"Venus, my beautiful Goddess, Thou art in truth a demon."
That which most impressed us in the score of the Teutonic Master was the extreme dearness of the musical manner of translating the spoken phrase by means of a continuous melody, without elaboration, without superfluous flourish, the orchestra providing the commentary, and, sustaining with its own fulness the simplicity of the vocal design. We sent from Wiesbaden either to the "Moniteur" or the "Artiste," we no longer remember which, an appreciative article which ended in expressing astonishment that an opera so original and unusual had not yet passed beyond the limits of the Rhine. Our astonishment was also great when, some years later, this same Tannhäuser--so easily given at the theatre of Wiesbaden, by singers and an orchestra which were probably not the first in Germany--having been produced here at the Opera, was declared impossible, foolish, absurd, outside all the possibilities of the theatre, and was smothered under a storm of hisses. They muffled Wagner's music in derisive purple, under the pleasantry "Music of the Future," but the wag who invented the phrase had no idea that he spoke so truly. In fact its time has come, and the music of the future is very near to being the music of to-day. The fall of Tannhäuser in no way unsettled our convictions. Critics are stubborn, and even though they are not dealing with the old romantic poets, they know very well that hisses do not kill a work of genius.
They said of the dramatic verses of Victor Hugo precisely what they say of the musical phrases of Wagner. Accusing them conclusively of not being verse at all, yet to-day it is a common argument of advance that the author of "Ruy-Blas" and the "Légende des Siècles" is the greatest master of metrical form of our time.
But to return to Rienzi, the production of which at the Théâtre-Lyrique accomplished an old-time project of the Master's. One of Wagner's letters makes that clear--"Written about thirty years ago, with a view to grand opera, Rienzi presents no difficulties for the singers to overcome, and offers to the Parisian public none of the problems of my later works. Both in subject and in musical form it is closely related to the operas that have long been popular in Paris, and I still believe that if it is brilliantly mounted and given with spirit it has a chance of success."