We Need to Talk about Richard : Wilhelm Richard Wagner
Ron Payne (31st October, 2020)
“It is impossible for a biography of Wagner to tell us anything about his music, but the story of Wagner’s life is absolutely fascinating and it would be so even if he had never written a note.” — W.H. Auden
Part 1: The Early YearsI have been thinking about Richard Wagner, both the man and his music, on and off since John Simkin posted his Giacomo Puccini selection some time ago. The need to say something was strengthened by the posts on film music, for some regard Wagner as its father. (Adorno even spoke of the birth of film out of Wagner’s music).
Puccini supported Benito Mussolini and was a favoured composer of the Fascist regime. Wagner was a favoured composer of the Nazis and, although he was safely dead before Adolf Hitler was born, was a notorious anti-Semite. Puccini was very good at making money; Wagner was much better at spending it - mostly other people’s.
Like Puccini Wagner largely confined himself musically to writing operas. But Wagner also poured out huge amounts of prose, wrote copious letters - he was a virtuoso at cadging money - and a lengthy and dubious autobiography. He talked incessantly both formally and informally (he had the habit of reading his works to his friends). He was a political revolutionary and a wanted man, living in exile in Switzerland. He changed the art of conducting and of theatrical production and influenced a whole generation of musicians and poets, novelists and even painters (French classmates Émile Zola and Paul Cézanne were both Wagnerites).
Behind the music – or better musical theatre - is an extraordinary life. Simon Callow, in Being Wagner-The Triumph of the Will described how before exploring that life he "knew remarkably little about the man, his vast intellectual scope, his rascally sex life, his revolutionary politics, his heroic struggle to create Bayreuth. In particular, I knew nothing about his quite extraordinary personality. I determined to put what I had discovered into the one-man show I was evolving, with the result that the text I read out on the first day of rehearsals lasted four hours. People came and went, had lunch, returned, and came back to find me still droning on. I couldn’t bear to leave anything out."
Eventually, with light, images, props and music Callow was able to get "Inside Wagner’s Head" down to 1½ hours. Tony Palmer was more indulgent; his film Wagner with Richard Burton in the title role, lasted 7 hours 46 minutes. It sought to humanise Wagner but Wagner clearly gained the upper hand.
I shall try to take both examples as a warning. I shall probably fail. Wagner was a small man, both physically and in some of his attitudes, but he is a big subject. One source mentioned that more had been written about Wagner than anyone other than Jesus Christ. Perhaps then it is as great an omission to know nothing about Wagner’s life and works as it is to be ignorant of William Shakespeare and the Bible (and perhaps the complete works of Wagner should be added as a freebie on that well known desert island)?
Wagner is now known for his 10 mature operas stating with the Flying Dutchman. I shall deal with those in part 2, along with the rest of his life, loves and questionable attitudes to almost everything. His apprentice works are not neglected masterpieces; they are interesting curiosities. I have given links at the appropriate places but have added the leaven of more accomplished pieces by his predecessors and contemporaries.
A Star is bornWilhelm Richard Wagner was born in 1813 in the Jewish quarter of Leipzig. His father, at least the one he cared to acknowledge, was Carl Friedrich Wagner, a clerk in the police service. His mother Johanna was a former mistress of Prince Constantin of Saxe-Weimar Eisenach. Papa Carl took a keen interest in the theatre, or at least in the actresses, and would often "arrive home late from the office". It is quite possible that while Carl Friedrich was paying his court in the Green Room Johanna was consoling herself with their lodger, the actor and painter Ludwig Geyer. Shortly after he was born his mother took him on the 100 mile journey from Leipzig to Teplitz, where Geyer was with an acting troupe; the Napoleonic wars were raging around them and this journey was through enemy territory, so the motivation may have been to show Geyer his child.
In November 1813 Carl died of typhus. Geyer married Johanna - supposedly - in August 1814 and she gave birth to Wagner’s sister Cäcilie in January 1815.Geyer was the only father Richard knew. Wagner must have suspected that he was his real father and, as Geyer is feasibly a Jewish name, that he might be half Jewish.
Geyer and his new family moved to Dresden where he was attached to the Royal Theatre. Young Richard had the run of the theatre and his home was often full of actors, and musicians, including composer Carl Maria von Weber, who was also attached to the theatre. Was destiny driving him towards musical theatre? It might seem so; his brother Albert became an opera singer and stage director, sisters Rosalie and Luise actresses, and Klara also an opera singer. Yet his parents were not sure what he might be good at.
