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Updated: April 30, 2025
A thousand cordial greetings. Your LUCERNE, poste restante. Be heartily welcomed on the Lake of Lucerne, my dear, great friend. "Tristan" will once again enjoy and derive strength from Alpine air before he leaves you for ever to shine on others. At Carlsruhe they are afraid that he will not arrive punctually at the appointed time. Devrient, whom I saw here and at Jena, told me so lately.
To facilitate her recovery I advised her, without delay, to take a long holiday for a tour on the Rhine. In accordance with the instructions conveyed to him by the Grand Duke, Eduard Devrient now addressed me in reference to the appointed performance of Lohengrin in Karlsruhe under my superintendence.
That which led to a remarkable revulsion of my feelings with regard to those German composers who hitherto had been admired and respected, was partly the influence of these critical skirmishes, and the luring sprightliness of their tone; but mainly the impression made by a fresh visit of Schroder- Devrient to Leipzig, when her rendering of Borneo in Bellini's Romeo and Juliet carried every one by storm.
Eduard Devrient urged Karlsruhe, where he was director, but Wagner wanted to supervise the production, and this was impossible in a theatre of Germany so long as the decree of banishment for participation in the Saxon rebellion hung over his head. The Grand Duke of Baden appealed to the King of Saxony to recall the decree, but in vain.
It is thus that Edward Devrient, the great German actor, and one of Mendelssohn's most intimate friends, describes her: "Cécile was one of those sweet womanly natures whose gentle simplicity, whose mere presence, soothed and pleased.
Still, he seemed eager to assume that the matter turned on artistic differences of opinion between me and his theatrical manager, and in bidding me good-bye he expressed the hope of seeing these apparent misunderstandings give way to a satisfactory explanation. I replied with indifference that I did not think it likely I should ever come to an agreement with Devrient.
After we had placed the coffin in the little mortuary chapel of the Catholic cemetery in Friedrichstadt, where Madame Devrient met it with a wreath of flowers, we performed, on the following morning, the solemn ceremony of lowering it into the vault.
A little later I was taken to task by Eduard Devrient for my impertinence in expecting to have grand- ducal adjutants at my disposal, from which I gathered that he had attributed my request to a desire for some mark of honour, whereas my idea had been that that was the only possible way in which I, a political outlaw, could venture to visit Karlsruhe, though my object was a purely professional one.
The genius of Devrient might yet have struck the right note of passion in the scene had she not chanced to be acting with a singer incapable of all dramatic seriousness, and whose natural gifts only fitted him for joyous or declamatory accents, and who was totally incapable of expressing pain and suffering.
As we were quite prepared for a bad reception, we were really frightened to enter. Imagine, therefore, our astonishment when we found the master, who had already been informed of the news in a letter from Devrient, in the very brightest spirits.
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