Wagner Without Fear

by William Berger

  FUGITIVE PATHS

  Liszt kept urging Wagner to go to Paris, and Minna, who joined him in Switzerland in September, supported this idea. Wagner duly went there in January 1850, but once again got nowhere. Meyerbeer still reigned supreme in the French capital. Wagner was miserable and unable to work on music. Instead, he got involved in a complicated love affair with a married lady in Bordeaux whose potty English mother was willing to support Wagner until the scandale erupted in public. After many tawdry scenes worthy of the Italian operas he claimed to dislike, Wagner rejoined Minna in Zurich in July. He was broke, as usual, and had no prospects. Germany and France were both closed to him. He reacted to his situation by venting bitterness in a pamphlet, “Judaism in Music,” which he finished in August. The world had failed him, and he blamed the Jews.

  It would strike a sane person as an irrational leap from resenting Meyerbeer’s success to writing “Judaism in Music,” but Wagner was not, conventionally speaking, sane. The logical processes of cause and effect were entirely absent in his thinking. Wagner was perfectly capable of tasting a rotten apple, or even hearing about one, and developing a creed around the notion that apples, all being rotten, are the cause of the world’s problems. Furthermore, he could add without compunction, no one could claim any appreciation for the score of, say, Tristan und Isolde until they rid their lives of the pernicious influence of apples. The reader is advised to sample some of Wagner’s theoretical writings before rejecting the previous sentences as frivolous.

  Meanwhile, he had more success sorting out his thoughts in other essays. In January 1851 he published Opera and Drama, in which he laid out his ideas of a new direction for “music drama,” and was then able to complete the outline for the four-part Ring of the Nibelung. He wrote A Communication to My Friends, which was a combination of autobiography, introduction to his existing operas, and statement of purpose for future works. After a grueling “water cure” at a Swiss spa, he returned to Zurich, where Minna once again joined him. Wagner organized a series of concerts, mainly because he had written much music he hadn’t yet heard played by an orchestra. (He was already exiled from Germany when Liszt gave the only moderately successful premiere of Lohengrin at Weimar in 1850.)

  These “cures” we always read about in the nineteenth century, and the “spas” everyone is always running off to, were the era’s combination of resort, rehab, and fashion show. Here they addressed the health issues unique to their time, since nobody of the artistic or upper classes ever seemed to have a normal disease. They suffered from “nervous collapse,” “total exhaustion,” “the vapours,” and the scariest malaise of the times, “brain fever.” It was very fashionable to be in a moribund state. Chopin was said to be dying his whole life. Wagner was a man of his times in this respect. When a letter of his ends by saying, “Am near death—don’t expect to survive,” it was the equivalent of today’s “Best regards.” Biographers have often missed these conventions of the 1850s, and assure us that Wagner’s life was sheer hell throughout this time. Apparently, it never got so bad that he considered getting a job.

  In Zurich Wagner met Otto Wesendonck, a prosperous merchant who helped him out financially. Wagner almost immediately ran up debts beyond even Wesendonck’s means, and further complicated the matter by becoming infatuated with Frau Mathilde Wesendonck. (Wagner was never interested in virgins, only in women who “belonged” to other men. Even Minna only got a proposal out of Wagner when she started receiving attentions from other suitors. Psychologists explain this as a by-product of an Oedipal complex. Later, Wagner was tasteless enough to speak of this quirk of his to Cosima.) Wagner relieved the tension by traveling to Italy (Wesendonck paid), where he later claimed that the sight of the sea off La Spezia inspired the opening measures of Das Rheingold, the first part of the Ring. He began composing without the slightest possibility of getting the Ring performed anywhere. He also became engrossed in philosophy. Schopenhauer’s book The World as Will and Idea, with its stunning opening line “The world is my idea,” blew Wagner away. It has traditionally been maintained that Wagner’s world outlook changed as a result of this book, but recent scholarship prefers to see Schopenhauer as coincidentally giving voice to nebulous ideas Wagner already had. In any case, the “vision” off La Spezia sounds suspiciously like certain passages in Schopenhauer.

