an inspiration vastly different from that notified to Liszt.  The tragedy was not to be a monument to a mere dream of felicity or to his artistic despair, but a tribute to a consuming passion for Mathilde Wesendonck, wife of a benefactor who had given him an idyllic home at Triebschen, on the shore of Lake Lucerne.  Mme. Wesendonck was the author of the two poems “Im Treibhaus” and “Traume,” which, with three others from the same pen, Wagner set to music.  The first four were published in the winter of 1857-1858; the last, “Im Treibhaus,” on May 1, 1858.  The musical theme of “Traume” was the germ of the love-music in the second act of “Tristan und Isolde”; out of “Im Treibhaus” grew some of the introduction to the third act.  The tragedy was outlined in prose in August, 1857, and the versification was finished by September 18.  The music was complete by July 16, 1859.  Wagner gave the pencil sketches of the score to Mme. Wesendonck, who piously went over them with ink so that they might be preserved for posterity.

In 1857 Wagner had been eight years an exile from his native land.  Years had passed since he began work on “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” and there seemed to him little prospect of that work receiving either publication or performance.  In May of that year he received an invitation from Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, to write an opera for Rio de Janeiro and direct its production.  Two and a half years before he had seriously considered the project of coming to America for a concert tour; so the invitation did not strike him as so strange and extraordinary as it might have appeared to a musician of less worldly wisdom.  It is not likely that he took it seriously into consideration, but at any rate it turned his thoughts again to the opera which he had mentioned to Liszt.  With it he saw an opportunity for again establishing a connection with the theatre.  Dom Pedro wanted, of course, an Italian opera.  Wagner’s plan contemplated the writing of “Tristan und Isolde” in German, its translation into Italian, the dedication of its score to the Emperor of Brazil, with the privilege of its performance there and a utilization of the opportunity, if possible, to secure a production beforehand of “Tannhauser.”  Meanwhile, he would have the drama produced in its original tongue at Strasburg, then a French city conveniently near the German border, with Albert Niemann in the titular role and an orchestra from Karlsruhe, or some other German city which had an opera-house.  He communicated the plan to Liszt, who approved of the project heartily, though he was greatly amazed at the intelligence which he had from another source that Wagner intended to write the music with an eye to a performance in Italian.  “How in the name of all the gods are you going to make of it an opera for Italian singers, as B. tells me you are?  Well, since the incredible and impossible have become your elements, perhaps you will achieve this, too,” Liszt wrote to him, and promised to go to Strasburg