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Updated: August 18, 2024
What can it matter to you whether people indulge their silliness in connection with you and your works? You have other cats to flog "d'autres chats a fouetter," as the French proverb has it. Do not therefore hesitate on your account or on my account to publish the "Nibelung" tetralogy as soon as it is finished.
Let all be well with you, my glorious friend, and proceed bravely with the completion of your tetralogy. When do you think it will be ready? Is there a possibility of thinking of its performance in the months of August and September, 1854? Do not allow other undertakings or claims to detract or detain you from this great enterprise, the task of your life.
In 1848, Wagner was not yet thinking of a Tetralogy, but of an heroic opera in three acts called Siegfried's Tod, in which the fatal power of gold was to be symbolised in the treasure of the Niebelungen; and Siegfried was to represent "a socialist redeemer come down to earth to abolish the reign of Capital." As the rough draft developed, Wagner went up the stream of his hero's life.
Theodore Thomas some years ago entertained the project of reviving German opera in New York, in a manner that should eclipse all previous operatic enterprises in this country. It was his intention to give in the leading American cities a series of performances of Wagner's Nibelung Tetralogy, and he looked forward to this as the crowning achievement of his busy life.
Yet the only deviation he made from his plan was that when he had reached the second act of the third of the Nibelung dramas, the poetic "Siegfried," in June, 1857, he made up his mind to abandon the Tetralogy for the time being, and compose an opera which might be performed separately and once more bring him into contact with the stage.
For the development of the great tetralogy, this is the most important scene of all, and, as such, it will probably meet with the necessary sympathy and attention. If you should like nothing at all in my score, you will, at least, be pleased once more with my neat hand-writing, and will think the precaution of red lines ingenious.
My work also pleases me again; my Nibelung tetralogy is completely designed, and in a few months the verse also will be finished. After that I shall be wholly and entirely a "music-maker," for this work will be my last poem, and a litterateur I hope I shall never be again. Then I shall have nothing but plans for performances in my head; no more writing, only performing. I hope you will help me.
What he was now writing was what his enemies tauntingly called "the music of the future," because, as they said, nobody liked it at present; but what he himself called the "art work of the future," in which all the fine arts are inseparably united. The biggest of his works, the "Nibelung Tetralogy," was conceived and for the most part written in Switzerland.
With the aid of these and liberal contributions by his ever-devoted king, Wagner was able, after many trials, tribulations, and postponements, to bring out, at last, his great Tetralogy, on August 13, 14,16, and 17, of the year 1876. It was beyond comparison the most interesting and important event in the whole history of music.
Rahn-Escher now became a welcome and comforting friend and visitor, who for many years thoroughly understood the management of my health, and especially the misgivings arising from the over-wrought state of my nerves. He soon verified the wisdom of his treatment, when in the middle of February I had undertaken to read my tetralogy aloud on four consecutive evenings before a larger audience.
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