in which so many of
them had contentedly acquiesced. His music is the logical development of
that of Gluck and Weber, purified by a closer study of the principles of
declamation, and enriched by a command of orchestral resource of which
they had never dreamed.

Wagner's first opera, 'Die Feen,' was written in 1833, when the
composer was twenty years old. Wagner always wrote his own libretti,
even in those days. The story of 'Die Feen' was taken from one of
Gozzi's fairy-tales, 'La Donna Serpente.' Wagner himself, in his
'Communication to my Friends,' written in 1851, has given us a _resume_
of the plot: 'A fairy, who renounces immortality for the sake of a human
lover, can only become a mortal through the fulfilment of certain hard
conditions, the non-compliance wherewith on the part of her earthly
swain threatens her with the direst penalties; her lover fails in the
test, which consists in this, that, however evil and repulsive she may
appear to him (in the metamorphosis which she has to undergo), he shall
not reject her in his unbelief. In Gozzi's tale the fairy is changed
into a snake; the remorseful lover frees her from the spell by kissing
the snake, and thus wins her for his wife. I altered this denouement by
changing the fairy into a stone, and then releasing her from the spell
by her lover's passionate song; while the lover, instead of being
allowed to carry off his bride into his own country, is himself admitted
by the fairy king to the immortal bliss of fairyland, together with his
fairy wife.'

When Wagner wrote 'Die Feen' he was under the spell of Weber, whose
influence is perceptible in every page of the score. Marschner, too,
whose 'Vampyr' and 'Templer und Juedin' had been recently produced at
Leipzig, which was then Wagner's headquarters, also appealed very
strongly to the young musician's plastic temperament. 'Die Feen'
consequently has little claim to originality, but the work is
nevertheless interesting to those who desire to trace the master's
development _ab ovo_. Both in the melodies and rhythms employed it is
possible to trace the germs of what afterwards became strongely marked
characteristics. Wagner himself never saw 'Die Feen' performed. In 1833
he could not persuade any German manager to produce it, and, in the
changes which soon came over his musical sympathies, 'Die Feen' was laid
upon the shelf and probably forgotten. It was not until 1888, five years
after the composer's death, that th