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The critics of the day at once accused Verdi of imitating Wagner, and certain passages undoubtedly suggest the influence of 'Lohengrin, but as a whole the score is thoroughly and radically Italian. In 'Aida' Verdi's vein of melody is as rich as ever, but it is controlled by a keen artistic sense, which had never had full play before.
From Paris Wagner went to Vienna, where he had the great happiness of hearing his "Lohengrin" for the first time. He hoped to have "Tristan" brought out, but the music proved too difficult for the singers of that time to learn. After many delays and disappointments, the whole thing was given up. Reduced now to the lowest ebb, Wagner planned a concert tour to earn a living.
I made bold to say that I had reason to doubt very much whether this would be done, and that even if B. and B. bought the scores of "Tannhauser" and "Lohengrin" I did not think for a moment that you would abandon your previous demand of my being invited to Berlin in order to secure an adequate rendering of your works. Write to me how this matter stands.
Probably his Excellency will not be very willing to lend the work a second time; but I hope for a favourable result all the same. The performance and the success will have quite a different chance if you go to Brussels, and I am afraid that in your absence your "Lohengrin" might be a little compromised.
There it lay a mute score. As he turned its pages, the notes looked out at him appealingly for a hearing. It was like a homesick child asking for its own. What did Wagner do? He wrote a few lines to Liszt. The answer was not long in coming. Liszt was already making the necessary arrangements to accede to Wagner's request and produce "Lohengrin" in Weimar, where he was musical director.
One thing more: in my last letters I entirely forgot to mention the Hartel affair to you. By a certain impulse, I applied to Breitkopf and Hartel about "Lohengrin". I owed them from of old two hundred thalers for a grand pianoforte, and proposed to them to wipe out this debt and to take the copyright of "Lohengrin" in return.
Take an extreme case. A group of people are photographed by Edison's new process say Titiens, Trebelli, and Jenny Lind, with any two of the finest men singers the age has known let them be photographed incessantly for half an hour while they perform a scene in "Lohengrin"; let all be done stereoscopically.
The feelings of the two are so exquisitely portrayed by the orchestra, that the scene would be easily comprehensible if it were carried on as indeed much of it is without any words at all. 'Lohengrin' was the first of Wagner's operas which won general acceptance, and still remains the most popular.
I met the most embarrassingly cater-cornered families." "Oh, they weren't embarrassed!" I interjected. "No, but I was," said John. "And you told me you weren't innocent!" I exclaimed. "They are going to institute a divorce march," I continued. "'Lohengrin' or 'Midsummer-Night's Dream' played backward.
He set the "anguish, doubt, desire," the whole chaos of his age, to a music whose thunder-roll seems to have inspired the opera of Lohengrin a music not designed to teach or to satisfy "the budge doctors of the Stoic fur," but which will continue to arouse and delight the sons and daughters of men.
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