Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/340

Rh 316 Wagner now settled for a time in Vienna, where Tristan und Isolde was accepted, but abandoned after 57 rehearsals, through the incompetence of the tenor, Herr Ander. Lohengrin was, however, produced on May 15, 1861, when Wagner heard it for the first time. His circumstances were now extremely straitened ; but better times were at hand. In 1863 he published the libretto of Der Ring des Nibelungen. King Louis II. of Bavaria was much struck with it, and in 1864 sent a private secretary to Wagner, who was then at Stuttgart, with an invitation to come to Munich and carry on his work there. The invitation was accepted with joy by the then almost despairing composer. The king gave him an annual grant of 1200 gulden (120), considerably enlarging it before the end of the year, and placing a comfortable house in the outskirts of the city at his disposal. The master celebrated his good fortune by composing a &quot; Huldigungsmarsch.&quot; In the autumn he was formally commissioned to proceed with the tetralogy, and to furnish proposals for the building of a theatre and the foundation of a Bavarian music school. All seemed to promise well, but no sooner did his position seem assured than a miserable court intrigue was formed against him. His political misdemeanours at Dresden were quoted to his discredit and made the excuse for bitter persecutions, and, notwithstanding King Louis s un- diminished favour, the opposition was too strong to be resisted, and Wagner was obliged to retire to Triebschen, near Lucerne, where he spent the next six years in uninter rupted study. Der Flieyende Hollander was performed at Munich in 1864; and on June 10, 1865, Tristan ^md Isolde was pro duced for the first time, with Herr and Frau Schnorr in the principal parts. Die Meistersinger von Niirnberg, first sketched in 1845, was completed in 1867, and first per formed at Munich under the direction of Herr von Btilow, June 21, 1868. The story, though an original one^ is founded on an episode in the life of Hans Sachs, the poet- cordwainer of Nuremberg ; and Wagner has combined its incidents with infinite ingenuity and humour. The success of the opera was very great ; but the production of the tetralogy was still impracticable. The scheme for the new theatre, which was to have been designed by the architect Semper, having been abandoned, there was no opera-house in Germany fit for the production of a work designed on so colossal a scale. A project was therefore started for the erection of a suitable building at Baireuth. Wagner laid the first stone of this in 1872, and the edifice was completed, after almost insuperable difficulties, in 1876. After this Wagner resided permanently at Baireuth, in a house named Wahnfried, in the garden of which he him self built the tomb in which his remains now rest. His first wife, Wilhelmina (nee Planer), having died in 1866, he was united in 1870 to Liszt s daughter Cosima, who had previously been the wife of Herr von Billow. Meantime Der Ring des Nibelungen was rapidly approaching com pletion, and on August 13, 1876, the introductory portion, Das Rheingold,, was performed at Baireuth for the first time, followed on the 14th by Die Walkure, on the 16th by Siegfried, and on the 17th by G otter ddmmerung. The success of the work, the story of which is founded on the famous Nibelungenlied, was very great ; and the per formance, directed by Herr Hans Richter, excited extra ordinary attention, but the expenses attendant upon its production were enormous, and burdened the management with a debt of 7500. A portion of this was raised by performances at the Albert Hall, in London, at which the composer himself was present, in 1877. The remainder was met by the profits upon performances of the tetralogy or, as Wagner himself called it, the &quot; Biihnenfestspiel&quot;- at Munich. Wagner s next, last, and perhaps greatest work was Parsifal, based upon the legend of the Holy Grail, as set forth, not in the legend of the Mort d Arthur, which fixes the home of the sacred vessel at Glastonbury, but in the poems of Chrestien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschen- bach, written in the 12th and 13th centuries, and other less-known works (see the article ROMANCE, in which the subject is treated in its various aspects). The libretto was complete before his visit to London in 1877. The music was begun in the following year, and completed at Palermo, January 13, 1882. The first sixteen per formances took place at Baireuth, in July and August 1882, under Wagner s own directing, and fully realized the expectations that had been formed of them. There can indeed be no doubt that this last work, called by Wagner a &quot; Biihnenweihfestspiel,&quot; in allusion to its mystically religious character, forms a fitting crown to his already brilliant reputation. Unhappily, the exertion of directing so many consecutive performances seems to have been too much for the veteran master s already failing strength, for towards the close of 1882 his health began to decline rapidly. He spent the autumn at Venice, in the Palazzo Vendramini, on the Grand Canal, and was well enough on Christmas Eve to conduct his own first symphony (composed in 1833), at a private performance given at the Liceo Marcello. But late in the afternoon of February 13, 1883, he was seized with a sudden attack of faintness, and on that evening he calmly breathed his last. Wagner was buried at Wahnfried, in the tomb he had himself prepared, on February 18, and a few days after wards King Louis rode to Baireuth alone, and at dead of night, to pay his last tribute of respect to the master he had so generously befriended. In private life Wagner was beloved and respected by all who knew him, though in his public character he made himself in numerable enemies, and provoked an immense amount of hatred it must be confessed, not wholly undeserved by the violent and intemperate character of his writings. Though Meyerbeer had been extremely kind to him in Paris, he spoke of him in Oper und Drama with the grossest disrespect. His utterly groundless pre judice against Liszt was ultimately conquered by that great master s beautiful forbearance alone. But these things will be forgotten, while the brightness of his genius will remain the lasting heritage of art. In person he was rather below the middle height, erect in carriage, with commanding aspect and remarkable quickness of speech and gesture. That his manners were to some extent uncon ventional there can be no doubt, but those who knew him best deny that there was even the semblance of truth in the absurd stories that were circulated with regard to his extraordinary eccentricities. Besides the great dramatic works we have mentioned, &quot;VVagner composed the choral music for Weber s funeral (Dresden, 1844), Das Liclesmahl der Apostel (Dresden, 1847), Sine Faustorcrturc (Paris, 1839), Kaiscrmarsch (1871), Siegfried Idyl (1871), and a not very numerous collection of smaller pieces. His literary works, published at Leipsic in 1871, fill nine thick volumes. (W. S. R. ) WAGTAIL (Wagsterd and Wagstyrt, 15th century, fide Th. Wright, Vol. Vocabularies, ii. pp. 221, 253; Uuagtale, Turner, 1544, p. 53), the little bird that delights us equally by its neat coloration, its slender form, its nimble actions, and its sprightly notes. Since it is so generally dispersed, especially in summer, throughout the British Islands, it seems to need no further description. The Pied Wagtail of authors, it is the Motacilla lugiibris of modern ornithology, or M. yarrelli of some writers, and has for its very near ally if indeed it be not considered merely a local race or subspecies of the M. alba of Linnams, which has a wide range in Europe, Asia, and Africa, visiting England almost yearly, and chiefly differing from the ordinary British form in its lighter- coloured tints, the cock especially having a clear grey instead of a black back. Eleven other more or less nearly-allied species are recognized by Mr Sharpe (Cat. B. Brit. Museum, x. pp. 456-496), who has laboriously treated the complicated synonymy of this group of birds. Eight of these are natives of Asia, several of them wintering in India, and one, M. ocularis, even occasionally reach ing the west coast of North America, while the rest are con fined to Africa. No colours but black, grey, or white enter into the plumage of any of the foregoing ; but in the species peculiar to