《我的生平——第一卷》

Meyerbeer’s arrival in Paris is a brief boon; unbothered by the failure of Wagner’s introductory letters, he warns Wagner that Paris is a grind, and introduces him to publisher Maurice Schlesinger before returning to Germany. Schlesinger has no use for Wagner at first, and the violinist Panofka introduction leads nowhere, so Wagner accepts a commission via his Königsberg advisory board to set Heine’s Two Grenadiers (translated by a Parisian professor) for baritone, and tries to place it with singers: Mme. Viardot praises it but declines to perform it, Mme. Widmann sings Dors, mon enfant with feeling but offers no further support, tenor Dupont calls the Ronsard setting unpalatable to Parisian audiences, and concert singer Geraldy insists the Two Grenadiers’ Marseillaise-style ending is only suited to street cannon accompaniments. The only small success is Habeneck’s gesture in conducting Wagner’s early Columbus Overture at a rehearsal for Anders and Wagner, though the Conservatoire will not program it; Wagner knows the superficial work would give the orchestra a false impression of his talent, but the rehearsals have an unexpected, life-changing side effect: he repeatedly hears Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, performed by the orchestra with a skill that undoes the damage of the botched Leipzig performance he witnessed in his youth. Where he once saw only meaningless, weird constellations in the score, he now hears streams of touching, heavenly melody, erasing years of wrong ideas about Beethoven formed by his confusing early education and terrible theatre experiences, an artistic awakening comparable only to seeing Schröder-Devrient act in Fidelio at 16. Burning to create work as satisfying as that performance, he sketches a Faust Overture, originally the first movement of a planned Faust Symphony with a Gretchen movement to follow, later rewritten on Liszt’s advice and performed to great acclaim as eine Faust-ouverture. He begs the Conservatoire to program it, but they tell him they have done enough for him and wish to be rid of him.