CHAPTER II - WAGNER IN ENGLAND

Summary

When Mendelssohn first came to England, in the spring of 1829, he was received with open arms both by artists and by society, and one of the earliest of his charming home letters describes a grand fete at Devonshire House, to which the fortunate youth was invited. Wagner's reception in this country, when he landed at Tower Wharf in the autumn of 1839, was of a very different kind. Neither the Philharmonic directors nor the Duke of Devonshire took the slightest notice of him, for the simple reason, amongst others, that they were not aware of his existence; for Wagner, at the time, was a poor, unknown, and struggling man. The great works destined to revolutionise dramatic music, lay as yet in a dim future not pierced even by his own eye. All that he cared for was to become a famous operatic composer, and to reap the lucrative laurels with which operatic success is crowned in these days, and of which Meyerbeer had earned his fill in Paris.

For that city Wagner was bound when he first approached these shores. He came from Riga in a sailing vessel, having acted as musical director of the theatre of that remote Northern city for some time. Similar appointments at Königsberg and Magdeburg had gone before, and had led to the composition of two operas, one of which, Das Liebesverbot, founded upon Measure for Measure, was given once at Magdeburg, while the other, entitled Die Feen, and developed from a fairy play by Gozzi, never saw the light during the composer's lifetime, although it has quite recently been given at Munich with such success of esteem as is due to the juvenile effort of a great master.