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Mime, Meyerbeer and the Genesis of Der junge Siegfried: New Light on the ‘Jewish Question’ in Richard Wagner’s Work

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2014

Michael C. Tusa
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Abstract

Between the initial conception in 1848 of a project on the Siegfried legend comprising a single work, Siegfried’s Tod, and its subsequent expansion in 1851 with the addition of Der junge Siegfried as a ‘prequel’ about the hero’s early life, Richard Wagner turned against Giacomo Meyerbeer in public denunciations in ‘Das Judentum in der Musik’ (1850) and Oper und Drama (1850–1). Changes in the treatment of the Mime–Siegfried relationship between 1848 and 1851 as well as similarities between Wagner’s characterisations of Meyerbeer and his portrayal of Mime in the 1851 sources suggest that Wagner’s animosity towards his former mentor informed a new conception of the dwarf. The troubled Mime–Siegfried relationship that crystallised in 1851 allowed Wagner to give symbolic, aesthetic form not only to his criticisms of Meyerbeer as man and artist but also to his own new creative path. That Meyerbeer by 1851 had come to represent to Wagner the personal and artistic deficiencies of all Jews necessarily also means that Wagner’s projection of Meyerbeer into Mime in Der junge Siegfried carried with it a more generally anti-Jewish message, as is frequently asserted in the literature.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 113 - 146
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

1 Adorno, Theodor W., In Search of Wagner, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London, 1991), esp. 23–27Google Scholar; Gutman, Robert W., Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music (New York, 1968), esp. 421–432Google Scholar; Millington, Barry, ‘Nuremberg Trial: Is There Anti-Semitism in Die Meistersinger?’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 3 (1991), 247–260CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rose, Paul Lawrence, Wagner: Race and Revolution (Princeton, 1992)Google Scholar; Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, Wagner Androgyne: A Study in Interpretation, trans. Stewart Spencer (Princeton, 1993)Google Scholar; Weiner, Marc, Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination (Lincoln, 1997)Google Scholar; Levin, David J., Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang, and the Nibelungen: The Dramaturgy of Disavowal (Princeton, 1998), esp. 85–95Google Scholar. For a recent, balanced overview to the topic, see Grey, Thomas S., ‘The Jewish Question’, in The Cambridge Companion to Wagner, ed. Thomas S. Grey (Cambridge, 2008), 203–218CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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5 ‘Er glich dem Staare, der dem Pflugschare auf dem Felde folgt, und aus der soeben aufgewühlten Ackerfurche lustig die an die Luft gesetzten Regenwürmer aufpickt.’ Cited after Richard Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, Zweite Auflage (Leipzig, 1887–8; henceforth abbreviated as GSD), III, 294. In the following all English translations from Wagner’s writings are my own, unless otherwise noted.

6 Understanding Mime as a surrogate Jew goes back at least to Gustav Mahler, whose comments, prompted by what he considered to be the overly Jewish interpretation of the role by the tenor Julius Spielman, were reported in the memoirs of Natalie Bauer-Lechner. As Grey points out, however, Mahler seems to have believed that such understanding was not widely held by Viennese audiences, hence he did not want Spielman to exaggerate such traits. See Grey, ‘The Jewish Question’, 214. For subsequent readings of Mime as a symbolic Jew, see Adorno, , In Search of Wagner, 23–26Google Scholar; Nattiez, , Wagner Androgyne, 70–76Google Scholar; Rose, , Wagner: Race and Revolution, 71Google Scholar; Weiner, , Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination, 84–98Google Scholar, 135–44, 167–71; Levin, , Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang, and the Nibelungen, 85–96Google Scholar.

7 Thomas S. Grey, ‘Music as Natural Language in the Moral Order of Wagner’s Ring: Siegfried, act 2, scene 3’, in Nineteenth-century Music: Selected Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference, ed. Jim Samson and Bennett Zon (Aldershot, 2002), 58. See also Grey, ‘The Jewish Question’, 214–215Google Scholar.

8 Wagner’s treatment of Mime in Das Rheingold does not figure in the present article, for in the Vorspiel to the Ring – conceived after the libretto for Der junge Siegfried – Mime appears as the hapless victim of Alberich’s ruthless quest for power rather than as a villain in his own right, thus underscoring the ascendancy of the Wotan–Alberich opposition over that of Siegfried–Mime over the genesis of the tetralogy.