At 9 years ‘Richard Geyer’ entered the Dresden Kreutschule. He was no Wunderkind; he was at the bottom of the lowest class and the only hope was that he might eventually learn to work at something; anything. Geyer wanted to make something of him and discouraged any theatrical ambitions. His parents were not convinced either of his musical ability. Richard had piano lessons but gave up as soon a he could bash out some of Weber’s music.
At some point he learnt acrobatics; he could still stand on his head in his 60s and occasionally hung feet-first from balconies. He had no known leanings towards the circus.
Geyer suddenly died at the age of 42 and his widow had to make do as best she could, taking in lodgers and relying on the income of her older children. Wagner was 11.
Apprentice YearsAt 12 he was now at school as ‘Richard Wagner’. That year a fellow pupil keeled over and died and Wagner’s commemorative poem was considered the best. His delighted mother thought he might have a future as a poet.
The plan however was that he would be supported by his family until he could go to university. He was left at Dresden when his family moved first to Prague and then to Leipzig. He was not generally a good pupil - "When I got to Leipzig, I quite gave up my studies and regular school attendance" - but he could apply himself when, and only when, he wished.
In 1827 he visited his uncle Adolf in Leipzig , found an excuse to leave the school in Dresden and enrolled at another in his home town. He soon neglected his studies in favour of writing, to much family disapproval, a lurid tragedy called Leubald, involving ghosts, insanity and multiple murders. (Wagner said later that the dead numbered 42 at the end, but he exaggerated for effect, it was only 12). This was no doubt a perfect opera plot and his next scheme was to set it to music in the style of Ludwig van Beethoven. That is an interesting choice of model as Beethoven was not particularly good at writing for the voice and only wrote one Opera; Fidelio, originally called Leonora, which captivated Wagner.
Fidelio was a ‘rescue opera’ – a style of French opera from the period of the Revolution - with a contemporary setting. Beethoven’s plot was based on an actual event in France during the terror. In it a woman disguises herself as a man to enter a gaol and rescue her husband, who is a political prisoner. The gaoler’s daughter of course falls in love with the disguised wife, to produce the love conflict. Beethoven was more at home writing for the orchestra but he had four goes at writing the introductory music, the Overture. This is the third:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOIlQkANUxQ
It is a musical drama in itself, with contrasting themes of adversity and hope, the dramatic trumpet call which signals liberation and the celebration of love and freedom at the end. Beethoven thought it too heavy to lead into the light domestic scene in the gaoler’s private quarters and had yet another go.
Later on the prisoners get a rare release for light and exercise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdB0roPqg7Q
These are the contrasting elements, orchestral, dramatic and vocal, that Wagner sought to fuse in his later works.
First he had to learn more about music.
In later life Wagner liked to present himself as being largely self-taught. This was not true but he did borrow a music text book from a library run by Friedrich Wieck, whose daughter Clara Wieck was later to marry Robert Schumann. This led to his first major financial embarrassment. Finding that he could not master the necessary techniques in weeks, or even months, he ran up large fines and at the age of 16 was being pursued for the first time for debt, which his family had to cover. The pattern of his life was set.
Around this time he developed a crush on Leah David, the daughter of a Jewish banker. It came to nothing; how different his life would been with a rich Jewish father-in-law.
He persuaded his family to allow him to pursue a musical training on the promise that he would knuckle down to his other studies. He took harmony lessons for three years and had a brief brush with the violin. At 16 he wrote some piano and chamber pieces, all now lost. At 17 - the age when he left or was thrown out of school - he wrote some since lost orchestral pieces and had one of them performed. To get inside Beethoven’s 9th Symphony – then largely considered unplayable - he first laboriously copied it then wrote a piano transcription which he tried twice to sell to the music publisher Schott. He eventually settled for some free music scores in exchange.
Wagner also threw himself into the life of a student, including duelling and gambling. He knew nothing about fencing but at one point had five duels lined up. Of the five, two had to flee their creditors, one had his artery severed in another duel, one was beaten up so badly in a brothel that he could not make the field and the last and most deadly was fatally run through before Wagner’s turn came. He saw gambling as a means of settling his debts; he soon discovered that it was not easy to win but became obsessed. One day he had a cheque for his mother’s pension in his pocket. He staked the lot, intending to flee the country for ever if he lost. He won, kept on winning and broke the bank. His mother, quite reasonably, fainted at the good news.