  Wagner went to London to conduct a series of concerts, including extracts from his own operas, which bombed with the critics. (He almost always had more success with general audiences than with critics and, to a certain extent, still does.) He met Queen Victoria, who, like any other good German of the time, was addicted to Italian opera. She declared herself intrigued by Wagner’s music, and asked if there were any possibility of translating his operas into Italian so they could be performed in London! It may have been the only time in his life when Wagner was speechless.

  LOVE MUSIC

  The weight of the Ring was becoming unbearable, and Wagner’s mind was busy elsewhere. Sometime in 1854 he became intrigued with the medieval legend of Tristan and Isolde. This seemed like a good idea to Minna, since a love-triangle opera would at least be performable and might produce some income. Wagner put aside Siegfried, the third part of the Ring, and devoted himself to composing Tristan und Isolde. As inspiration for this love story, he and Mathilde Wesendonck exchanged passionate letters and carried on an affair whose exact nature remains a mystery. We don’t even know if they ever actually had sex. We do know that they were in love with the drama of a torrid affaire. Wagner was also steeping himself in Buddhist literature at this time. Clearly, Tristan would not be the simple, performable work for which Minna hoped in vain.

  Wesendonck built a stately villa outside of Zurich with a guest house on the grounds, which the Wagners moved into. (What was Otto thinking?) Wagner’s mind was alive in this time, sketching the outline for Parsifal while composing Tristan. Visitors came to the cozy, if irregular, love nest, perhaps none more interesting than those who arrived in September 1857.

  Back in Weimar, Liszt was taking on music students. The most brilliant was a nervous young minor nobleman from nearby Berlin named Hans von Bülow, whose piano playing rivaled Liszt’s and who showed great promise in the then-emerging art of conducting. Liszt transferred his three children from glittering Paris to live with Bülow’s shrew-mother in dreary Berlin at the instigation of Princess Carolyne, who never missed a chance to shaft Marie d’Agoult. Young Hans was taken by Cosima’s grace, aristocratic bearing, and striking, if not beautiful, looks (she inherited her father’s large nose). Not seeing any other future, Cosima accepted the proposal from the twitchy Hans. For their honeymoon, they went to stay with, of all people, the Wagners and Wesendoncks. Cosima had met Wagner in Paris years before, but now she was overwhelmed beyond speech. While Bülow picked through the orchestral sketches of Siegfried at the piano (a feat Wagner himself could not manage), Cosima realized what a mistake she had made by marrying Bülow. She thought of suicide.

  When the Bülows left, there was still Mathilde, but Minna was not having any fun. She taught the pet parrot to say “Wagner is a bad husband,” and began to confront Frau Wesendonck. It didn’t help when Wagner set some of Mathilde’s love poetry to beautiful music in what would be known as the Wesendonck Lieder. Minna and Otto finally rebelled, and the little love nest was finished. Minna retired to a spa cure, while Wagner was packed off to that ultimate destination of failed lovers, Venice. Again, Wesendonck paid the bills. Codependency had not yet been identified as an illness.

  Wagner rented a floor of the otherwise empty Palazzo Giustinian on the Grand Canal, and kept a highly dramatic journal (near death every day) for Mathilde’s benefit. In fact, it was the perfect mood and setting to work on the fatally erotic Tristan, which was completed in March 1859. Mathilde proved more useful to him as a distant muse than as a next-door neighbor. Venice at that time was ruled by Austria, whose reactionary officials were less than thrilled with the presence of the fugitive revolutionary. Fortuna
tely, the Venetian chief of police was a music lover named Crespi, who fudged reports to Vienna. But Venice was becoming too small for Wagner. He returned to Switzerland without a prospect in the world. The Wesendoncks welcomed him back and helped him out financially, but did not invite him to live with them. It was time to try Paris again.

  Wagner did periodically write to Dresden, hoping for amnesty, saying how badly he wanted to return and promising never again to interfere in politics. The authorities wanted him to admit his revolutionary error and return to face trial, which, they hinted, was a formality and at which he would no doubt be acquitted. Wagner refused to do this. He never saw that he had done anything wrong. Minna urged him to comply, but he never did. Wagner, who is reputed to have had no ethics whatsoever, should instead be credited with an extremely selective and randomly evoked sense of ethics.