9 A generous anthology of relevant documents is published in Oberzaucher-Schüller, Gunhild, Marion Linardt and Thomas Steiert, eds., Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung (Vienna, 1998), 142–296Google Scholar. For overviews of Wagner’s relationship to Meyerbeer, see Linardt, Marion, ‘Richard Wagner. Mein Leben mit Meyerbeer’, in Linardt and Steiert, Meyerbeer Wagner: eine Begegnung, 71–100Google Scholar and Döhring, Sieghart, ‘Die traumatische Beziehung Wagners zu Meyerbeer’, in Borchmeyer et al., Richard Wagner und die Juden, 262–274Google Scholar. On Wagner’s artistic debt to Meyerbeer and the tradition of grand opera, see Döhring, Sieghart, ‘Meyerbeer und Wagner’, in Richard Wagner und seine ‘Lehrmeister.’ Bericht der Tagung am Musikwissenschaftlichen Institut der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 6./7. Juni 1997, ed. Christoph-Hellmut Mahling and Kristina Pfarr (Mainz, 1999), 145–154Google Scholar; and Grey, Thomas S., ‘Richard Wagner and the Legacy of French Grand Opera’, in The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, ed. David Charlton (Cambridge, 2003), 321–343Google Scholar.

10 Wagner, Richard, Sämtliche Briefe, vol. 1, ed. Gertrud Strobel and Werner Wolf (Leipzig, 1979), 323–327Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 142–5. For an English translation, see Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, trans. and ed. Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (London and Melbourne, 1987), 42–4.

11 Wagner’s positive assessments of Meyerbeer appear in the published essay ‘On German Music’ (originally published in 1840 in the Revue et gazette musicale as ‘De la musique allemande’) and a posthumously published essay usually identified as ‘On Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots’. On the basis of a reference in Meyerbeer’s diary, Sieghart Döhring infers that Wagner’s intended title for the latter was ‘Über den Standpunkt der Musik Meyerbeers’ and that Meyerbeer himself withheld it from publication. Döhring, ‘Die traumatische Beziehung Wagners zu Meyerbeer’, 263, n. 4. For an English translation and discussion of ‘On Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots’, see Grey, Thomas S., ‘Wagner Admires Meyerbeer (Les Huguenots)’, in Richard Wagner and His World, ed. Thomas S. Grey (Princeton, NJ, 2009), 335–346Google Scholar.

12 Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, I, 384–389Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 155–60. English translation in Selected Letters, 66–9.

13 Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, I, 576Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 188–9. English translation in Selected Letters, 88, where the editors suggest a date of 4 February for the letter. It is worth noting that Wagner had already in 1840 asked Schumann not to be so critical of Meyerbeer because he owed everything to him, ‘especially his very imminent fame’; see his letter of 29 December 1840 in Sämtliche Briefe, I, 429; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, p. 179.

14 Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe (Leipzig, 1970), II, 112Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 191–2.

15 An early example of this distancing occurs in a letter to Eduard and Cäcilie Avenarius and other Parisian friends of 6 November 1842, wherein Wagner complains that critics attempt to attribute his unexpected success to the assistance that he received from Meyerbeer and the Brockhaus family. ‘Nun sehen sie doch auch, daß ich noch ein ziemlich junger Mensch bin, u. die Verwirrung wird immer größer. Endlich kommt es denn heraus, daß ich ein Leipziger bin, u. daß ich zuletzt in Paris war: richtig – ich bin Meyerbeer’s Schüler. Nun aber schöpft die glückliche Familie Brockhaus das Fett ab: Brockhaus, heißt es, hat mich drei Jahre nach Paris geschickt, um dort zu “studieren” und den Rienzi zu schreiben … Kinder, dieses Gerede bringt mich’s ins Grab vor Aerger! Es ist wirklich niederträchtig, daß die dumme Welt gewöhnlich noch solchen Leuten Triumphe zuschreibt, die!!’ Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, II, 175–176Google Scholar; reprinted in Wagner-Meyerbeer: eine Begegnung, 194–5.

16 Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, II, 222–223Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 201–2. My translation is adapted from Selected Letters, 105.

17 Wagner makes a similar point in a letter to Samuel Lehrs of 7 April 1843: ‘europäisch können wir Opern-Componisten nicht sein – da heißt es – entweder deutsch oder französisch! Man sieht es ja, was so ein Hans-Narre, wie der Meyerbeer uns für Schaden macht.’ Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, II, 234Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 202–3.

18 Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, II, 538–539Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 223; I have adapted my translation from Selected Letters, 135.

19 See the letter of 26 December 1844 in Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, II, 410Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 211.

20 See the letter of 4 January 1846, in Wagner, Sämtliche Briefe, II, 479; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 220.

