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Updated: May 13, 2025
What this meant in Paris I learned just about this time from the hapless fate of the worthy Lehrs. Driven by need such as I myself had had to surmount a year before at about the same time, he had been compelled on a broiling hot day in the previous summer to scour the various quarters of the city breathlessly, to get grace for bills he had accepted, and which had fallen due.
This filled us with the utmost thankfulness on poor Lehrs' account, and we looked on the incident almost as a miracle. We could not help assuming, however, that M. Villemain had been influenced by Didot, who had been prompted by his own guilty conscience for his despicable exploitation of Lehrs, and by the prospect of thus relieving himself of the responsibility of helping him.
Besides this, he asked me to compose a chorus for a vaudeville entitled La Descente de la Courtille, which was to be played at the Varietes during the carnival. This was a second opening. My friends now strongly advised me to write something small in the way of songs, which I could offer to popular singers for concert purposes. Both Lehrs and Anders produced words for these.
I also set L'Attente from Hugo's Orientales, and Ronsard's song, Mignonne, to music. I next stumbled on the idea of writing a grand bass aria with a chorus, for Lablache to introduce into his part of Orovist in Bellini's Norma. Lehrs had to hunt up an Italian political refugee to get the text out of him.
I had been astonished at times to hear even the grave and virtuous Lehrs, openly and quite as a matter of course, give expression to grave doubts concerning our individual survival after death. He declared that in many great men this doubt, even though only tacitly held, had been the real incitement to noble deeds.
"And the pieces that must have been spoiled!" put in Jean. "But think of the triumph of at last taking from the lehrs such gems as these! The results which air, soil, and age have by chance produced in the ancient Egyptian and Græco-Syrian glass the Tiffanys have created in a modern ware. It is a great achievement, and a royal contribution to the art of the world."
Once they prepared a touching surprise for me in the form of a little party which they arranged for New Year's Eve . Lehrs arrived at dusk, rang the bell, and brought a leg of veal; Kietz brought some rum, sugar, and a lemon; Pecht supplied a goose; and Anders two bottles of the champagne with which he had been presented by a musical instrument-maker in return for a flattering article he had written about his pianos.
However, there is or was in Wagner's case a divinity that shapes our ends. Much as he hungered after comforts, luxuries and the flesh-pots of Egypt, the dæmon within his breast was too strong for him. He had planned a new work, more or less on the lines of Rienzi, and perhaps some lucky or unlucky accident might have sent him the inspiration to start with the music. But just at this juncture Lehrs' copy of the Sängerkrieg attracted his attention: the complete drama of Tannhäuser, and the first vague notion of Lohengrin, flashed upon him. As he said, and as I have repeated, a new world was opened before his amazed eyes. The Saracen Young Woman and the rest all went to the wall; and when on April 7, 1842, he set out for Dresden he had different plans altogether in his head. Before he could start Schlesinger advanced the money for more cornet-
Dorus-Gras, a real primadonna of the Grand Opera, Mme. This much, then, did I achieve in six months. It was now nearly Easter of the year 1840. Encouraged by Gouin's negotiations, which seemed to spell hope, I made up my mind to move from the obscure Quartier des Innocents to a part of Paris nearer to the musical centre; and in this I was encouraged by Lehrs' foolhardy advice.
But I felt that the writer had only grasped the old legend in a distorted form, and therefore endeavoured to gain a closer acquaintance with the true aspect of this attractive story. At this juncture Lehrs brought me the annual report of the proceedings of the Konigsberg German Society, in which the 'Wartburg contest' was criticised with a fair amount of detail by Lukas.
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