Richard Wagner Part 3

"... Herr von Luttichau has definitely consented to my opera being put on the stage after Reissiger's. That is all very good; but how many questions does not this answer suggest! For instance: does the general management propose to place my work upon the stage with the outlay indispensable to a brilliant effect? On this point W----writes me: 'The general management will leave nothing undone to equip your opera in a suitable manner.' You will understand how terribly terse this seems to me! I am not greatly surprised at receiving no letter from Reissiger since last March: he has worked for me--that is the best and most honourable answer; besides, it would be foolish on my part to expect that Reissiger, now that his own opera must be fairly engrossing his attention, should be much occupied about me. But what alarms me is the absolute silence of our Devrient!

I think I have already written a dozen letters to her: I am not exactly surprised at her sending me no single line in answer, because one knows how terrible a thing letter-writing is to many people. But that she has never even indirectly sent me a word, nor let me have a hint, makes me downright uneasy. Good heavens!

So much depends upon her--it would really be a mere humanity on her part if she, perhaps through her lady's-maid, had sent me a message to this effect: 'Make your mind easy! I am taking an interest in your affair!'--certainly everything which I have learnt here and there about her behaviour with regard to me gives me every reason to feel comfortable; for instance, she is said to have declared some while ago in Leipzig that she hoped my opera would be brought out in Dresden. This token would have fully quieted me, if it had only come directly to my ears or eyes: hearsay, however, is far too uncertain a thing.

"A month ago I likewise wrote to her, and earnestly begged her to let me have only a line with the name of the lady-singer whom she would like to be cast for the part of Irene, so that I might make a formal list to propose to the management. No answer! Oh, my best Herr Heine, if your kindness would only allow you a few words in which to make me acquainted with the intentions of the adored Devrient! Does she really wish to sing in my opera?--that is the question.

"Good heavens! only to know how all this stands! I have written to Herr Tichatschek, and commended myself to his amiability: shall I be able to count on this gentleman?"

Again, on January 4 of the following year:

"Should it really come to this, that my opera must be laid aside for the whole winter, I should indeed be inconsolable; and he or she who might be to blame for this delay would have incurred a grave responsibility--perhaps for causing me untold sufferings.

I cannot write to Madame Devrient; for that I am much too excited, and I know too well that my letters make no impression upon her. But if I have not yet worn out your friendly feeling toward me, and if I can be a.s.sured that you rely upon my fullest grat.i.tude, I earnestly beg of you to go to Madame Devrient. Tell her of my astonishment at the news that it is she who hinders my opera from at length appearing; and that I am in the highest degree disturbed to learn that she by no means feels that pleasure in and sympathy for my work which so many flattering a.s.surances had led me to believe. Give her an inkling of the misery she would prepare for me, if (as I have now good reason to fear) a performance of _Rienzi_ could not after all take place this year! But what am I saying? Though you may be the most approved friend of Madame Devrient, even you will not have much influence over her. Therefore, I do not know at all what I should say, what I must do, or what advise! My one great hope I place in you, most valued friend! I have written to Herr von Luttichau, and herewith turn to Reissiger. If Devrient cannot give up her Armida, if she cannot afford me the sacrifice of a whim, then all my welfare rests only on the promptness with which this opera is brought out, and my own is taken up. I therefore fervently pray Reissiger to hurry: and you--I beseech you--do the same with Devrient. By punctuality and diligence everything can still be set right for me; for the chief thing is--only that my opera should come out before Easter (that is to say, in the first half of March). I am truly quite exhausted!

Alas! I meet with so little that is encouraging, that it would really be of untold import to me if, at least in Dresden, things should go according to my wis.h.!.+"

These excerpts afford some notion of the struggles and disappointments of this time--struggles that were to be repeated when, more than twenty years later, _Tristan_ and the _Mastersingers_ were produced in Munich. More need not be quoted, for the story is always the same--delays caused by intrigues and the whims and caprice of singers, and the indifference of inartistic directors.

It should be said that Meyerbeer seems, for the only time, really to have helped Wagner in getting _Rienzi_ accepted, for a letter of his to von Luttichau recommending the opera, has been preserved; wherefore let us gladly acknowledge this deed, which was a good, if a very small, one. He again paid a visit to Paris, and this time gave Wagner a word of introduction to Pillet, who had a.s.sumed the post of director of the Opera. Owing to this introduction the _Flying Dutchman_ was written. Wagner sketched a scenario and let Pillet have it. The customary procrastination set in, and at last Pillet flatly told Wagner he could not produce an opera by him: he was young, a German, and so on and so on; and in a word he liked the scenario and had determined to have it set by one Dietsch--which is not a very French-sounding name. He offered Wagner twenty pounds for it, and if the offer was not accepted--well, Wagner might do what he chose.

Wagner took it.

He completed his libretto, took lodgings at Meudon, then a lovely suburb of Paris, hired a piano and sat down to compose his _Dutchman_.