21 ‘Abends hörte ich “Rienzi” grosse Oper in 5 Akten von Richard Wagner. Obgleich eine unsinnige Überfülle der Instrumentation betäubt, so sind doch wahrhaft schöne, ausgezeichnete Sachen drin.’ Quoted after Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 209. Gasparo Spontini was also in attendance at this performance.

22 See Wagner’s letter to his first wife, Minna, of 3 October 1847 in Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, II, 573Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 228. Connected to this discomfort may also have been the fact that Meyerbeer had a year earlier turned down a request by Wagner for a loan of 1,200 thalers, a fact that is recorded in Meyerbeer’s diary entry for 26 November 1846 but not in any of Wagner’s known writings. See Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 223.

23 For the reference, see below, note 25.

24 Wagner’s accusation that Meyerbeer had influenced the press to ‘slander’ Rienzi in Berlin in 1847 is clearly spelled out in an undated letter to Louis Schindelmeisser, assignable to June 1854 on the basis of its content, which discusses the adoption of Tannhäuser in Berlin; in this letter, Wagner claims to have proof that Meyerbeer sabotaged the reception of Rienzi in Berlin. See Wagner, Richard, Sämtliche Briefe, eds Hans-Joachim Bauer and Johannes Forner (Leipzig, 1986), VI, 168–169Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 290–1. English translation in Burk, John N., ed., Letters of Richard Wagner. The Burrell Collection (New York, 1972), 142–143Google Scholar, where the recipient is instead identified as Ferdinand Heine.

25 On 4 June 1849 Wagner wrote to Minna from Paris, ‘wie ich nun in die Schlesingersche Handlung trat u. da sehr freundlich empfangen wurde, war Meierbeer auch da, aber zufällig hinter einer Comptoirblende versteckt, hinter welcher er auch blieb, als er mich sprechen hörte, so daß es schien, als ob Schreck über meine plötzliche Gegenwart u. böses Gewissen wegen seiner Berliner Intriguen ihn zurückhielten: als ich endlich erfuhr, er sei da, ging ich sehr freundlich u. unbefangen hinter die Blende u. holte ihn da vor: er war verlegen u. fade, und ich weiß genug um vor ihm auf der Hut zu sein.’ Wagner, Richard, Sämtliche Briefe, ed. Gertrud Strobel and Werner Wolf (Leipzig, 1975), III, 68Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 229. English translation in Selected Letters, 170. The incident is reported from Meyerbeer’s side in a letter to Carl Kaskel of 19 June 1849, according to which Meyerbeer, having heard a rumour of Wagner’s involvement in the Dresden uprising, was reluctant to ask him about it out of delicacy. Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 231.

26 Letter to Liszt of 5 June 1849. Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, III, 73Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 230. Liszt’s essay had been published in both the Journal des débats and La musique. Gazette de la France musicale. For background and a portion of the original essay, see Liszt, Franz, ‘The Overture to Tannhäuser’, ed. David Trippett, trans. John Sullivan Dwight, in Richard Wagner and His World, ed. Thomas A. Grey (Princeton, 2009), 251–268Google Scholar.

27 ‘In the last act I was unfortunately distracted by a banker who spoke uncommonly loudly in his box. Otherwise I have convinced myself, and to be sure in the 47th performance of this opera, that this work has won an undeniable, great, and enduring success with the audience of the Paris grand opera: the house is always filled beyond capacity and the applause is more enthusiastic than I have otherwise found it here.’ Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, III, 240Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 234. I have adapted the translation from Selected Letters, 185.

28 Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, III, 248–249Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 237. Sieghart Döhring offers a rather different interpretation of the letter, seeing it as Wagner’s acknowledgement that since Meyerbeer had pushed opera as far as possible in one direction, he would have to go in another. See ‘Die traumatische Beziehung’, 271 and fn. 28. On the ironic intent of the letter see also Grey, ‘Richard Wagner and the Legacy of French Grand Opera’, 458 and n. 33.

