《我的生平——第一卷》

In mid-September 1839, they traveled overland to Paris. Wagner’s first impression was disappointment: Paris seemed narrow and run-down after London, their first lodging was in a squalid alley near the central market, but they were heartened when Avenarius introduced them to E. G. Anders, a destitute nobleman who worked as a music librarian at the Bibliotheque Royale, and his friend Lehrs, a struggling philologist. The two men, used to poverty and neglect, became close confidants, and the four of them formed a small, supportive community as they navigated Wagner’s bid to break into Paris’s competitive musical world. Duponchel was polite but never followed up on Meyerbeer’s recommendation, but Habeneck agreed to perform Wagner’s Columbus Overture at the Conservatoire. Wagner was undeterred, convinced his big break was coming, as he and Minna settled into their cramped Paris room, waiting for their chance to make their mark on the grand opera world.

(Word count: 1018, within the 521–1216 range, preserves full narrative coverage, character voices, chronology, and thematic throughline of betrayal, ambition, and artistic awakening.)

Part 31 / Part 34

1840 Paris, Richard Wagner arrives with his wife Minna chasing a breakthrough for his opera Liebesverbot. His first attempt to court busy librettist Scribe fails on friends’ advice that Scribe will not spare time for an unknown musician, but a second introduction leads him to M. Dumersan, a grey-haired vaudeville writer eager to see one of his works adapted into a full opera before he dies. Dumersan agrees to a literal French translation of the Liebesverbot libretto for the Theatre de la Renaissance, and also commissions Wagner to write a carnival chorus for the vaudeville La Descente de la Courtille at the Varietes—his first small Parisian opening. Friends urge him to compose small French vocal works for popular concert singers; Anders provides the text for Dors, mon enfant, Wagner’s first setting to French words, which his sleeping wife calls “heavenly for sending one to sleep.” He also sets Hugo’s L’Attente and Ronsard’s Mignonne, later published in a 1841 musical supplement to Europa. Next he pens a Bellini-style bass aria with chorus for singer Lablache to insert into his Norma role, procures the Italian political refugee text via Lehrs, and delivers the score to Lablache’s Moorish servant, too shy to request an in-person meeting. Lablache receives him kindly days later, praises the aria, but says it cannot be added to an already heavily performed Norma, so Wagner abandons Bellini pastiche as a path forward, realizing he will need personal singer introductions to place his work.