He gives a graphic account of his tremors whilst awaiting the piano: he feared that during the degrading struggle for bread the power of composing might have deserted him. The instrument arrived, he sat down, and shouting for joy, struck out the sailors' chorus. In seven weeks the draft was complete--it is dated September 13, 1841. Want of funds compelled him to leave Meudon and resume his treadmill toil--this time in the Rue Jacob in Paris; but he began to score his opera in the autumn and by the end of the year it was entirely finished. He sent it to the Berlin Opera, and at once began to cast round for another subject. He had demonstrated to his own complete satisfaction that grand historical themes were the only useful material for a thoroughly "up-to-date" (date 1842--seventy years ago) composer; and while doing what may be called foraging work he had hit upon the story of _The Saracen Young Woman_. We may presume that this appealed to him in a mood of reaction after the intensely personal quality of the _Dutchman_. That mood sent him back in the direction of _Rienzi_. About the _Dutchman_ he never had the slightest illusion. He knew it to be so far ahead of the time that nothing in the way of a popular success was to be hoped for it. On the other hand, he had perfect faith--a faith justified by the subsequent event--in _Rienzi_; and since the Wagner of 1842 was by no means the Wagner of 1862, or even of 1852, since also he had been half-starved for a couple of years and money seemed to him a highly desirable thing, he naturally, inevitably, was drawn towards a subject which promised as well, from the box-office point of view, as _Rienzi_.

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 daemon 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 _Sangerkrieg_ attracted his attention: the complete drama of _Tannhauser_, 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-a-piston arrangements of opera-airs, and he had to take the scores of those operas amongst his luggage.

As yet I have said nothing about his acquaintance with Liszt. It began at this time, and of course was destined to have wonderful results, but for the moment it was of no importance. Wagner was an unknown composer; Liszt was a world-famous pianist. Wagner, moreover, had written only _Rienzi_ and the _Dutchman_, and was unable even to play them on the piano. He probably made only the slightest impression on Liszt. The incident is worth noticing in this chapter, because, though this Paris episode seems to be nothing but a series of disasters, it is an instance of the good that came of it. Wagner undoubtedly learnt a lot about the stage; he got to know Liszt; he had the world of _Tannhauser_ and _Lohengrin_ opened out to him. When he went off to Dresden and touched German soil once more he swore he would never again leave his fatherland. But he had learnt what his fatherland was quite unable to teach him. His friends said his character changed entirely during this period. Undoubtedly it did change: the Wagner who had aimed only at worldly, commercial success, changed into Wagner the artist whose sincerity carried him through all troubles to the crowning triumph--and discomfiture--of Bayreuth. I have referred before to the fact of the old momentum keeping him going in a certain direction even after he knew that direction to be a wrong one; and the same thing was to occur again, as we shall see in a moment. After writing the _Dutchman_ he actually deliberated as to the wisdom of doing another _Rienzi_. The claims of his stomach were, naturally after a two years of semi-starvation, very strong, and another _Rienzi_ might have meant easily earned bread-and-b.u.t.ter. But the Paris change was fundamental; and even if he had tried to do another _Rienzi_ he could not possibly have done it. Without his knowing it, the artist in him had triumphed over the merely commercial composer.

CHAPTER VI

'RIENZI' AND 'THE FLYING DUTCHMAN'

I

Were _Rienzi_ an opera of the highest artistic importance, I suppose I should have read ere now Bulwer Lytton's novel of that name. As it is, I must confess my utter inability to wade through that pretentious and dreary achievement. And it does not matter. Skimming over the novel, I have gathered enough of the plot to see that Wagner took only the plot and nothing else from Lytton. What else he could have taken I cannot guess, unless it was a copious stream of high-falutin', and at this period Wagner's own resources of the sort were ample. What he wanted was a plot that would afford him an opportunity of planning a spectacular opera on the largest possible scale, and this he found in Lytton.

Two claims, or rather, a claim and a counter-claim, have been, and constantly are, made with regard to _Rienzi_. The first is that it was inspired by Meyerbeer and a copy of one of his works--which one I do not know; the counter-claim is that Meyerbeer had no part in the business, and that on the contrary he learnt more from Wagner than Wagner could possibly have learnt from him. Now the notion, I take it, of composing a grand work for the Paris stage was suggested by Meyerbeer's stupendous success--of that, indeed, I cannot admit there is the faintest shadow of a doubt. Starting from Paris, where they were concocted together with Scribe, Meyerbeer's operas went the round of the opera-houses of Europe, and save in one or two quarters Meyerbeer lorded it over the opera-houses of Europe. It may be true enough that some of his mighty works had not been played at Riga--it may even be true that Wagner had not seen the scores. But that I feel less sure about; and, anyhow, if he had not seen them he was bound to have heard of them. The talk of musical Europe was not likely to be unknown to a man who both read and wrote in the musical papers. As soon as Wagner conceived the idea he wrote to Scribe concerning it; and, as we know, Scribe quite naturally left his communication unanswered. We find, then, that this, not more than this, though certainly not less, is the extent of Wagner's indebtedness to Meyerbeer: that Meyerbeer, by writing clap-trap for a large stage, with showy, tawdry effects, had gained enormous popularity and corresponding wealth, and thus unconsciously had thrown out a hint that budded and blossomed into _Rienzi_. How little beyond this bare hint Wagner got from Meyerbeer we shall see when we examine the music.