29 As is noted by Katz, Jakob, The Darker Side of Genius, trans. Allan Arkush (Hanover, NH, 1986), 22–23Google Scholar. Katz (52) speculates that Wagner had written an earlier version of the anti-Jewish essay in the final years in Dresden on the basis of a letter of 8 May 1850 from Minna to Wagner. According to the letter, Minna had refused to read two years earlier (therefore 1848) an essay in which Wagner ‘defamed an entire race, which actually did you many favors’. Rose (50) takes this suggestion as fact to establish that by 1848 Wagner’s revolutionary politics and anti-Jewish opinions were integrated. But I think it more likely that Minna – who refers in the original German with the plural to ‘ganze Geschlechter … die Dir doch im Grunde liebes gethan’ – is referring to one of Wagner’s revolutionary tracts of 1848, which are critical of German princes and call for the abolition of aristocratic privilege. See ‘Wie verhalten sich republikanische Bestrebungen dem Königtum gegenüber’ of June 1848, in Wagner, Richard, Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen, Sechste Auflage, Volksausgabe (Leipzig, n.d.), XII, 220–229Google Scholar, and ‘Deutschland und seine Fürsten’, published anonymously in October 1848, in ibid., XII, 414–19. One should note that Wagner himself uses the phrase ‘verblendetes, tief entartetes Geschlecht’ in the former essay (Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen, XII, 226) to refer to the ruling (and incompetent) European princes. For the German original of Minna’s letter, see Richard Wagner, Briefe. Die Sammlung Burrell, ed. John N. Burk (Frankfurt am Main, 1953), 391.

30 In this interpretation I agree with the assessment of Katz, , The Darker Side of Genius, 31–32Google Scholar: ‘It is just as certain, however, that his negative image of both Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer was formed independently of their Jewish origin and was not at first connected with it. The composition of the anti-Jewish essay, therefore, marked the establishment of a quasi-factual foundation for his subjective judgment. The artistic inadequacy of the two composers was no longer regarded as accidental, since it followed inevitably from their Jewish descent.’ Rose, Wagner: Race and Revolution, passim, gives a thorough exposition of the evolution of anti-Jewish opinions that could have influenced Wagner’s thinking. Particularly important for the language in ‘Das Judentum in der Musik’ is the preface that Heinrich Laube wrote to his play Struensee (1847), an anti-Jewish manifesto written after his play had been passed over in Berlin in favour of a play on the same topic by Meyerbeer’s brother Heinrich Beer. See Rose, , Wagner: Race and Revolution, 42–43Google Scholar. For an assessment of the background and impact of ‘Das Judentum in der Musik’, see also Fischer, Jens Malte, ‘Richard Wagners Das Judentum in der Musik: Entstehung – Kontext—Wirkung’, in Borchmeyer et al., Richard Wagner und die Juden, 35–54Google Scholar.

31 Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, III, 545–546Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 266–7; I have adapted the translation from Selected Letters, 222.

32 For a discussion of this point and its musical consequences, see Dahlhaus, Carl, Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas, trans. Mary Whittall (Cambridge, 1979), 82–87Google Scholar. The paradox that a lot of narrative remained in Wagner’s Nibelungen drama even after it expanded to a tetralogy has received much comment. See, for instance, Abbate, Carolyn, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1991), 156–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 157–70; Treadwell, James, ‘The Ring and the Conditions of Interpretation: Wagner’s Writing, 1848–1852’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 7 (1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 219, 226–31; Levin, , Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang, and the Nibelungen, 30–95Google Scholar.

33 It is uncertain when Wagner actually started to work on Der junge Siegfried. The letter to Uhlig of 10 May is the first datable reference to the new project. Following the writing of several (undated) prose memoranda on the overall shape of the drama, Wagner started the large prose draft on 24 May and proceeded to write the libretto on 3 June. See Deathridge, John, Martin Geck and Egon Voss, eds., Wagner Werk-Verzeichnis (Mainz, 1985), 405Google Scholar.

34 Wagner, Sämtliche Briefe, eds. Gertrud Strobel and Werner Wolf (Leipzig, 1979), IV, 44. My translation is adapted from Selected Letters, 223.

35 The relevant documents for the genesis of the text of the Ring are published in Strobel, Otto, ed., Richard Wagner. Skizzen und Entwürfe zur Ring-Dichtung. Mit einer Dichtung ‘Der junge Siegfried’ (Munich, 1930)Google Scholar. For an extended discussion of the differences between the poem of Der junge Siegfried and the definitive poem of Siegfried, see Daniel Coren, ‘The Texts of Wagner’s Der junge Siegfried and Siegfried’, 19th-Century Music, 6 (1982), 17–30.

36 On the relationship of Wagner’s Ring poems to the sources on which he drew, see Cooke, Deryck, I Saw the World End (London, 1979), 74–131Google Scholar, and Magee, Elizabeth, Richard Wagner and the Nibelungs (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar. For the sources specific to Siegfried, see McCreless, Patrick, Wagner’s Siegfried: Its Drama, History, and Music (Ann Arbor, 1982), 35–51Google Scholar.

37 McCreless, , Wagner’s Siegfried, 44Google Scholar, aptly calls the Germanic version of Siegfried a kind of ‘thirteenth-century Paul Bunyan’.

