with a Wagnerian coterie to act as a guard of honor for the composer.  Nothing came of either plan.  Inspired by his love for Mathilde Wesendonck, Wagner wrote the opera and succeeded in selling the score to Breitkopf & Hartel for the equivalent of $800.  Then began the hunt for a theatre in which to give the first representation.  Eduard Devrient urged Karlsruhe, where he was director, but Wagner wanted to supervise the production, and this was impossible in a theatre of Germany so long as the decree of banishment for participation in the Saxon rebellion hung over his head.  The Grand Duke of Baden appealed to the King of Saxony to recall the decree, but in vain.  Wagner went to Paris and Brussels, but had to content himself with giving concerts.  Weimar, Prague, and Hanover were considered in order, and at length Wagner turned to Vienna.  There the opera was accepted for representation at the Court Opera, but after fifty-four rehearsals between November, 1862, and March, 1863, it was abandoned as “impossible.”

The next year saw the turning-point in Wagner’s career.  Ludwig of Bavaria invited him to come to Munich, the political ban was removed, and “Tristan und Isolde” had its first performance, to the joy of the composer and a host of his friends, on June 10, 1865, at the Royal Court Theatre of the Bavarian capital, under the direction of Hans von Bolow.  The roles of Tristan and Isolde were in the hands of Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld and his wife.  Albert Niemann was prevented by the failure of the Strasburg plan from being the first representative of the hero, but to him fell the honor of setting the model for all American representations.  The first performance in the United States took place in the Metropolitan Opera-house on December 1, 1886, under the direction of Anton Seidl.  The cast was as follows:  Isolde, Lilli Lehmann; Brangane, Marianne Brandt; Tristan, Albert Niemann; Kurwenal, Adolf Robinson; Konig Marke, Emil Fischer; Melot, Rudolph von Milde; ein Hirt, Otto Kemlitz; ein Steuermann, Emil Saenger; ein Seemann, Max Alvary.

Two circumstances bid us look a little carefully into the instrumental prelude with which Wagner has prefaced his drama.  One is that it has taken so prominent a place in the concert-room that even those whose love for pure music has made them indifferent to the mixed art-form called the opera ought to desire acquaintance with its poetical and musical contents; the other is that the prelude, like the overture to “Fidelio” known as “Leonore No. 3,” presents the spiritual progress of the tragedy from beginning to end to the quickened heart and mind of the listener freed from all material integument.  To do this it makes use of the themes which are most significant in the development of the psychology of the drama, which is far and away its most important element, for the pictures are not many, and the visible action is slight.  Listening to the music without thought of the drama, and, therefore, with no purpose of associating it with the specific conceptions which later have exposition in the text, we can hear in this prelude an expression of an ardent longing, a consuming hunger,