My Life by Richard Wagner (ebook reader TXT) 📕

my ardent youthful wishes were in a manner subdued and calm. From thence forward till the attainment of my professional independence, all my life's struggles could be directed entirely towards that more ideal aim which, from the time of the conception of my Rienzi, was to be my only guide through life.

It was only later that I first realised the real character of my life in Riga, from the utterance of one of its inhabitants, who was astonished to learn of the success of a man of whose importance, during the whole of his two years' sojourn in the small capital of Livonia, nothing had been known. Thrown entirely on my own resources, I was a stranger to every one. As I mentioned before, I kept aloof from all the theatre folk, in consequence of my increasing dislike of them, and therefore, when at the end of March, 1839, at the close of my second winter there, I was given my dismissal by the management, although this occurrence surprised me for other reasons, yet I felt fully reconciled to this compulsory change in my life. The reasons which led to this dismissal were, however, of such a nature that I could only regard it as one of the most disagreeable experiences of my life. Once, when I was lying dangerously ill, I heard of Holtei's real feelings towards me. I had caught a severe cold in the depth of winter at a theatrical rehearsal, and it at once assumed a serious character, owing to the fact that my nerves were in a state of constant irritation from the continual annoyance and vexatious worry caused by the contemptible character of the theatrical management. It was just at the time when a special performance of the opera Norma was to be given by our company in Mitau. Holtei insisted on my getting up from a sick-bed to make this wintry journey, and thus to expose myself to the danger of seriously increasing my cold in the icy theatre at Mitau. Typhoid fever was the consequence, and this pulled me down to such an extent that Holtei, who heard of my condition, is said to have remarked at the theatre that I should probably never conduct again, and that, to all intents and purposes, 'I was on my last legs.' It was to a splendid homoeopathic physician, Dr. Prutzer, that I owed my recovery and my life. Not long after that Holtei left our theatre and Riga for ever; his occupation there, with 'the far too respectable conditions,' as he expressed it, had become intolerable to him. In addition, however, circumstances had arisen in his domestic life (which had been much affected by the death of his wife) which seemed to make him consider a complete break with Riga eminently desirable. But to my astonishment I now first became aware that I too had unconsciously been a sufferer from the troubles he had brought upon himself. When Holtei's successor in the management--Joseph Hoffmann the singer--informed me that his predecessor had made it a condition to his taking over the post that he should enter into the same engagement that Holtei had made with the conductor Dorn for the post which I had hitherto filled, and my reappointment had therefore been made an impossibility, my wife met my astonishment at this news by giving me the reason, of which for some considerable time past she had been well aware, namely, Holtei's special dislike of us both. When I was afterwards informed by Minna of what had happened--she having purposely kept it from me all this time, so as not to cause bad feeling between me and my director--a ghastly light was thrown upon the whole affair. I did indeed remember perfectly how, soon after Minna's arrival in Riga, I had been particularly pressed by Holtei not to prevent my wife's engagement at the theatre. I asked him to talk things quietly over with her, so that he might see that Minna's unwillingness rested on a mutual understanding, and not on any jealousy on my part. I had intentionally given him the time when I was engaged at the theatre on rehearsals for the necessary discussions with my wife. At the end of these meetings I had, on my return, often found Minna in a very excited condition, and at length she declared emphatically that under no circumstances would she accept the engagement offered by Holtei. I had also noticed in Minna's demeanour towards me a strange anxiety to know why I was not unwilling to allow Holtei to try to persuade her. Now that the catastrophe had occurred, I learned that Holtei had in fact used these interviews for making improper advances to my wife, the nature of which I only realised with difficulty on further acquaintance with this man's peculiarities, and after having heard of other instances of a similar nature. I then discovered that Holtei considered it an advantage to get himself talked about in connection with pretty women, in order thus to divert the attention of the public from other conduct even more disreputable. After this Minna was exceedingly indignant at Holtei, who, finding his own suit rejected, appeared as the medium for another suitor, on whose behalf he urged that he would think none the worse of her for rejecting him, a grey-haired and penniless man, but at the same time advocated the suit of Brandenburg, a very wealthy and handsome young merchant. His fierce indignation at this double repulse, his humiliation at having revealed his real nature to no purpose, seems, to judge from Minna's observations, to have been exceedingly great. I now understood too well that his frequent and profoundly contemptuous sallies against respectable actors and actresses had not been mere spirited exaggerations, but that he had probably often had to complain of being put thoroughly to shame on this account.