38 Strobel, , Richard Wagner, 28Google Scholar.

39 Ibid., 71.

40 In ‘Das Judentum in der Musik’ Wagner explained his purpose: ‘wir haben uns das unwillkürlich Abstoßende, welches die Persönlichkeit und das Wesen der Juden für uns hat, zu eklären, um diese instinktmäßige Abneigung zu rechtfertigen, von der wir doch deutlich erkennen, daß sie stärker und überwiegender ist, als unser bewußter Eifer, dieser Eifer uns zu entledigen’. GSD, V, 67. Quoted after Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 240–1.

41 See above, page 118 and note 18.

42 In the various sources on which Wagner drew, the smith who becomes the foster-father of Sigurd/Sigfried is generally not a dwarf. McCreless, Wagner’s Siegfried, 46, suggests that Wagner made Mime into a dwarf by fusing him with the dwarf Eugel, one of three Nibelung brothers, in Das Lied vom hürnen Seyfrid, and thereby making Mime the brother of the Nibelung Alberich rather than of Fafner (Fafnir). There are also hints in the Poetic Edda that Reigin is a dwarf; see Cooke, , I Saw the World End, 109Google Scholar, and Magee, Richard Wagner and the Nibelungs, 74, n. 49.

43 See, for instance, Weiner, , Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination, 84–88Google Scholar.

44 ‘Nun reizt Mime den Jüngling zu Erlegung des Wurmes, wodurch er sich ihm dankbar erzeigen soll.’ Strobel, Richard Wagner, 28.

45 Ibid., 70.

46 The translation is adapted from Stewart Spencer’s translation of the corresponding scene from Siegfried in Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung: A Companion ([London], 1993), 198.

47 Already by 24 August 1850 Wagner seems to have become convinced that Meyerbeer’s prior ‘Gefälligkeiten’ on his behalf had an ulterior reason. Writing to Karl Ritter that he did not fear reprisals for ‘Das Judentum in der Musik’, Wagner explained: ‘Sollten die Juden auf den unglücklichen einfall kommen, die sache gegen mich in das persönliche hinüberzuziehen, so würde es ihnen sehr übel bekommen, da ich mich nicht im mindesten fürchte, selbst wenn mir Meyerbeer frühere gefälligkeiten gegen mich vorwerfen lassen sollte, die ich bei solcher gelegenheit auf ihre wahre bedeutung zurückfühen würde. – Aber, wie gesagt, ich will den scandal nicht herbeiführen.’ Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, III, 84Google Scholar. Reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 260. Why exactly Wagner thought Berlioz was in Meyerbeer’s debt is not clear; possibly he was thinking of Meyerbeer’s efforts on behalf of Berlioz’s music during the French composer’s sojourn in Berlin in April 1843. See Holoman, D. Kern, Berlioz (Cambridge, MA, 1989), 300Google Scholar.

48 ‘daß du mich hassest, freut mich sehr’. Strobel, Richard Wagner, 85. In the libretto the line becomes ‘daß du mich hassest/hör’ ich gern’.

49 Ibid., 72.

50 Ibid., 90.

51 Ibid., 28.

52 See above, pages 119–20 and notes 24 and 25.

53 Wagner, , Sämtliche Briefe, III, 177–178Google Scholar; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 234. Wagner expressed a similar pessimism about his Parisian prospects a few days earlier in a letter written to his sister Clara Wolfram on 1 December 1849. Sämtliche Briefe, III, 170–2; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 232.

54 Strobel, , Richard Wagner, 71Google Scholar.

55 Ibid., 72.

56 Linardt, ‘Richard Wagner. Mein Leben mit Meyerbeer’, 99, characterises Wagner’s relationship with Meyerbeer prior to his break as one of ‘Schizophrenie zwischen Bittstellertum und heimlicher Abneigung’.

57 See, for instance, Nattiez, , Wagner Androgyne, 69–73Google Scholar, and Weiner, , Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination, 88–90Google Scholar.

58 In Wagner’s 1848 scenario, the primary guilt of the gods is their failure to free the Nibelungs (the working masses? Jews?) from their enslavement to Alberich’s ring.

59 ‘Mime hieß ein starker Zwerg, der konnte herrlich schmieden.’ Strobel, Richard Wagner, 52. In the 1848 text of Siegfried’s Tod, this becomes ‘Mime hieß ein mannlicher Zwerg, / zierlich und scharf wußt’ er zu schmieden; / Sieglind, meiner lieben Mutter, / half er im wilden Walde: / den sie sterbend da gebar, / mich Starken zog er auf / mit klugem Zwergenrath’. GSD, II, 218. In contrast, after 1851, Siegfried’s report about Mime emphasises his defects and duplicity from the outset. In the definitive text of Götterdämmerung the lines are ‘Mime hieß / ein mürrischer Zwerg / in des Neides Zwang / zog er mich auf, / daß einst das Kind, / wann kühn es erwuchs, / einen Wurm ihm fällt’ im Wald, / der lang schon hütet einen Hort.’

