Exile, Schopenhauer and Mathilde Wesendonck
Wagner spent the next twelve years in exile. He had completed
Lohengrin before the Dresden uprising, and now wrote desperately to his friend
Franz Liszt to have it staged in his absence. Liszt, who proved to be a friend in need, eventually conducted the premiere in
Weimar in August 1850.
Nevertheless, Wagner found himself in grim personal straits, isolated from the German musical world and without any income to speak of. Before leaving Dresden he had drafted a scenario that would eventually become his mammoth cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. He wrote the libretto for a single opera, Siegfried's Tod (Siegfried's Death) in 1848. After arriving in Zurich he expanded the story backward to include an opera about the young Siegfried. He completed the cycle by writing Die Walküre and Das Rheingold and revising the later operas to agree with his new concept. His wife Minna, who had disliked the operas he had written after
Rienzi, was falling into a deepening depression. Finally, he fell victim to
erysipelas, which made it difficult for him to continue writing.
Wagner's primary published output during his first years in
Zürich was a set of notable essays:
The Art-Work of the Future (1849), in which he described a vision of opera as
Gesamtkunstwerk, or "total artwork", in which the various arts such as music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts, and stagecraft were unified;
Judaism in Music (1850), a tract directed against Jewish composers; and
Opera and Drama (1851), which described ideas in
aesthetics that he was putting to use on the
Ring operas.
By 1852 Wagner had completed the libretto of the four Ring operas, and he began composing
Das Rheingold in November 1853, following it immediately with
Die Walküre in 1854. He then began work on the third opera,
Siegfried in 1856, but finished only the first two acts before deciding to put the work aside to concentrate on a new idea:
Tristan und Isolde.
Wagner had two independent sources of inspiration for
Tristan und Isolde. The first came to him in 1854, when his poet friend
Georg Herwegh introduced him to the works of the
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Wagner would later call this the most important event of his life. His personal circumstances certainly made him an easy convert to what he understood to be Schopenhauer's philosophy - a deeply pessimistic view of the human condition. He would remain an adherent of Schopenhauer for the rest of his life, even after his fortunes improved.
One of Schopenhauer's doctrines was that music held a supreme role amongst the arts, since it was the only one unconcerned with the material world. Wagner quickly embraced this claim, which must have resonated strongly despite its direct contradiction with his own arguments, in "Opera and Drama", that music in opera had to be subservient to the cause of drama. Wagner scholars have since argued that this Schopenhauerian influence caused Wagner to assign a more commanding role to music in his later operas, including the latter half of the
Ring cycle, which he had yet to compose. Many aspects of Schopenhauerian doctrine undoubtedly found their way into Wagner's subsequent libretti. For example, the self-renouncing cobbler-poet
Hans Sachs in
Die Meistersinger, generally considered Wagner's most sympathetic character, is a quintessentially Schopenhauerian creation (despite being based on a real person).
Wagner's second source of inspiration was the poet-writer Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of the silk merchant Otto von Wesendonck. Wagner met the Wesendoncks in Zürich in 1852. Otto, a fan of Wagner's music, placed a cottage on his estate at Wagner's disposal. By 1857, Wagner had become infatuated with Mathilde.
Though Mathilde seems to have returned some of his affections, she had no intention of jeopardising her marriage, and kept her husband informed of her contacts with Wagner. Nevertheless, the affair inspired Wagner to put aside his work on the
Ring cycle (which would not be resumed for the next twelve years) and begin work on
Tristan und Isolde, based on the
Arthurian love story.
The uneasy affair collapsed in 1858, when Minna intercepted a letter from Wagner to Mathilde. After the resulting confrontation, Wagner left Zürich alone, bound for
Venice. The following year, he once again moved to Paris to oversee production of a new revision of
Tannhäuser, staged thanks to the efforts of
Princess de Metternich. The premiere of the Paris
Tannhäuser in 1861 was an utter fiasco, due to disturbances caused by members of the
Jockey Club. Further performances were cancelled, and Wagner hurriedly left the city.
In 1861, the political ban against Wagner in Germany was lifted, and the composer settled in
Biebrich, Prussia, where he began work on
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Despite the failure of
Tannhäuser in Paris, the possibility that
Der Ring des Nibelungen would never be finished and Wagner's unhappy personal life, this opera is by far his sunniest work. Wagner's second wife Cosima would later write:
"when future generations seek refreshment in this unique work, may they spare a thought for the tears from which the smiles arose." In 1862, Wagner finally parted with Minna, though he (or at least his creditors) continued to support her financially until her death in 1866.
Between 1861 and 1864 Wagner tried to have
Tristan und Isolde produced in
Vienna. Despite over 70 rehearsals the opera remained unperformed, and gained a reputation as being "unplayable", which further added to Wagner's financial woes.
