Three of the leaders of the insurrection—­Roeckel, Bakunin, and Heubner; personal friends of Wagner—­were captured and imprisoned; he himself was so lucky as to escape to Weimar, where Franz Liszt took care of him.  It so happened that Liszt, who had given up his career as concert pianist (though all the world was clamoring to hear him), and was conducting the Weimar Opera, had been preparing a performance of “Tannhaeuser,” to which Wagner would, under normal conditions, have been invited as a matter of course.  He was now there, but as a political fugitive, wherefore it was not deemed advisable to have him attend the public performance; but he did secretly witness a rehearsal, and was delighted to find that Liszt’s genius had enabled him to penetrate into the innermost recesses of this music.  It was impossible, however, for him to stay any longer.  The Dresden police had issued a warrant for the arrest of “the royal Kapellmeister Richard Wagner,” who was to be “placed on trial for active participation in the riots which have taken place here.”  No time was, therefore, to be lost.  Late in the evening of May 18, Liszt’s noble patroness, the Princess Wittgenstein, received this note from him:  “Can you give the bearer sixty thalers?  Wagner is obliged to fly, and I cannot help him at this moment.”

Early the next morning Wagner, provided with a false pass, left Weimar and headed for Switzerland, which was to be his home for the greater part of the following twelve years of his exile from Germany.  Had he been caught, like his friends, and, like them, imprisoned during these years, it is not likely that the world would now possess those seven monuments of his ripest genius, “Rheingold,” “Die Walkuere,” “Siegfried,” “Goetterdaemmerung,” “Tristan and Isolde,” “Die Meistersinger,” and “Parsifal.”  Even as it was, the world has undoubtedly lost an immortal opera or two through his unfortunate participation in the rebellion.  For during the first four years of his exile, he did not compose any music.  He reasoned that he had written four good operas and nobody seemed to want them; why, therefore, should he compose any more?

At the same time, he realized that there were natural reasons why his operas were not understood.  They were written in such a novel style, both vocal and instrumental, that the singers, players, and conductors found it difficult to perform them correctly, the consequence being that they did not specially impress the audiences, which, moreover, were bewildered by finding themselves listening to works so radically different from what they had been accustomed to in the opera-houses.  In the hope of remedying this state of affairs Wagner devoted several years to writing essays, in which he explained his aims and ideals for the benefit both of performers and listeners.  Little attention was, however, paid to these essays, and although they are valuable aesthetic treatises, most lovers of Wagner would gladly give them for the operas he might have written in the same time,—­operas uniting the characteristics of “Lohengrin” and “The Valkyrie.”