Dear friend,
I can no longer delay writing to you, although I should have preferred to wait for another letter from you, so as to answer any possible questions of yours. As far as I can at present form an opinion of the character of the Lohengrin performance at Weimar from the accounts that have reached me, there is one thing that stands forth in the surest and most indubitable manner, viz., your unprecedented efforts and sacrifices in favour of my work, your touching love for me, and your marvelous faculty of making the impossible possible. I can see after the event quite clearly what a gigantic task you have undertaken and performed. How can I ever reward you? I should scarcely have anything to communicate to you beyond these exclamations of gratitude if I had not discovered in Herr von Zigesar's letter (received the day before yesterday, together with the honorarium) a certain disappointment—the disappointment involuntarily expressed by one who does not see his warmest zeal for a beloved cause crowned by the desired success, and who therefore assumes a certain pensive and doubtful attitude. Zigesar is doubtful whether the success of my opera is certain; he professes the warmest desire to work for that certainty with all his might, but appears to hesitate as to the best means for the purpose. Knowing that your zeal in the same cause is more active and energetic than that of any one else, I must turn to you alone in considering the means which may bring about our common desire.
So much is certain: that the performance has caused fatigue by the length of its duration. I confess I was horrorstruck when I heard that the opera had lasted until close upon eleven at night. When I had finished the opera, I timed it exactly, and according to my calculation the first act would last not much over an hour, the second an hour and a quarter, the third again a little more than an hour, so that, counting the entr'actes, I calculated the duration of the opera from six o'clock to a quarter to ten at the latest. I should have been doubtful whether you had taken the tempi according to my calculation if musical friends, well acquainted with the opera, had not assured me particularly that you had taken the tempi throughout as they knew them from me, and now and then rather a little quicker than slower. I must therefore assume that the dragging took place where you, as conductor, lost your immediate power, viz., in the recitatives. I have been assured that the recitatives were not attacked by the singers as I had performed them to my friends at the piano. Allow me to explain myself a little more particularly, and forgive my mistake of not having done so before.
Owing to the deplorable fact that at our German theatres scarcely anything but operas translated from a foreign language is given, our dramatic singers have been most thoroughly demoralized. The translations of French and Italian operas are generally made by blunderers, or at least scarcely ever by people who would be able to effect between the music and the translation a similar concordance to that which existed in the original version, as, for example, I tried to do in the most important parts of Gluck's Iphigenia. The result has been in the course of time that the singers got into the way of neglecting altogether the connection between word and tone, of pronouncing an unimportant syllable to an accentuated note of the melody, and of putting the important word to a weak part of the bar. In this way they gradually became accustomed to the most absolute nonsense, to such an extent that it was frequently quite indifferent whether they pronounced at all or not. It is most amusing to hear German critics boast that only Germans understand dramatic music, while experience teaches that every bad Italian singer in the worst Italian opera declaims more naturally and expressively than the best Germans can do. The recitative has fared worst; in it singers have become accustomed to see only a certain conventional sequence of tonal phrases, which they can pull about and draw out according to their sweet will. When in opera the recitative commences, it means to them, "The Lord be praised, here is an end to that cursed tempo, which off and on compels us to a kind of rational rendering; we can now float about in all directions, dwell on any note we like until the prompter has supplied us with the next phrase; the conductor has now no power over us, and we can take revenge for his pretensions by commanding him to give us the beat when it suits us," etc. Although perhaps not all singers are conscious of this privilege of their genius, they, as a rule, involuntarily adopt this free-and-easy method, which confirms them in a certain natural laziness and flabbiness. A composer writing for German singers has therefore to take every care in opposing an artistic necessity to this lazy thoughtlessness. Nowhere in the score of my Lohengrin have I written above a vocal phrase the word "recitative;" the singers ought not to know that there are any recitatives in it; on the other hand, I have been intent upon weighing and indicating the verbal emphasis of speech so surely and so distinctly that the singers need only sing the notes, exactly according to their value in the given tempo, in order to get purely by that means the declamatory expression. I therefore request the singers particularly to sing all declamatory passages in my operas at first in strict tempo, as they are written. By pronouncing them throughout vividly and distinctly much is gained. If, proceeding from this basis with reasonable liberty and accelerating rather than holding back, they manage to obliterate the painful effect of the tempo altogether, and produce an emotional and poetic mode of speech, then all is gained.
