struck by the simplicity of the auditorium, the orchestra pit in which the majority of the players were tucked under the stage, and the practice of lowering the lights in the theatre during the performance. In due course, a repentant and heartbroken Minna went back to him. She joined the local company, playing starring roles, and their domestic life resumed rather more happily than before. They were joined by Minna’s sister, Amelia – a real sister, this time – and, for a brief period, a young wolf. Wagner was deeply fond of animals, and they of him; at various times he carted round a sort of domestic zoo, including hamsters and parrots. Throughout his life he was surrounded by dogs, the bigger the better. They were slavishly devoted to him, and fiercely protective. Wagner was fascinated by the wolf and tried to domesticate it; the creature proved untameable and was finally released back into the wild. After its departure, he acquired an enormous Newfoundland dog which he called Robber; he adored this animal, and the feeling was entirely mutual.
Wagner spent two long years in the snowbound, fogbound and rain-bound city. Despite his growing mastery over the orchestra, singers and chorus, the gap between what he was striving to create on stage and what his colleagues were either willing or able to achieve resulted in increasing agitation on his part. He now came to loathe what he disdainfully called ‘theatre people’; he fell out with the director of the theatre and avoided all off-stage contact with his fellow artists. His greatest satisfaction came not in the opera house but from a sensational series of orchestral concerts he gave featuring music by Mozart, Beethoven, Weber and, occasionally, himself; fewer compromises needed to be made when singers and scenery were taken out of the equation. He applied himself vigorously and with detailed thought to the question of building up knowledgeable audiences – ‘true lovers of art’ – while also encouraging the merely curious. Everything must be done to ensure that the greater part of the audience regards the concerts as agreeable entertainment ‘since we all know perfectly well that not every section of the audience has come to worship at the shrine of art’. A Swiss baker was engaged to take care of the buffet arrangements. The twenty-five-year-old conductor with his blazing ideals was also an entirely practical manager. His orchestra responded well to the demands that he made of them. ‘We are giving so perfectly organised a body (as our orchestra may justifiably be described at present) an opportunity to show its strengths … and to develop along independent lines; for what true musician would not be dismayed to be thinking of carrying out routine duties rather than achieving something that was genuinely enjoyable and edifying?’ It was the opera house that was driving him mad. The truth is that he had had enough of provincial theatres; his heart was set on the greater world, and Rienzi, on which he had for many months been toiling, was to be his passport to it. He dreamed only of Paris.
His departure from Riga was abrupt, amidst the intrigues and vituperations so characteristic of him; Minna gave her final performance as Schiller’s Mary Stuart, the proceeds of which enabled them to pay for their travel. Typically, Wagner was being energetically pursued by creditors, so in order to get past the Russian customs officers they needed to undertake an immensely complicated subterfuge, changing carriages and hiding in safe houses. The whole escapade took place under the beady eyes of heavily armed Cossacks. The roads were bumpy and dangerous. At one point, Minna was thrown out of the carriage; she later attributed her failure to conceive during their marriage to this incident. The journey, already quite dangerous and alarming enough, was rendered almost hallucinatory by Wagner’s stubborn determination to travel with the dog, Robber, from whom at no cost would he be parted. The great shaggy beast sometimes loped alongside the carriage; sometimes they managed to bundle him into it. Life would be easier for the dog, they decided, if they were to abandon the carriage and complete the journey by sea, stopping at London en route for Paris, so they smuggled him on board, where he terrorised crew and passengers alike, taking up residence in front of the ship’s grog, which thereupon became the exclusive preserve of the Wagners.
The crossing was, at first, becalmed, and then terrifyingly storm-tossed. Even the crew were unnerved, and began darkly to suspect that the Wagners and their dog had brought bad luck with them. Finally, after weathering these storms, the ship approached the English coast, whereupon the vessel ran aground on sandbanks. As they at last reached the mouth of the Thames, Wagner, despite Minna’s bitter reproaches, fell into a deep and contented sleep, emerging from it shortly afterwards refreshed and full of energy. His powers of renewal remained prodigious to the end of his life.
THREE
London – the greatest city in the world, as Wagner called it – thrilled them. Even the traffic jams were impressive: it took the Wagners an hour to get from Tower Bridge to Old Compton Street, where they happily installed themselves with Robber, who then decided to do a bit of unilateral tourism – strolling back, two hours later, having had a good look at Oxford Street. The Wagners followed suit, doing some sightseeing themselves. Richard was trying to find the author of Rienzi, Baron Bulwer-Lytton, so, very sensibly, he went to the House of Lords; there he caught sight of the Duke of Wellington, and the prime minister Viscount Melbourne, but no sign of the celebrated author. He and Minna wandered the streets, surviving what Wagner calls the ghastly English Sunday, and took a train (their first ever) to Gravesend. Then, with Robber still at their side, they crossed the Channel by steamer, arriving at Boulogne, where they planned to stay for a few days. By remarkable coincidence, the man whose career Wagner intended to emulate – and then eclipse – was there. Giacomo Meyerbeer was, at the age of forty-eight, the most successful and influential composer in Europe, the toast of Paris (Robert le Diable and Les Huguenots, both global smash hits, had their premières there) and also the court Kapellmeister in Berlin. He inspired both the admiration and the envy of his colleagues, not only in the ambitiousness and scope of his work, but for his ability to turn composing into a profit-making concern: he was a shrewd businessman and a master of the arts of publicity, and he had the press neatly stitched up. This was a man from whom a struggling young composer had much to learn, one way and another. During his time in Riga, Wagner had sent him a letter in which he told the great man that ‘you can hardly rise to greater artistic fame, for you have already reached the most dazzling heights; you are almost a god on earth. I am not yet 24 years old,’ he continued, cheerfully ditching his former god:
I was born in Leipzig, and when I attended university there I decided to pursue a career in music. My passionate admiration of Beethoven impelled me to take that step, which explains why my first works were extremely one-sided. Since then, and since I have gained experience of life and of the musical profession, my views about the present state of music, particularly dramatic music, have changed considerably. Need I deny that it was your works, more than anything else, that showed me a quite new direction …
Understandably, Meyerbeer had not replied to this rhapsody. What would he have said? ‘You’re right. I am a god on earth’? Whatever his merits or demerits as composer or as a man, Meyerbeer had no delusions about himself. Having struggled to succeed, he was always willing to help out nascent talent: here in Boulogne, Wagner managed to get an appointment with him without much difficulty. He was impressed by the older composer. Meyerbeer’s Jewishness did not escape his attention; stick in Wagner’s craw though it might, it was no obstacle to his pursuit of him. ‘The years had not yet given his features the flabby look which sooner or later mars most Jewish faces,’ he said, graciously, ‘and the fine formation of his brow round about the eyes gave him an expression of countenance that inspired confidence.’
Wagner brought the libretto of Rienzi to the meeting, along with the score of the two acts (out of five) that he had already completed. Meyerbeer listened attentively and with great courtesy to Wagner’s spirited rendition of three acts of the libretto, and kept the score to study; in addition, he gave him letters of introduction to the manager of the Opéra in Paris and introduced him to his friends in Boulogne,