60 McCreless, , Wagner’s Siegfried, 42Google Scholar, drawing on Northrup Frye’s ideas about comic plot archetypes, sees this important change as part of the comic design of Siegfried insofar as it creates the first of several comic obstacles for the hero to overcome.

61 Strobel, , Richard Wagner, 28Google Scholar.

62 Magee, , Richard Wagner and the Nibelungs, 116–117Google Scholar, suggests that Wagner derived Siegfried’s unusual technique of filing the sword fragments down into splinters from an episode involving Wieland the Smith in Karl Joseph Simrock’s Amelungenlied (1843).

63 Strobel, , Richard Wagner, 131–132Google Scholar. The translation is adapted from the corresponding passage in Siegfried in Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs: A Companion, 220–1.

64 See above, note 57.

65 Strobel, , Richard Wagner, 69Google Scholar.

66 GSD, V, 82–3. Reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 256–7.

67 Strobel, , Richard Wagner, 70Google Scholar.

68 Magee, , Richard Wagner and the Nibelungs, 107–116Google Scholar, makes a persuasive case that Wagner drew some inspiration for Der junge Siegfried from Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué’s Sigurd, der Schlangentödter, a nineteenth-century treatment of the Siegfried legend. A comparison of the opening scene in the prose draft with de la Motte-Fouque’s version is instructive for what Wagner took from Fouqué and what he added on his own. Like the prose draft, Fouqué’s play opens with Reigen at the forge producing a sword for Sigurd that he deems a ‘kunstreich Meisterwerk’, one that Sigurd will, however, shatter. See Motte-Fouqué, Friedrich de la, Sigurd, der Schlangentödter. Ein Heldenspiel in sechs Abentheuren (Berlin, 1808)Google Scholar, 4. But note that in Fouqué’s version: (1) Reigen expresses no awareness of inability on his part, and (2) that the problems with Reigen’s first attempts lie, according to Sigurd’s mother Hiordysa, not with Reigen’s skills but with the poor quality of the ore that he can obtain from the mountains in the region. Ibid., 10. Given the shards of Siegmund’s sword that Hiordysa has preserved, Reigen, unlike Wagner’s Mime, is able to reforge them for Sigurd.

69 ‘Dieser täuschende Komponist geht sogar so weit, daß er sich selbst täuscht, und dieses vielleicht ebenso absichtlich, als er seine Gelangweilten täuscht.’ GSD, V, 82; reprinted in Meyerbeer-Wagner: eine Begegnung, 256–7.

70 Arlott, Norman, Birds of Europe, Russia, China, and Japan (Princeton, 2007), 128Google Scholar. Wagner’s Swiss acquaintance, the novelist Gottfried Keller, uses the starling imagery in a similar manner in Der grüne Heinrich (first version, 4 vols., 1854–5) to describe the tutor as someone who has memorised all sorts of information about philosophical systems without actually understanding any of them. ‘Er behauptete, der beste Volksschulmeister wäre nur derjenige, welcher auf dem höchsten und klarsten Gipfel menschlichen Wissens stände, mit dem umfassenden Blicke über alle Dinge, das Bewußtsein bereichert mit allen Ideen der Welt, zugleich aber in Demut und Einfalt, in ewiger Kindlichkeit wandelnd unter den Kleinen, womöglichst mit den Kleinsten. Demgemäß lebte er wirklich, aber dies Leben war seiner großen Jugend wegen eine allerliebste Travestie in Miniatur. Gleich einem Stare wußte er alle Systeme von Thales bis auf heute herzusagen; allein er verstand sie immer im wörtlichsten und sinnlichsten Sinn, wobei besonders seine Auffassung der Gleichnisse und Bilder einen komischen Unfug hervorbrachte.’ Quoted after Keller, Gottfried, Der grüne Heinrich (Braunschweig, 1854)Google Scholar, II, 254–5 (digital copy at www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/keller_heinrich02_1854?p=264, accessed 7 August 2013). According to Ernest Newman, Keller met Wagner in 1855, after the author’s return to Zurich. See The Life of Richard Wagner, vol. 2 (New York, 1933; reprint Cambridge, 1976), 166.

