CHAPTER X.

PARIS, 1839-1842. _Continued._

The Paris sojourn the crucial epoch of Wagner’s career--The grand opera the hothouse of spurious art--Concessions to anti-artistic influences--Realism of the historic opera irreconcilable with his own poetic idealism: why?--Is infected with the revolutionary spirit of the age--From now we date the wondrous change in his art work--Protests through the “Gazette Musicale” against Italian composers dominating the French stage to the exclusion of native worth--Rebuked by Schlesinger--The Conservatoire de Musique; its performances solid food to Wagner--“Music a blessed reality”--Probability that the unrealities of the French stage brought Richard Wagner to a quicker knowledge of himself--Wagner’s estimate of French character--Their poesy--His tact--Feeling of aversion towards the military and police--His compositions--A year of non-productivity--Assertion of the poet--Proposal by Schlesinger that he should write a light work for a boulevard theatre--Refuses--Is put to bed with an attack of erysipelas which lasts a week--“Overture to Faust”: “the subjects not music, but the soul’s sorrows transformed into sounds”--Minna and his dog--Wagner’s lugubrious forebodings and short novel, “End of a German Musician in Paris”--Completes “Rienzi,” which is sent to Germany--The “Flying Dutchman”--How the subject came to be adopted--Heine’s treatment of Fitzball’s version--The original story as told by Fitzball--Libretto completed, delivered to the director of the grand opera, who bargains for it--Superiority of legend over history for musical treatment--Wagner and his meaning of the “Dutchman” anecdote related at Munich, 1866--The one of his music-dramas that occupied the shortest time in composition--It is sent to Meyerbeer--News from Dresden--“Rienzi” accepted, leaves for Germany.....99