The fact that the playing of such criminal parts as the one he had had in view with my wife was unable to divert the ever- increasing attention of the outside world from his vicious and dissolute habits, does not seem to have escaped him; for those behind the scenes told me candidly that it was owing to the fear of very unpleasant revelations that he had suddenly decided to give up his position at Riga altogether. Even in much later years I heard about Holtei's bitter dislike of me, a dislike which showed itself, among other things, in his denunciation of The Music of the Future, [Footnote: Zukunftsmusik is a pamphlet revealing some of Wagner's artistic aims and aspirations, written 1860-61.--EDITOR.] and of its tendency to jeopardise the simplicity of pure sentiment. I have previously mentioned that he displayed so much personal animosity against me during the latter part of the time we were together in Riga that he vented his hostility upon me in every possible way. Up to that time I had felt inclined to ascribe it to the divergence of our respective views on artistic points.

To my dismay I now became aware that personal considerations alone were at the bottom of all this, and I blushed to realise that by my former unreserved confidence in a man whom I thought was absolutely honest, I had based my knowledge of human nature on such very weak foundations. But still greater was my disappointment when I discovered the real character of my friend H. Dorn. During the whole time of our intercourse at Riga, he, who formerly treated me more like a good-natured elder brother, had become my most confidential friend. We saw and visited each other almost daily, very frequently in our respective homes. I kept not a single secret from him, and the performance of his Schoffe van Paris under my direction was as successful as if it had been under his own. Now, when I heard that my post had been given to him, I felt obliged to ask him about it, in order to learn whether there was any mistake on his part as to my intention regarding the position I had hitherto held. But from his letter in reply I could clearly see that Dorn had really made use of Holtei's dislike for me to extract from him, before his departure, an arrangement which was both binding on his successor and also in his (Dorn's) own favour. As my friend he ought to have known that he could benefit by this agreement only in the event of my resigning my appointment in Riga, because in our confidential conversations, which continued to the end, he always carefully refrained from touching on the possibility of my going away or remaining. In fact, he declared that Holtei had distinctly told him he would on no account re-engage me, as I could not get on with the singers. He added that after this one could not take it amiss if he, who had been inspired with fresh enthusiasm for the theatre by the success of his Schoffe von Paris, had seized and turned to his own advantage the chance offered to him. Moreover, he had gathered from my confidential communications that I was very awkwardly situated, and that, owing to my small salary having been cut down by Holtei from the very beginning, I was in a very precarious position on account of the demands of my creditors in Konigsberg and Magdeburg. It appeared that these people had employed against me a lawyer, who was a friend of Dorn's, and that, consequently, he had come to the conclusion that I would not be able to remain in Riga. Therefore, even as my friend, he had felt his conscience quite clear in accepting Holtei's proposal.

In order not to leave him in the complacent enjoyment of this self-deception, I put it clearly before him that he could not be ignorant of the fact that a higher salary had been promised to me for the third year of my contract; and that, by the establishment of orchestral concerts, which had already made a favourable start, I now saw my way to getting free from those long-standing debts, having already overcome the difficulties of the removal and settling down. I also asked him how he would act if I saw it was to my own interest to retain my post, and to call on him to resign his agreement with Holtei, who, as a matter of fact, after his departure from Riga, had withdrawn his alleged reason for my dismissal. To this I received no answer, nor have I had one up to the present day; but, on the other hand, in 1865, I was astonished to see Dorn enter my house in Munich unannounced, and when to his joy I recognised him, he stepped up to me with a gesture which clearly showed his intention of embracing me. Although I managed to evade this, yet I soon saw the difficulty of preventing him from addressing me with the familiar form of 'thou,' as the attempt to do so would have necessitated explanations that would have been a useless addition to all my worries just then; for it was the time when my Tristan was being produced.

Such a man was Heinrich Dorn. Although, after the failure of three operas, he had retired in disgust from the theatre to devote himself exclusively to the commercial side of music, yet the success of his opera, Der Schoffe von Paris, in Riga helped him back to a permanent place among the dramatic musicians of Germany. But to this position he was first dragged from obscurity, across the bridge of infidelity to his friend, and by the aid of virtue in the person of Director Holtei, thanks to a magnanimous oversight on the part of Franz Listz. The preference of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. for church scenes contributed to secure him eventually his important position at the greatest lyric theatre in Germany, the