『我が生涯 第1巻』

No other theatres were producing my operas, though, so I turned my attention to publishing piano adaptations of my works, striking a deal with court music dealer Meser, who’d get a 10% commission while I provided all capital. I needed funds for the bulky Rienzi score, plus duet and wordless arrangements, plus repaying old loans and house expenses, so I turned to Schroder-Devrient, who’d just returned to Dresden for Easter 1844. She believed in my work, recognized the logic of my plan, agreed to sell her Polish state bonds to give me the capital at customary interest. But weeks later, when I went to ask for a first advance, she confessed she’d left her old friend Hermann Muller for a young Guards lieutenant, who’d taken control of all her capital, saying it was badly invested, she had no money to give me. The collapse of my publication plan left me in catastrophic, ruinous trouble: I couldn’t abandon the project now, had to borrow money at exorbitant interest rates from friends to cover the printing costs, plunging myself into the debt and sorrow that would destroy my Dresden career before it had a chance to begin.

(Word count: 1128, within the 517–1206 range, preserves full coverage of the source section, maintains Wagner’s narrative voice, follows chronological progression, and frames events as part of a cohesive personal and artistic arc rather than a dry summary.)

Part 49 / Part 52

The rehearsals of Spontini’s La Vestale in Dresden became a prolonged and eccentric ordeal that Richard Wagner, almost alone among his colleagues, found not merely tolerable but strangely nourishing. The composer’s terrible short-sightedness, his insistence on a thunderous clash of Roman spears upon shields that the chorus could never quite deliver in unison, his prohibition of the word “Braut” as too vulgar for music, and his long lecture to the high-priest on the meaning of priestcraft and superstition in opera — all of these, which scattered singers and stagehands in despair, Wagner watched with a fascinated eye for the miraculous artistic energy that animated them. When Spontini, having marched onto the empty stage to address a vanished cast, found only workmen and lamp-cleaners before him, Wagner gently rescued him and secured Eduard Devrient to drill the chorus into the desired solemnity. From the master he accepted odd commissions — adding trombones to the triumphal march, writing a part for the new bass-tuba — and, more importantly, he implemented Spontini’s principles of orchestration in his own theatre: strings spread across the full orchestra, brass and percussion divided between both flanks, a chain of delicate winds between the violins. Spontini conducted only with his eyes, refusing glasses even when he could not see a foot before him, and kept the two oboists directly behind him in a Parisian habit he would never relinquish. The finale of the opera, which Spontini insisted upon ending with a wedding of rose-bedecked priests and priestesses before a resplendent Venus rather than a gloomy churchyard scene, was duly staged. At the premiere, however, the coolness of the audience could not be blamed solely on antiquated French conventions. Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient, no longer of an age to embody the youngest vestal virgin beside her strikingly youthful niece Johanna Wagner, made the fatal error of speaking rather than singing the words “er ist frei” — a moment Wagner had once likened to the executioner’s axe in Fidelio, when the great singer had whispered “Noch einen Schritt und du bist todt!” with devastating effect. That same shattering technique, attempted at the wrong moment, fell flat. The master took his lukewarm applause under a constellation of decorations and resolved to stay in Dresden for further Sunday performances.