A word must be said about the counter-claim. In his age Wagner at Bayreuth, although he had fine musicians as his friends, had round him many gentry who told him--greatly daring, to his face--not only that he owed no artistic debt to any one, but that, on the whole, most other composers owed him a good deal. One can excuse the weary old man, sorely battered in life's battles, lapping up a little of this sweet flattery; but it is hard to forgive the stupidity that still makes the great composer appear ridiculous thirty years after his death. This legend of Meyerbeer borrowing or thieving from Wagner is sheer rubbish; in all Wagner's music there is not a bar which could have been of use to Meyerbeer. The most rowdy tunes in _Rienzi_ he could easily equal: anything ever so remotely approaching the beautiful he did not want. What! was he to run the chance of failure by writing, or copying, one really expressive measure?

It needed the cruel disillusionment of the Paris days, it needed also the time needful for Wagner's normal growth, before he was driven to see that the music-drama, or something that ultimately evolved itself into the music-drama, was the form that he needed for his deepest utterances. _Rienzi_ is old-fas.h.i.+oned opera, barefaced, blatant and unashamed. Wagner wanted effective airs, duets, trios, choruses and marches; and no libretto-monger ever went to work in a more deliberate, matter-of-fact and business-like way to provide opportunities for these. Both in _Die Feen_ and in _Das Liebesverbot_ his purpose had been more definitely, more disinterestedly, artistic.

Now he set to work to manufacture for the Paris market. The subject was eminently suitable. The personage Rienzi was intended for a great, heroic figure and the music written for a brilliant tenor. The indispensable love-element was provided by Irene, a soprano (though it can well be sung by a mezzo), and Adriano, son of a patrician, a mezzo-soprano (almost a contralto part)--which would be amazing did we not know Wagner's aim. A woman-man carries us back to the days of Handel and Gluck, and shows how little sincere Wagner was at the time, how absorbingly bent he was on tickling the ears of the Parisians. The villains of the piece, Colonna and Orsini, with their patrician followers, are true stage-villains of melodrama in some situations--proud, determined, unsparing; but in other situations they whine in a very un-patrician-like way for mercy. In truth, Wagner was determined to give all the singers a chance of showing off their voices and their skill in every kind of music--heroic or noisy, pathetic or whining, brave and obstreperous or feebly tender. A few minutes' consideration of the story as Wagner lays it before us, and the music he sets to it, will show that every character in the opera is an unhuman chameleon. It is not worth while spending the reader's time on an exhaustive a.n.a.lysis. We shall have enough to do of that kind of thing when we come to the beginning of Wagner's riper work, the _Dutchman_: time and s.p.a.ce would only be wasted if we examined _Rienzi_ very closely.

The curtain rises on a street in Rome; it is night, and in the foreground Rienzi's house can be discerned. Orsini and his companions run up a ladder to a window, enter, and come out carrying Irene, Rienzi's sister. She screams for help quite in the Donna Anna manner; Colonna and his companions come in and fall to blows--why, is not too clear--with Orsini and his men. Adriano, Colonna's son, rescues Irene.

Crowds of the common people rush in, wildly asking one another what the row is about; Raimondo, the pope's legate, comes on, and in the name of holy mother church begs for peace; Rienzi, waked by this time, sees what has occurred, and in a speech--uttered mainly in the driest of dry recitative--taunts the patricians with their bad conduct and their reckless readiness to break all the vows they have made. The n.o.bles announce their intention of going elsewhere to fight out their quarrel to the bitter end, and they go. Rienzi beseeches the crowd to wait their time, and he will lead them to destroy their oppressors.

They quietly disperse; Rienzi, Adriano and Irene have a scene; Rienzi recognises in his sister's rescuer the son of his brother's murderer, Adriano, and the latter, who has fallen in love with Irene, promises to take Rienzi's part, and the three sing a trio as cold, undramatic and commonplace as anything in Donizetti. There are two pa.s.sages in it which possess life: a variant of a theme from _Euryanthe_, and a theme distinctly suggestive of the Wagner of _Tristan_. Then Rienzi goes off, ostensibly to prepare for battle, but in reality to leave the scene clear for Adriano and Irene to sing a rather maudlin love-duet.

A trumpet-call is heard; people rush in from all sides; Rienzi addresses them; and after choruses, partly double-choruses, all go off to fight the patricians. There is plenty of bustle; there is tremendous vigour; and the scene affords chances for the stage manager to manipulate big crowds effectively. But we must remember that the thing had been quite as well done by Auber in _Masaniello_: even the energy is not the true Wagnerian energy divine: it does not show itself through the stuff of the music, but in the common rumty-tumpty rhythms of the day, often offensively vulgar, and in the noisy instrumentation. Any one can write for a big chorus and orchestra, with plenty of trumpets and drums: to fill the music itself with energy is a task that Wagner could not cope with as yet.

