was a hard and bitter one. Berlioz, in
similar straits, supported himself by singing in the chorus of a
second-rate theatre. Wagner was refused even that humble post. In 1842
"Rienzi" was accepted at Dresden, and its signal success led to his
appointment as Capellmeister there (January, 1843). In the following
year the "Flying Dutchman" was not so enthusiastically received, but
it has since easily distanced the earlier work in popular favor. The
story was suggested to his mind during the stormy voyage from Riga;
and it is a remarkable fact that the wonderful tone-picture of
Norway's storm-beaten shore was painted by one who, till that voyage,
had never set eyes on the sea. In 1845 his new opera, "Tannhaeuser,"
proved at first a comparative failure. The subject, one which had been
proposed to Weber in 1814, attracted Wagner while he was in Paris, and
during his studies for the libretto he found also the first
suggestions of "Lohengrin" and "Parsifal." The temporary failure of
the opera led him to the consideration and self-examination which
resulted in the elaborate exposition of his ideal (in "Opera and
Drama," and many other essays). "I saw a single possibility before
me," he writes, "to induce the public to understand and participate in
my aims as an artist." "Lohengrin" was finished early in 1848, and
also the poem of "Siegfried's Tod," the result of Wagner's studies in
the old Nibelungen Lied; but a too warm sympathy with some of the aims
of the revolutionary party (which reigned for two short days behind
the street barricades in Dresden, May, 1849) rendered his absence from
Saxony advisable, and a few days later news reached him in Weimar that
a warrant was issued for his arrest. With a passport procured by Liszt
he fled across the frontier, and for nearly twelve years the
bitterness of exile was added to the hardships of poverty. It is this
period which is mainly responsible for Wagner's polemical writings, so
biting in their sarcasm, and often unfair in their attacks. He was a
good hater; one of the most fiendish pamphlets in existence is the
"Capitulation" (1871), in which Wagner, safe from poverty (thanks to
the kindness of Liszt and the munificence of Ludwig II., of Bavaria),
and nearing the summit of his ambition, but remembering only his
misfortunes and his slights, gloated in public over the horrors which
were making a hell of the fairest city on earth. There is excuse at
least, if not justification, to be f