Dingelstedt's sympathetic and clever notice of the performance of my Lohengrin has impressed me very much. He owns that previously he had known nothing by me, and chiefly attributes to this circumstance a certain puzzled feeling which the first performance of Lohengrin has produced in him. That puzzled feeling he transfers to the character of the work itself, speaking of numberless intentions crossing each other, with which he supplies me, but never guessing, as far as I can see, the only intention which guided me—I mean the simple and bare intention of the drama. He speaks of the impression which flutes, violins, kettledrums, and trumpets made on him, but nowhere of the dramatic representatives in whose stead, as he puts it, those instruments spoke. From this I conclude that at the performance the purely musical execution preponderated, that the orchestra—as connoisseurs have also told me—was excellent, and that friend Liszt, together with all that immediately depended on him, was the real hero of the performance. If we consider honestly and unselfishly the essence of music, we must own that it is in large measure a means to an end, that end being in rational opera the drama, which is most emphatically placed in the hands of the representatives on the stage. That these representatives disappeared for Dingelstedt, that in their stead he only heard the utterance of orchestral instruments, grieves me, for I see that, as regards fire and expression, the singers remained behind the support of the orchestra. I own that a singer supported by the orchestra in such a manner as is here the case must be of the very highest and best quality, and I fully believe that such singers could not easily be found in Weimar, and in Germany generally. But what is really the essential and principal thing here? Is it voice only? Surely not. It is life and fire, and in addition to that earnest endeavour and a strong and powerful will. In Dresden I made the experience with our best singers that, although they had the most laudable intentions and the greatest love for their tasks, they were unable to master a certain flabby laziness, which in our actual artistic muddle appears to be the characteristic trait of all our operatic heroes. I there caused all the remarks in the score of Tannhäuser to be inserted in the parts of the singers with the utmost accuracy—I mean the remarks which had reference to the meaning of the situation and the dramatic action. At the performance I perceived with dismay that all these had remained unnoticed, and I had to see—imagine my horror!—for example, that my Tannhäuser in the contest of the singers shouted the hymn of Venus—
"Wer dich mit Gluth in seine Arme geschlossen, Was Liebe ist, weiss der, nur der allein!"
at Elizabeth, the chastest of virgins, before a whole assembly of people. The only possible result could be that the public was, to say the least, confounded, and did not know what to make of it. Indeed, I heard at Dresden that the public became acquainted with the dramatic meaning of the opera only by reading the book in extenso; in other words, they understood the performance by disregarding the visible performance and making additions from their own imagination. Are your singers at Weimar more advanced than our famous people of Dresden? I think not. Probably they also will, in the first instance, be satisfied with getting over the difficulty of hitting the notes and committing their parts to memory, and on the stage they will at best take notice only of what the stage-manager tells them in the most general way. Genast, however, was always one of those artists who do not rely upon the stage-manager for the comprehension of their parts; he who has heard him and seen him knows so much. Being now a stage-manager himself, he probably thinks it unnecessary to play for the singers the schoolmaster, whom he, as a singer, never wanted. In this, however, he is mistaken; the present generation has run wild from its birth. I also can understand too well that, in his friendly zeal for my work, he remained entirely on the proper standpoint of the stage-manager, who arranges things in a general way, and justly leaves it to the individual actors to find out for themselves what concerns them only. In spite of this, I ask him now to interfere even there, where the power and the natural activity of the stage-manager ceases; let him be the trustee of infant actors. At the rehearsal of my Tannhäuser in Weimar I had occasion to point out the neglect of some scenic indications on the part of individual singers. Elizabeth, for example, during the postlude of the duet with Tannhäuser in the second act, has to justify the re-entry of the tender theme in the clarinet in slower tempo by looking—as is indicated in the score—after Tannhäuser in the court of the castle and by beckoning to him. By neglecting this and merely standing in front, waiting for the conclusion of the music, she naturally produces an unbearable feeling of tedium. Every bar of dramatic music is justified only by the fact that it explains something in the action or in the character of the actor. That reminiscence of the clarinet theme is not there for its own sake as a purely musical effect, which Elizabeth might have to accompany by her action, but the beckoned greeting of Elizabeth is the chief thing I had in my eye, and that reminiscence I selected in order to accompany suitably this action of Elizabeth. The relations of music and action must therefore be deplorably perverted where, as in this instance, the principal thing—i.e., the dramatic motive—is left out, while the lesser thing—i.e., the accompaniment of that motive—alone remains. Of the performance of Lohengrin one fact has been related to me which, although it may appear of little consequence, must serve me to show how important, nay decisive, for a proper understanding such individual cases may be.
