『我が生涯 第1巻』

The most vividly memorable episode of his Nuremberg stay, however, is a cruel tavern joke played at the expense of Lauermann, a thick-set, middle-aged master carpenter with a comical appearance, a thick local dialect, and a delusion of his own vocal talent that makes him a favorite target of the local theatrical wags. Having long stopped mocking him to his face out of fear of his violent temper, the regulars trick Wagner into playing along by introducing him as the great Italian bass Lablache; Lauermann is immediately suspicious, noting Wagner’s youthful face and clear tenor voice, but his vanity is roused by the constant flattery of the crowd, who argue that even Lablache would have something to learn from him. After hours of back-and-forth, Lauermann finally gives in, singing a trivial street ballad with bizarre, jerky tics, his face bright red, his thumbs twitching behind his ears, as the entire crowd erupts in laughter. Furious, he storms out of the inn, and Wagner, wracked with guilt, follows to apologize, eventually convincing the drunken carpenter to return and sing again for the crowd’s amusement. The night ends with Lauermann being carried home in a wheelbarrow, his wife yelling curses at the crowd for enabling his delusions, before the group returns to the inn, gets into a fight with workmen enforcing closing hours, and only disperses after one of the regulars knocks a troublemaker senseless. Wagner and Wolfram walk home laughing, Wolfram admitting this chaotic routine was a standard evening at the local inn.

With his funds nearly gone, Wagner stops only briefly in Wurzburg, then travels to Frankfurt to wait for the Magdeburg directors’ promised travel subsidies, which never arrive. He makes a day trip to Wiesbaden to scout talent from the dissolving operatic company, hears the tenor Freimuller shine in a rehearsal of Robert le Diable, and hires him on the spot. Back in Frankfurt, he attends a production of The Magic Flute conducted by the celebrated Guhr, and is so impressed with the company that he hires the young soprano Fraulein Limbach, who sang the first boy role, on the spot; when the hotel owner refuses to advance him the funds to help her escape her existing Frankfurt contract, however, he is forced to abandon her, a humiliation that still stings as he travels through rain and storm via Leipzig (to pick up his beloved brown poodle) before returning to Magdeburg to resume his post as musical director on September 1, 1836.