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All three German things, you see. All morbid things. Most of the sentimentality seems to have come from Germany, an essentially brutal place. But of course sentimentality is really diluted morbidness, and therefore first cousin to cruelty. And I have a real and healthy dislike for that Tannhauser opera.
Tannhäuser has lent ear somewhat listlessly. This hall has been called his rightful kingdom; he sits among the other minstrels consciously like a young monarch. At the closing figure of Wolfram's rhapsodical rhetoric, the image of the fount, a shadowy smile of superiority has dawned upon his face. As the applause dies, he grasps his harp and rises to take exception to Wolfram's definition.
Biterolf calls Tannhäuser a shameless blasphemer, and challenges him to combat; Tannhäuser replies bitterly; the surrounding nobles want to silence him; his anger becomes rage, and his rage madness; Wolfram tries to calm every one, but Tannhäuser is now too far gone, and in "wildest exaltation" he chants the hymn he sang to Venus in the first act.
In Nuremberg the veritable Hans Sachs wrote plays on Tannhauser, Tristan, and Siegfried between three and four hundred years before the poet-composer who put the old cobbler-poet into his comedy.
New Yorkers must consider themselves fortunate in having heard for two seasons the greatest of Wagnerian tenors even though he is no longer in his prime the man who sang the title rôle of "Tannhäuser" when that opera was produced in Paris in 1861; who created the part of Siegmund in 1876 at Bayreuth; and who, in his way, has done as much to popularize Wagner's operas as Liszt did during the Weimar period, when people had to go to that city to hear "Lohengrin" and "Tannhäuser," as they now go to Bayreuth to hear "Parsifal."
But even after I had at last succeeded in gaining access to the imperial officials, it seemed as though next to nothing would be done on my behalf, when suddenly one morning Count Hatzfeld overwhelmed me with news that on the preceding evening the Emperor had given orders for a performance of my Tannhauser. The decisive word had been spoken by Princess Metternich.
It was she who by her magnificent interpretation of Leonore, in Beethoven's "Fidelio," first revealed the beauty of the part to the public. In Wagner's operas she appeared as Senta, in the "Flying Dutchman"; Venus, in "Tannhäuser," and actually created the rôle of Adriano Colonna, in "Rienzi."
Up to this point Liszt had been the only person to nourish the secret hope of my heart, as he was confident that the Grand Duke of Weimar would do something for me, but to judge from my latest experience these prospects amounted to nothing, while I had grounds for hoping that a new work of similar design to Tannhauser or Lohengrin would be taken up everywhere with considerable alacrity.
I was able to tell him that I had already had the pleasure of bringing my case to the notice of the old poet, who lived near Potsdam as a royal pensioner. I remembered very well that Frau von Luttichau had sent the themes Lohengrin and Tannhauser to her old friend some years ago, when these matters were first mentioned between us.
All the experiences connected with the performance of Tannhauser having filled me with true despair as to the whole future of my artistic operations, I saw it was hopeless to think of its production being extended to other German theatres for I had not been able to achieve this end even with the successful Rienzi.
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