fresh motive for each recurrence of one and the same mood in different scenes; a course whereto I naturally did not feel the smallest inclination, since I had only in mind the most intelligible portrayal of the subject-matter and not a mere conglomerate of operatic numbers."

One other musical thought in this work must here be enumerated because of a special meaning which it had for its composer. In 1866 Ferdinand Praeger was dining with Wagner in Munich, when the conversation turned upon "the weary mariner, his yearning for land and love, and Wagner's own longing for his fatherland at the time he composed the 'Dutchman.'" Wagner went to the piano, and said, "The pent-up anguish, the homesickness that then held possession of me, were poured out in this phrase":

[Music]

"At the end of the phrase," continued Wagner, "on the diminished seventh, in my mind I brooded over the past, the repetitions, each higher, interpreting the increased intensity of my sufferings."

The "Flying Dutchman," then, is the product of Wagner's genius in its embryonic stage. The grasp of tradition and operatic convention upon his mind is not yet shaken off. The chorus of sailors in the first finale is in a popular, rhythmical, melodic vein and might almost have been written by a Frenchman. The opening of Act II. is constructed on wholly operatic lines, with its gay chorus followed by the dramatic ballad. Then follow two purely operatic scenes, the duets of Senta and Erik and Senta and the Dutchman. In the last act the paucity of material forced Wagner to spin his web very thin indeed. He consumes as much time as possible with his theatrically contrasting choruses of merry-making betrothal guests and ghostly wanderers of the sea. The machinery of the stage creaks through the whole scene till the entrance of Senta and Erik brings us once more face to face with human nature. The scene is brief, and it is not to be praised. It would have been more beautiful to make the Dutchman depart out of sheer love for Senta and unwillingness to win salvation through her sacrifice. But the act ends effectively. Perhaps the most striking proof in all this curious score that Wagner had not yet found himself is in the duet of Daland and the Dutchman in Act I. The Dutchman asks if Daland has a daughter and on receiving an affirmative reply, says, "Let her be my wife." Daland, "joyful yet perplexed," exclaims:

"Wie? Hör ich recht? Meine Tochter sein Weib? Er selbst spricht aus den Gedanken!"

And with this Wagner ushers in a very Italian duet:

[Music:

Wie? Hör' ich recht? Meine Tochter sein Weib? Er selbst spricht aus den Gedanken.]

On the other hand, there are not a few manifestations in "Der Fliegende Holländer" of the future Wagner. In the first place, the overture is a splendid exemplification of his musical style and his method of construction and it employs some of the materials of the opera in a masterly manner. Again the solo of the steersman, succeeded by the outburst of the storm and the appearance of the Dutchman's ship upon the raging deep, produces an effect similar to that of the song of the sailor followed by the passionate utterances of Isolde in the first scene of "Tristan und Isolde." The solo of the Dutchman in Act I., while more conventional in its melodic manner than Wagner's later music, gives a foretaste of the power exhibited in the second act of "Lohengrin" in expressing dark and bitter moods. In the musical and dramatic characterisation of Daland one may discern something of the facility which afterward made so much of Hans Sachs. Indeed in characterisation more than in anything else does this opera herald the coming master, for Van der Decken, Senta and Daland are clearly and completely drawn musically and dramatically. They are living figures in the gallery of Wagner portraits; and while we may not deny that "Der Fliegende Holländer" is a comparatively weak production, we would not readily part with the dreamful, devoted, ill-fated Senta.

In the instrumentation, also, one finds evidences of the real Wagner. The high, shrieking brass chords of the diminished seventh, heard in the "Rienzi" overture, are here repeated; the rich use of divided strings is found; and the beautiful employment of wide harmonies in the wood wind leads the mind forward toward the final exit of Elizabeth in "Tannhäuser" and the entrance of Elsa in "Lohengrin." But, view this work as we may, we cannot regard it as standing beside the two lyric dramas of the transition period. It is the work of an independent and gifted mind of 28, a work of radiant promise, but not of mature genius.

TANNHÄUSER UND DER SÄNGERKRIEG AUF WARTBURG

Grand Romantic Opera in Three Acts.

First performed at the Royal Saxon Court Theatre, Dresden, October 19, 1845.

_Original Cast._

Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia Dettmer. Tannhäuser Tichatschek. Wolfram von Eschenbach Mitterwurzer. Walther von der Vogelweide Schloss. Biterolf Wächter. Heinrich der Schreiber Gurth. Reimar von Zweter Risse. Elizabeth, Niece of the Landgrave Fräulein Johanna Wagner. Venus Mme. Schroeder-Devrient. A Young Shepherd Fräulein Thiele.

Weimar, 1849; Schwerin and Breslau, Freiburg and Wiesbaden, 1852; Königsberg, Hamburg, Darmstadt, Elbing, Cassel, Frankfort, Posen, Leipsic, Riga, Barmen, Bremen, Bromberg, Cologne, Danzig, Düsseldorf, Prague, and Stralsund, 1853; Wolfendbüttel, Rostock, Reval, Neisse, Magdeburg, Glogau, Mayence, Gumbinnen, Gratz, Aix-la-Chapelle, Augsburg, and Stettin, 1854; Strassburg, Lübeck, Coburg, Bamberg, Munich, Mannheim, Antwerp, Zurich, Würzburg, Carlsruhe, Hanover, 1855; Berlin, 1856; Vienna, Dessau, and Sondershausen, 1857; Stuttgart, 1859; New York, April 4, 1859; Rotterdam, 1860; Paris, 1861; Brunswick, 1861; Olmütz and Amsterdam, 1862; Munich, Paris version, 1867; The Hague, 1870; Budapesth, 1871; Bologna, 1872; Brussels, 1873; Lucerne, 1874; Copenhagen, 1875; London (Italian), May 6, 1876; New York (Italian) and Moscow, 1877; Trieste, 1878; Innspruck and Salzburg, 1880; Ghent and London (English), 1881.

First performed in America at the Stadt Theater, New York, April 4, 1859.

_Cast._

Hermann Graff. Tannhäuser Pickaneser. Wolfram Lehmann. Walther Lotti. Biterolf Urchs. Heinrich der Schreiber Bolten. Reimar von Zweter Brandt. Elizabeth Mme. Siedenburg. Venus Mme. Pickaneser. Shepherd (Not given).

Conductor, Carl Bergmann.

TANNHÄUSER

With "Tannhäuser" we enter upon what may fairly be called the transition period of the genius of Wagner. While in certain passages this work is quite as much indebted to older opera as "Der Fliegende Holländer," and in others falls into a cheap and tawdry style of melody quite unworthy of its composer, it nevertheless contains parts which rise to heights never before attained except perhaps in Beethoven's "Fidelio." The book will especially repay study, for in it we find the first complete demonstration of Wagner's powers as a dramatist and a dramatic poet. His skilful weaving of the dramatic web out of materials scattered and apparently unrelated places him among the masters of theatrical writing. It will be our pleasure first to examine the sources of the drama and the manner in which Wagner employed them.

"Tannhäuser" was first conceived by Wagner in 1841, and the scenic sketches, with the provisional title "Venusberg, Romantic Opera," were made in 1842. The poem was finished on May 22, 1843. Owing to his being occupied with the preparations for the production of "Der Fliegende Holländer" and with other matters, Wagner did not complete the score till April 13, 1845. When the work was in preparation for performance at the Paris Grand Opéra in 1861, Wagner rewrote some portion of the score. The reader will recall that the members of the Jockey Club demanded their usual terpsichorean titbit, but that Wagner would not consent to write an ordinary ballet and thrust it into his drama at a certain hour. He insisted that the ballet should take its proper place in the dramatic scheme and that it should have a meaning.

He accordingly wrote a new and careful elaboration of the scene in the Venusberg at the opening of Act I. In the first, or Dresden, version of the work the overture is a complete number, and as such is frequently heard on the concert platform. In the Parisian version the overture does not come to an end, but at the second appearance of the bacchanalian music the curtain rises and the ballet begins. It is descriptive of the revels of the realm of Venus--"a wild and yet seductive chaos of movements and groupings, of soft delight, of yearning and burning, carried to the most delicious pitch of frenzied riot."[34] He then extended the dialogue between Venus and Tannhäuser to a scene of considerable dimensions, its chief purpose being a further revelation of the character of Venus. Undoubtedly this Parisian version was nearer to Wagner's heart than his first one, but its music does not well bear critical examination, for the style of the added part is that of the "Tristan" period, while the old "Tannhäuser" music is of a much more primitive sort.

[Footnote 34: Wagner, "On the Performing of Tannhäuser," Prose Works, Ellis, Vol. III.]

So much for the writing of the opera. It is a curious fact that Wagner has recorded as his sources of inspiration a book which cannot be found and a condition which did not exist. He says that while "Rienzi" was in preparation at Dresden, the German "Volksbuch" of "Tannhäuser" fell into his hands. Now no one has ever been able to find such a book, and learned authorities declare that there never was one. But Wagner further says that he had made the acquaintance of Tannhäuser in Tieck's narrative, which he now reread. He read also the "Tannhäuserlied." He says: "What most irresistibly attracted me was the connection, however loose, between Tannhäuser and the 'Singer's Tourney in the Wartburg,' which I found established in that Folk's book." With this second subject he had already made some acquaintance in a tale of Hoffmann, and he now decided to read the mediæval epic, "The Sängerkrieg." There is no connection at all between the incidents of the old Tannhäuser legend and "The Sängerkrieg." This is a condition which Wagner himself created, and his error in supposing that he had discovered it in the legend is an amusing instance of the occasional inability of genius to analyse its own workings. What Wagner did was to accept Lucas's identification of Tannhäuser with one of the personages in the epic, thus bringing the two stories together, as we shall presently see.

The legend of Tannhäuser is found in old folk tales, mostly in the popular form of ballads. An English translation of one of these, printed with the original music in Böhme's "Altdeutsches Liederbuch," is reproduced in Jessie Weston's excellent work, "Legends of the Wagner Drama." The story contained in this is that Tannhäuser, a knight, has spent much time in the cave of Venus, but has grown weary and would depart. Venus tells him that he has sworn a solemn oath with her "for aye to dwell." He denies that he has so sworn. She offers him her fairest maid as wife if he will stay, but he declines, saying,

"Nay, an I took another wife, I here bethink me well, My lot for all eternity Would be the flames of hell."

Venus still pleads with him and bids him think upon her charms and the joys of life in the Venusberg. He declares that his "life is waxen sick and faint," and again begs for leave to go. Finally he calls upon the Virgin to aid him. Then Venus tells him to go, but adds that wherever he goes he shall sing her praise. He departs, and determines to seek Pope Urban at Rome and ask absolution. The Pope, who holds in his hand a withered staff, says:

"This staff shall bud and bloom again Ere grace to thee be shown."

Tannhäuser in despair returns to the arms of Venus. On the third day after his departure from Rome the staff buds and blossoms. The Pope seeks for Tannhäuser, but it is too late; he has returned to his sin, and for this Pope Urban's soul is to be counted lost on the Judgment Day.

There is absolutely nothing in that story to suggest any connection with the contest of minnesingers in the Castle of Wartburg in 1204 A.D., the year in which Wolfram von Eschenbach is known to have been the guest of Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia. This contest is described in the poem, or collection of poems called the "Wartburgkrieg," which dates from the 13th century and gives us an interesting view of the Court of Hermann of Thuringia. It is not certain that all of this poem has come down to us, nor do we know who wrote it. Simrock, the German editor of the work, believed that its earliest part was written about 1233. Some verses, believed to have been by Walther von der Vogelweide, appear in the work. The latest part of it probably dates from 1287.

The poem contains no such contest in song as that which takes place in the second act of Wagner's drama, but it does describe a debate as to the glories of certain princes. Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Heinrich der Schreiber, Walther von der Vogelweide, Biterolf, and Reimar von Zweter take part in the discussion, while Wolfram von Eschenbach, the famous author of "Parzival," is the umpire. It was in reading this poem that Wagner's attention was called to Wolfram and his works, and thus he discovered the legendary world of "Lohengrin" and "Parsifal." The "Wartburgkrieg" contains other matter, but that just summarised is all that Wagner found for his "Tannhäuser." He got from the mediæval epic the atmosphere of Hermann's Court, for this potentate was famous in his day as a patron of poetry and an encourager of the art of the knightly minnesinger. He obtained also the idea of the contest of song--which in history was rather one of poetry--and the names of the historical minnesingers. In adopting this material to his dramatic purpose Wagner omitted Heinrich of Ofterdingen and substituted Tannhäuser for him. He furthermore changed the subject of the controversy.

