Ring. He flitted about again, leaving Paris, returning a little later.

Wagner fell in love with Jessie Taylor Laussot, who proved a benefactress in a financial way. In the meantime, he decided to leave Minna forever. In Zurich, whither he repaired, he labored unceasingly on the libretto for The Young Siegfried. Then he created the subject of The Valkyrie and finally that of The Rheingold.

It is amusing to note that he wrote his Ring librettos in reverse order, that is, from what is now Götterdämmerung back to Das Rheingold. Having hit upon a huge theme, he found it increasingly necessary to broaden its scope, thus accounting for the four operas. Parenthetically, however, he wrote the music in the correct order.

The reaction of some of Wagner’s musically untutored contemporaries is amusingly depicted in this caricature from Figaro (1876).

Wagner as a young man, about the time Meyerbeer sponsored the first production of Rienzi in Dresden.

Richard Wagner at the peak of his powers when Der Ring des Nibelungen was nearing completion.

Now in Wagner’s life there appears a strange and beautiful influence, Mathilde Wesendonck, wife of a very wealthy silk merchant. It has been pointed out that under the spell of this beguiling woman his composing flourished as never before. At the home of the Wesendoncks he completed the poem for Tristan und Isolde. It is not known how friendly Richard and Mathilde were, but this is fact: Wagner left his friends’ abode because he would not bring grief upon Otto Wesendonck.

He went once more to Paris where some very ridiculous things happened having to do with a suggested ballet for the opera Tannhäuser. Wagner, adamant, would not change the order of his work merely to please influential gentlemen of the Jockey Club.

In 1864, when Wagner was fifty-one, he settled in Munich—he had been forgiven for his revolutionary surge—and in this musically flourishing city he came under the high patronage of King Ludwig of Bavaria. Here he renewed acquaintance with Liszt’s daughter Cosima, whom he had met some years before. She was now married to Hans von Bülow, a highly gifted conductor. The composer and Cosima were thrown together a lot and their mutual regard soon ripened into love. Poor little Minna, who had been ill for a long period, died in 1866, a piece of news which saddened Wagner greatly.

That same year, however, he and Cosima took a place at Triebschen on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. Bülow, at first angered by his wife’s deed, soon came to realize the inevitability of it. Besides, he adored Wagner and his music. He acted sanely therefore, sacrificing his personal feelings for the sake of Wagner’s art. Cosima and Richard were married in 1870.

At Triebschen he completed Die Meistersinger, Siegfried, and the first two acts of Götterdämmerung, besides writing any number of treatises, articles, and the like. Here, too, the idea of a great festival theater was born in him, and the originality of the thing soon won many influential supporters to the cause. By 1871 a site was found for it at Bayreuth, Germany. The next year he put the finishing touches to the Ring and the Bayreuth project grew in proportion to his frantic efforts to raise money for it. In all, it took some four years to erect this shrine to Wagnerian music. And finally, the première of the Wagnerian Cycle, running from August 13 to 16, was a tremendous success, in spite of the heartaches, the headaches, and the discouragement.

Manuscript of a humorous song dedicated by Wagner to Louis Kraft, proprietor of the hotel in Leipzig where Wagner stopped during his first trip to Bayreuth.

With all that he had already accomplished, Wagner could have retired to the easy life he often so fervently spoke about. But the urge to compose never left him. He set to work on Parsifal, the poem he had completed some months before. When the opera was all finished he endeavored with his usual kinetic energy to raise money for its production. It was given its first performance on July 26, 1882. There were sixteen more performances.

Wagner, after all the excitement of Bayreuth, left for a vacation in Venice. In spite of repeated heart attacks, he considered seriously the writing of another symphony. But he had done his work. There was to be no second symphony. Wagner died of his heart illness on February 13, 1883. He was buried at Bayreuth.

Overture to “Rienzi”

Bulwer’s Rienzi revived an old desire of Wagner’s to make an opera out of the story of the last of the Tribunes. He was in Dresden during the summer of 1837 and there he read Barmann’s translation of the Bulwer novel. However, he did not begin actual work until the following July. First, of course, came the text. Later that month he started on the music. By May 1839, he had completed two acts. The remainder of the score, with the exception of the Overture, was written and orchestrated in Paris. The Overture was finished on October 23, 1840.

On October 20, 1842, Rienzi was given its world première at the Royal Saxon Court Theater, Dresden. Amusingly, the performance began at 6 P.M., and it went on and on until midnight. America was not to become acquainted with the opera until March 4, 1878, when it was given at the Academy of Music, New York.

The thematic material employed in the Overture stems from music in the opera itself, such as the “long-sustained, swelled and diminished A on the trumpet,” which is the signal for the people’s uprising against the nobles; Rienzi’s Prayer; a theme of the chorus, Gegrüsst sei hoher Tag; the theme of the revolutionary forces, Santo spirito cavaliere; the stretto of the second Finale, Rienzi, dir sei Preis; and a subject similar to the phrase of the nobles set to the words, Ha, dieser Gnade Schmach erdruckt das stolze Herz!

The score of the Overture calls for one piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two valve-horns, two plain horns, one serpent (nowadays replaced by the double-bassoon), two valve trumpets, two plain trumpets, three trombones, one ophicleide (replaced by the bass-tuba), two snare-drums, bass drum, triangle, cymbals, and strings.

The People’s Chorus, commencing Act II of Rienzi.

Overture to “The Flying Dutchman”

This compact and brilliantly written Overture calls for the following instrumentation: piccolo, two flutes, two oboes,