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It is evident that two souls so sympathetic could not long remain in proximity without craving a closer union. "Coming events cast their shadows before," remarks one who often was present during the Biebrich visit of the Von Bülows to Wagner. How deeply Cosima sympathized with Wagner's aims even then is shown by another episode of this visit.
So there is the amazing fact: Wagner, who worshipped Weber's operas, had not, when fourteen years old, heard of the existence of a musician a thousand times mightier than Weber. The great hour was at hand. First, however, he had to pass through a period of boyish disgust and disappointment. At Dresden he had been a favourite with his masters, and had worked hard.
Then a rat crawled into one of the pipes Carson was unable to ascertain which and died there, with results that baffle description. I doubt if Wagner himself could have expressed the situation in his most inspired moments. Still Carson was philosophical. "I'll play a requiem to the rodent," he said, "that will make him turn over in his grave, wherever that interesting spot may be."
The point would not be of any real importance did it not seem to lend colour to the absurd charge of licentiousness and sensuality which has so often been brought against Wagner. I have already remarked that an important difference between the old conception of the story and Wagner's lies in the fact that in the latter their love remains unsatisfied.
Among other works in which she performed during this closing operatic season of her life was Gluck's "Iphigenie en Aulis," which was especially revived for her. Johanna Wagner, the sister of the great composer, was also in the cast, and a great enthusiasm was created by a general stage presentation of almost unparalleled completeness for that time. Mme.
Now Wagner was, when he wrote The Ring, a most sanguine revolutionary Meliorist, contemptuous of the reasoning faculty, which he typified in the shifty, unreal, delusive Loki, and full of faith in the life-giving Will, which he typified in the glorious Siegfried.
I need do nothing more than give the fundamental basis of them all, the one point which he argues in a thousand ways through them all. Wagner would have it, then, that just about the time he came into the world, or a little later, all nothing less than all the arts had gone as far as they could separately, each alone.
But what purpose, musical or other, is subserved by arbitrarily allying a musical phrase to a personage or an idea and blaring it out whenever that personage or idea comes to the front? Wagner early realized the uselessness of the proceeding, and, as I pointed out, in Tannhäuser there are no leit-motifs, though passages and parts of passages are repeated.
But there in the dark for the car lamps went out at the same time with the lantern I could hear those fellows pulling and hauling up and down the aisle and scuffling over the floor, and through all Melford bellowing away, like an orchestral accompaniment to a combat in Wagner opera, but getting quieter and quieter till his bellow died away altogether.
She said, further, that she had took just enough of the stuff at dinner to make her think she wasn't entirely bankrupt, and she wanted to give these here accounts a thorough going-over while the sensation lasted. Not wishing to hurt Uncle Henry's feelings, even if he didn't catch me at it, I partook again of the fervent stuff, and fell into new wonder at the seeming imbecility of Herman Wagner.