  DISASTER IN PARIS

  The next Paris episode may be the most oft-told chapter in Wagner’s life. The net result was the spectacularly disastrous production of Tannhäuser at the Opéra, which left Wagner more bitter than ever—ten years later he publicly called for the destruction of the city after it fell to German troops in 1871. What is less emphasized is how many admirers his several concerts won him. Charles Baudelaire, Catulle Mendès, Camille Saint-Saëns, Charles Gounod, and many other prominent artists and writers became Wagnerians at this time. His failure at the Opéra, where Tannhäuser was booed off the stage on three separate nights in a demonstration rooted in complicated causes, only confirmed their adoration for Wagner as a force against the establishment. Also at this time, Wagner’s banishment from Germany was finally lifted. He made some excursions to Rhineland towns, noting that he felt “absolutely nothing” in setting foot on his native soil again. Yet there was no point in remaining in Paris, which he left once and for all in January 1862.

  ADRIFT

  Minna was thoroughly sick of Wagner. After Paris, there were a few more cures, then the Wagners finally decided to live apart. Minna was set up in a modest apartment in Dresden, which was where she had always wanted to be anyway. Wagner criss-crossed Germany several times, trying to scare up new friends and benefactors, but even the most ardent fans had been warned against making any definite financial commitments to this human fortune-vacuum. He conducted lucrative concerts in Russia, spent the money, and set sights on Vienna.

  In Vienna, Wagner finally heard Lohengrin for the first time. A successful production of Dutchman followed, and there was every reason to believe Tristan would be produced there. With his usual overoptimism, Wagner rented an expensive apartment and furnished it sumptuously. He wanted a comfortable home to work on his next opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. This new project, a comic opera full of easy melody, had been well received by friends who heard readings of the libretto. It would surely take Germany by storm. Wagner thought prosperity was right around the corner. It wasn’t. Rehearsals for Tristan were falling apart. The tenor couldn’t remember any of the role from one day to the next, and finally lost his voice completely. People said Wagner had “really gone too far this time,” and that Tristan, whatever its musical merits, was absolutely unperformable. It was finally canceled by the Vienna company in March 1864. Wagner was worse than broke. He had borrowed heavily against projected income from Tristan and even Meistersinger, which wasn’t yet composed. Austrian law severely penalized late debt payments, and Wagner had to borrow at high interest to avoid prison. His attorney (Liszt’s uncle, incidentally) told him bluntly to split town—fast. This he did on March 23.

  In Switzerland again, no one was willing or able to put him up. He thought of marrying rich, and asked his sister Luise in Dresden to sound out Minna about a divorce. To her credit, Luise refused, and advised her errant brother to apply for a vacant job in Darmstadt. Instead, Wagner went to Stuttgart, for lack of anyplace else to go, and checked into a modest hotel. Even this was beyond his present means, but luckily there were some well-off music lovers in town who opened their dining room to him. On Monday, May 2, while he was at their house eating, he was handed a card and was told that the “Aulic Secretary of His Majesty the King of Bavaria” desired a word with him. Suspecting some debt collector of a cheap trick, Wagner sent word that he was not there. Back at his hotel the next morning, he was handed a bundle of “urgent” letters from Vienna (more bills), and told that Minister Pfistermeister of Munich was waiting to see him. Resigned, he agreed to see this man he still assumed to be a creative debt collector.

  TURNABOUT

  No librettist, least of all Wagner, could have invented what ensued. The king had ordered Pfistermeister, who was his cabinet secretary (a uniquely Bavarian office, being both a personal royal advisor and a state minister), to track down Richard Wagner personally. Wagner was informed that the young king was a fervent admirer of his, and proposed to settle his debts, provide for his welfare, and give him anything he needed to accomplish his work. Pfistermeister invited Wagner to go with him to Munich and meet his number one fan. Wagner wrote a passionate letter of thanks to the king and hopped on the next train. Pfistermeister bought the tickets.

