My Life — Volume 1

Part 61 / Part 64

Wagner’s high-stakes push to establish himself in Berlin ended in total, bitter failure, colored by critical hostility and the King of Prussia’s dismissive evasiveness: when Wagner appealed to him for support for Rienzi, the monarch cut him off with the infamous line, “Oh bother! have you come to me again with your Rienzi?” The only bright spot in the city was the Crown Prince (the future Emperor William I) and his wife: after the second act of Rienzi, the Crown Prince steadied Wagner when he slipped on the smooth parquet on his way to the vestibule, and invited him to the royal box, where the newly arrived Crown Princess effused about how much she’d enjoyed the opera, thanks to positive reports from their mutual friend Alwine Frommann. For months, Alwine had been Wagner’s lifeline in the gray, unforgiving city, meeting him most evenings for conversation that bolstered his spirits against daily setbacks, and she’d held out hope the Crown Princess might sway the King in his favor, but no word ever came before Wagner’s forced departure.

Even old casual acquaintances turned on him after Rienzi’s premiere: H. Truhn, who used to share wine with Wagner at Lutter and Wegener’s Hoffmann-themed haunt and chat animatedly about opera’s future, joined the ranks of scoffers. The only steady, if useless, ally was his old friend Gaillard, whose music shop and journal had both failed, who was in the late stages of a wasting disease, and who spent their rare meetings begging Wagner to support his terrible original plays, leaving Wagner only with a sense of melancholy. Wagner’s attempt to win over critic Rellstab by pointing to Rienzi’s clearer structure (a rebuttal to Rellstab’s old complaints about The Flying Dutchman’s “nebulousness”) fell flat: Rellstab insisted no new art form was possible after Gluck, that the best any composer could do was meaningless bombast, and that Meyerbeer was the only figure who’d ever mastered Berlin’s musical scene. A chance meeting with Meyerbeer ended with Meyerbeer’s servant packing trunks, the composer claiming he was leaving the city and unable to help; Wagner only learned weeks later Meyerbeer had never left Berlin, and was behind rumors that Wagner was angling for a court theatre directorship and special privileges, rumors Wagner had to solemnly deny to conductor Taubert to preserve their working relationship. All his entreaties to reach the King via Count Redern came to nothing, until Redern finally confessed the King had flatly refused to attend any Rienzi performance, tired of being pestered about the opera.

Leaving Berlin after the third Rienzi show, his last sliver of hope gone, Wagner was crushed by the gray, wet winter weather, his wife and sister Clara who’d accompanied him on the hopeful trip now heading home with him. The only small comfort on the coach ride came when he heard his wife argue passionately with a commercial traveler who’d dismissed Rienzi as bad without ever seeing it, scolding him for irresponsibly damaging a stranger’s livelihood with baseless opinion. Back in Dresden, the papers reported Rienzi was a flop, acquaintances offered pitying condolences, and Wagner had to put on a brave face, insisting things were not as bad as reported. He learned soon after that his friend Hiller’s new opera Conradin von Hohenstaufen was a fake success: Hiller’s Polish wife had rounded up Polish theatergoers in Dresden to cheer the first performance, but they disliked the opera so much they skipped the second, poorly attended show, and only showed up for the third (a Sunday, naturally well-attended) out of social obligation to their host. Hiller took the third night’s applause as proof of genuine success, and was shocked when Wagner attended the fourth performance, after the Hillers had left town, to find the theater almost empty, the librettist Reinike miserable at the failure, and Wagner immediately called out the scam. He pointed out flaws in the opera to Reinike, who passed the critiques to Hiller, who wrote a friendly letter acknowledging he’d been wrong to ignore Wagner’s advice, but Wagner never got around to helping revise the work.

Wagner’s material losses from Berlin were steep: Director Küstner only paid him royalties for the three Rienzi performances, no extra compensation, and Wagner had to beg the Dresden authorities for an advance to cover his costs. His fight for a raise to match his colleague Reissiger, which he’d brought to the King via Director Lüttichau, ended in fresh humiliation: Lüttichau returned with the King’s response, which accused Wagner of overestimating his own talent thanks to flattery from high-placed friends, suggested he thought he was as good as Meyerbeer, and said he was considering firing him entirely, only his work revising Gluck’s Iphigenia might earn him a second chance, with a small pay bump. Wagner refused the 900 marks he was offered in disgust, but his spirits were briefly lifted when the King of Prussia visited Dresden and requested a Tannhäuser performance, which he attended in full, later explaining he’d avoided Rienzi in Berlin because he’d wanted to hear Wagner’s work in a good production, not a bad one. That small validation gave him the courage to take the 900 marks he was desperate for.

Lüttichau tried to win back his trust, proposing a series of orchestral concerts in the theater, with profits going to the orchestra, which Wagner agreed to, even redesigning the stage with a custom sounding board to turn it into a functional concert hall. The first concert, programmed with Mozart’s D major Symphony, Palestrina’s Stabat Mater, Bach’s Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, and Beethoven’s Eroica, was a massive hit, and Wagner started 1848 in a slightly more reconciled mood. That hope was short-lived: his mother died in February, and after her funeral in Leipzig, where he was soothed by her peaceful, smiling deathbed expression (her last words were “Oh! how beautiful! how lovely! how divine! Why do I deserve such favour?”), he returned to Dresden feeling utterly alone, all natural family bonds loosened with her passing, and threw himself into finishing the orchestration of Lohengrin.

The 1848 revolutions upended everything he thought he knew about politics. He’d long assumed Paris was too fortified for a popular rising, but when news of Louis Philippe’s flight and the proclamation of the French Republic reached him during a Martha rehearsal, he was shaken. As revolutionary fervor spread across Germany, the Saxon King finally dismissed his reactionary ministry for a liberal, democratic one, and Wagner roamed the illuminated streets of Dresden amid cheering crowds, hoarse from shouting support for the monarch, convinced a new, just order was possible. He finished the Lohengrin score at the end of March, and was cheered by a meeting with Madame Jessie Laussot, a young Englishwoman married to a Frenchman, brought to his door by 18-year-old Karl Ritter, a shy Russian-German Dresden resident who’d once asked for his Tannhäuser autograph. Laussot’s earnest, unguarded admiration was the first warm, sympathetic interaction he’d had since Alwine Frommann, a small bright spot in chaotic times.