71 GSD, III, 294–5.

72 Abbate, Carolyn, In Search of Opera (Princeton, 2001), 122Google Scholar, interprets the song as something ‘that has been sung countless times over the years’, a kind of ‘harping’ that also embodies ‘empty formalism’ of a type that Wagner associated with Jewish ‘artistic incapacity’.

73 Wagner evidently did make a few musical sketches for Der junge Siegfried in 1851 before deciding to expand his Nibelungen drama into a tetralogy. For a transcription and commentary, see Bailey, Robert, ‘The Method of Composition’, in The Wagner Companion, ed. Peter Burbidge and Richard Sutton (New York, 1979), 287–292Google Scholar. None of the early known sketches pertain to the ‘starling song’.

74 Adrian Daub, ‘Mother Mime: Siegfried, the Fairy Tale, and the Metaphysics of Sexual Difference’, 19th-Century Music 32 (2008), 175, notes ‘in particular the exaggerated four-squareness’ of Mime’s song as but one aspect that marks him as a ‘remnant of an “inferior” operatic practice’.

75 For representative (and famous) examples of compound-metre narrations, see Antonio’s romance in Cherubini’s Les deux journées, Raimbaud’s ballade in Robert-le-Diable, and of course Senta’s ballad in Der fliegende Holländer.

76 Strobel, , Richard Wagner, 84Google Scholar. The notion introduced in 1851 that Mime is a thief opens some interpretatative possibilities for the treatment of his character. For instance, is it possible that his tale of being given the fragments of Siegmund’s sword by a dying Sieglinde is a prevarication? The pantomime during the prelude of Act I in the recent production of Siegfried at the Metropolitan Opera seems to suggest that Mime steals the sword fragments and the newborn child from the dying Sieglinde.

77 Strobel, , Richard Wagner, 71Google Scholar.

78 From the 1848 materials for Siegfried’s Tod it is also clear that Mime had told him the story of his mother, Sieglinde, as well. See ibid., 52.

79 Nattiez, , Wagner Androgyne, 76–84Google Scholar; Grey, Thomas S., Wagner’s Musical Prose: Texts and Contexts (Cambridge, 1995), 153–172CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 Nattiez, , Wagner Androgyne, 76Google Scholar, calls Mime an ‘impossible androgynous father’. Mime’s pseudo-androgyny is also discussed by Daub in ‘Mother Mime’, 160–77 passim; Daub interprets the opposition of Mime’s (false) androgyny and asexual reproduction against Siegfried’s discovery of bisexual reproduction as part of a larger complex of oppositions within the opera. See also Weiner, , Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination, 179–183Google Scholar for a related discussion of Wagner’s procreative metaphors for Jewish art and artists.

81 ‘Meyerbeer machte alle Phasen der Entwickelung dieser [Rossinian] Melodie mit durch, und zwar nicht aus abstrakter Ferne, sondern in ganz realer Nähe, immer an Ort und Stelle. Als Jude hatte er keine Muttersprache, die mit dem Nerve seines innersten Wesens untrennbar verwachsen gewesen wäre: er sprach mit demselben Interesse in jeder beliebigen modernen Sprache und setzte sie ebenso in Musik, ohne alle andere Sympathie für ihre Eigenthümlichkeiten, als die für ihre Fähigkeit, der absoluten Musik nach Belieben untergeordnet zu werden.’ GSD, III, 293.

82 GSD, III, 299.

83 GSD, III, 299. Wagner’s assertion that Meyerbeer played an active role in the shaping of the libretti of his grand operas is attested by a number of modern studies of the genesis of the works. Representative studies include Heinz Becker, ‘‘‘… Der Marcel von Meyerbeer.” Anmerkungen zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Hugenotten’, Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (1979–80), 79–100; Steven Huebner, ‘Italianate Duets in Meyerbeer’s Grand Operas’, Journal of Musicological Research 8 (1989), 203–58; Armstrong, Alan, ‘Gilbert-Louis Duprez and Gustave Roger in the Composition of Meyerbeer’s “Le Prophète”’, Cambridge Opera Journal 8 (1996), 147–165CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 GSD, III, 307.

85 Strobel, , Richard Wagner, 52Google Scholar.

86 As Siegfried recounts it in Act III of Siegfried’s Tod, Mime’s demise also follows immediately upon the warning. After hearing about the bird’s warning, Gunther’s men ask, ‘Vergaltest du Mime?’ to which Siegfried replies, ‘Zu mir zwang ich den listigen Zwerg: / Ihm mußte Balmung erlegen.’ GSD, II, 219.