So far the characters have been consistent. In the second act they all show signs of weakness. Messengers of peace enter: Rienzi has conquered and freed the people from an unbearable yoke; he is congratulated by the messengers who have wandered through the country--a pilgrimage that in the fourteenth century might well have occupied them for years--and everywhere peace prevails. The music here has a certain charm and freshness, but no more can be said for it.

Wagner wanted a contrast to the imposing displays of the first act, so he simply put in this unnecessary scene. The patricians enter and whine, begging for mercy; Rienzi, now Tribune, joins the senators; and Colonna, Orsini and the rest begin to plot his death. Adriano, amongst them unnoticed at first, expostulates--begs them not to stain their hands and souls with the blood of the vanquisher who has treated them so magnanimously. They scorn him as a deserter of his own cla.s.s; they leave, and he swears to save "Irenens Bruder." He has become sentimentalist; but some of the music of the scene has strength. Then the people conveniently flock in; amba.s.sadors come from all corners of the earth to acknowledge Rienzi; Adriano warns him that mischief is breeding, and Rienzi calmly smiles; there is a most elaborate ballet, occupying many pages of the score and full of trumpery tunes; Orsini stabs Rienzi, and all the patricians are seized by the guards; Rienzi shows himself unhurt, being protected by a breastplate; the conspirators are condemned to die and are led away. Then Adriano and Irene plead for Colonna; at first Rienzi is obdurate; then he, too, turns weakling and promises pardon. He pleads for his enemies with the people; in spite of two citizens who see nothing but danger, he prevails, and the act ends with another huge chorus. There is much very Italian stuff in the music; but on the whole this scene is the strongest in the opera. Of the real Wagner there is still small sign.

He had completed these two acts when he set out for Paris. Once he realized how poor were the prospects of getting his work played there, his ardour for bigness and noise seems to have cooled. There are no more double choruses; everything is planned on a smaller scale. The three remaining acts in their present form (for he afterwards shortened the opera) can be, and often are, compressed into two, or even one. They can be described in a few words. The people begin to distrust Rienzi; the patricians recommence plotting; Rienzi leads the people to victory against them, and Colonna, with the others, is killed. Adriano again wobbles and swears vengeance; the capitol is set on fire with Rienzi and Irene inside; at the last moment Adriano repents and rushes in to die with them; the building falls with a crash, destroying the three; and as the curtain falls the patricians--such as are left--seeing the people leaderless, fall upon and scatter them. There are pages on pages that one can scarcely believe came from Wagner's pen; in terrific theatrical situations the most trivial Italian tunes are poured out in copious profusion. The war hymn is sheer rowdyism; the great broad melody which forms part of the prayer, and on which the introduction of the overture is based, stands out from a weltering sea of orchestral bangs, noises and screams and skirls of the strings. But there are numberless chances for fine voices to be heard; and at that time of day these were even more prized than they are to-day. The sparkle, the fireworks, the sheer noise of the choruses, carried every one away. In Dresden Wagner became the man of the hour. He had aimed at a success of this sort, and he attained it, though by no means so quickly as he had expected, nor in the quarter where a success would have been profitable.

It is not needful to say much more about the music. It shows a variety of influences; it shows also that Wagner, before he was thirty, was, as I have already said, a perfect master of the tricks of the trade.

In huge imposing effects he out-Meyerbeered Meyerbeer, out-Spontinied Spontini. If his tunes have not the superficial gracefulness of Bellini it is because Wagner, in spite of himself, was driven by his daemon to aim at expressiveness, and, as in the _Dutchman_ a very short time afterwards, fell between two stools. His tunes lack the fluency of the Italians because he did, in a half-hearted way, want to utter genuine feeling; they are not finely, accurately and logically expressive as they are in _Tannhauser_ and _Lohengrin_, because the Italian influence, and the necessity of writing to please the gallery, perpetually held him back. The contours of the melodies are dictated from outside, consciously copied from alien models: in the later works they are shaped by the inner force of his own mind, and though the Weber idiom is prevalent, he used it unconsciously, as children in learning to speak acquire the accent of the elders about them or the dialect of the neighbourhood in which they are reared. I say the tunes lack external grace, and I might go further: all the themes, all the pa.s.sages that follow (rather than grow out of) the themes, are characterized by a certain clumsiness. This followed, as night the day, from the attempt to copy and to be original at the same time. He could not obey his instinct and write directly and simply: he must needs warp and twist the obvious, and disguise, even from himself, its essential commonplaceness. A remarkable instance is his use of the Dresden Amen in _Rienzi_ as compared with his use of it in _Tannhauser_. In the latter it is plain, diatonic and immensely--in the best sense--effective; in _Rienzi_, in spite of the vigour of its presentation, the effect is weakened by the way in which it is bent away to a chromatic something which is neither frankly Italian nor honestly German. Again, he composed with an audience in his mind's eye that could only take in one melody or theme at a time. The melody might be in an upper part, a middle, or in the ba.s.s. In one or another it always is, and the rest of the musical tissue is only accompaniment. Hence a heaviness, a lumbering motion of the harmonies, which is irritating to our ears now that we are accustomed to webs he spun in later days when music no longer consisted to him of top parts and bottom parts, but of a broad stream of parts, all of equal importance, and all flowing along together, preserving each its individuality, and each individual blending with the others to produce the total effect. In _Rienzi_ the ba.s.s often remains the same for bars together, while in an upper part a florid tune flourishes its tail, so to speak, for the public amus.e.m.e.nt. An ugly trick he indulged in at this time was giving to the voice the notes of the instrumental ba.s.s--a remnant of the eighteenth-century way of writing for the ba.s.s voice.