When I conceived and wrote the second act, it had not escaped me how important it would be for the proper mood of the spectator to show that Elsa's contentment at the last words of Lohengrin is not really complete and genuine; the public should feel that Elsa violently forces herself to conquer her doubt, and we should in reality fear that, having once indulged in brooding over Lohengrin, she will finally succumb and ask the prohibited question. In the production of this general feeling of fear lies the only necessity for a third act in which that fear is realized; without it the opera should end here, for the chief problem would not only have been mooted, but satisfactorily solved. In order to produce this feeling very distinctly and tangibly, I invented the following dramatic point: Elsa is led by Lohengrin up the steps of the minster; on the topmost step she looks downwards with timid apprehension; her eye involuntarily seeks Frederick, of whom she is still thinking; at that moment her glance falls on Ortrud, who stands below, and raises her hand in a threatening manner. At this moment I introduce in the orchestra in F minor ff the warning of Lohengrin, the significance of which has by this time been distinctly impressed upon us, and which, accompanied by Ortrud's impressive gesture, here indicates with absolute certainty, "Whatever happens, you will disobey the command in spite of all." Elsa then turns away in terror, and only when the king, after this interruption, once more proceeds towards the entrance of the minster with the bridal pair, does the curtain drop. What a pity then that that dramatic point was not made on the stage, and that the curtain dropped before the entry of the reminiscence in F minor! This not unimportant mistake was, no doubt, caused by the probably accidental neglect of a remark in the full score which, according to my previous wish, should, like similar other remarks, have been extracted for the benefit of the actors. I must fear that several other things have also remained unnoticed and unexecuted, and nothing confirms me so much in this fear as the account of Dingelstedt, who, in spite of his unmistakable goodwill, has evidently not taken in my opera because of the music.
Dearest Liszt, was I right when in the preface of my Kunstwerk der Zukunft I wrote that not the individual, but the community alone, could create genuine works of art? You have done the impossible, but, believe me, all must nowadays do the impossible in order to achieve what is really possible. What delights me more than all is to hear that you have not lost courage, and are going to try everything in order to support the opera, in spite of a certain disappointment around you, and even to put it on its legs. To assist you in this most laudable zeal I give you the following advice: Let Genast, whom I cordially thank for his friendship, before the resumption of Lohengrin, call the whole personnel to a reading rehearsal; let the singers read their parts in connection, distinctly and expressively, from the printed libretto, in which there are unfortunately many misprints. Let Genast take the score, and from the remarks therein inserted explain to the singers the meaning of the situations and their connection with the music bar by bar. The devil must be in it if the matter could not then be put right, provided the intentions of the actors are good. Once more, let Genast go beyond his position as stage-manager, which, no doubt, he fills as well as any one, and let him become the guardian of the infants and the neglected.
By these words I by no means wish to express a definite doubt as to your singers in general or their achievements in this particular case. The fact that in a purely musical sense they took such care of their parts that you ventured with them upon the performance of this enormously difficult, because unfamiliar music is an excellent testimony in their favour. In the above I asked them for something which perhaps they have never been asked for before. I hope Genast will find it worth his while to explain this most specially to them, and that he will succeed in making them do justice to my demand. In that case he may boast of having been the chief participant in a revolution which will lift our theatrical routine out of its grooves.
The representative of Lohengrin alone appears, according to all accounts, really incapable. Would it not be possible to make in this instance a change of persons? To my mind everybody ought to be glad when Lohengrin enters, instead of which it appears that people were more pleased when he left the stage. At this moment I receive your letter, assuring me of your joy and friendship. What good spirits you are in!
I will close this long letter, which must have bored you very much, by comprising all the single points I have mentioned to you in a final and weighty bundle of prayers.
1. Arrange by the intervention of Genast that before the second performance the singers have another rehearsal according to the above indications. Let no scenic remark remain unnoticed.
2. Insist firmly and sharply that the singers perform in decisive and lively tempo what they take to be recitatives in my opera. By this means the duration of the opera will, according to my experience, be shortened by nearly an hour.
3. Further, I desire that, with the exception of the second part of Lohengrin's tale, which I determined from the beginning to cut, my opera should be given as it is, without any omissions.
If cuts are made, the chain of comprehension will be torn asunder, and my style, which the public are only just beginning to take in, so far from being made more accessible, will be further removed from the public and the actors. To capitulate to the enemy is not to conquer; the enemy himself must surrender; and that enemy is the laziness and flabbiness of our actors, who must be forcibly driven to feel and think. If I do not gain the victory, and have to capitulate in spite of my powerful ally, I shall go into no further battles. If my Lohengrin can be preserved only by tearing its well-calculated and artistic context to pieces, in other words if it has to be cut owing to the laziness of the actors, I shall abandon opera altogether. Weimar in that case will have no more interest for me, and I shall have written my last opera. With you, dear Liszt, who have so bravely accepted my battle, it lies to gain a complete victory for me. I do not know what more I could say; to you I have said enough. To Genast, for whom also this letter is intended, I shall write separately as soon as I know that my demand has not offended him. To Zigesar I write tomorrow.
In the meantime I post this letter in order not to incur the reproach of delay.
Farewell, then, dearest, splendid friend. You are as good as refreshing summer rain. Farewell. Be thanked, and greet my friends.
One thing more: as you have no organ and no harmonium (physharmonika), I want you to let the short organ-passage at the end of the second act be played by wind instruments behind the scenes.
Lohengrin should sing the words "Heil dir, Elsa! nun lass vor Gott uns gehen!" with tender emotion.
Source: Project Gutenberg eBook #3835, Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt — Volume 1, No. 41