Whence came the lovely character, one of the noblest of all Wagner's heroines, Elizabeth, the Landgrave's niece? She is not to be found in the Tannhäuser legend nor in the "Wartburgkrieg." It is altogether certain that Wagner found the suggestion for this beautiful character in the story of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, the daughter-in-law of Hermann of Thuringia. She was affianced in childhood to the Landgrave's eldest son Ludwig; and when married the pair led a rigorously monastic life and devoted themselves to holiness. Ludwig died young and his brother Heinrich was harsh to Elizabeth. The pure and lofty stature of this saintly princess furnished Wagner with the personality which he needed as the element of opposition to the baneful influence of Venus.

We have now before us the sources from which Wagner drew the materials for this noble drama. Let us see how he utilised his matter. In the first scene we behold Tannhäuser in the arms of Venus, sick and weary of sensual delight and eager to return to the smell of the green grass and the song of birds, and still more to the rhythmic alternation of pain and pleasure which makes the song of human life. His senses are nauseated with their own ceaseless gratification. Who, then, is this Venus, and what is she doing in the subterranean world of the 12th century? She is plainly the Venus of Roman mythology, the Aphrodite of the Greeks, the Astarte of the Phoenicians. The atmosphere which surrounds her is that of the classic Venus. She is further identified by the pictures of Leda and the Swan and Europa and the Bull, taken from classic fable and illustrating stratagems of the passion over which Venus presided. Before the Romans pushed their way into Germany, the old Teutonic mythology had its goddess Freya, the wife of Odin, queen and leader of the Valkyrs. But the Scandinavian myth made Frigg, or Fricka, the queen, and Freya the second in rank. She was the goddess of love and beauty. The South German races confounded the two and added qualities not known in the northern mythology. They made Freya coincident on one side with Hel, the goddess of the underworld and of the dead, and on the other with Holda, the goddess of the spring, of budding and fructification. Thus when the Romans carried their mythology into Germany it was not at all extraordinary that the attributes of Freya and Venus should have become mingled in the minds of the people.

These simple-minded people did not readily part with their poetic mythology when Christianity mastered their hearts. The old deities were supposed to have retired into caves or mountains, there to dwell till recalled to activity. Venus, according to various traditions, lived in more than one cave, but her favourite abode was the Hörselberg in Thuringia. The propinquity of this cave to the Castle of Wartburg naturally led Wagner to choose it as the scene of Tannhäuser's retirement. In the drama the knight's feelings and desires are precisely the same as those of the hero of the old legend. Wagner adds the beautiful poetic touches of his yearning to hear the song of birds and once more to suffer pain. Furthermore he makes it clear to us that the Venus of his imagination was not without womanly feeling, and that her passion for Tannhäuser was a very real one. She scornfully gives him leave to go, but it is finally his despairing cry to the Virgin for aid which acts as a charm to remove the spell of enchantment. He instantly finds himself in the valley before the Wartburg, and hears the tinkling of sheep-bells, while a young shepherd carols a lay to the May and to Holda, the representative of the beneficent side of the evil goddess just left. It is in such details of fancy as these that Wagner demonstrates his right to consider himself a poet.

With the disappearance of the red and glittering cave of Venus and the appearance of the cool, fresh greens of the landscape--a striking pictorial contrast, full of theatrical effectiveness, and showing Wagner's employment of the combined arts of poetry, music, painting, and action in the new dramatic form--we enter the domain of the "Wartburgkrieg." The Tannhäuser of the old legend steps into the shoes of Heinrich of Ofterdingen. The adventure which has befallen him is not unsuited to his character, for the real Tannhäuser was a bit of a Don Juan and had many "affairs." It seems that he repented and became a wiser and a better man in later life. In the ballad Venus foretold that he would sing her praises wherever he went, but in the drama this prediction is made by Tannhäuser in the first scene. That Wagner had a purpose in the change is shown by Tannhäuser's outbreak in the hall of song. Efforts have been made to prove that Heinrich of Ofterdingen and Tannhäuser were one and the same person, for the existence of the former is problematical, and also to prove that Tannhäuser did really visit the Court of Hermann. Neither has been established as a fact. The matter is of little importance to us. The personages in the song contest, except Tannhäuser, are historical, and Wagner has been faithful in his representation of their characters. He has chosen for dramatic purposes to accentuate the poetic side of Wolfram's character. Wolfram was celebrated as a champion of Christianity, and was an ardent advocate of nobility of heart in woman in preference to merely external beauty. In the very beginning of his "Parzival" he says:

"Many women are praised for beauty; if at heart they shall be untrue, Then I praise them as I would praise it, the glass of a sapphire hue, That in gold shall be set as a jewel! Tho' I hold it an evil thing, If a man take a costly ruby, with the virtue the stone doth bring, And set it in a worthless setting: I would liken such a costly stone To the heart of a faithful woman, who true womanhood doth own. I would look not upon her colour, nor the heart's roof all can see; If the heart beateth true beneath it, true praise shall she win from me."[35]

[Footnote 35: "Parzival," a knightly epic, by Wolfram von Eschenbach. Translation by Jessie L. Weston. London, David Nutt.]

In the hall of song the contest is on a similar theme, and Wolfram was well chosen by Wagner to oppose the passionate ideas of the wandering Tannhäuser. Walther von der Vogelweide has little importance in Wagner's "Tannhäuser," but is mentioned again in "Die Meistersinger," when young Walther von Stolzing claims him as master. Vogelweide was a poet of renown in his day, a contemporary of Wolfram, a Tyrolean by birth and a lyric singer. He was a man of station and had an estate near Würzburg, where he was buried. Reimar was also a notable poet in his day, but of Biterolf little is known except that there was such a man.

These are the personages who greet Tannhäuser when Wagner's wonderful transformation scene has closed, when the effect of the beautiful pictorial change has died away, and the solemn strains of the pilgrims' chorus, so gently beneficent after the passionate witcheries of the wild bacchanal, have melted into the distance. And with the advent of these historic figures there begins the operation of the elevating principle of the drama, the influence of Elizabeth. With their simple and yet aspiring spirits they furnish a beautiful contrast to the carnal creatures whom we have just left in the Hörselberg. The latter typified the gratification of the senses, while these are an expression of the higher desires of man, presently to be shown to us in their loftiest embodiment, the eternal woman-soul, which "leadeth us ever upward and on."

In the experience of Tannhäuser Wagner has set before us the struggle of the pure and the impure, the lusts and the aspirations of man's nature. It is essentially the tragedy of the man. We may try as we please to exalt the importance of Elizabeth as a dramatic character, but the truth is that she is merely the embodiment of a force. Tannhäuser is typical of his sex, beset on the one hand by the desire of the flesh, which satiates and maddens, and courted on the other by the undying loveliness of chaste and holy love. If ever a sermon was preached as to the certainty with which the sins of the flesh will find a man out it is preached in the second act of this tremendous tragedy, when the flame of old passions sears the front of new happiness and drives the errant out of paradise.

Here Wagner has risen far above his material. In the pomp and circumstance of the mediæval contest of song he has displayed active fancy, for the scene as presented is his rather than history's. In the culmination of the catastrophe he has wrought with the craft of genius, for in the period of which he wrote the yielding of a man to sensual temptation would never have caused such a stir. Tannhäuser would have been damned rather for worshipping a heathen goddess, an enemy of the Christian Church, than for slumbering in the soft embraces of a wanton. Hence, though struck to the heart by more than mortal wound, Elizabeth thinks first of her lover's sin:

"Was liegt an mir? Doch er--sein Heil! Wollt Ihr sein ewig Heil ihm rauben?"

"What matters it for me? But he--his salvation! Would you rob him of his eternal salvation?" With this beautiful plea of the stricken Elizabeth Wagner shows how perfectly he understood the tragic elements of his story, for he makes the saving principle again, as in "Der Fliegende Holländer," one of self-effacement, a love faithful unto death.

In the final act Elizabeth, her last hope of the return of Tannhäuser gone, consecrates her soul to heaven, relinquishes the desire of life, and ascends to her last home. Wolfram, who has loved her, and who thus becomes, in his self-sacrifice, a foil to the passionate and self-gratifying Tannhäuser, sits at the foot of the Hörselberg and philosophises to the evening star. Tannhäuser returns, cursed by Rome, and plunged in despair. His narrative is the climax of power in the opera, one of the most intensely tragic pieces of writing in all dramatic literature. His senses reel; the old world of lusts and passions opens the portals of its rosy dreamland, and the songs of its sirens again lure him back to the arms of Venus and bury the newly awakened soul in the depths of sensual debauchery. But no; the eternal feminine still strives to save. The sainted Elizabeth, dead, is yet the guardian angel of this poor wanderer, and as her funeral bier is laid before him he sinks beside it with the last unutterably pathetic supplication of a still repentant spirit:

"Heilige Elizabeth, bitte für mich!"

"Holy Elizabeth, pray for me." And Wolfram pronounces the benediction in the words, "Er ist erlöst" ("he is redeemed"). The sprouting staff of the Pope, which has followed him from Rome, is laid upon his dead body, and the solemn chorus of the pilgrims chant the entrance of his purified spirit into its eternal rest. Thus did Wagner, out of the simple and unrelated materials of the old Tannhäuser myth and the "Wartburgkrieg," fashion the tragedy of a man's soul. Women never find in "Tannhäuser" all that a man finds there. The experience of the story lies beyond the pale of the feminine nature, but every man must bow his head in reverence to the genius which thus made quick the battle of passion against purity for the possession of the masculine soul. Wagner wrote no mightier tragedy than this.[36]

[Footnote 36: It is worthy of note that in 1863 there was printed in Mobile, Ala., a long blank-verse poem, entitled "Tannhäuser; or, The Battle of the Bards," by Neville Temple and Edward Trevor. This was a paraphrase--and in some places a translation--of Wagner's opera book. It was written by two young men in the English civil service in Germany and sent over to America by a friend. It transpired that "Edward Trevor" was no less a personage than Robert, Lord Lytton, better known as Owen Meredith, author of "Lucile."]

The music of "Tannhäuser" commands less admiration than the book. Some of it is worthy of the mature Wagner, but much is trivial and some is positively weak and puerile. Wagner had not yet grasped a new conception of the lyric drama; he had thus far only enlarged and extended the old one. He was not yet ready to set aside all the old formulæ; but he was striving to give them a new significance. Hence in "Tannhäuser" there are passages of a familiar operatic cut, such as the scene of Tannhäuser and the courtiers in the first act, ending with the finale of that act, the duet between Tannhäuser and Elizabeth in Act II., and Wolfram's address to the evening star in

## Act III. On the other hand, most of the score shows wide departures

from the older operatic manner. There is a sincere attempt to make the musical forms follow the poem. There is an abundance of real dialogue, in which the setting of the text is constructed on the purest dramatic lines. This is especially true of the scene between Tannhäuser and Venus, the debate in the hall of song, and the narrative of Tannhäuser. But such admirable pieces of writing as the address of the Landgrave to the contestants and the pathetic prayer of Elizabeth have also a large dramatic value because of their perfect embodiment of the feeling of the scene.

The leitmotiv is not employed in "Tannhäuser." Arthur Smolian wrote a pamphlet on the music of this opera. It was prepared for the _Bayreuther Taschenbuch_ of 1891 and translated into English by the indefatigable Ashton Ellis. It professes to name and catalogue the leading motives of "Tannhäuser," but what it really does is to prove that there are none. The author quotes Wagner: "The essential feature of Tannhäuser's character is his instant and complete saturation with the emotions called up by the passing incident, and the lively contrasts which the sudden changes of situation produce in his utterance of this fulness of feeling. Tannhäuser is never a 'little' anything, but each thing fully and completely." Mr. Smolian says: "With the foregoing words, in which Wagner defines the nature of his hero, we might also most fittingly describe the individuality of the 'Tannhäuser' music." Here, then, he should have stopped, for he had spoken the truth, and his thematic catalogue is misleading. The music of "Tannhäuser" is nearly all written freely for the investiture of the passing mood, and those portions which are accorded special meaning and are used for repetition may speedily be enumerated and dismissed.