He had blagged his way into into Leipzig University to study music by going straight to the Chancellor. He sometimes attended lectures, but he got most out of 6 months study with Theodor Weinlig, cantor at St.Thomas’s Church – the post once held by Johann Sebastian Bach. Weinlig taught him counterpoint and harmony by making him take a piece of music, analyse how it worked and get down to some exercises to put what he had learnt into effect. After 6 months Weilig said that he had no more to teach him, waived his fee and persuaded a music publisher to publish a couple of Wagner’s works. He was now 18.
‘I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven’Wagner heard Wilhelmine Schröder-Devriant, a vocally wayward but thrilling soprano - a sort of Maria Callas - sing in an opera. Forty years later he said that nothing had ever made a stronger impression on him. He wrote her a passionate letter explaining how once he heard her he knew his vocation was to write opera. But in fact much of his production suggested that he still wanted to be the next Beethoven. At 19 he wrote a symphony, quite audibly a mixture of Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, and Felix Mendelssohn, and had it performed. He gifted the manuscript score to Mendelssohn, perhaps hoping that he would perform it. Mendelssohn lost it-a black mark that would be held against him. The separate instrumental parts were discovered many years later in a trunk left behind when he fled his creditors, and the symphony was reconstructed. If you want to dip in here it is, in a nippy performance by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Neeme Järvi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0d-yI3fMVc
It has never entered the repertoire.
In the same year he visited a Count Pachta on his estate near Prague, where became infatuated with his daughter Jenny. Jenny did not feel the same way and she and her sister teased him by flirting with their aristocratic admirers. He concluded that she was not worthy of his love. By coincidence or not he conceived the plot for a gory opera The Wedding: "A demented lover climbs to the bedroom window of his friend’s bride who is waiting for her husband. She wrestles with the maniac and flings him to the courtyard below where he is dashed to pieces. At the funeral the bride expires with a shriek on his corpse… my sister disliked the work, I destroyed it without trace".
The FairiesThe next year Richard joined his brother Albert in Würtzburg as chorus master at the theatre. One task was to rehearse Marschner’s Der Vampyr, and he was already familiar with Weber’s fairy Oberon and the like. Weber’s ‘Ruler of the Spirits’, to gives a fair example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgeaZc4f2O4
So in his spare time he wrote the text and music of a German romantic opera in the contemporary supernatural manner. In Wagner’s Die Feen (The Fairies) a half-fairy wishes to marry a mortal, with the usual complications -see Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe. With Wagner though, apart from one comic duet, it was all rather serious. He couldn’t get it put on. It was not performed until 1888, after Wagner’s death, and has only received a handful of revivals since. Here are the overture and opening chorus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzZOHstLsx4
So you are hearing music that Wagner never heard himself; perhaps he would have concluded that the Overture went on a bit too long, but I doubt it.
If you really want fairies, though, follow Mendelssohn, this is the way to do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHTV3GFyHfM
Love is in the AirSo then much for German opera! Perhaps he should try one in the Italian style, after the manner of Vincenzo Bellini? Wagner was very keen on Bellini’s Norma, which offered this kind of long breathed melody:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FgjkXt2NpM
Bellini could also let himself go like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOB_xXAhFgw
So, should Wagner write something serious, or comic? Or somewhere in between? On a holiday in 1834 he conceived Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love) based on Measure for Measure, not one of Shakespeare’s cheeriest comedies, with the action transposed to Sicily. It was a protest in favour of free love. His life was about to go, with misgivings, in the opposite direction.
Appointment in MagdeburgWagner had returned from his holiday to discover that he had been appointed as musical director of a touring theatrical company based in Magdeburg. He joined it at a run down spa town, took one look at the seedy surroundings and the equally seedy company and decided to refuse the post. Wagner then caught one sight of the leading actress, Minna Planer, and decided to stay after all. That Sunday he conducted a performance of Don Giovanni despite the orchestra’s refusal to rehearse on Saturday, with some success.
Hands off Poland!At Magdeburg he acquired a reputation as a competent conductor and continued to turn out orchestral works of his own, all rather heavy handed. An Overture Columbus was followed by Polonia, based on patriotic Polish songs, including the future Polish national anthem. He managed to make 5 minutes worth of material into a 12 minute piece:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ9S_BT6QBk
It was his tribute to Polish refugees from Tsarist persecution. It was probably not among Hitler’s favourites.
