《我的生平——第一卷》

In December 1844, the remains of Carl Maria von Weber were at last removed from a forgotten corner of St. Paul’s in London and brought home by his elder son. Wagner, as president of the committee, had fought the theatre management, overcome the King’s supposed scruples, and arranged the funeral music from Euryanthe — the spiritual vision of the overture, transposed into B flat major, and twenty muffled drums replacing the tremolo of the violas. At the Catholic cemetery in Friedrichstadt, before a hushed crowd, he delivered his first public oration, learned by heart. He fell into a curious trance in which he seemed to hear and see himself speaking, and only the silence recalled him to his duty; he then finished with such fluency that Emil Devrient pronounced him deeply impressive even from a purely dramatic standpoint. The ceremony concluded with a hymn Wagner himself had composed and set to mediaeval-Germanic words in Gothic type — for he had finally renamed his completed opera Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg, and one hundred copies of his score were now ready.

The summer of 1845 took him to Marienbad, where the volcanic soil of Bohemia set his imagination ablaze. Walking in the woods with Wolfram von Eschenbach under his arm, he sketched the whole of Lohengrin in a fever of inspiration and, as a counterweight, outlined the comic scheme of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg — Hans Sachs holding up his chalk-marked shoes opposite the Marker with his slate. The doctor bade him give up the waters. Back in Dresden by mid-August, he threw himself into Tannhäuser rehearsals with renewed vigour, even as Schroeder-Devrient warned him plainly that Tichatschek, for all his metallic voice and perfect delivery, lacked the dramatic seriousness for the role, and that she herself could no longer impersonate Venus — “After all, I cannot be clad in a belt alone.” Mitterwurzer, the reticent young baritone with a soulful voice, laboured devotedly over Wolfram, and Johanna Wagner, with her tall slender form and childlike purity, prepared to enchant the audience as Elizabeth. The scenery, ordered from Paris, arrived in fragments; the Hall of Song was delayed until Wagner had almost despaired, and on 19 October 1845, the first performance of Tannhäuser took place amid considerable anxiety.