r, unlike
the usual stern parent who repels impecunious musicians, gave his
permission for their union, which took place soon after, in 1836.

In a couple of years he settled down in Milan, with his wife and two
children. Success began to crown his efforts, and his career of opera
composer was well begun, when his domestic happiness came to a complete
end. First one child fell sick and died of an unknown malady, then the
second followed it in a few days, and within two months the bereaved
mother was stricken with a fatal inflammation of the brain. In the midst
of all these misfortunes, Verdi was kept at work by a commission for "Un
Giorno di Regno," which was to be a comic opera! Little wonder that the
wit oozed out of the occasion, and the performance proved a failure. The
despondent Verdi resolved to give up his career altogether, and only by
the insistence of the manager, Merelli, was he finally persuaded to
resume his occupation. In later life he married again, passing a placid
existence on his extensive estates.

The domestic career of Richard Wagner has formed the subject for endless
discussions. His birth, his early studies, his university career, and
his start as a professional musician, all took place in Leipsic. There,
too, he met the famous opera singer, Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient,
whose gifts made such an impression on the young composer. It was the
excellence of her acting, as well as her singing, that gave the embryo
reformer his first ideas of the intimate union of drama and music that
is one phase of his later operatic greatness. Many of his leading roles
were written for her, and as late as 1872 he stated that whenever he
conceived a new character he imagined her in the part.

His work as leader took him first to Magdeburg. The failure of his early
opera, "Das Liebesverbot," put an end to this enterprise, and soon
afterward he appeared as concert leader in Koenigsberg. There he met and
married his first wife, Wilhelmina (or Minna) Planer. Their natures were
different in many respects. While he displayed many of the vagaries of
genius, she was patient and practical, and, if not wholly understanding
the highest side of his nature, she gave up her own career to help him
through his days of poverty and struggle.

The first venture of the wedded pair was at Riga, where Wagner was
engaged for a term to conduct in a new theatre. After this, they took
ship for Paris, and the stormy passage gave Wagner man