Rule Britannia!With the Overture Rule Britannia, Wagner tried to tap into the London market; it was sent to the Philharmonic Society and returned unwanted. Wagner could not afford to pay the postage so back it went to London, where it stayed. Barry Millington, in The Master Musicians: Wagner managed to find something positive to say about Polonia "the piece has great vitality, veering between feverish agitation and melancholy" but of Rule Britannia could only say that it is heavily orchestrated. Those who wish may judge for themselves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUUfG4QalC8
If you find yourself wanting to do something else after a couple of minutes it is quite understandable.
After Poland and Britain might have come France; Wagner planned make a trilogy with a Napoleon Overture, which came to nothing - but then Beethoven had already done it. Germany apparently didn’t inspire him at all.
FaustWagner’s last youthful attempt at a purely orchestral piece came in 1840, when he wrote A Faust Overture, this time with a proper German subject. It was intended to be ‘A Faust Symphony’ but stalled at the first movement. It is definitely and improvement on what had gone before, because Wagner is finding his own voice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrxGCsL5-RM
The Ban on LoveBut we are ahead of ourselves. After two years, in 1836, The Ban on Love was ready and Wagner hoped that a benefit performance would pay off his creditors. The day came and he looked through the curtain and found the audience consisted of three; a Jewish money-lender who had befriended Wagner, the money-lender’s wife, and a Polish Jew in full regalia. Also looking through the curtain was Herr Pollert, the husband of the prima donna.
Perceiving that he could do no harm to the takings Pollert decided to vent his jealousy on the second tenor, who was badly injured and retired to the dressing room. He then stuck his wife, who went into hysterics, and the entire cast began to take sides. The performance was cancelled ‘owing to unforeseen circumstances’ and the company soon collapsed into insolvency. Wagner too found a summons nailed to his door. Exit Richard Wagner, stage left, pursued by creditors.
Wagner’s ‘youthful indiscretion’ evidently as some life in it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzBCrJddvWQ
The Joys of Married LifeMinna got a contract at a theatre in Königsberg, in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad) and Wagner followed her there. They finally decided to get married, on 24 November 1836. On the way to the church they rowed furiously, then burst into giggles. The Pastor solemnly told them that they had a secret friend and Wagner’s ears pricked up, he thought this was news of unknown benefactor. He was disappointed to learn that the secret friend was Jesus. The day before the wedding he had had to appear in court to answer his Magdeburg creditors and of course he had run up new debts in Königsberg.
Minna came with a ‘younger sister’, Natalie, who was actually her daughter from a teenage seduction; she would have no children with Wagner. Natalie recorded that Wagner was soon bullying Minna (verbally; he detested physical violence against people or animals).
On 1 April 1837 Wagner finally got his appointment at the theatre. Perhaps the date was appropriate as it was on the verge of bankruptcy and had to ask employees to work for nothing for a period. Minna then left him in favour of a merchant called Dietrich and he pursued her in a rage. In the absence of ready money he took along the silver wedding gifts as payment for a fast coach and had to return on a slow coach when their worth was exhausted.
Wagner tracked her down to her family in Dresden; she had not completed the journey with Dietrich. She returned but soon was off again; this time she went all the way with Dietrich.
Wagner had been offered a coveted engagement at the opera house in Riga-geographically Latvian, culturally German and politically within the Russian Empire. He proved himself a very effective conductor in a range of works-especially those of Beethoven- and had conceived his next project. If he had failed in writing in the German and Italian styles he would now try his hand at the French mode, Grand Opera. This sort of thing, from Meyerbeer’s Les Hugenots, where the hero overhears the Catholics plot to massacre the Protestants gathered in Paris:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiViGadXnCE
Apparently its composer, Meyerbeer, was making huge profits from it in Paris. Wagner would try to get his effort too put on in Germany or Paris - it would be too big a project for a provincial opera house-and make his name and fortune.
He needed something political-cum-historic, then, with some conflicted love interest and plenty of scope for spectacle. He had read Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s turgid best-selling novel Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes in translation and had his subject. Rienzi is the story of a man who is swept to power on the strength of his promise to make Rome a great city once again. The streets will be made safe as nobles and plebeians will be subject to the same law. His fortunes suffer a reverse as there are rumours of secret deals with the nobles, complaints about the pomp and splendour of his life style and discontent about the taxes needed to pay for the protection of the citizenry. Rienzi’s daughter and the son of the chief villain are in love. The mob finally sets fire to the Capitol and all three perish. He began to work on turning it into a libretto - almost uniquely, being a poet, dramatist and thinker as well as a composer, he always wrote his own - and set it to music.