Artistically _Rienzi_ was a sin. Remembering that _Die Feen_ had been written years before, it is useless to contend that Wagner did not know he was aiming at something lower than the best he could produce.

He never again fell away from his highest and truest self, though he was sorely tempted.

II

The simple, terrible old legend of the Flying Dutchman had in it no elements of drama. The irascible mariner of ancient times, vainly struggling to round Cape Horn (or some other cape) against a head wind, swore in his wrath that he would succeed if he tried until the Day of Judgment; a lightning flash in the sky proclaimed that he was taken at his word; thenceforward his s.h.i.+p sailed the seas without stopping; it never could reach any port, and release would only come at the last day. The crew died and their ghosts worked the vessel; the vessel rotted and the ghostly crew continued to work a phantom s.h.i.+p; only Vanderdecken, the skipper, seems to have lived on in the flesh.

Other s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sed through the phantom as though it was a cloud; and the living crews shuddered, and cursed the dead. Before this thing of terror and mystery could form a part of any drama, adventures had to be invented and grafted on to it. As with the legend of the Wandering Jew, this was done in a hundred, perhaps a thousand, instances; and never had a good piece of work been the result. Whether Heine did or did not himself devise the form in which the legend is used in his reminiscences of Herr von Schnabalewopski it is not worth troubling to find out. It is enough that in Heine, Wagner found the story more or less as he employed it. It is an odd compound--odd at this time of day at least--of the hard old superst.i.tion with soft German sentimentality of the Romantic period. A good Angel, thinking the Dutchman's fate too hard, interceded for him; and though his sentence could not be wholly remitted, a bargain was struck. Once in seven years Vanderdecken could land and spend a certain time ash.o.r.e. If during this interval of peace he could find a maiden who would love him faithfully to death, he would be released: his wanderings would be o'er, and death would swallow him up. How the maiden's fidelity could be tested does not appear.

Wagner would have it that with the _Dutchman_ he ceased to be a mere stringer of opera verses and became the full poet. The work does not support that view; nor is the construction of the plot one whit better than a hundred others put together by hacks before he was born. Each act is crammed with conventional tricks out of the hack's common stock; in each scene, from the very first, characters come on or go off, not because it is inherent in the action that they should do so, but because without such helps the librettist, or "poet," could not have got along. The curtain rises on a rocky Norwegian fiord where a sailing-vessel has found shelter from a storm that is raging on the open sea. Daland, the skipper, has gone ash.o.r.e to survey the land and to find out, if he can, whither his s.h.i.+p has been driven. He recognizes the spot: it is Sandwike, and the tempest has blown him "sieben Meilen" out of his course. However, he is glad enough to be safe; and seeing signs of better weather goes into his cabin to wait, leaving a watchman on guard. This is the first specimen of the old stage-craft; Daland had to be got rid of, so, instead of attending to any damage the waves may have caused the s.h.i.+p, he goes quietly downstairs to take a snooze. The watchman tries to keep himself awake by singing. But it is no use. The librettist is inexorable: the stage is wanted for some one else; and the watchman's song merely acts as a soporific, and at last the poor fellow snores. In the distance appears the s.h.i.+p of the Flying Dutchman--"blutroth die Segel, schwarz der Mast"--she nears rapidly, enters the fiord and casts anchor hard by Daland's boat, and Vanderdecken comes ash.o.r.e. It is the seventh year, and he has the usual short respite in which to seek the maid who will redeem him. He has a long soliloquy; then, in the nick of time, Daland awakes, comes on deck, unjustly reproaches the watchman for dozing, hails the Dutchman, and joins him on the rocks for a chat. They soon grow friendly and strike a bargain. Daland is to take the stranger home with him, and if his daughter Senta proves satisfactory, Vanderdecken is to have her as his bride in return for infinite treasure out of the hold of the strange vessel. Daland has been shown a sample, and is overjoyed with his bargain: a distinguished-looking husband for his daughter and the husband's wealth for himself. The wind changes to a favourable one; Daland sets out first, leaving the Dutchman to follow in a boat which we may well believe goes faster, for it is driven by the devil and carries a private hurricane wherever it goes. The convenient veering of the wind need not be taken as forced on the stage manager by the librettist, for Daland foretells it at the very beginning of the act.