These divide themselves naturally into two classes, representing respectively the good and the evil principle of the action. These themes, which have such significance that they are repeated in the exposition of the drama, are first heard and most easily identified in the magnificent overture. This opens with a serene statement of the theme typifying the holy thought, the religious mood of the good characters in the play. This thought is employed as the melody of a chorus of pilgrims, and it reappears in a triumphant proclamation at the end of the drama when the good principle emerges victorious from the battle against the evil:

[Music]

The intoning of this solemn melody is interrupted in the overture by the intrusion of the music of the bacchanalian orgies in the cave of Venus, which begins with this phrase, given out by the violas:

[Music]

Tannhäuser's hymn in praise of Venus appears in the overture and is, of course, again heard in the first scene of the drama. It is repeated with immense significance, but not at all in the manner of a leitmotiv, in the scene of the hall of song.

[Music:

Dir töne Lob! Die Wunder sei'n gepriesen.]

In the overture the listener will hear after one of the passages of turbulence this theme intoned by a clarinet.

[Music:

Geliebter, komm! Sieh dort die Grotte, von ros'gen Düften mild durchwallt!]

Later he will recognise its significance, when in the first scene he hears it sung by Venus with the words of pleading. The reader is now in possession of all the thematic ideas of the score of "Tannhäuser" which approach in their nature the musical phrases employed by Wagner in later works. And yet it is only an approach. In the second act, when Wolfram is preaching the beauties of ideal love, thoughts of the unbridled gratifications of the Hörselberg flash through Tannhäuser's mind and we are informed of it by the repetition of the bacchanale motive. And when at length, taunted into recklessness by the words of his opponents, Tannhäuser launches into the praise of sensual love, he naturally does so in the hymn to Venus from the first scene. And that is the extent of the repetition of primary material in the second act.

In the third act, when Tannhäuser in his despair calls upon Venus, we are informed of her appearance before his fancy by the return of the bacchanalian music. We also see her revealed in the rosy light of her cavern, but this is a complete concession to the public want of imagination. Wagner's original intention was to let the music tell the story of her nearness, but he came to the conclusion that he would not be understood, and so he placed Venus and her court before our eyes. With the return of the pilgrims' chorus at the end of the drama we meet the last repetition of a thematic idea. In none of these repetitions is the leitmotiv method employed. They are simply such repetitions as Gounod makes in "Faust" when the mad Marguerite imagines she hears again the first salutation of Faust, or in "Roméo et Juliette," when the dying Romeo's disordered mind carries him back to the chamber scene and "Non, ce n'est pas le jour."

The dramatic power of "Tannhäuser" is not to be sought in evidences of the development of the future Wagnerian system except in the fidelity of the music to the underlying thought, and of the masterful employment of operatic materials hitherto used wholly with a view to musical effectiveness. In characterisation, too, this score shows an advance over that of "Der Fliegende Holländer," which itself was far ahead of its contemporaries. Wagner himself lays stress upon the deep significance of passages of free composition. For example, he says that in the stanza which Tannhäuser sings in the finale of the second act ("Zum Heil den Sündigen zu Führen")--a stanza which is usually buried by the ensemble--"lies the whole significance of the catastrophe of Tannhäuser, and indeed the whole essence of Tannhäuser; all that to me makes him a touching phenomenon is expressed here alone." And various remarks in his long and--for the theatre--important essay on the performing of "Tannhäuser" show how far from his mind in the preparation of this work was the fully developed Wagnerian system of "Tristan und Isolde." The union of the arts tributary to the drama in the "art work of the future" had already been conceived by him, and the greatness of "Tannhäuser," together with the causes of its radical difference from the typical opera of its time, must be sought in the evidences of Wagner's successful employment of this union. Neither verse nor music had yet disclosed the complete Wagner; but here we find the master in his transitional stage. The puissant eloquence of the vital scenes of "Tannhäuser" will long keep it before the public in spite of its inherent weaknesses.

LOHENGRIN

Romantic Opera in Three Acts.

First performed at the Court Theatre, Weimar, August 28, 1850.

_Original Cast._

Lohengrin Beck. Telramund Milde. King Henry Höfer. Herald Pätsch. Ortrud Fräulein Fastlinger. Elsa Fräulein Agthe.

Wiesbaden, 1853; Stettin, Breslau, Frankfort, Schwerin, Leipsic, 1854; Hanover, Darmstadt, Riga, Prague, Hamburg, Cologne, 1855; Würzburg, Mayence, Carlsruhe, 1856; Munich, Sondershausen, Vienna, 1857; Dresden, Berlin, Mannheim, 1859; Danzig, Königsberg, 1860; Rotterdam, 1862; Gratz, 1863; Budapesth, 1866; Dessau, 1867; Milan, Cassel, Baden, St. Petersburg, 1868; Olmütz, Stuttgart, Gotha, 1869; Brussels, Brunswick, Magdeburg, The Hague, Copenhagen, 1870; Bologna, New York, 1871; Nuremberg, Florence, 1872; Lübeck, 1873; Stockholm, Strassburg, 1874; Boston, 1875; London, Covent Garden, May 8, 1875; Dublin, 1875; Basle, Trieste, 1876; San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chemnitz, Crefeld, Temesvar, Salzburg, Melbourne, Lemburg, 1877; Görlitz, Barmen, Regensburg, Rome, 1878; Altona, Liegnitz, 1879; London (English), Genoa, 1880; Liverpool, Antwerp, Venice, Nice, Naples, Moscow, Madrid, Münster, 1881; Innspruck, Barcelona, 1882.

First performed in America in German at the Stadt Theater, New York, April 3, 1871, under Adolf Neuendorff.

_Cast._

Lohengrin Theodore Habelmann. Telramund Herr Vierling. King Henry Herr Franosch. Herald W. Formes. Ortrud Mme. Frederici. Elsa Mme. Louise Lichtmay.

First performance in Italian, Academy of Music, March 23, 1874.

_Cast._

Lohengrin Italo Campanini. Telramund Giuseppe del Puente. King Henry Giovanni Nannetti. Herald A. Blum. Ortrud Annie Louise Cary. Elsa Christine Nilsson.

LOHENGRIN

I.--The Book

When he was collecting the materials for "Tannhäuser," Wagner, as we have seen, read the "Parzival" of Wolfram von Eschenbach. The last one hundred lines of that poem contains one of the versions of the story of Lohengrin. It is an insufficient story, however, and would not in itself have provided the foundation of Wagner's most popular work. As I have said in my introduction to the Schirmer edition of the vocal score of "Lohengrin," "Wagner's method of literary composition was to gather all the versions of a national mythological legend, and select the incidents and characters which fitted into his plan." This plan, of course, grows out of his perception of the dramatic possibilities of the story. The sources of Wagner's poem, then, in addition to "Parzival," were "Der Jüngere Titurel," a poem by Albrecht von Scharffenberg, giving a full account of the Holy Grail and its guardians, and also recounting the life and death of Lohengrin after leaving Brabant; _Der Schwanen-Ritter_, by Konrad von Würzburg, a poem dating from the latter half of the thirteenth century; "Lohengrin," a poem by an unknown Bavarian poet, and the popular form of the legend as given by the Grimm Brothers in the "Deutsche Sagen."

At Marienbad in the summer of 1845 he laid down the outlines of his plan, and in the winter ensuing he wrote the book and invented some of the melodic ideas. He began the actual composition of the opera with the narrative of Lohengrin in the final scene, because, like the ballad of Senta, that monologue contained the most significant musical germs in the whole score. While living at Grossgraufen, near Pilnitz, he wrote the music of the third act between September 9, 1846, and March 5, 1847. The first act was composed between May 12 and June 8, 1847, and the second act between June 18th and August 2d of the same year. The prelude was finished on August 28, 1847, and the instrumentation was made during the following winter and spring. The score of the opera was not published for several years, because Meser, who had printed the previous works of the composer, had lost money by the ventures. Breitkopf & Härtel subsequently secured the score at a small price, not because they were niggardly in offering, but because Wagner's works had no large market value at the time, and he was anxious to sell, being in his chronic condition of financial embarrassment.

The Lohengrin poem gives the story thus: Elsa, daughter of the Duke of Brabant, is left in care of Frederic of Telramund. He aspires to her hand, but she refuses him. He then accuses her before the Emperor of having promised to be his wife and having broken the promise. The Emperor declares that the case must be tried by the ordeal of battle. A passing falcon falls at Elsa's feet with a bell tied to its leg. In her agitation she rings the bell. The sound reaches Monsalvat, where it acts as a summons to Lohengrin, the son of Parzival. A swan appears on the river and Lohengrin knows that he is ordered to go with it. On arriving at Antwerp, five days later, Lohengrin is received with honour, and with Elsa sets out for the court of the Emperor at Mayence. There the combat is fought and Telramund defeated. Lohengrin marries Elsa, having extracted from her the promise not to ask his name or country. They live together two years. Then in a joust Lohengrin conquers the Duke of Cleves and breaks his arm. The Duchess of Cleves sneers at Lohengrin because no one knows who he is. This preys on the mind of Elsa till she asks the fatal question. Then Lohengrin, in the presence of the Emperor and the Court, tells his story, steps into the swan-boat and vanishes.

The story of the "Chevalier au Cygne," as found in the Grimm version also, is evidently a combination of two legends. The first deals entirely with the transformation of human beings into swans, and the second with the Swan-Knight. The mother-in-law of a queen, out of hatred, endeavours to make away with her seven children, each of whom was born with a silver chain about its neck, and to throw suspicion on the queen. She gives them to a knight to slay, but he contents himself with leaving them in a wood, where they are found and cared for by a hermit. The king's mother subsequently learns that the children are still alive, and sends a servant to kill them and bring the chains as evidence. He finds six children, one having gone on a short journey with the hermit, and when he takes the chains off their necks they turn into swans and fly away. The king's mother now brings the false accusation against the queen, and the king declares that, unless a champion can be found to establish her innocence, she must die. An angel goes to Helyas, the son who was not found by the servant, and tells him who he is and of his mother's danger. Helyas goes to Court, declares himself, fights for his mother, and conquers. The chains are brought forth, the six swans fly in, Helyas puts the chains around their necks, and they resume their human forms.

Subsequently Helyas sees a swan appear, drawing a boat, and knows that he is summoned. At Nimwegen he finds that before the Emperor Otto the Duchess of Bouillon has been accused by her brother-in-law of poisoning her husband. The Emperor has ordered the settlement of the case by the ordeal of combat. Helyas defends the Duchess, overthrows her accuser, marries her daughter, and becomes the father of Godfrey of Bouillon. After seven years the Duchess asks the fatal question, and Helyas, without answering it, goes away forever in his swan-boat. The reader will easily discover in the latter part of this story how the Lohengrin legend has been used to manufacture a supernatural father for Godfrey of Bouillon. It was not at all uncommon for the poets of the mediæval period thus to celebrate the mighty.

We have now before us the chief materials out of which Wagner made his beautiful dramatic poem, for the story of Wolfram's "Parzival" served principally to set him on the track, and to make suggestions as to the character of Elsa. That story tells simply that the Duchess of Brabant refused to be the wife of any man save him whom God should send her, and so Lohengrin came and the marriage took place, with the stipulation that he should not be asked his name or race. After some years she asked the fatal question and he returned to Monsalvat.

The Elsa of Wolfram was evidently inclined to become a nun, but in two lines of the "Parzival" Wagner found a suggestion as to her nature of which he made eloquent use in his first act:

"In God was her trust, whatever men might in their anger speak, And, guiltless, she bare the vengeance her folks on her head would wreak."

The absolute confidence of Wagner's Elsa in the readiness of Providence to send her the knight of whom she had dreamed and her unresisting attitude in the presence of her accuser and her king were certainly drawn from these lines of Wolfram's.

From the story of the Swan-Knight he gathered the idea of the transformation of a human being into a swan by a malignant woman, and his tremendously dramatic development of this idea is seen in the plot of his opera. The accusation of Telramund is increased by the assertion that Elsa has murdered her brother, a suggestion drawn, of course, from the accusation against the queen in the "Chevalier au Cygne." He has in reality been transformed into a swan by Ortrud, the wife of Telramund, a character wholly invented by Wagner. It is she who performs the office attributed in the old story to the Duchess of Cleves, that of inspiring distrust and questionings in the mind of Elsa. The character of Telramund is the merest sketch in the sources of the drama and its individuality is entirely the result of Wagner's dramatic skill.

