『我が生涯 第1巻』

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.