87 Wagner may have drawn on a popular comedy by Friedrich Hopp, Dr. Fausts Hauskäppchen (1843), for the comical conception of a character magically influenced to speak the truth despite his desire to dissimulate. When the scholar Ernst Koch proposed this to Wagner in 1874, the composer responded that he could not remember any direct source for the scene, ‘but no doubt Dr. Faust’s magic skull-cap unconsciously contributed to it’. See Newman, , The Life of Richard Wagner, II, 361–362Google Scholar.

88 Strobel, , Richard Wagner, 85Google Scholar.

89 As ultimately set, the discrepancy between musical expression and Mime’s true intentions breaks down repeatedly, as the dwarf’s recurring frustration at his evident inability to deceive Siegfried brings forth music that abandons its unctious bonhomie in favour of more grotesque or strident tones.

90 GSD, III, 294.

91 See above, note 26.

92 ‘Lange schon mied ich mein heimatland, lange der mutter schooß.’ Strobel, , Richard Wagner, 75Google Scholar.

93 GSD, III, 293.

94 Strobel, , Richard Wagner, 99Google Scholar. Wagner ultimately suppressed this description in the definitive poem of Siegfried. Adorno, In Search of Wagner, 24, inferred that that he did so because ‘he recoiled with shock from the similarity between Mime and himself. His own physical appearance, disproportionately small, with overlarge head and protruding chin, bordered on the abnormal and only fame preserved him from ridicule.’

95 See above, note 69.

96 GSD, V, 83.

97 Grey, ‘The Jewish Question’, 216Google Scholar.

98 Wagner, Cosima, Die Tagebücher, ed. Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack (Munich and Zurich, 1976), I, 576–577Google Scholar; reprinted in Linardt, ‘Richard Wagner. Mein Leben mit Meyerbeer’, 71

99 Wagner, Cosima, Die Tagebücher, II, 515Google Scholar; reprinted in Linardt, ‘Richard Wagner. Mein Leben mit Meyerbeer’, 71

100 A parallel ‘conspiracy of silence’ on Wagner’s part, shielding the completed artwork from his animus towards another ‘enemy’ attends the relationship of Hanslick to Beckmesser. See below, note 107.

101 Weiner, , Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination, 89–90Google Scholar.

102 Nattiez, , Wagner Androgyne, 72Google Scholar, describes Siegfried as ‘the poet of the future’.

103 See above, note 79.

104 The same idea, with a different mythical prototype behind it, was expressed by the critic Richard Rote in 1910: ‘Wagner mußte Meyerbeer töten, wie Zeus den Kronos töten mußte – weil er sein Vater war.’ Quoted in Döhring, ‘Meyerbeer und Wagner’, 146–7. Jens Malte Fischer also makes the link between Siegfried’s murder of Mime and Wagner’s explicit critiques of Meyerbeer in ‘Das Judentum in der Musik’ and Oper und Drama: ‘Der polemische Mord an Meyerbeer war also auch ein Vatermord. “So lang ich lebe, stand mir ein Alter im Weg, den hab ich nun fortgefegt”, singt Wagners Siegfried, als er Mime erschlagen hat, und die zuckersüße Falschheit, die Siegfried an seinem Ziehvater Mime so sehr haßt, finden wir exakt in der Beschreibung Meyerbeers durch Wagner wieder.’ Fischer, ‘Richard Wagners Das Judentum in der Musik’, 42.

105 George Bernard Shaw’s critical assessment of Götterdämmerung in part rested on what he perceived to be its conventionality (or ‘Lohengrinising’ as he put it) in comparison to the preceding dramas of the Ring. See The Perfect Wagnerite. A Commentary on the Niblung’s ‘Ring’ (London, 1923; reprint: New York, 1967), 71–94.

106 Wagner began Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde in the first half of July 1851.

107 In the original prose draft of 1845 for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg the antagonist in the drama is simply referred to as the ‘Merker’. When Wagner revived the project in 1861 with a new prose draft, he gave this character the name ‘Hanslich’ (later amplified as ‘Veit Hanslich’). Wagner subsequently effaced this obvious allusion to the conservative Hanslick, one of his most outspoken and influential critics. In conjunction with the present discussion of Mime and Meyerbeer it is further significant, I think, that Wagner never acknowledged in any later known utterances that he had at one time undeniably linked Beckmesser to Hanslick. On Wagner’s (and Beckmesser’s) relationship to Hanslick, see Grey, Thomas S., ‘Masters and Their Critics: Wagner, Hanslick, Beckmesser, and Die Meistersinger’, in Wagner’s ‘Meistersinger’: Performance, History, Representation, ed. by Nicholas Vazsonyi (Rochester, 2003), 165–189Google Scholar.