The scene is laid at Antwerp, as it is in the Bavarian poet's version, but is retained there instead of being shifted to Mayence. The heroine is the Duchess of Brabant. The monarch, however, is not Otto, but Henry I., who reigned from 918 to 936. In his treatment of this character Wagner adheres to historic truth. Henry was a progressive and an aggressive monarch, and he not only led his people in successful wars against the Huns, but brought order out of political chaos at home. It is to these historical matters that the King refers in the speeches of the opening scene of the opera.

In the old stories the Knight has several days in which to reach the woman in distress and fight for her. Wagner has made this episode far more dramatic by requiring the immediate presence of the champion, by the ingenious plan of having the first call unanswered, and by making the fight for Elsa's life and honour take place at once. The arrival of Lohengrin is one of the most theatrically effective scenes in all opera, and the sweet and gentle farewell to the swan, following the hubbub of excitement, affords one of those splendid musical contrasts which are to be found in all Wagner's works and which are, as in this case, entirely his own. The first act of the opera leans heavily on the sources of the story, but the reader can have no difficulty in seeing how ingeniously Wagner has utilised his materials. At the end of the combat it has in recent years been the custom to employ a piece of stage business, authorised by the Bayreuth management, which is destructive of much of the effect of the scene, and obviously contrary to Wagner's original conception. Lohengrin does not fell Telramund "with one mighty stroke," as the stage direction in the score says he should, but holds his sword on high, while Frederic, without being struck at all, falls, overcome by the mysterious power which emanates from it. Of course this belittles the knightly character of Lohengrin, who conquers not by his prowess, but by the intervention of supernatural power, and furthermore it is opposed to the text. The Herald in his address to the combatants just before the King's prayer says:

"Durch bösen Zaubers List und Trug Stört nicht des Urtheils Eigenschaft."

"By evil magic's cunning and deceit distort not the nature of the judgment." The meaning of that speech is certainly a prohibition of the exercise of supernatural power by Lohengrin. And in the old stories it is always related that he defeated his opponent in equal combat. The supernatural element is sufficiently to the fore in this first scene in the appearance of the Swan-Knight in answer to the prayer and in reward of the faith of the innocent maiden under accusation. The love of Lohengrin for Elsa is in accordance with the old stories, and so is Elsa's offer of her crown, her domain, and herself. To the fall of the curtain at the end of Act I. Wagner followed the sources of his story closely, the changes being such as I have pointed out, and chiefly of a kind demanded by the technics of dramatic construction.

But with the second act we enter a chapter more fully the product of Wagner's genius. The original sources give only suggestions of it. The scene between Telramund and Ortrud at the beginning of this act, so much disliked by those to whom only the saccharine melodies of love and mystic knighthood are pleasing, is one of the most important in the drama. Telramund, robbed of sword and fame, reproaches Ortrud for inducing him to make the accusation against Elsa. He recognises the sacred character of Lohengrin, but Ortrud scoffs at it. She calls her husband's attention to the condition imposed upon Elsa by Lohengrin, that she must ask neither his name nor the place whence he came. Ortrud reveals the fact that if he is forced to answer this question his power is at an end. But Ortrud further counsels her husband to proclaim that the victory was won by magic, thus breaking the law of the sacred ordeal. Still further she says that, if Lohengrin can only be wounded in the slightest way, his power will vanish. To Telramund she entrusts this part of the task, while for herself she reserves the business of inspiring distrust in the mind of Elsa.

She addresses the maiden on her balcony in the accents of despair. Elsa in pity descends to lead her into the house. Then Wagner makes use of the mediæval belief that the old pagan gods had not ceased to exist, but were temporarily in retirement from the assaults of Christianity. Ortrud, who is a pagan at heart, calls on the old Norse gods to aid her in overthrowing these Christian enemies of theirs. When Elsa appears, this dark woman at once expresses her fear that a knight who appeared by magic may disappear. Elsa's trust is not yet to be shaken, and Ortrud follows her into the house. When Elsa and her train are moving toward the church, Ortrud claims the right of precedence and, like the Duchess of Cleves in the old tale, flings the taunt of Lohengrin's namelessness at Elsa. Again the maiden defends her spouse elect. Lohengrin and the King appear. Telramund, carrying out his part of the task, comes forward and declares that Lohengrin conquered him by the aid of magic. The King and the nobles, with full faith in the nature of the judgment, refuse to listen to him. He then whispers to Elsa that if she will admit him to the chamber that night he will clear all doubt. Lohengrin orders him away and leads Elsa into the minster.

Throughout this act the immense dramatic skill of Wagner is manifested. With only a few meagre suggestions from the old legends,--basic ideas, indeed, but undeveloped,--he built up an act of extraordinary dramatic power and musical fecundity. In its construction this act equals anything in the entire range of opera. The effective series of pictures, ranging from the dismal pair on the cathedral steps in the gloom, through that of Elsa apostrophising her lover on the moonlit balcony, the entrance into the house of the two women in the glimmer of the torches, the break of day, and the growing glitter of the festal morning with its pageant, up to the splendid climax of the scene in the denouncement of Frederic and the final entry into the church, are as ingeniously arranged as anything in the Meyerbeerian operas; but these scenes succeed one another in a perfectly natural and poetical sequence, and without forcing theatrical craft upon our attention. And in this act Wagner develops with transcendent power the characters of Ortrud and Telramund. Of the malignant pagan sorceress his own words are the best description. In one of the letters to Liszt he says:

"Ortrud is a woman who does not know love. By this everything most terrible is expressed. Politics are her essence. A political man is repulsive, but a political woman is horrible. This horror I had to represent. There is a kind of love in this woman, the love of the past, of dead generations, the terribly insane love of ancestral pride which finds its expression in the hatred of everything living and actually existing. In man this love is ludicrous, but in woman it is terrible, because a woman, with her strong natural desire for love, must love something; and ancestral pride, the longing after the past, turns in consequence to murderous fanaticism. In history there are no more cruel phenomena than political women. It is not therefore jealousy of Elsa, perhaps for the sake of Frederic, which inspires Ortrud, but her whole passion is revealed only in the scene of the second act, where, after Elsa's disappearance from the balcony, she rises from the steps of the minster and invokes her old, long-forgotten gods. She is a reactionary person, who thinks only of the old and hates everything new in the most ferocious meaning of the word; she would exterminate the world and nature to give new life to her decayed gods. But this is not merely an obstinate, morbid mood in Ortrud; her passion holds her with the full weight of a misguided, undeveloped, objectless feminine desire for love; for that reason she is terribly grand."

This Ortrud of Wagner's touches hands with the Lady Macbeth of Shakespeare. The same ambition, the same political, unsexed womanhood, the same desperate daring, and the same brazen resolve appear in both. Both seek a throne by foul means. Both are labouring for their husbands, and both fear the weakness of the spouse. Ortrud might fairly take from the lips of Lady Macbeth her invocation:

"Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here; And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty! Make my thick blood, Stop up th' access and passage to remorse; That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my purpose, nor keep peace between Th' affect and it!"

Telramund, "infirm of purpose," like Macbeth, is swayed and mastered by the superior force of his wife's indomitable will and insatiable ambition. Fate follows his footsteps as relentlessly as it does those of the Thane of Cawdor, and when he falls a victim to vaulting ambition, which overleaps itself, he falls a victim of Nemesis.

The last act places before us several salient features of the original material. Elsa, not after years of married bliss, but on the bridal night, asks the fatal question. Here Wagner shows a deep appreciation of the poetic possibilities of the theme, undoubtedly suggested to him by the resemblance of the situation to that of Zeus and Semele in classic fable. Elsa never could have grasped the essential nature of this sacred messenger, and so Wagner cuts the knot by ending the marriage at its very outset, before the final surrender of the heroine's womanhood. Lohengrin was never hers; she was never his. Frederic's last attempt follows the utterance of the question, and then before the assembled court, on the river bank where first he appeared, Lohengrin tells the marvellous, thrilling tale of Monsalvat, the Holy Grail and his origin, opening to us for a few moments the cathedral vistas of Wagner's "Te Deum,"--"Parsifal." Ortrud prematurely triumphs and announces that the swan is the missing brother: she herself placed the chain about his neck. Lohengrin calls upon God, and the spell is broken. The rightful heir of Brabant is restored to his sister's arms, and the Swan-Knight floats away in his shallop, this time drawn by a dove, the messenger of heaven. The reader will have no difficulty now in recognising the sources of these incidents, except, perhaps, in the death of Telramund, which was suggested to Wagner, as was the idea of robbing Lohengrin of his saintly power by wounding him, by passages in "Der Jüngere Titurel." The narrative of Lohengrin is suggested by Wolfram's "Parzival."

One more note must be made before we pass to a brief examination of the music of Wagner's most popular work. There is a strange resemblance between some of the fundamental features of the story of "Lohengrin" and those of "Der Fliegende Holländer." Senta and Elsa are both dream-haunted maidens. Both dream of lovers. About each of the lovers there is something mystic or supernatural. Each of the lovers is to come to the maiden from the water. In each case the maiden is called upon to submit to a certain ordeal, and her failure is to result in the return of the lover to the element from which he came. And in one element of the story the fact is similar, but the relations of the personages changed. In one a maiden is to save the lover; in the other, the lover comes as a champion and saviour. Is it not possible that the origin of the two legends is the same, the story of Skeaf, the mysterious king of the Angles, who drifted to their shores in a rudderless shallop when a babe, and grew to be a good and great monarch? When he died, they laid his body in the shallop and the little vessel floated away into the unknown, whence it came.

II.--The Music

And now let us look at the music of this opera, music which is usually listened to with complacent admiration for its mellifluous melody, but too seldom considered in respect of its dramatic significance. "Lohengrin" is musically far in advance of "Tannhäuser." True, there is not in this opera any piece of writing so puissant in its revelation of a human heart as the narrative of the returned pilgrim, but the score in its entirety is more closely knit, more coherent in style, more certain in its characterisations, more dramatic in its development of emotional climaxes and its explication of the scenes. In "Lohengrin" we find the grasp of his material much firmer in Wagner's hands. The organism is higher; the unity of word, action, and tone nearer to that for which the author constantly sought.

"Tannhäuser" is a hybrid. Old forms jostle the new; thin melodic strophes in conventional song-patterns lower the potency of some scenes to the level of Italian opera. But in "Lohengrin" the song form disappears forever from the Wagnerian scheme. The music is the utterance of speech; the melody, the spontaneous embodiment of feeling. There is no longer any recitative. There is only musical dialogue. And the leitmotiv, temporarily laid aside in the composition of "Tannhäuser," returns with wider and deeper and more varied meaning. We are at the culmination of the transition period of Wagner's genius, standing at the outer gates of "Tristan" and "Die Meistersinger."

Wagner himself recognised the nature and the limits of the advance made in this opera. He declares in the "Communication" that he was here seeking to free himself from the tyranny of the final cadence--that which tells the ear of the completion of a melodic form--and to make the music the outgrowth of the speech. But he saw in later years that he was still under the domination of melodic fashion in "Lohengrin"; and it is precisely his subservience to this fashion, with which the easy-going public from long use has become familiar, that makes "Lohengrin" the favourite of opera-goers the world over. We find the most potent evidences of the domination of the closing cadence in Elsa's narrative, in the duet of Ortrud and Telramund in the second act, and in the passages of the duet in the chamber scene. On the other hand, there is a close approach in the score of "Lohengrin" to the endless melody of the later dramas, and we are not surprised by the recollection that the Nibelungen trilogy was the next work to which Wagner turned.

The prelude to "Lohengrin" may be described as an instrumental representation of the vision of the Holy Grail. The motive on which it is built is that which throughout the opera typifies the sacredness of Lohengrin and his identity as a messenger of the Grail.

[Music: THE GRAIL.]

This theme is heard at the beginning of the prelude in its first form. It is heard again when Lohengrin prepares to bid farewell to the swan which is to return to Monsalvat, the palace of the Grail, thus announcing the identity of the knight as a messenger of the Grail. It is not heard again till the third act, except for a passing moment in Act II., where the Herald's delivery of Lohengrin's message to the nobles is preceded by the Grail motive, the first half intoned by the trumpets on the stage and the second half by the orchestra. It then disappears till the final scene of the opera, when it sounds forth as the warp and woof of that marvellously lovely piece of writing, the narrative of Lohengrin's origin. Next to the Grail motive stands that which is indicative of the knightly nature of Lohengrin.

[Music: LOHENGRIN THE KNIGHT.]