I do not wish to treat so n.o.ble a work as the _Flying Dutchman_ with any irreverence; but if it is worth understanding Wagner's art, and the slow processes of its transition from the baldness and ultra-conventionality of _Rienzi_ to the richness and simplicity and directness of _Tristan_, we must realize clearly that in its present stage the craftsmans.h.i.+p was little in advance of Scribe's. In some respects he was very far in advance of Scribe. The whole thing springs from and swings round a central idea, the idea of the lonely outcast doomed to sail a stormy sea for ever without even the prospect of h.e.l.l as a refuge, always seeking one to redeem him and free him from his torments, and at last finding her. But Wagner had not yet evolved or invented the technique which would enable him to present his idea in the theatre without resorting to those crude conventionalities which seemed harmless and even reasonable enough at the time, though now they compel us to smile. He could no more have constructed the framework of the _Dutchman_ without shoving on and pulling off his puppets as seemed desirable than he could have written the music without using the set forms, airs, duets, etc., of a type of opera which, in intention, he had already gone far beyond. The conventionality shows itself in one rather surprising way. Throughout the opera it is made plain that the whole world knows the Dutchman story: mariners s.h.i.+ver when they think of meeting him; children are scared when they are told of him. Yet when the very s.h.i.+p described in the "old ballad," sung in the second act, sails into the fiord with its blood-red sails and black masts, no one evinces the faintest astonishment. Daland has the Dutchman's picture at home; he sees the s.h.i.+p before his eyes; but in a matter-of-fact manner he asks him who he is. Daland's sailors are called on deck to set sail, and pay no attention to so weird a craft.

In the next act we have a room in Daland's house. A number of girls are spinning; Senta alone is idle, absorbed in a portrait that hangs on the wall--that of Vanderdecken. From earliest girlhood she has heard his tale and brooded over it; and self-sacrifice being her hobby, she has evidently worked herself up into a morbid state of mind and resolved to "redeem" the unfortunate man should the opportunity occur. This is honest work, not Scribe make-believe. Cases in which men and women have wrought themselves into an exalted mood and planned and achieved deeds, great or small, n.o.ble or ign.o.ble, but always more or less mad, are common enough in history to justify a dramatist in taking a specimen as one of the persons of his drama. Besides, Senta, from the moment she is seen, stands out as the princ.i.p.al figure. The Dutchman is there to give character and atmosphere to the piece, but dramatically he is nothing more than Senta's opportunity personified.

The girls spin on; a kind of forewoman, Mary, upbraids Senta with idling and staring at the picture and dreaming away her life--for the girl is quite open about her sympathy with the accursed seafaring man. She wants Mary to sing the _Flying Dutchman_ ballad; Mary curtly refuses; "Then," rejoins Senta, for all the world like a leading lady in a melodrama giving the cue for the band to begin the royalty-song, "I'll sing it myself"; and, despite protests, she does. It recounts, of course, the story of the Dutchman prior to his meeting with Daland.

At the end she announces her intention of saving him; and while the women are expostulating, Eric rushes in to add his voice to theirs. He tells them Daland's s.h.i.+p is in sight; and all save he and Senta scurry off to make preparations. Eric wishes to marry her, and pleads his cause; she asks him what his griefs are compared with those of the doomed man whose picture hangs on the wall. He (rightly) thinks her semi-demented, and tells a dream he had: of the Dutchman entering, of Senta at once giving herself to him, and then sailing away. His story has a result precisely contrary to what he intended and hoped: her ecstasy becomes more violent than ever; he (the Dutchman) seeks her and she will share his grief with him. Eric rushes off in despair and horror; Senta subsides; she prays that the Dutchman may be able to find her--and her father and Vanderdecken enter.

She stands mazed, not greeting her father nor uttering a word, gazing at the stranger. Now Daland, I have already remarked, has noticed no resemblance between this man and the picture, and he cannot understand his daughter's silence. Finally she salutes him and asks about Vanderdecken; and Daland, in haste, discloses his plan. Neither Vanderdecken nor Senta speaks; so, with a stroke of the old-fas.h.i.+oned opera trickery, Wagner makes Daland feel himself _de trop_ and go away. Vanderdecken at once begins his story, and the pair sing a duet, which I will deal with shortly; for the moment I need only remind the reader that Senta's mind was made up in advance. When the Dutchman, almost warningly, reminds her that it is nothing less than a life's devotion he demands, she proudly answers, "Whoever you are, whatever the curse on you, I will share your life and your doom." The librettist now having need of his services for the finale, Daland enters, and the act winds up with a showy trio.