Minna had rejoined him, now with her genuine sister, Amelie. He also took in a wolf and tried to tame it. A Russian officer soon took notice of Amelie, and Minna did not approve. The two sisters then spent a year in the same house without speaking one word to each other. Although Wagner had done well the theatre manager Holtai did not like him and his contract was not renewed. He did like Minna, though, and made advances towards her. By this time Wagner’s old creditors were catching up with him and demanding justice. And of course he had run up new debts in Riga.
This time they had thought to have his passport confiscated. A friend came up with a plan: they would make an illicit crossing into Prussia from where they could stow away in a ship. After that Wagner could then try his luck in Paris, the centre of the operatic world, where, free of provincial restrictions, he would no doubt have the success he deserved. Wagner, Minna and their dog Robber were taken to the border by coach and led to a smugglers’ den. The border ditch watched by armed Cossacks. In the few minutes when the watch was being relieved they sped down the hill, over the ditch and out of range of the guards. What if the dog had barked?
On the Prussian side they were taken by farm cart across bumpy country roads to avoid Königsberg. At one point they were tipped out in a farmyard. Wagner’s dignity was injured when he fell into a large pile of manure. Minna suffered worse; according to her, her fall brought on a miscarriage and she could never again bear children. At the port they furtively boarded a small merchant vessel called the Thetis, hauled up the dog and hid below deck. They were bound first for London. The ship made little progress for a week because of extreme calm and was then hit by a violent storm, forcing it to take refuge in a Norwegian fjord, where they went ashore at a small fishing village. This all made a profound impression on Wagner and provided material for later use (see The Flying Dutchman).
Down and Out in London and ParisThere were a few more storms before they set foot in London. Wagner tried to revive interest in Rule Britannia and meet Bulwer-Lytton at the Houses of Parliament to discuss his proposed dramatisation of Rienzi, both without success. Both his targets happened to be away. (Would it have occurred to Wagner that Bulwer-Lytton might not wish to meet an unknown, penniless, German to discuss turning his novel into an opera? Almost certainly not.)
The Wagners crossed the channel from Margate to Boulogne, where they found Giacomo Meyerbeer in residence. ‘Giacomo’ was actually a German-Jewish composer. He had been regarded as the coming man in Germany but had made a success writing opera in Italy and was now doing very well for himself at the Opéra in Paris. He might be the essence of the rootless cosmopolitan Jew, a citizen of nowhere, if he had not also kept his links with Germany; he was a Prussian Court Kappelmeister and later Prussian General Music Director.
He had done for real what Wagner had only imagined for himself. He was a man both to envy and keep on the right side of, so long as he was needed. Wagner hastened to pay his respects. Meyerbeer had ignored letters from Wagner but, meeting him in the flesh, was gracious. What did Wagner think of him? He recalled ‘ The years had not yet given his features the flabby look which sooner or later mars most Jewish faces, and the fine formation of his brow around his eyes gave him an expression of countenance that inspired confidence’.
The reigning king of the Paris Opéra listened with interest to the libretto of Rienzi and promised Wagner letters of introduction to the director and conductor of there. He arrived in Paris in September 1839 where he began networking and met the German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine and other ex-pats. He also met Liszt and Berlioz. Berlioz was at that time writing two contrasted works. One was the Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale written for a wind band of 200 players (Berlioz too thought big). It commemorated the dead of the revolution that had brought Louise Philippe to power 10 years earlier. Berlioz didn’t have much time for the regime but welcomed the 10,000 francs. Wagner didn’t often have much time for other composers, but this work did make a big impression on him.
Berlioz also wrote a set of chansons Les nuits d'été (Summer Nights) at around the same time, here is the last of them, showing a wonderful wit and lightness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLLcynKLAo8
Wagner also tried writing French songs, although he knew almost nothing of the language. His have sunk without trace.