This motive immediately follows the first appearance of the Grail motive in the first act and becomes the instrumental background to Elsa's "In lichter Waffen Scheine ein Ritter nahte da" ("I saw in splendour shining a knight of glorious mien"). It is heard again when Lohengrin appears in the distance coming down the Scheldt in answer to Elsa's prayer, and at the end of the first act, when the triumph is complete, it peals forth fortissimo. It announces Lohengrin's entrance in Act II. and again in the final scene of the opera. At the end of all Wagner shows us that the knightly character of Lohengrin is intimately associated with his position as guardian of Brabant, for the knighthood motive is transferred in all its splendour to the rescued Gottfried, while, as Lohengrin disappears in the distance, it is heard for the first time in the minor mode. Another motive, which is a companion of Lohengrin's, is the swan motive.

[Music: THE SWAN.]

This is heard as the accompaniment to the closing words of Lohengrin's farewell to the swan in Act I.; again in Act III., when the half-hysterical Elsa fancies she sees the swan coming to take Lohengrin away, and finally when the Knight is about to address the swan preparatory to his departure in the last scene. A part of the melody which accompanies the entrance of Elsa in the first act is also evidently designed to act as a leading motive. This may be called the motive of Elsa's faith.

[Music: ELSA'S FAITH.]

It is repeated immediately after the entrance of the maid, when the King asks her if she will be judged by him, and the stage direction bids her make a gesture expressive of her complete trust. In the last scene, when Elsa enters dejected after having broken her vow, the King asks her the cause of her sadness, and she tries to look him in the face but cannot. Then we hear the broken faith motive:

[Music: ELSA'S FAITH BROKEN.]

Two themes are employed to signify the evil elements of the drama. The first of these is the prohibition motive:

[Music: THE PROHIBITION.

Nie sollst du mich befragen.]

The ban of secrecy imposed by Lohengrin becomes a potent weapon for evil in the hands of Ortrud. It is heard ominously in the introductory measures of the second act, and with portentous meaning when Ortrud begins to unfold her plan to Frederic. When Ortrud in the scene with Elsa says, "May he never leave thee who was by magic hither brought," the prohibition motive is given out adagio by the wind; and at the end of act, as Ortrud expresses by face and gesture her triumph over Elsa entering the cathedral, this motive is pealed forth at full power by the trumpets and trombones. It recurs in most mournful instrumental colour at the end of the chamber scene in

## Act III., when Elsa has asked the fatal question. The other theme

significant of evil is the motive of Ortrud's influence:

[Music: ORTRUD.]

This is first heard in the introduction to Act II. It reappears when Ortrud begins to reveal her ideas to Frederic, and accompanies each of her suggestions for the overthrow of Lohengrin and destruction of Elsa. It is heard again in the accompaniment to the short ensemble which succeeds Lohengrin's appeal to Elsa in the finale of Act II., when to his dismay he sees that she is wavering. Again it sounds when Frederic whispers to Elsa in the same scene, and when the maid declares her doubts in the chamber scene it is repeated to show that she is acting under the influence of Ortrud. This is a very close approach to the fully developed employment of the leitmotiv, for in the later dramas we find these themes frequently used to connect the passing action with the influences which have led to it or to associate it with an absent personality.

A less important motive, but one whose treatment foreshadows Wagner's later musical method, is that of the ordeal:

[Music: THE ORDEAL.]

This makes its appearance in Act I. after the nobles shout "Zum Gottesgericht!" ("a judgment of God!"), and immediately before the King addresses Telramund asking him if he will do battle. In the major mode it is sounded by the trumpets on the stage as the summons to Elsa's champion to appear, and its fundamental rhythm becomes that of the music to which the six nobles pace off the measurement of the ground. In the fight itself this motive is worked out orchestrally as an accompaniment to the action. It belongs strictly to the music of the scene, yet it is treated thematically and developed as far as needed.

These are all the leading motives of "Lohengrin." The rest of the music is freely composed, but the attentive hearer will note that while ethereal string harmonies intone the Grail motive, Lohengrin's knighthood is announced by the brass, and to the wood wind choir is allotted Elsa's music. For the rest the lover of this opera must seek his intellectual enjoyment in the general fidelity of the score to the thought of the text, to the increasing freedom from the shackles of formularies, and to the flexible, changeful, constantly significant harmonic plan.

The enormous variety of the rhythmic effects is obtained without frequent changes of time. The first act, for example, is all in common time up to the beginning of the King's prayer, which is in three-fourths measure. At the beginning of the combat the common time returns and is continued till the end of the act. The entire second act is in common time. In the third act two-fourths time is used for the "Bridal Chorus" and then the composer returns to common time and retains it to the end. These facts are alone sufficient to show the wide gulf which separates the Wagner score from that of the old-fashioned Italian opera, wherein the elementary dance rhythms are all used with as much variety as possible. Wagner attains an infinitely greater variety of styles and expression with only two interruptions of his original time signature.

Yet the one thing which Wagner felt most keenly in the composition of this opera was his subserviency to rhythm--not musical, but poetical. He admits that he had not yet freed himself from old melodic ideas and that the dominance of the cadence was still felt in his work, but his real difficulty was the inflexibility of verse written in modern metre, which makes such rigorous demands for imitation in the form of the musical setting. He was in later works to find the solution of that problem and enter the kingdom of perfect freedom from textual rule. The music of "Lohengrin," then, must be regarded as standing midway between the style of "Der Fliegende Holländer" and that of "Die Meistersinger." Its extraordinary popularity is due to the external and sensuous charms of its melody, which make their appeal to the aural palate of those incapable of comprehending a dramatic scheme such as Wagner's. This outward attractiveness of the music Wagner himself would have been the first to blame, and he always felt that his own beautiful conception of the character of Lohengrin was not revealed to the public.

TRISTAN UND ISOLDE

## Action in Three Acts.

First performed at the Royal Court Theatre, Munich, June 10, 1865.

_Original Cast._

Tristan Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Kurvenal Mitterwurzer. Melot Heinrich. Marke Zottmayer. Isolde Mme. Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Brangäne Mlle. Deinet.

Weimar, 1874; Berlin, 1876; Königsberg, Leipsic, 1881; Hamburg, 1882; London, June 20, 1882.

First performed in America at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, on December 1, 1886.

_Cast._

Tristan Albert Niemann. Kurvenal Adolph Robinson. Melot Rudolph von Milde. Marke Emil Fischer. Isolde Lilli Lehmann. Brangäne Marianne Brandt. Ein Hirt Otto Kemlitz. Steuermann Emil Saenger. Seemann Max Alvary.

Conductor, Anton Seidl.

TRISTAN UND ISOLDE

I.--Sources of the Story

From the dramatic and musical style of "Lohengrin" to that of "Tristan und Isolde" is a far cry, and the reader must brace his intellectual forces to assault a new world. It would be easier for some reasons to take up the consideration of this work after that of the "Meistersinger" and "Der Ring," but such a proceeding would lead to a confusion of historical facts in the mind of the reader, and therefore we shall take it up in the order of its production. We must bear in mind that before writing the score of this work Wagner wrote those of "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walküre," and that therefore he had entered into his fully developed style. Further than that we shall see that he went beyond his own conceptions of his theories, and that in this work he gave us the fullest, freest, and most potent demonstration of the vitality and justice of his methods and his style.

In an undated letter to Liszt, written in the latter part of 1854, Wagner says: "I have in my head 'Tristan und Isolde,' the simplest but most full-blooded musical conception: with the 'black flag' which floats at the end of it I shall cover myself to die." But in the meantime, as we have seen, he was working on the first parts of the "Ring" series. When he had about half written "Siegfried" there came upon him a period of depression. He felt that he was writing works which he would not live to see produced. He hungered for a closer, an active connection with the stage, and he needed money, and so he regretfully laid aside the "Ring" scores and set to work on the poem of "Tristan und Isolde." This was written at Zurich in 1857. The music was begun in the same year, and the score of the first act was finished at Zurich on December 31st. The second act was finished at Venice in March, 1859, and the third at Lucerne in August of the same year.

Many persons labour under the delusion that "Tristan und Isolde" is a new fancy of Wagner's; they do not know that the tale is one of the famous old legends of the Arthurian cycle and that it ranks as one of the great epics of mediæval Europe. First of all, however, this story belonged to the great English cycle of legends, which have supplied material to so many poets down to Tennyson and Swinburne. The latter wrote a version of this very tale under the title of "Tristram of Lyonnesse," which is only a modern adaptation of the earliest known title, "Tristam de Leonois," a poem dating from 1190.

The story is of Celtic origin, yet we find that it first took definite poetic shape in France. The Arthurian cycle consists of the "Romance of the Holy Grail," "Merlin," "Launcelot," "The Quest of the Saint Graal," and "The Mort Artus." From the last was drawn the beautiful "Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Mallory, a story of which about one-third is devoted to the life and adventures of Tristram, not properly told in this version. How was it that the French romantic poets were engaged in celebrating the doings of English heroes? In the heart of the Midi the forerunners of the Troubadours sang the deeds of Arthur and Launcelot and Merlin, just as Tennyson did in the latter half of the nineteenth century. As far as we can ascertain at this time, the exploits of Arthur, which had been narrated in scattered song and story for many a long year through all the vales of England, were compiled by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He died in 1154, the year in which Henry II. ascended the throne of England. Henry was of the house of Anjou, and united the crowns of England and Normandy under his sceptre. At about the same period, according to Professor Morley, Walter Map, an Archdeacon of Oxford (1154-89), is believed to have introduced the Holy Grail into the romances which existed before his time.

The conditions were now precisely right for the introduction of the Arthurian legends and the Grail into the romantic literature of France. The Norman Court took great delight in the English tales. The French poets were only too glad to find new material which was sure of favour in high places. And their own blood was not averse to the nature of the poetry. The French of the Middle Ages were a wonderfully cosmopolitan people. Near Tours, far to the north of the sunny land of the Troubadour, Charles Martel crushed and scattered the army of the Prophet, and for centuries after that the Saracen trod the valleys of the Midi. Long before that the Greeks had sent settlers into the region, and the old nature-loving Hellenic spirit found its expression and its means of preservation in the folk songs and dances of the people. But the inhabitants of the Midi were, nevertheless, Celts. Matthew Arnold says: "Gaul was Latinised in language, manners, and laws, and yet her people remained essentially Celtic." And so we need not be astonished at finding the Celtic Arthurian legends taking root in the literature of mediæval France. Robert de Borron, a Trouvère, born near Meaux, wrote about 1170 or 1180 the Provençal version of the Grail legend. Chrétien de Troyes, another of the French romanticists, wrote a version of the Grail legend about the same time as Borron.

Of the oldest French versions of the Tristram tale, two are known. M. Gaston Paris and Dr. Golther have put forth in their books on the Tristram legend studies of what is called the minstrel version of the story. The first was made by Beroul in England out of the scattered traditions relating to Tristan. It dates from 1150 and only a fragment of it remains. There was also a very early German version by Eilhart von Oberge, and from this indirectly originated the unsatisfactory version given by Mallory. The other old French one was that of Thomas of Brittany, an Anglo-Norman. This poem was the previously mentioned "Tristam de Leonois," and from it, about 1210, Gottfried of Strassburg, a German, drew the great mediæval Teutonic form of the tale, the direct source of Wagner's work.

The story as told by Gottfried is briefly as follows: Morold, an Irish warrior, brother of Ireland's Queen, holds Cornwall in fear, and demands a tribute to his King and master. Tristan, nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, challenges him to mortal combat. Morold wounds Tristan, and declares that, as his sword was poisoned, only his sister, Queen Isolt of Ireland, can heal the wound. Tristan smites Morold's head off, but a piece of the sword remains in the skull. Tristan's wound will not heal, so in company with his servitor Kurvenal and several other attendants he sails for Ireland to seek aid of Queen Isolt. Morold's body and head are taken back to Ireland. Tristan appears before the Queen disguised as a harper, calling himself Tantris. The Queen, pleased with his music, agrees to heal him if he will teach music to her daughter, also named Isolt. He consents, is healed, and returns to Cornwall. There he sings the praises of the Queen's daughter, the younger Isolt, and offers to return to Ireland and ask for her hand for his uncle, King Mark. He goes, and, on his arrival, finding the land devastated by a dragon, slays the monster and cuts out its tongue. Being overcome by the creature's foul breath, he sinks unconscious, and the Queen's steward, who has heard the sound of the conflict, comes and cuts off the dragon's head to show as evidence that he slew the beast. The steward claims the hand of the Princess, which has been promised to the slayer of the dragon, but the Queen Mother by her magic discovers that another did the deed, and going forth at dawn finds the unconscious Tristan.