No further comment is needed on this act: in structure, like the first, it is only old-fas.h.i.+oned opera. It is in the third act that the inherent weakness of the story for operatic purposes shows with almost disastrous results. Only the sheer force of the music averts a complete breakdown. The problem was to show Senta literally faithful unto death. Evidently it was impossible for Vanderdecken to claim and carry off his bride forthwith. Had that been possible the work might have terminated with a short scene to form the real finale of the second act. But Vanderdecken had asked for a wife, and Daland would not have dreamed of letting his daughter go until the proper ceremony had taken place. Besides, Wagner was writing an opera with the very practical view of a performance in the theatre; and in those days of lengthy operas (_Rienzi_ at first played five and a half hours) the public would have grumbled if they did not get enough for their money. No manager would have looked at a work no longer than the first and second acts of the _Dutchman_. The final scene could not be made very lengthy; so the composer determined to pad out the act with pure irrelevant music, and the librettist had to find him words. In a piano score now before me the essential part of the act, the scene in which Senta redeems the Dutchman, occupies twenty-four pages; and these are preceded by fifty pages of choruses of sailors, maidens and ghosts.

Allowing for the larger s.p.a.ce occupied by choruses on the printed page, we are half-way through the act before serious business begins.

It must be owned that Wagner has done his work superbly, even making use of it to a certain extent. Girls bring provisions and drinks for Daland's crew, and there is a lot of chorus and counter-chorus and dancing. Then both men and girls call upon the Dutch crew. There is no response. The s.h.i.+p lies wrapt in gloom; and, half afraid, the girls and Daland's men taunt them with being dead. But suddenly the hour arrives for the Dutchman to sail. With perfect calm all around, a hurricane shakes her sails and shrieks and pipes in the rigging, and the waters roar and foam; the crew come to life and call for their captain in a series of unearthly choruses. Daland's men, horror-struck, make the sign of the cross; the spectres give a "taunting laugh" and subside; once again all is peace, and the sinister vessel lies there, the air seeming to thicken and grow blacker about her.

The women have gone off; the sailors occupy themselves with eating and drinking; and Senta, pursued by Eric, comes on. He has heard of the intended marriage, and begs pa.s.sionately that she shall not sacrifice herself, ending with a cavatina--a cavatina by Richard Wagner!--in vain. But Vanderdecken has heard all from the wings--another bit of old-fas.h.i.+oned stage trickery, like the "asides"--and resolves that Senta shall not sacrifice herself. "For ever lost," he cries, realizing that he is renouncing his last chance.

Senta declares her determination to follow him--she will redeem him whether he wishes it or not; in a regular set trio she, he and Eric thrash the matter out; she is not to be shaken; Eric gives a despairing cry which brings on the women folk and the sailors. The Dutchman says farewell, pipes up his spectral crew, who heave the anchor, and he goes on board. As the s.h.i.+p moves off Senta throws herself into the water; the s.h.i.+p falls to pieces; the sun rises, and in its beams the "glorified forms" of the pair are seen mounting the skies. Senta has had her way: she has worked out her destiny and "saved" the wanderer. The curtain falls.

This is the first of the genuine Wagner dramas, the first, therefore, from which the Wagnerians have drawn, or into which they have read, "lessons." As we get on I shall try to show that no moral can be tacked on to any of Wagner's works. But supposing that he did wish to teach us something in the _Dutchman_, what on earth can it be? Not, surely, that one should not swear rash oaths in a temper? We have all done that and needed no redeemer. There is no touch of essential veracity in the old legend, a bit of puerile medieval fantasy; there is no sort of proportion between the trivial offence and the appalling punishment; even in an age which thought to oppose the will of the Almighty the rankest blasphemy it can never have been considered eternally just that a righteous and merciful Creator should deal out such a punishment. Besides, in the ancient legend, as in Wagner's book, the Almighty has little to do with the matter: it is the foul fiend who snaps up Vanderdecken in his momentary lapse. Again, after the first act Vanderdecken is second to Senta. Even the belated attempt to show him heroic in his determination to sail off alone to his doom has no dramatic point; it has no bearing on his salvation, for nothing happens until Senta jumps into the sea, and we feel sure nothing would have happened if she had not jumped. _That_ lesson, at any rate--a childish, inept, inane, insane one at best--is not set forth in the _Dutchman_. The only other possible one is that self-sacrifice is a worthy and beautiful thing in itself. In itself, I say, for Senta's self-sacrifice is purely a fad: she knows nothing of Vanderdecken save a rumour shaped into a primitive ballad. Such self-sacrifice is not worthy, not beautiful; but, on the contrary, a very ugly and detestable form of lunacy. In truth, not only is there no lesson in the _Dutchman_, but the whole idea is so absurd that only the power of the music enables us to swallow it at all. The condition on which the Dutchman can be saved is purely arbitrary; what difference ought it to make to him that some one, for the sake of an idea, sacrifices herself? The "good angel" who proposed it must have been temporarily out of her senses, and the Creator when he agreed must have been nodding. And the whole business is smeared over with German mawkish sentimentality--this business, I mean, of Senta _loving_ the Dutchman. Had he seen and loved her, and resolutely sailed off without her, and found his salvation in that, there would be some semblance of reason; but the fumbling attempt to make something of the man at the last moment is futile, and we are left with nothing but sentimental sickliness, nauseating and revolting. In a word, then, we must take the _Dutchman_ libretto as it is, unreasonable, false: only a series of occasions for writing some fine music. That it is nothing more than such a series I have endeavoured to establish at all this length; because if it is worth understanding Wagner at all, and if we wish to understand him, we must realise the point he started from in his half-conscious groping after the opera form which he only found in its full perfection in his _Tristan_ period.

