en 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 _Tannhaeuser_ 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,