It is now decided that the question between Tristan and the steward shall be settled by combat, and the Princess orders Tristan's armour to be made ready. In looking at the sword she discovers the nick in the blade, and finds that the splinter from Morold's head, which has been preserved, fits it. It also dawns upon her that "Tantris" is "Tristan" reversed. She would slay Tristan, but the Queen desires to know what matter of great import brought him again to Ireland. He makes known his mission, and as the Queen professes herself ready to forgive Tristan for killing Morold, her brother, the compact is made. Princess Isolt goes with Tristan. As they depart for Cornwall, the Queen confides to Brangäne, the Princess's kinswoman and companion, a love potion, to be given to King Mark and the Princess on the marriage night that they may ever afterward love each other. The Princess is loath to leave her own people, and she hates Tristan for having slain her Uncle Morold.

On the way to Cornwall a serving-maid, who is asked for a drink for Tristan and Isolt, ignorantly gives them the love potion, and they love one another. The poem narrates many incidents in the course of deceit pursued by the lovers, but they need not be recapitulated here. The King's steward, Majordo, aided by the dwarf, Melot, watches the lovers and informs the King of their infidelity. But with the help of Brangäne's cunning, they several times avoid detection. The King even banishes them from Court, but, finding them asleep in a forest retreat with a naked sword between them, takes them back, though he orders them to remain apart. Finally he surprises them in the garden, and then Tristan is forced to flee from Cornwall. He finds a refuge in Arundel, the land of Duke Jovelin, whose daughter, Isolt of the White Hand, falls in love with him. As he is always singing of his lost Isolt, she thinks that he loves her. He, hearing nothing from the old Isolt, deems himself forgotten, and concludes that it would be as well to marry Isolt of the White Hand.

Gottfried's poem ends here. In the other versions, however, the tale is completed. Tristan does marry the second Isolt. He receives a poisoned wound while aiding a friend to meet clandestinely another man's wife. Knowing that none save his first Isolt can heal the wound, he sends Kurvenal to bring her, telling him that if he succeeds in getting her he must hoist a white sail when entering port on his return, but if he fails he is to hoist a black one. Isolt of the White Hand hears this, and when the ship is sighted bearing a white sail, she tells her husband that it is black, whereupon he turns his face to the wall and dies. Tristan's Isolt arrives to find him dead. She lays herself on the bier beside him and expires. King Mark, having learned the story of the love potion, has the two buried in the same chapel, on opposite sides. A rose tree grows from Tristan's tomb and a vine from Isolt's, and the branches reach across the chapel and intertwine.

II.--Wagner's Dramatic Poem

The falsehood of the second Isolt has greatly annoyed some of the modern writers. Bayard Taylor simply declined to believe that such a thing happened. Matthew Arnold made the second Isolt faithful to her love. She nursed her dying husband tenderly even while waiting for the first Isolt to arrive. But Wagner wisely ignored this part of the legend. We hear nothing of any second Isolt. As is invariably the case, his treatment of the story draws together all the beauties of the original material and moulds them into a compact, consistent whole, instinct with dramatic force and poetic beauty. In attempting to set forth the Wagnerian arrangement of the materials, I find it difficult to proceed coolly and systematically. There is a witchery in this marvellous drama of fatal love that masters my mind. If the reader finds me wanting in the calm of judicial equipoise, let him forgive me, for I am dealing with that which lies next to my heart. As Louis Ehlert says:

"When in the second act Isolde is awaiting her lover, when the orchestra throbs with a thousand pulses and every nerve becomes a sounding tone, I am no longer the man I am through the rest of the year, nor am I artistically and morally a responsible being: I am a Wagnerian."

For the perfect understanding of the story the first act of the drama is the most important. It is also that which the fewest persons closely study. Edward Schuré, in "Le Drame Musicale," says:

"The fundamental idea of the legend is that of the love-philtre, fatal, irresistible, overpowering and uniting two human beings; of love vanquishing everything, honour, family, society, life and death, but which is itself ennobled by its very grandeur and fidelity. For it bears within itself its own punishment as well as its justification, its religion and its world, its hell and its heaven, supreme sorrow and supreme consolation."

While this may be a correct view of the old legend, it is not true of Wagner's drama. In the latter the philtre performs the office of Fate in the ancient Greek tragedy. In the plays of Sophocles and Æschylus mortals fulfil their manifest destinies, but Fate is the secret agency which hurries them forward to their ends. So, in this drama of Wagner's, Tristan and Isolde are the victims of a fatal love before the action begins, and the philtre is only the instrument through which all restraints are removed and the unhappy pair hurled into the vortex of their own passion, helpless victims of cruel Destiny.

Upon the deck of the ship bound for Cornwall Isolde lies silent on her couch. From aloft floats down the song of a sailor, crooning of his absent Irish love. Isolde, starting up, demands to know where she is. Before night, Brangäne tells her, the ship will reach Cornwall. "Nevermore! To-night nor to-morrow," exclaims Isolde, a dread purpose in her mind. And then she bursts into rage, she who has hitherto been silent and even has refused food. Brangäne begs her to free her mind. "Air!" cries Isolde. The curtain is thrown back, showing the stern of the ship and Tristan at the helm. Isolde gazes at him and murmurs:

"To me given; From me riven; Leal and trusted, True and trait-- Death-devoted head! Death-devoted heart!"

In these lines we hear a revelation of Isolde's heart. Tristan was hers; he is not. Both must die. She sends Brangäne to summon him to her presence. He offers excuses. Why? Later he tells Isolde, when she asks him why he has avoided her during the voyage, that it was not meet that he who escorted a bride across seas should go near her. She derides the excuse, knowing its shallowness. The man was afraid of himself. He had once wooed this woman and now in her presence he felt the old fascination. He dared not trust his heart.

Brangäne's persistence arouses the squire Kurvenal, who rebuffs her by singing a popular song about Tristan's victory over Morold. Then Isolde in her rage tells the whole story to Brangäne. She tells how the wounded Tristan, calling himself "Tantris," came to Ireland that she might nurse him when he was suffering from a poisoned wound. She tells how she found the nick in his sword and fitted to it the splinter, taken from the head of Morold, not her uncle, as in the old poem, but her lover--making her wrong a much deeper one. She tells how she stood ready to slay him with that sword, but he fixed his melancholy gaze upon her. "Not on the sword, not on my arm; full to my eyes went his look. His misery pleaded straight to my heart." This look was her undoing, and Wagner made its musical symbol one of the salient themes of his score. Tristan swore truth and thanks eternal, yet no sooner had he returned to Cornwall than he suggested the expedition to Ireland to get Isolde as a bride for King Mark, his uncle. It is this for which Isolde craves vengeance. Tristan, having lightly won her love, would present her as a gift to another. She curses him in her rage, and cries, "Vengeance! Death! Death to the two!" Brangäne vainly strives to soothe her. Staring vacantly into space she murmurs: "Unloved by the noblest of men, must I stand near and see him? How can I endure the anguish?" That is the future she dare not, will not face.

What a vast difference already between the original legend and this wonderful dramatisation of it by Richard Wagner! Brangäne says it is foolish for Isolde to fancy that she can remain unloved. Does she forget her mother's magic art, which has provided her with potions of strange power? No, Isolde has not forgotten. She asks for the casket, and when Brangäne shows her the love potion she brushes it aside and declares that the drink of death is for her. Reader, keep this death thought always in mind. It is the basic underthought of the entire drama. In the first act it appears first in the mind of Isolde. She will renounce life, for there is nothing in it for her but misery. In the second act both she and Tristan feed upon the dream of death; and in the third act death unites them.

At last Tristan and Isolde are face to face. She demands revenge for Morold. Tristan offers his sword and bids her slay him. She refuses on the ground that she cannot go before Mark as the slayer of his favourite knight. She invites Tristan to drink atonement with her. He understands, and is ready with her to seek oblivion. Brangäne, bidden to bring the drink of death, hastily substitutes for it the love potion. She will do anything rather than slay her mistress; she condemns her to live and suffer. The words of Tristan as he stands with the cup in hand ready to drink show that he comprehends the situation. He has discovered that Isolde loves him; he knows that he loves her. He prefers death to a life of renunciation or dishonour. He drinks. She seizes the cup and shares the draught. It was not the drink of death. It was for them the drink of hell. Hurled now by the unrestrained passion within them into one another's arms, the man wonders what dream of honour it was that troubled him but a moment ago, and the woman marvels that she trembled at the thought of shame.

_Tristan._--"Was träumte mir, von Tristan's Ehre?"

_Isolde._--"Was träumte mir von Isolde's Schmach?"

"What dreamed I of Tristan's honour?" "What dreamed I of Isolde's shame?" I have purposely dwelt at length on the incidents and dialogue of this wonderful first act, because they furnish the key to the entire drama, and because so many persons, even professed lovers of Wagner, misconstrue the meaning of the action. The ill-fated pair are lovers before the drama begins, but both are labouring under a misunderstanding. She thinks that he does not love her because he has come to carry her home as a bride for his uncle. He thinks that she is athirst for vengeance for the death of Morold. She desires to die rather than face her future. He is ready to die when he divines the true cause of her rage. Better oblivion than a life of misery. Brangäne's unwillingness to be a party to the suicide of her mistress is the motive for the administration of the potion, which simply bursts the bonds of restraint and shows the two hearts to one another free of all disguise.

The rest is simple. In the second act Isolde awaits her lover in the garden. Brangäne warns her of Melot, but she refuses to accept the warning. Is not Melot Tristan's friend? Put out the torch! That is the signal. The burning woman cannot put out the flame of her own passion, but she can and does turn down the torch. What a portentous signal! The turning down of the spear and the torch from time immemorial have meant that death was present. And so Wagner turns down this torch with the awful music of the death motive. Tristan rushes to her arms. They sing to one another in ecstatic accents and in "wrought riddles of the night and day." The torch was the day; it kept them asunder. Its extinction brought night, the only time when they may be together. And so in ever-ascending polyphonic utterances of metaphor, they arrive at last at a naked truth. For them the day is all separation and lies. Only night eternal, the night of death, can make them free. Isolde sings:

"Dem Licht des Tages wollt' ich entfliehn, dorthin in die Nacht dich mit mir ziehn, wo der Täuschung ende mein Herz mir verhiess, wo des Trug's geahnter Wahn zerinne: dort dir zu trinken ew'ge Minne, mit mir--dich im Verein wollt' ich dem Tode weih'n."

Mr. John P. Jackson makes this read in English thus:

"Day would I flee, Away to the Night Take me with thee To end the deception For me and for thee! Where end should all lies That our hearts could sever, Where together we'd drink Of rapture forever-- And in love united there Death all-everlasting share!"

Tristan responds that he drank eagerly what he thought was the draught of death. Isolde complains that the draught was deceitful, for instead of sweeping them both into night, it left them in the cold glare of day, where was only separation for them. Tristan answers that with honour and fame both destroyed in the glare of day, their hearts can have but one vast yearning, the yearning for night. Then he leads her to the embowered seat, and there they sing together that marvellous duet beginning:

"O sink' hernieder Nacht der Liebe, gieb Vergessen dass ich lebe."

"O sink around us, night of love; grant forgetfulness that I live." From the tower floats down the warning of Brangäne. The lovers heed it not. Wrapped in each other's arms, they prate of odious day and love-giving night, the night of eternity. Then comes the awakening. Mark, led by Melot, surprises them. Tristan murmurs: "Der öde Tag zum letzten Mal" ("The hated day for the last time"). A moment later he raves at Mark and his courtiers as "Daylight's phantoms, morning's dreams." When the King has finished his long and pathetic address, Tristan turns to Isolde and asks her whether she is willing to follow him to the land where the sun never shines, the wondrous abode of night. Well she knows his meaning, and as he hesitated not on the ship, so she hesitates not now. Melot's sword is ready, and Tristan hurls himself upon it. The wound becomes a consecration, a deed of expiation and release. It takes the solemnity of the loftiest tragedy, leaving, a comet-flight below its elevation, the melodramatic wound of the legend whence Wagner drew his materials.

