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I have just received the incredible news from the Prague manager that, after the censorship had authorized the performance of "Tannhauser", permission was suddenly withdrawn by a higher personage, in other words that the opera was forbidden. There must surely be some personal stupidity at work here.
This fervour alone might account for his artistic development in the Tannhäuser period. It drove him to find the secret of the one true mode of expression the law of simplicity, the unvarying rule that anything more than is needed for the expression of the thing to be expressed is bad art, and, in the long run, ineffective.
'Tannhäuser' or 'Siegfried' might shake a few beams loose, but lighter music, I think, can be indulged in with impunity." Time did not serve, as Carson had hoped, to mellow things. Indeed, the succeeding weeks brought more trouble, and most of it came through the organ. Some of the rattling panels, in spite of every effort to make them fast, rattled the more.
In this stanza and in this song lies the whole significance of the catastrophe of Tannhauser, and indeed of the whole essence of Tannhauser; all that to me makes him a touching phenomenon is expressed here alone.
A few days later a third performance took place, but this time before a full house, Schroder-Devrient, depressed at the small share she was able to take in the success of my work, watched the progress of the opera from the small stage box; she informed me that Luttichau had come to her with a beaming face, saying he thought we had now carried Tannhauser happily through.
Nevertheless, he had to submit to a nominal trial performance, for which he chose the description of the pilgrimage in Tannhauser, acting and singing it upon the stage of the Grand Opera House. Mme. Kalergis and Princess Metternich, who were secretly present at this performance, were both enthusiastically prepossessed in Niemann's favour, as were also all the members of the management.
Your route sheet for the next two months looks like a morgue to me, and unless you interpolate a few coon songs in Tannhäuser and some song and dance specialties between the acts of Les Huguenots you're gone. You know I used to sing this route in musical comedy, and, on the level, I've got a fine part waiting for me right now in The Giddy Queen.
We will not let our hair turn grey over the "Tannhauser" affair at Berlin. I anticipated this all along, although, for my part, I could not and did not wish to bring it about. I do not grudge your Berlin friends the satisfaction which this issue of the affair will give them, and hope that many other occasions will turn up on which I shall not be superfluous or inconvenient to you.
The Queen of England had told you that an Italian performance of your works would be desirable; of Roger's "Tannhauser" we had spoken several times, and you had also come to an understanding with Ollivier as to the droits d'auteur.
Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his box at the Opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt pleasure to "Tannhauser," and seeing in that great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.
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