『我が生涯 第1巻』

Wagner traveled to Dresden via Berlin on June 3, found Minna at her parents’ cramped, humble home, and his initial fury melted into sympathy for her despair, until he could only express repentance and heartbroken understanding. Minna insisted she had been driven to flee by their impossible situation, which Wagner had been blind and deaf to. He told her he had secured the post of musical conductor at Riga, where a new theatre was opening under favorable terms with a salary high enough for her to retire from the stage entirely. After a painful week in Dresden, he traveled to Berlin to sign the Riga contract, then returned to convince Minna to set up in Blasewitz, a village near Dresden, while he wrapped up his affairs in Königsberg. For a time her mood improved, as Wagner spared her all pressure, but soon the situation worsened for no clear reason. When Minna announced she was taking a pleasure trip with a girlfriend’s family, Wagner agreed, but was alarmed when her sister requested a written passport permission: he traveled to Dresden to investigate, only to be treated with open hostility by Minna’s parents, who accused him of being unable to support her. A letter from Möller cleared up the mystery: Dietrich was staying at a Dresden hotel, and both he and Minna had vanished again.

Desolate, Wagner turned to his sister Ottilie and brother-in-law Hermann Brockhaus, who lived in a beautiful villa in Dresden’s Grosser Garten. For the first time, he experienced the comfort of uncomplicated family support, and his dormant creative instincts were revived by Hermann, a brilliant oriental languages expert. He worked out the full scheme for a grand opera based on Bulwer Lytton’s Rienzi, sent his Rule Britannia overture to London’s Philharmonic Society, and began corresponding with Parisian librettist Scribe about a setting for H. Konig’s Die Hohe Braut, sending him the translated French libretto and the score of his Liebesverbot to prove his skill.