This is the wound that will not heal without the aid of Isolde's art. There is no jarring note in the Wagnerian version, no libertine Tristan aiding another in a rude liaison, no Isolde of the White Hand. There is only the one master passion. There is only one tragedy. In the third act we find the wounded, wasting, visionary man lying under a linden tree in the courtyard of his own castle at Kareol in Brittany, whither the faithful Kurvenal has borne him. A shepherd draws a melancholy wail from his pipe, and, in answer to Kurvenal's anxious question sighs, "Lone and bare is the sea." For these two are watching for the ship which shall bear the healer, Isolde, to the side of the stricken man. Kurvenal whispers words of encouragement to his lord, but Tristan shakes his head. He has awakened once more to the glare of sunlit noon, and once more the old fantasies of day and night rush through his brain.

When will the blazing of the torch cease to keep him sundered from Isolde? When shall it be night for these two? Kurvenal reveals that he has sent a ship to bring Isolde. The thought is new strength to Tristan. He bursts into a delirium of joy. He sees the ship, the flag waving at the mast. "Kurvenal, siehst du es nicht?" ("Kurvenal, seest thou it not?") Kurvenal sees no sail upon the sea. Again the weary man sinks back upon his rude couch. He relives the story of his love. He raves again as he curses the magic draught, which was not the drink of death. He faints, and for the moment Kurvenal thinks him dead. But no, he revives. He asks again if the ship is in sight. Kurvenal says to-day it must surely come. "And on it Isolde!" cries Tristan. Once more the waning spirit mounts a mighty billow of emotion. "Isolde, how holy and fair art thou! Kurvenal, man, art thou blind? Dost thou not see what I see? The ship! The ship! Isolde's ship! Seest thou it not?"

A new tune peals from the shepherd's pipe. The ship is sighted! The flag of good tidings streams from the mast, the flag which means that Isolde is on board. Fly thou, Kurvenal, to the strand to help her. To-day shall the lovers be united. Frenzy for the last time seizes Tristan. Once, wounded and bleeding, well-nigh slain by Morold, Isolde found him and nursed him back to life. Again shall she find him so. Off, then, foolish bandages. Let the red blood flow merrily. Isolde comes! He hears her calling. What is this? "Do I hear the light? The torch! The signal! It is extinguished! To her! To her!"

And so the hero sinks dying in her arms, and for him at last the longed-for night of total oblivion has come. Isolde prostrates herself upon his body. A second ship is sighted, bearing Mark. Kurvenal, misunderstanding the purpose of the King, resists the entrance of his guard and is slain, after himself giving a fatal wound to the false Melot. Mark has learned the secret of the potion. He recognises the truth that the unhappy pair have been the victims of Fate, and he has come to unite them. Alas, too late! The mightiest of monarchs, Death, has come before him. Isolde, her soul spreading its wings for flight, sings out her apostrophe to her dead hero, a marvellous pæan of praise, the echo of the duet of love, and sinks lifeless on his insensate form. Night and eternal oblivion have come for both. The tragedy is over.

That is the marvellous poem which Wagner made of the old story of Godfrey, a poem in itself worthy, despite its rugged diction, to stand beside the best dramatic literature of Germany, and never once to be thought of as an opera libretto. I have briefly noted some of the points at which Wagner has separated himself from the sources of his story. The manner in which he has in all his poems utilised the original suggestions stamps him as a dramatist of the highest rank, a poet of lofty gifts. In none is this more beautifully demonstrated than in "Tristan und Isolde." It is true that in some of the later versions of the old poem, when possibly the early faith in love philtres was fading, the idea exists that Tristan and Isolde loved one another from their first meeting; but, as Miss Weston properly notes, "there is little doubt that the Minstrel held the fatal passion of the two lovers to be due to the Minnetranc alone." The frequent appearance of magic drinks in old legends is familiar to all students of folk-tales and sagas. Wagner himself gives us another instance of it in the drinks administered to Siegfried by Hagen, an idea which he obtained from the old tales. In his "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama" (which I have been forced to parallel in rehearsing some parts of the story of "Tristan und Isolde") H.E. Krehbiel calls attention to the fact that the existence of the love before the incident of the potion provides that element of guilt which all the ancient dramatists required in order that too much sympathy might not be excited by the sufferings of the hero or heroine. On the whole, then, Wagner's treatment of this much-discussed drink is perfectly clear. There is no excuse for misunderstanding it. And it raises the tragic element of the drama far beyond the level of the early poems.

Another element of the classic tragedy preserved in this work is that of the inevitable doom of the unhappy pair. They are victims of Fate from the outset, and Wagner has kept the prophecy of death constantly before our minds by making it appear to the lovers themselves as the only avenue of escape from their misfortunes. Furthermore, this forethought of death develops in the second act into a conviction and a passionate desire. The exclamations "Let me die" ("Lass' mich sterben") of the lovers are not mere bursts of sensual rhapsodising, but are expressions of their souls' yearning for the plunge into oblivion at the moment of perfect ecstasy. For both dread the turning of the light of day upon them; both foresee a future of separation and misery.

The pessimism of this second act is the feature of Wagner's drama which has aroused the largest amount of discussion. Its peculiarly illogical deduction from a turbulent, passionate, soul-consuming love like that of Tristan and Isolde has frequently called forth unfavourable comment. Yet we are bound to admit that in his treatment of this element of his work the master has been dramatically ingenious. In summarising the story I have indicated his poetic treatment of the cessation of the desire for life and the yearning for death. That he has made it poetic is not to be denied, but it is not consistent. If the lovers had sworn renunciation and had suffered from the enforcement of their vow, there would have been consistency in their desire to die. But in the midst of unbridled indulgence in their passion they would have wished to live, unless there had been surfeit and the subsequent moral reaction. But of this we have no hint. The yearning for death, however, is an outcome of Wagner's absorption of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. This writer was a subjective realist and regarded extant phenomena as the products of the will--that is, the world exists because man wishes to think so. The highest ethical destiny of man is the nullification of the will by the practice of an asceticism which shall remove from him all desire for the objects of sense. These, then, being but creations of the will, shall disappear, and the will, the only reality, shall quietly renounce itself and vanish into the infinite. The doctrine is closely allied to that of the Buddhist Nirvana. Wagner's endeavour to reconcile it with the dramatic ideas of "Tristan und Isolde" was not successful. Asceticism and adultery are not companions. But from the Schopenhauerian pessimism he drew the long-continued harping upon night and death, which is considerably more poetical than the thoughts of the philosopher. In the second act the music of the duet breathes all the pulsing and the languors of consuming passion, and the score effectually masks the dramatic ineffectiveness of the dialogue.

Otherwise the second act is a wonderful conception. In no other part of Wagner's writings is his perfect command of his own union of the arts tributary to the drama more beautifully demonstrated. The picture, the action, the music, combine to create a poetic effect upon the mind of the auditor. The dramatic instincts of Wagner led him to centralise in one meeting of the lovers all the long-drawn passion of the old legend. In the drama we have but one meeting, which brings about the catastrophe. And whatever we may think of the undramatic character of the Schopenhauerian pessimism, which, as I have written elsewhere, is dragged into the story by the neck, it affords ground for a poetic dialogue rich in mysticism and not shocking in suggestion of mere fleshly desire. The dwarf Melot of the legend becomes the faithless friend of Tristan in the drama. He is merely a sketch, for his one action is but a piece of mechanism in the movement of the story.

The substitution of a long harangue for a swift blow of the sword has caused the proverbial finger of scorn to be pointed at King Mark, who comes upon the stage in this act to discover his bride in the arms of his knight. But he is certainly a vast improvement on the Mark of the legend, who was constantly hesitating, who even saw the guilty pair asleep in the forest, but refused to believe because the naked sword lay between them. This Mark at least does not suspect and confide in turns, send them away and then take them back. The long speech explains certain points which are the best defence of Mark's "sermonising," as it is often called. It tells us that he wed a second time only because his court and his people demanded it, and because Tristan himself declared that he would leave Cornwall unless the King yielded. The fact that it was a political marriage, and that the King was old and weary and not prone to emotional flashes, may serve to explain why he talks instead of slaying Tristan on the spot. At any rate Wagner's conception of the voluntary release of the embrace of life by the guilty lovers is carried out, for when Mark does not cut him down, Tristan throws himself upon Melot's sword.

Miss Weston, who makes much of the authority of the old legends and of resemblances in the folk-lore or mythology of antiquity, regrets that the death of Tristan in the third act is less touching than in the legend, where, deceived by Isolde of the White Hand and believing himself forsaken by his own Isolde, he silently turns his face to the wall and breathes out his life with the name of the loved one on his lips. And she furthermore repeats the criticism of Gaston Paris that the final speech of Isolde contains more philosophy than poetry, a weak criticism as one reading of the text will show. Mr. Krehbiel more aptly notes that the elimination of the second Isolde removes from the character of Tristan a stain which was placed upon it by his loveless second marriage, and saves us the shock of seeing the wife and the mistress in contest about his dying couch. Furthermore, the musical treatment of the act is to my mind the most convincing piece of dramatic writing in the literature of the lyric stage. I say this without forgetting the wonders of the first and second acts. There are certain similarities in the musical plans of the three acts. Each begins with a passage intended to create an atmosphere: the first, with the sailor's song floating down from aloft; the second, with the music of the hunt dying away under the black arches of the forest; and the third with the shepherd's pipe wailing the heart-wrecking song of the empty sea. Nothing in the lyric drama excels the potency of the combined scene, action, text, and music at the opening of the second act except the astonishing effect of the preliminary measures of the third.

And then follows a succession of those emotional waves, mounting in foaming crests of tone and sinking in throbbing refluxes, which no other composer ever wrote as Wagner did. Tristan's fevered mind, yearning for the ship, waxes and wanes in crescendi and diminuendi of passion till the suffering and sympathising spectator fancies that his nature will endure no more. And then at the apex of one of the awful upward flights of delirium comes that tremendous climax made by the changing of the melody of the shepherd's pipe. The ship is sighted. Now comes a period of vehement action, ending with the frenzied man's tearing off the bandage, and sinking into Isolde's arms to breathe out his life. Another burst of action follows this crisis, and then the stillness of death itself prevails while the musical finale of the work, the wonderful "Liebestod," falls upon the audience "like the sound of a great Amen." There is nothing in the old legend to suggest the astounding effects which Wagner has heaped up in this last act. It is all the inspiration of a master genius working without trammels in a field created by its own powers.

III.--The Musical Exposition

Let us turn now to a brief examination of the musical structure of "Tristan und Isolde." It is not practicable to make this examination exhaustive, nor would it be profitable. For those who desire to detect each motive of the score as it passes them in the general panorama of tone there are many handbooks. The present writer does not believe that the dramatic influence of Wagner's music upon the auditor is dependent on the latter's full acquaintance with the terminology of the significant themes. That a certain intellectual pleasure is added to the hearing of one of these dramas by a recognition of the identity of the motives is not to be denied, and that their dramatic purport should always be clear to the hearer's mind is beyond dispute; but it should never be the purpose of an auditor to concentrate his attention on the themes. Learn their meaning from the text. Then let them alone, and they will do their work.

In "Tristan und Isolde" we come upon the Wagnerian system worked out to its end. Indeed, the composer went even further. In a letter to Francis Villot in Paris in 1860, afterward published under the title of "Music of the Future," the poet-composer said of "Tristan und Isolde":

"Upon that work I consent to your making the severest claims deducible from my theoretic premises; not because I formed it on my system, for every theory was clean forgotten by me; but since here I moved with fullest freedom and the most utter disregard of every theoretic scruple, to such an extent that during the working out I myself was aware how far I had outstripped my system."

The composer sought in this drama to free himself from all the restrictions of historical detail, and to centralise the music upon the expression of the emotions of his personage, to make the play of emotions, and not the succession of incidents, the real material of the drama. This had always been his ideal of the lyric drama, but he had not been certain of its practicability. In the letter just quoted he says on this point:

"All doubt at last was taken from me when I gave myself up to the 'Tristan.' Here, in perfect trustfulness, I plunged into the inner depths of soul events, and from out this inmost centre of the world I fearlessly built up its outer form. A glance at the volumen of this poem will show you at once that the exhaustive detail work, which a historical poet is obliged to devote to clearing up the outward bearings of his plot, to the detriment of a lucid exposition of its inner motives, I now trusted myself to apply to these latter alone. Life and death, the whole import and existence of the outer world, here hang on nothing but the inner movements of the soul. The whole affecting action comes about for reason only that the inmost soul demands it and steps to light with the very shape foretokened in the inner shrine."

