Life of Wagner Biographies of Musicians

Excerpt: ...however, that the name of Wagner had for the present received sufficient consideration, and that it was time to give a hearing to some other composer. “This other name was Jacques Offenbach,” adds Wagner. It needs no comment. Pg 109 Again followed concerts, first in Prague, where “Tristan” was requested, then in Carlsruhe, where he had long been forgotten, although the prince’s own love for art had not been extinguished. The Carlsruhe and Mannheim orchestras acknowledged that they now first fully realized that they were artists. A negotiation for permanent settlement at the grand-ducal court failed, owing to the opposition of the courtiers. Wagner had demanded a court-carriage! Frederick the Great has said, it is true, that geniuses rank with sovereigns; but then this was too much, too much! Then too, he had, O horror! spent the beautiful ducats which the grand-duke had presented him, in entertaining of an evening the musicians who had executed the work. Where would such pretensions, such extravagance lead? The same courtiers, however, did not consider it robbery for many years shamefully to abridge the income of their noble prince until they finally stood disgraced themselves and escaped punishment only through the inexhaustible kindness of their monarch. In Loewenberg, in Breslau, and again in Vienna, everywhere Wagner met with abundant Pg 110 success. But what of the real goal? “The public met him with enthusiasm wherever he showed himself, but on the other hand the leading critics remained cold or hostile and the directors of the theatres closed their doors to him,” his biographer, Glasenapp, says truthfully enough. Of the Nibelungen-poem also no notice had been taken except in a very narrow circle. Here and there a copy of the little volume, bound in red and gold, could be found, but the owner was sure to belong to the school of Liszt or Wagner. “How could the poetic work of an opera-composer...