『我が生涯 第1巻』

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.