III

In the music the head and shoulders of the real Wagner emerge boldly from the ruck of commonplace which const.i.tutes the bulk of the operatic music of the time. How any one could have failed to see the strength and beauty of much of the _Dutchman_ is one of those things almost impossible to understand to-day. Of the tawdry vulgarity, the blatant clamour, of _Rienzi_ there is not a hint. The opera is by no means all on the highest level, but a good third of it is, and there are pages which Richard never afterwards surpa.s.sed. A dozen pa.s.sages are prophetic of the Wagner of _Tristan_ and the _Ring_. Let me begin by quoting a few of these. The phrase (_a_, page 118) immediately suggests _Tristan_, as it screams higher and higher with ever-increasing intensity of pa.s.sion; a variant of it (_b_) is charged with the same feeling, and is used in the same way. The feeling is not the same as in _Tristan_; both are used when Eric makes his last despairing appeals to Senta. But look at (_c_). Compare it with one of the themes (_d_) expressive of Wotan's anguish, and then recollect that (_c_) is used when Vanderdecken, in veiled speech, tells Daland of his woes. When Vanderdecken is yearning for Senta's love, and trembling lest by telling the truth he should frighten her, we get (_e_), afterwards developed with such poignant effect in the first and last acts of _Tristan_. Vanderdecken enters with Daland, and Senta, almost stunned, sets eyes on him for the first time. The musical phrase is (_f_), which, simplified and more direct in its appeal, was to be used when Siegmund and Sieglinda first gaze on one another. Then the pa.s.sage (_g_) is one which the reader will find mentioned in my chapter on _Tristan_ (p. 263) as standing for quite a mult.i.tude of things in the _Ring_. A curious case is the little phrase (_h_) which occurs in the middle of the watchman's song. Of no significance here, of what tremendous import it is in the first act of _Tristan_.

None of these phrases or pa.s.sages is developed with the power and resource characteristic of Wagner's later work; but it is astonis.h.i.+ng that after the baldness and noise of _Rienzi_ he should have gone straight on to invent such music at all. He was still groping his way, and had to trust to the conventional framework of opera construction to a large extent; that is, each act is divided into set numbers, even when the numbers are based on music which has been heard before and to which, therefore, a definite meaning has become attached. He could not yet trust himself in an open sea of music, as he did in _Tristan_; rather, we have a chain of lakes, the music sometimes overflowing out of one into another. The marvellous continual development of themes with intricate interweavings and incessant transmogrifications--all this was part of the technique of the _Tristan_ period. Neither in the _Dutchman_ nor in _Tannhauser_ nor in _Lohengrin_ is there any sign of it. Of what may be called leitmotivs there are only three, the Dutchman (_i_) and Senta (_j_), while a portion of the second (_k_) may be regarded as a third, for it is used by itself, independently.

One little group of notes (_l_) I have seen described as a leitmotiv; and if it is one, I should like to know what it stands for. As can be seen, it is a bit of the Senta theme (fourth bar of _j_); and in the overture a long connecting pa.s.sage is built on it. But it also forms part of the chorus of sailors in the first act, part of the watchman's song in a varied form, part of another sailors' chorus (_m_); it is the very backbone of the spinning chorus; and lastly, a large portion of the spectral sailors' chorus is made up of it. I have no explanation to offer--unless it be that Wagner, bent on suggesting the sea throughout the opera, felt that this phrase helped him to sustain the atmosphere. The sea, indeed, throughout the _Dutchman_, is the background, foreground, the whole environment of the drama; in this wild legend which came out of the sea, every action is related to the sea, and one might say that the sea's voice is echoed in every one's speech. The sea music, therefore, based on Senta's ballad--apart from the leitmotivs which that contains--is of the very first importance.

The easiest way to get a firm grasp of the _Dutchman_ is to a.n.a.lyse this ballad. Then in pa.s.sing rapidly over the score afterwards we shall see at a glance the structure of the whole, and how the new thematic matter is either welded into this sea music or stodgily interpolated. The song is too long to be transcribed here; but every reader must have in his possession a copy at this time of day. There are ten bars of introduction: in the eleventh, to the Dutchman theme, Senta sings the "Yo-ho-ho"; at the fifteenth, with a glorious swing and rush she dashes into the ballad--

"Traft ihr das Schiff im Meere an, Blutroth die Segel, schwarz der Mast?

Auf hohem Bord der bleiche Mann, Des Schilfes Herr, wacht ohne Rast."

This consists of eight bars--a four-bar section repeated. Then we get the storm music, four bars of which I quote (_n_), and this is freely employed throughout the opera. The storm subsides, and at bar thirty-nine Senta sings to her own theme--

"Doch kann dem bleichen Manne Erlosung einstens noch werden, Fand' er ein Weib, das bis in den Tod getreu ihm auf Erden."