diculous thirty years after his
death. This legend of Meyerbeer borrowing or thieving from Wagner is
sheer rubbish; in all Wagner's music there is not a bar which could
have been of use to Meyerbeer. The most rowdy tunes in _Rienzi_ he
could easily equal: anything ever so remotely approaching the
beautiful he did not want. What! was he to run the chance of failure
by writing, or copying, one really expressive measure?

It needed the cruel disillusionment of the Paris days, it needed also
the time needful for Wagner's normal growth, before he was driven to
see that the music-drama, or something that ultimately evolved itself
into the music-drama, was the form that he needed for his deepest
utterances. _Rienzi_ is old-fashioned opera, barefaced, blatant and
unashamed. Wagner wanted effective airs, duets, trios, choruses and
marches; and no libretto-monger ever went to work in a more
deliberate, matter-of-fact and business-like way to provide
opportunities for these. Both in _Die Feen_ and in _Das Liebesverbot_
his purpose had been more definitely, more disinterestedly, artistic.
Now he set to work to manufacture for the Paris market. The subject
was eminently suitable. The personage Rienzi was intended for a great,
heroic figure and the music written for a brilliant tenor. The
indispensable love-element was provided by Irene, a soprano (though
it can well be sung by a mezzo), and Adriano, son of a patrician, a
mezzo-soprano (almost a contralto part)--which would be amazing did we
not know Wagner's aim. A woman-man carries us back to the days of
Handel and Gluck, and shows how little sincere Wagner was at the time,
how absorbingly bent he was on tickling the ears of the Parisians. The
villains of the piece, Colonna and Orsini, with their patrician
followers, are true stage-villains of melodrama in some
situations--proud, determined, unsparing; but in other situations they
whine in a very un-patrician-like way for mercy. In truth, Wagner was
determined to give all the singers a chance of showing off their
voices and their skill in every kind of music--heroic or noisy,
pathetic or whining, brave and obstreperous or feebly tender. A few
minutes' consideration of the story as Wagner lays it before us, and
the music he sets to it, will show that every character in the opera
is an unhuman chameleon. It is not worth while spending the reader's
time on an exhaustive analysis. We shall have enough to do of that
kind of thing when