[Illustration]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

VII

By way of a footnote to this chapter I may be allowed to add a few words about the smaller characters.  All that Wagner took from the old legends was the suggestion for the two lovers who sinned and perished for their sin.  Crudely or coarsely, gentlemanly (as in Tennyson), refined and spiritualized, that idea is the central idea of every form of the tale.  To these two people Wagner added Brangaena and Kurvenal, and, taking only the name of King Mark, he created a new personage, unlike any of the older versions of the man, necessary for the exposition of his idea.  Brangaena is the most difficult part to sing and act, and it is also the most grateful to the actress.  She has not a phrase that is not beautiful, from her first dozen bars to her last recitative.  Kurvenal has his song in the first act and scarcely appears again until the last, when all his music is of an unspeakable pathos.  His phrase to Tristan, “The wounds from which you languish here all shall end their anguish,” is as touching in its rough, uncouth way as a hound licking the hand of its dead master.  That is all Kurvenal is—­a faithful human dog done in artistic form; and it requires a very great artist to interpret it.  David Bispham’s impersonation remains in my memory as the greatest I have seen.  Mark’s reproaches in the second act, and his utter grief in the third, are also very hard to render.  In fact, only fine opera singers can take any of these parts without coming to grief.  The invisible sailor must be able to sing beautifully; the shepherd must both act and sing with no little skill.

CHAPTER XII

‘THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBERG’

I

The next period of Wagner’s life, from the date of finishing Tristan, 1859, till King Ludwig sent for him, 1864, was stormy.  The struggles and endless disappointments made of him the somewhat hard and embittered Wagner of later years.  The constant battles, the few victories and the many disappointments must be related in my next chapter, as it is simpler and easier for the author, if not the reader, to consider the Mastersingers of Nuremberg immediately after Tristan.  A few facts may be mentioned now to enable us to place the second opera in its true chronological order.  The Nibelung’s Ring was still in abeyance; Tristan finished, Wagner, in search of means of subsistence—­the patience and indeed the means of his friends fast giving out—­undertook a series of concert trips, going to Brussels, Paris, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Marienfeld, Leipzig and Vienna.  In 1861 his last hopes of a Paris success with Tannhaeuser were extinguished; his concerts up till then had resulted only in an increasing burden of debt; his domestic