The BohemiansIt was the beginning not of triumph but 2½ years of cheerless poverty. Wagner mostly hung around with three other fellows in poverty; a librarian called Anders (‘Otherwise’) who had abandoned his real name, Ernst Kietz, a painter who was said to take so long cleaning his brushes that he never completed a portrait, and a philologist called Lehrs who was an ideas man and introduced Wagner to philosophy in cluding the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. (Wagner might have written much La Boheme from his own experience.) The Wagners pawned Minna’s jewellery, clothes and wedding ring, and then sold the pawn tickets. They eked out an existence in one room. They could not afford to resole their shoes. Even the dog ran away. Wagner began to borrow from his future brother-in-law, and others. As Charles Osborne said, ‘He was not in the habit of repaying any of these debts. Indeed Wagner may have been the first artist to put into successful practice the theory that the world owed him a living’.
Here he tries his brother-in-law: "In order to pay my rent and other items I visited the pawnbroker yesterday with my last non-essentials, but without obtaining the sum I need. Since this amounts to no more than 50fr. You are once more (and for the last time) my only refuge." (4/1/1840)
Following this last time, he was soon back again asking for 10 times the amount: "If the state of your business allows it could you advance me 500 fr. till Easter?" (22/2/1840) [In today’s values that is about £1,200].
Another mark was the "friend of his youth" the dramatist Theodor Apel. In September 1940 Wagner wrote "You will probably feel resentment but, oh my God, why am I driven to ignore your resentment? Why, because for a whole year I have been living here in utter poverty without a penny to call my own".
Minna soon followed up with a letter dictated by Wagner, claiming - probably falsely - that he had actually been imprisoned for debt.
Meyerbeer used his influence to get The Ban on Love performed at Théätre de la Renaissance. The theatre went bust before it could be produced and for some reason Wagner though his patron might be to blame. Had he deliberately steered Wagner towards an insolvent institution to eliminate a rival? But he knew how to grovel: "The time has come to sell myself to someone, in order to exist in the most basic sense of the word. But my head and heart are no longer my own – they are already your property, my Master; all I have left are my hands. Would you like to make use of them? I realise that I shall have to be your slave in mind and body, if I am to gather food and strength for the work which shall one day express my gratitude to you. I shall be a faithful and honest slave. I feel immensely happy when I can give myself unconditionally, recklessly and in blind faith…Therefore buy me good sir, your purchase should be worthwhile! Unpurchased, I should perish and my wife with me. Would that not be a pity?" (3/5/1840)
As Rudolph Sabor noted where most people would have hated themselves for writing that letter Wagner chose instead to hate the recipient and his whole race.
The amiable Meyerbeer innocently asserted himself again on Wagner’s behalf. He asked his secretary to send him a sub and the next year wrote to Dresden and the Berlin Opera House recommending Wagner to them.
In the meantime Wagner was doing musical journalism, making arrangements of popular works and even produced 3 novellas for the music publisher Moritz Schlesinger; another Jew , of course. He later claimed that this work was somehow forced upon him but it was he who made the first approach. Here he is trying to get some money out of Schlesinger:
"I cannot possibly go to sleep before impressing upon you the significance of the visit which I intend to pay you tomorrow morning, namely the settling of our account and 100fr. In advance…My dearest Herr Schlesinger , those 100 fr. You simply must let me have, otherwise I can take no responsibility for your appearance before the judgement seat of posterity, when it might be said the Moritz Schlesinger, the generous, the acute Moritz Schlesinger had refused an advance of 100fr. To the subsequently far-famed Richard Wagner." (27/4/1841)
One of the worst treated was his "honest old fellow" Ernst Benedikt Kietz, the not very successful portrait painter who was scarcely better off than Wagner.
"Once again take up the trusted sword and slash through the knot of adversity! The enclosed letters are of great importance to me, as you may well imagine. They must catch the next post, but at present I cannot afford the postage. Dip into you magic sack and clear them for me. Look at the enclosed pawn ticket. Strictly speaking, the redemption or renewal period expired on the 15th of last month, but when I queried this they granted me a four-weeks extension without any trouble…Since you have a real passion for holding forth eloquently in French, do me a favour and go to the address on the ticket…and talk to the people." (13/10/1841).
How thoughtful of Wagner to give Kietz the opportunity to demonstrate his good French.
Wagner has borrowed from Kietz’s uncle too:
"I enclose a note for your uncle Fechner which you can send to him. Risking that gentleman’s contempt, I must state that I cannot pay him anything before the autumn. I cannot … People who have suffered as I have, care little about conventions which are dear to your uncle and his kind. All the same, it vexes me to say this." (12/5/1842)
Well, that’s all right then. By that time Wagner was back in Germany, for his fortunes had improved. Meyerbeer’s efforts on his behalf had paid off. In June 1841 he heard that Rienzi had been accepted for production in Dresden. In March 1842 Meyerbeer helped get Wagner’s next work, The Flying Dutchman, accepted in Berlin. Richard and Minna set off back to Germany to push things along. Of course they borrowed the money for the journey.
