rt had been solved, and
whether the people were ready for it and prepared to share in its
grandest and noblest triumphs.

The public rehearsal was festive in its character. The whole musical
press of Germany and some of the foreign critics were present.
Wagner was called after every act. Unfortunately, the representation
proper was delayed for nearly four weeks through the sickness of
Frau Garrigues-Schnorr, who took the role of Isolde, so that the
Munich people were after all the principal attendants. The applause
was nevertheless enthusiastic, and the success of the memorable
"art-festival" of June 10, 1865, admission to which was not to be had
for money, but by invitation of Wagner and his royal friend, was an
accomplished fact, notwithstanding the work had been by no means fully
comprehended, for this required time. Unfortunately, the noble artist
died a short time after, in Dresden, from the effects of a cold, to
which the utter disregard of the theatre managers in Munich had
exposed him in the scene where he had to lie wounded on a couch.
Wagner was deeply affected. He conceived he had lost the solid stone
work of his edifice, and would now have to resort to mere bricks. It
is certain he never found a Siegfried as great as this Tristan.

Another contingency temporarily interfered with the undertaking of the
two friends, and that was the opposition of the Munich public, which
resulted in Wagner's permanent withdrawal from the city. To this
public a person was indeed strange who made such unusual artistic
demands, while the personal character and habits of Wagner at that
time were probably nowhere more strange than in Bavaria, which had
obtained its education at the hands of the Jesuit priests. It is true,
the good qualities, such as simplicity of manners and habits of life,
had remained, but the intellectual horizon had become a comparatively
narrow one, and, what was worse, the clerical and aristocratic
Bavarian party feared it would lose its power if a man like Wagner
were to remain permanently about the king. George Herwegh has
described comically enough the Witches-Sabbath, which that party, in
1865, with the aid of other hostile factions, enacted, and which
forced Wagner once more into foreign lands.

Munich, accustomed to simplicity, took exception to the rich style in
which Wagner furnished the villa presented by the king, and to the
expansion of the civil-list for the construction of the theatre, which