operas was interrupted by an
inexpressible, enthusiastic delight, when, here and there, during the
performance of nobler works, I became conscious of the incomparable
effects that can be produced by musico-dramatic combinations on the
stage,--effects of a depth, sincerity, and direct realistic vivacity,
such as no other art can produce. I felt quite elated and ennobled
during the time that I was rehearsing Mehul's enchanting 'Joseph' with
my little opera company." "Such impressions," he continues, "like
flashes of lightning" revealed to him "unsuspected possibilities." It
was by utilizing these "possibilities" and hints, and at the same time
avoiding the errors and blemishes of his predecessors, that his
superlative genius was enabled to create such unapproachable masterworks
as "Siegfried" and "Tristan and Isolde."

The way up to those peaks was, however, slow and toilsome. For years he
groped in darkness, and light came but gradually. It has already been
intimated that his genius was slow in developing. A brief review of his
romantic career will bring out this and other interesting points.

At the time when Richard Wagner was born (May 22, 1813), Leipzig was in
such a state of commotion on account of the war to liberate Germany from
the Napoleonic yoke that the child's baptism was deferred several
months. To his schooldays reference has been made already, and we may
therefore pass on to the time when he tried to make his living as an
operatic conductor. Although he was then only twenty-one years old, he
showed remarkable aptitude for this kind of work from the beginning, and
it was through no fault of his that misfortune overtook every opera
company with which he had anything to do. The bankruptcy, in 1836, of
the manager of the Magdeburg Opera, affected him most disastrously, for
it came at the moment when he had arranged for the first performance of
an opera he had written, entitled, "Das Liebesverbot," or "The Novice of
Palermo," and which therefore was given only once. Many years later an
attempt was made to revive this juvenile work at Munich, but the project
was abandoned because, as the famous Wagnerian tenor, Heinrich Vogl,
informed the writer of this article, "Its arias and other numbers were
such ludicrous and undisguised imitations of Donizetti and other popular
composers of that time that we all burst out laughing, and kept up the
merriment throughout the rehearsal." This is of interest because it
shows t