RienziRienzi came on in October 1842 and was an immense success. At the premiere Wagner apparently noticed for the first time that Rienzi was also immensely long: "... one great anxiety filled me with growing alarm. I noticed that the first two acts had taken as long as the whole of [Weber’s] Der Freischutz for instance. On account of its warlike calls to arms the third act begins with exceptional uproar and when, at its close the clock pointed to ten, I became perfectly desperate… As we still had two acts to go I thought it was certain that we should not be able to finish the piece… However, my astonishment at finding the audience still there in full muster, even in the last act towards midnight, filled me with perplexity."
This may have been the last time that Wagner felt any perplexity about the length of his works. He set about making cuts, and then more cuts, and when it was published it was in a slimmed down version. It was last performed in the UK in 1983, in a further reduced version, placed in the context of 20th century totalitarianism.
Anyone wishing to hear the full score will be disappointed as the manuscript was given to the Reichsführer as a 50th birthday present and perished with him in his bunker.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton said that the message of his novel was that "to be great and free a People must trust not to leaders but to themselves-that there is no sudden leap from servitude to liberty- that it is to institutions, not to men, that they must look for reforms that last beyond the hour – that there own passions are the real despots they should subdue, their own reason the true regenerator of abuses".
Hitler did not see Wagner’s Rienzi quite like that. He responded to the idea of Rienzi as the redeemer, the orator able to sway the masses and who was to restore Rome’s greatness. He told a school friend that the idea of National Socialism came to him when they attended a performance in Linz in 1907, "in that hour it began". If so the destruction of the score seems apt. (He also apparently had score of The Fairies with him; the symbolism of that isn’t quite so apparent.)
What was this bloated musical monster, really like? The faults which Wagner belatedly noticed should have come as no surprise: "Grand Opera, with all its scenic and musical splendour, its effect-ridden, musically massive strength of passion stood before me; my artistic ambition demanded not merely that I should imitate it but that I should outdo all previous examples with sumptuous extravagance".
This meant a lot choruses, marches, processions and ballets etc. And of course, real horses: "I shall not give up a single detail of the musical pomp on the stage; …See to it that the trumpeters and trombonists accompanying the military expedition of Colonna and Orsini in the first act are chosen from the cavalry and appear on horseback: this (as I imagine it) will look splendid and appropriate and it can certainly be done on the Dresden stage. The director must spare no expenses and pains, for in an opera like mine it’s all or nothing-you understand me!" (January 1942).
This is from the man who a year earlier could not afford postage on his letters. But then, as usual, he wasn’t paying.
With all that noise and action the music probably didn’t matter very much. That is just as well as posterity has not been kind. A contemporary called it ‘Meyerbeer’s best opera’ but beneath the noise it has been seen as prolix and banal, and with a pretentious poverty of musical invention.
It is now rarely performed but here are extracts from a Berlin production where no-one could mistake the message:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VReUUxv6PQM
In the Soviet Union however Rienzi was regarded as a champion of the proletariat and Wagner’s Overture was played to open the proceedings of the tenth anniversary of the Republic in 1928. Fortunately it contains most of the good music, it lasts only 13 minutes, and anti-fascists can listen to it with a good conscience:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URIwWtwn6qA
For those who would like something a calmer Rienzi’s prayer in act 4 has been extracted from the last act as a concert piece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNpsz2bHs-Q
Wagner’s apprenticeship, with ambition far in excess of its patchy achievements, was over. There was nothing yet to suggest that he was “perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived" (W H Auden again).
In 1843 The Flying Dutchman had its premiere in Dresden, though not to the same overwhelming success as Rienzi. Wagner had already drafted the libretto of another potential grand opera, The Saracen. He was appointed as joint Kappelmeister at the King of Saxony’s court and paid off his old debts (by obtaining a loan). He was now 30 and might be expected to settle down. All he had to do was to curb his extravagance, keep his nose clean, and follow Rienzi with another crowd pleasing block-buster or two. What could possibly go wrong?
To be continued. The music gets better, the behaviour doesn’t.