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When the opera was produced the effect on the audience was certainly overwhelming, almost stupefying. The Dutchman had been accepted at Berlin on Meyerbeer's recommendation, but that recommendation Wagner probably thought of no great value, and after the success of Rienzi he determined to have it also played at Dresden, and the first performance took place at the beginning of 1843.
Patience conquers all things, if one lives long enough, and at length even Wagner's innumerable woes were solved by the appearance of a veritable deus ex machina let down from heaven. But Wagner was over fifty when the tardy god arrived.
If we knew nothing about the Greeks, it would perhaps be impossible to assail our present conditions at all, and objections made on the large scale conceived for the first time by Wagner would have been regarded as the dreams of people who could only be at home in outlandish places.
Nietzsche is right when he says Wagner summarises modernism; but he forgot that Wagner summarises it because he largely helped to create it, to make it what it is, by this power of transferring his thought and emotion bodily, as it were, to other minds, and that he will remain modern for long to come, inasmuch as he moulds the thought of the successive generations as they arise.
If he himself broke loose from any post or position, he rarely found a better one in its stead, while more than once distress was all that his unrest brought him. Thus Wagner changed his associates, his dwelling-place and country, and when we come to comprehend the nature of the circles into which he gravitated, we can hardly realise how he was able to tolerate them for any length of time.
He has also written several songs and piano pieces, and, it is now reported, is engaged upon a dramatic composition called "The Royal Children." He is regarded in Germany as the one composer who gives promise of continuing and developing the scheme of the music-drama as it was propounded by Wagner.
They may dismiss all such misgivings speedily and confidently. If the sound of music has any power to move them, they will find that Wagner exacts nothing further. There is not a single bar of "classical music" in The Ring not a note in it that has any other point than the single direct point of giving musical expression to the drama.
In reading such enthusiastic descriptions and musical biographies are full of them we cannot but echo De Quincey and Wagner in regretting that there has been no shorthand method of taking down and preserving these wonderful improvisations of the great masters. Future generations will be more favored, if Mr. Edison's improved phonograph fulfils the promises made of it.
The bells ring, the lovely strains from "Lohengrin" fill the grand, new house o' God, an' overflow into the quiet streets o' the village, an' we hear in them what Wagner never thought of the joyful death-march of a race. Think of it, Bill, this old earth is growin' too costly for the use o' man. We prefer autos an' diamonds an' knick-knacks!
One of the colored porters in the Wagner Palace Car service, who was always with me on my tours of inspection over the railroad, told me an amusing story of Mr. Mansfield's devotion to his art. He was acting as porter on Mansfield's car, when he was making a tour of the country. This porter was an exceedingly intelligent man.
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