In beginning the work, he wrote the text without any thought of operatic style. The reader will note that it is written in a freely formed rhymed verse, the rhythms being few, but elastic, and of such a nature that the poetry suggests the form of the melody without hampering the composer. This result could have been achieved only by the procreation of both verse and music by one mind. The organic union of text and tone was conceived in Wagner's brain before pen touched paper. In reference to this he says in the "Music of the Future":

"Whereas the verses were there [in the Italian opera] intended to be stretched to the length demanded by that melody through countless repetitions of words and phrases, in the musical setting of 'Tristan' not a trace of word repetition is any longer found, but the weft of words and verses foreordains the whole dimensions of the melody, _i.e._, the structure of that melody is already erected by the poet."

At a first glance this seems to be a contradiction of Wagner's theory that the poem should not impose its form on the music. But we must bear in mind that this poetry was prepared with the avoidance of text domination in the poet's mind. Wagner wrote to Villot that he found that his melody and its form were wholly freed from the old shackles. He composed with the utmost liberty.

Before noting a few of the most significant phrases of this score, which is a shimmering web of leading motives, let us take a glance at the general plan. Here is a work constructed upon a model diametrically opposed to the familiar one of Meyerbeer, the one regnant in Europe at the date of "Tristan und Isolde's" production. Meyerbeer built entirely for the succession of incidents, musical and pictorial. The dramatic idea had to conform itself to this scheme. Wagner built wholly on the ground of the thought and feelings of his personages, and the action and the music had to place themselves as explicators wholly at the service of these inner governors. Yet we shall find that each act of the drama has a clear and symmetrical musical shape, and that although this form is prescribed by the emotional movement, it is none the less grounded upon the fundamental laws of musical form.

Each of the three acts begins with a musical mood picture, in which the elements of external description and inner feeling are skilfully combined. The first act opens with the quaint, peaceful song of the sailor, which suggests a calm sea and a pleasant voyage. The second begins with the hunting music dying away in the forest, music which establishes a nature mood, a mood of moonlight and rustling leaves. The third is ushered in with the music of the empty sea, a descriptive lament whose profound melancholy is not equalled in any other score. Starting from each of these pictures, Wagner develops an act. The sailor's song in Act I. is followed by a sudden interruption of the peaceful mood. Isolde's passion begins to play. It bursts into tumult. The curtain is thrown back, and to accompany the motionless picture of Tristan at the helm, the sailor's song is repeated. Again the music gradually rises in emotional force, till another climax is reached, when Kurvenal trolls his ditty and the insulted Isolde has the curtain closed. Another point of repose, and again with Isolde's passion the music rises, but sinks to languorous yearning as she tells of the glance that won her soul. The wave mounts again as she curses Tristan and cries for vengeance. The music sinks into impressive depths as Isolde proclaims her purpose to administer the drink of death, and here Wagner relieves the strain and makes a sharp contrast by introducing the cries of the seamen outside. Then follow Kurvenal's boisterous entrance, and at length the entrance of Tristan, which is heralded by an orchestral passage voicing the heroism and the fate of the hero, a passage of extraordinary power. The scene between Tristan and Isolde begins reposefully and rises to a climax of passion at the taking of the drink. Then comes a moment of expectancy, followed by an upheaval, and then each utters the other's name in a phrase of deepest yearning. The sailor's music again affords the necessary relief, and the act comes to an end in a turmoil of tone.

The musical scheme of the second act is simpler because the emotions are less complex. After the opening mood picture, Isolde has a brief scene of contest with Brangäne, and at the extinction of the torch the musical wave, which has been growing, curls and breaks. The next one starts with Isolde's waving her scarf. Now we have a rapid, agitated movement, depicting the wild haste of Tristan, the eagerness of Isolde. The lover enters and this movement becomes tumultuous. When its climax is reached the necessary point of repose is made as Tristan leads Isolde to the seat. We have had an allegro agitato; now follows an adagio appassionata, the love duet. Its long-drawn, melting measures are broken once by the watch-cry of Brangäne--so composed that it does not interrupt, but intensifies the mood--and at last the rude interruption of Kurvenal. The contrast here is short and sharp. The dramatic situation is enough. Then follows another slow movement,--the coda of the adagio,--Mark's speech, Tristan's answer, his appeal to Isolde, her answer. With the few crashing measures of Melot and of Tristan's self-impalement, the musical scheme is completed. Its form is perfect; its organic union with the mood scheme of the act complete.

The musical plan of the third act has again more detail, because the story is more incidental. With the melancholy music of the empty sea as a starting-point, Wagner develops a long adagio, whose wave-crests are the summits of Tristan's delirious outbursts. This adagio ends when the shepherd's pipe proclaims the sighting of the sail. Then enters the allegro agitato of the act, the wild rhapsody of Tristan, the tearing off of the bandages, and the death of the hero. With Isolde's mourning over the body we get a point of repose and contrast. The shepherd announces a second ship. Descriptive music of rapid movement follows, till the fight is interrupted by Mark's entrance, and the final slow movement is begun. This movement comes to its majestic climax with the "Liebestod," and with a few bars of finale by the orchestra the work ends, like Tschaikowsky's sixth symphony, with its adagio lamentoso.

The drama is prefaced by a prelude, in which some of the most significant themes of the work appear. The thought underlying the prelude is the insatiable desire of the lovers, ever rising higher and higher in emotional waves till it sinks exhausted in its vain endeavour to find its own satisfaction. Several themes are combined in the musical structure of the Vorspiel, but the most important are those of Love and the Glance of Tristan; the glance which, Isolde tells Brangäne, stayed her hand when she had discovered that Tristan was the slayer of Morold and had lifted the sword to slay him.

[Music: LOVE.]

[Music: THE GLANCE.]

These two marvellously expressive themes are heard frequently throughout the drama. The sailor's song, with which the first act begins, contains the melody of the sea music, heard several times in the course of the act.

[Music: THE SEA.]

This theme belongs to what Mr. Krehbiel has well described as the music of the scene, or scenic music. It deals with the externals of the drama, not with its emotions. The next significant motive to appear is that of Death, which is first heard when Isolde exclaims, "Death-devoted head! Death-devoted heart!"

[Music: DEATH.]

Closely associated with this in meaning is the Fate motive, which is first heard in the harmonic scheme of the prelude.

[Music: FATE.]

We have now before us nearly all the significant thematic material of the first act. Most of the other melodic features are freely composed and do not figure in the subsequent episodes. The repetitions of the motives quoted will explain themselves to the most casual observer. The re-entrances of the Death and Fate motives are unmistakable in purport, while the reappearance of the Love and Glance themes after the drinking of the potion brings back the opening of the prelude with its story of desire insatiable, love immeasurable.

The play upon the contrasting fancies of night and day, which forms the figurative material of the lovers' dialogue in the second act, suggests new thematic devices, and so the act opens with the proclamation by the orchestra of the Day theme.

[Music: DAY.]

Derived from this is the beautiful motive of the Night, which appears in Tristan's long speech dealing with the fanciful contrast of the two. When he says, "Was dort in keuscher Nacht dunkel verschlossen wacht?" ("What watches yonder darkly concealed in chaste Night?") the theme sings softly in the orchestral accompaniment:

[Music: NIGHT.]

This luscious, languorous theme plays an important part throughout the act. The hearer will note how beautifully it serves as the introduction to the cantabile of the duo, "O sink' hernieder," and how effectively the composer has made the day and night variations of the one fundamental musical idea carry out the thought of the dialogue. Another theme which appears in the introductory music of the second act is that of the Triumph of Love:

[Music: TRIUMPH OF LOVE.]

From a development of this theme, by the simple musical device of augmentation, Wagner constructs the climax of the duo, which becomes again the climax of the last speech of Isolde over the dead body of Tristan:

[Music]

Another significant motive heard in the opening measures of the act is the Love Call, which is afterward employed frequently in the

## action:

[Music: LOVE CALL.]

These are the principal and most significant new motives which appear in the love music of this wonderful act. Of course, some of the themes heard in the first act are employed here again, and nothing in the entire score is more charged with meaning than the combination of the motive of the Triumph of Love with the harmonies of that of Death at the instant of Isolde's extinction of the torch. Such feats of musical depiction the attentive listener will find on every page of the score, yet the actual number of motives to which special meanings have been attached is not large enough to tax the memory. The appearance of King Mark in the action is noted by two motives, one used to indicate his personality and the other his grief:

[Music: MARK.]

[Music: MARK'S GRIEF.]

The third act opens with music descriptive of bitter grief and loneliness. The first phrase, that of grief, is a remarkable thematic development of the second half of the Love motive:

[Music: GRIEF.]

The ensuing long ascending passage expresses loneliness most eloquently. This is interrupted by a new motive, heard frequently in this act, the motive of Anguish:

[Music: ANGUISH.]

The melody played by the shepherd's pipe has received various titles, but it speaks its own language of melancholy. The music allotted to Kurvenal in the opening scene of the act is similar in character to that which he sings in Act I., and at one place is a repetition of it. In the long speeches of Tristan we hear repeated with powerful dramatic significance the motives of Day and Night, the Love theme, the Death theme, the motive of Anguish, and snatches of the love duo of Act II. The musical material of the entire act is now woven of what has already been heard. The motives melt and flow in a stream of marvellous melody, till at the end Isolde proclaims her hero's greatness in the "Liebestod," which is a repetition, with some developments, of Tristan's "So stürben wir um ungetrennt, ewig einig ohne End'," and the motive of the Triumph of Love:

[Music:

So stürben wir um ungetrennt, Ewig, einig ohne End'.

So die that we together blend, Living, loving, without end.]

There are other motives in this stupendous score, but, as I have already intimated, it would be idle for the music-lover to burden his memory with them. Many of them are thematic developments of phrases first heard in the germinal form, and it is in the overwhelming eloquence of these developments that the power of the score is largely to be found. With the themes already given the lover of the true lyric drama should readily understand the purposes of the composer. For the rest, the perfect organic union of text, tone, and

## action in "Tristan und Isolde" makes it the most directly expressive

of all the later dramas. Only those who go to hear it with the conception of an old-fashioned opera in their minds fail to receive its message. "Tristan und Isolde" is a drama of human emotions uttered in tones. As such it must be conceded a place among the mightiest conceptions of the poetic brain.

DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG

Opera in Three Acts.

First performed at the Royal Court Theatre, Munich, June 21, 1868.

_Original Cast._

Hans Sachs Betz. Veit Pogner Bausewein. Kunz Vogelgesang Heinrich. Conrad Nachtigall Sigl. Sixtus Beckmesser Hölzel Fritz Kothner Fischer. Balthazar Zorn Weixlstorfer. Ulrich Eislinger Hoppe. Augustin Moser Pöppl. Hermann Ortel Thoms. Hans Schwartz Graffer. Hans Foltz Hayn. Walther von Stolzing Nachbaur. David Schlosser. Eva Fräulein Mallinger. Magdalene Frau Diez. Ein Nachtwächter Lang.

Weimar, Mannheim, Carlsruhe, Dresden, Dessau, 1869; Berlin, Hanover, Vienna, Leipsic, Stettin, Königsberg, 1870; Hamburg, Prague, Bremen, 1871; Riga, Copenhagen, 1872; Mayence, 1873; Cologne, Nuremberg, Breslau, 1874; Brunswick, 1876; Strassburg, Augsburg, 1877; Gratz, Düsseldorf, 1878; Wiesbaden, Rotterdam, Darmstadt, 1879; Schwerin, 1881; London, May 30, 1882.

First performed in America at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, Jan. 4, 1886.

_Cast._

Hans Sachs Emil Fischer. Veit Pogner Joseph Staudigl. Kunz Vogelgesang Herr Dworsky. Conrad Nachtigall Emil Saenger. Sixtus Beckmesser Otto Kemlitz. Fritz Kothner Herr Lehmler. Balthasar Zorn Herr Hoppe. Ulrich Eislinger Herr Klaus. Augustin Moser Herr Langer. Hermann Ortel Herr Doerfler. Hans Schwartz Herr Eissbeck. Hans Foltz Herr Anlauf. Walther von Stolzing Albert Stritt. David Herr Krämer. Eva Auguste Krauss (Mrs. Seidl). Magdalena Marianne Brandt. Nachtwächter Carl Kauffmann.

Conductor, Anton Seidl.

DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG

"Tannhäuser" was finished in April, 1844, and in the summer of that year, while at Marienbad, Wagner made the sketch of "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg." He designed this comic opera as a pendant to the serious "Tannhäuser" (see