ng
and act, and it is also the most grateful to the actress. She has not
a phrase that is not beautiful, from her first dozen bars to her last
recitative. Kurvenal has his song in the first act and scarcely
appears again until the last, when all his music is of an unspeakable
pathos. His phrase to Tristan, "The wounds from which you languish
here all shall end their anguish," is as touching in its rough,
uncouth way as a hound licking the hand of its dead master. That is
all Kurvenal is--a faithful human dog done in artistic form; and it
requires a very great artist to interpret it. David Bispham's
impersonation remains in my memory as the greatest I have seen. Mark's
reproaches in the second act, and his utter grief in the third, are
also very hard to render. In fact, only fine opera singers can take
any of these parts without coming to grief. The invisible sailor must
be able to sing beautifully; the shepherd must both act and sing with
no little skill.

CHAPTER XII

'THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBERG'

I

The next period of Wagner's life, from the date of finishing
_Tristan_, 1859, till King Ludwig sent for him, 1864, was stormy. The
struggles and endless disappointments made of him the somewhat hard
and embittered Wagner of later years. The constant battles, the few
victories and the many disappointments must be related in my next
chapter, as it is simpler and easier for the author, if not the
reader, to consider the _Mastersingers of Nuremberg_ immediately after
_Tristan_. A few facts may be mentioned now to enable us to place the
second opera in its true chronological order. The _Nibelung's Ring_
was still in abeyance; _Tristan_ finished, Wagner, in search of means
of subsistence--the patience and indeed the means of his friends fast
giving out--undertook a series of concert trips, going to Brussels,
Paris, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Marienfeld, Leipzig and Vienna. In 1861
his last hopes of a Paris success with _Tannhaeuser_ were extinguished;
his concerts up till then had resulted only in an increasing burden of
debt; his domestic existence was unendurable; things were as bad as
bad could be. So he sat down and wrote his only comedy. It was not a
simple case of "tasks in hours of insight willed can be through hours
of gloom fulfilled." The _Mastersingers_ had been sketched, as we
know, in 1845; but the new work was a change, in that he created the
character of Hans Sachs afresh, and the opera became an en