  LUDWIG AND MUNICH

  King Ludwig II had assumed the throne of Bavaria in February. He was only eighteen years old at the time, devilishly good-looking, and a bit eccentric. Most short bios of Ludwig say he was already exhibiting signs of the insanity that would prove his downfall, but this is only benefit of hindsight. Insane, perhaps—but compared to which other European monarchs of the time? Ludwig’s dynasty, the Wittelsbachs, had ruled Bavaria for eight hundred years, and a special bond was considered to exist between the family and the Bavarian people. Nor was Ludwig particularly strange by dynastic standards. His poor brother Otto had been committed to a locked cell at a young age. His aunt was functional but insisted that she had once swallowed a glass piano. His cousin Elizabeth, who became empress of Austria, was intelligent but preferred the company of horses and gymnastic equipment to people. And the infatuation of his grandfather, Ludwig I, with the hip-swinging adventuress Lola Montez finally cost him his throne.

  Ludwig grew up in the castle of Hohenschwangau, whose walls were painted with medieval legends of Lohengrin. He developed a passion for Wagner’s works before he ever heard one. When he finally attended a performance of Lohengrin in Munich at the age of fifteen, he knew his life mission was to cultivate its genius creator. Ludwig was homosexual, but in 1865 he was exceptionally naive even by the standards of the time. Once, he was moved to tears by the sight of a muscular, shirtless woodcutter he saw in the mountains. He confessed he had absolutely no idea why the sight upset him so. Loneliness remained the great leitmotiv of his life.

  With his typical inability to restrain himself, Wagner moved into an ostentatious mansion in the best part of Munich. He immediately tricked out the interiors in a manner that made his Vienna excesses seem monastic by comparison. Expensive drapes, upholstery, and hangings of all kinds found their way into his house, causing comment from visitors who were quite accustomed to the heavy tastes of the times. Pink satin was everywhere, and one small room boasted a ceiling covered in rosettes of that same material. One of Wagner’s many quirks was an addiction to fripperies of this kind, also including heavy French perfumes, which were at odds with the heroic virtues of his operas, but which he felt he needed around him to work. Tongues wagged.

  Everybody presumes that artists are weird, and Wagner might have become popular in Munich if he had stopped at feminine frills. But that was only the start. He told King Ludwig he needed a new theater built in which his operas could be properly performed, and his old friend from revolutionary days in Dresden, the architect Gottfried Semper, was summoned to design a Festival House whose plan amounted to a reconfiguration of the city of Munich. A new school had to be established, where singers would be taught new techniques (to sing Wagner, of course). To head all these musical endeavors while Wagner composed new masterpieces in pink satin peace and quiet, there was no other choice than Hans von Bülow.

  Getti
ng Bülow to Munich was the easiest part, since he had made nothing but enemies in his native Berlin. Bülow came and was named “Performer to the King,” with a mandate to develop the royal musical knowledge. Cosima came with him. Life was about to get very interesting in Munich.

  INTRIGUES IN MUNICH

  Wagner and Cosima moved toward their fateful union by degrees. On November 28, 1863, they rode in a carriage together in Berlin while Hans rehearsed for a concert. They came to some sort of an agreement then and there. The problem was that Wagner, not Cosima, needed Bülow. In June 1864, when Wagner was installed as the debt-free composer to the king of Bavaria in a country villa, Cosima joined him with her two daughters and they consummated their relationship. Bülow showed up a week later and probably sensed something, since he timed one of his famous nervous fits for the occasion. Subsequently, there were furtive visits and letters from all three to Liszt, whose role in the imbroglio becomes almost comic in retrospect.

  Liszt was living in Rome with Princess Carolyne, who was raising hell trying to squeeze an anullment of her marriage out of the pope. Finally, it appeared to be approved, and she and Liszt set a marriage date. On the eve of that date, a papal emissary called on the princess to inform her that, for reasons never revealed to history, the anullment was denied. One can almost hear Liszt sighing in relief. Just to set matters in stone, he suddenly took holy orders, becoming an abbé and looking terribly chic in his clerical collar. Now this curious man, who managed to escape marriage his entire life, descended on his daughter, her husband, and her lover, preaching the sanctity of wedlock. This caused a rift with Cosima and Wagner that would take many years to heal. In the meantime, he proclaimed sympathy for Bülow—at least publicly. When a friend of Cosima’s rebuked Liszt for censuring his daughter, he confided, “I agree with you, but I cannot say so in my position.”