Reproduction of a portrait painted by Ludwig Geyer. Original now in
possession of the Brockhaus family in Leipsic.
]
Before the production of “Tannhäuser,” he had made sketches for the
books of “Lohengrin” and “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg” (“The
Mastersingers of Nuremberg”). He finished the former work in March,
1848. In the mean time failure had brought debt and trouble upon him.
Even his wife, though an admirable woman in other respects, did not
comprehend his intellect, and grieved at his preference of artistic
works over paying operas of the familiar sort. Restless and irritated,
he plunged into the revolutionary movement and gave utterance to radical
opinions, even arguing in a lecture that the king ought to proclaim
Saxony a free state. In May, 1849, Dresden streets were barricaded
against troops sent to disperse rioters, and in spite of assertions to
the contrary, there is good evidence that Wagner was fighting on the
people’s side.[1] The Prussian troops scattered the revolutionists, and
Wagner fled to Weimar, where he was received with open arms by Franz
Liszt, thenceforward his most devoted friend. The police were on his
track, however, and he hastened by way of Paris to Zurich, Switzerland.
Wagner’s exile lasted from 1849 till 1861, and this period embraces the
climax of his creative labors. He began his career as a citizen of
Zurich by pouring forth a long series of literary works, of which those
above mentioned and “Judaism in Music” may be regarded as the most
important. There will be occasion to speak later of those bearing on his
operatic ideas, but the “Judaism” article produced bitter comment at the
time, and has remained a source of offence to many. It was published in
the _Neue Zeitschrift für Musik_, over the _nom de plume_ K. Freigedank.
The chief contentions of the article were that the Jews, being of no
nation, but of all nations, are without national feeling; that their art
work, especially in music, lacks that genuineness which is one of the
products of nationality; and that an instinct for gain causes them to
sacrifice pure art for the profitable fashion of the time. His examples
were Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, the latter of whom he again censured in
“Opera and Drama.” The authorship of the strictures on the Jews was
speedily suspected, and a host of pamphlets appeared in answer to it.
The principal result was that Wagner’s writings sold well. In a letter
written in 1847 he declared that he esteemed Meyerbeer as a man, but as
a composer viewed him as the embodiment of “all that is repellent in the
incoherency and empty striving after outward effect of the operatic
music of the day.” This was his only answer to the charge that he had
repaid Meyerbeer’s early assistance with ingratitude.
[Illustration: