It is perhaps an understatement to say that the artistic ambition of Richard Wagner was rivaled by few. We all, of course, have known people that need the theater and some form of media like air. But most of those people, especially if they have a family, are content to hold down a day job while expressing their artistic personality after hours. Not Wagner. This quality of his nature led to a broken marriage and many wrecked friendships. Not that Wagner is to be ultimately condemned. For although it was difficult for contemporaries to judge, I guess, it seems to us they should have been able to do so. It seems to us they should have had the simple human perception that would cause them to rescue from starvation and near madness a man whom Posterity would one day regard as one of the world’s great geniuses. ****** I believe in God, Mozart, and Beethoven” – Famous line from “An End in Paris” The story came about this way. Wagner was born in Germany and spent much time after he decided on a course in music wandering from small town to small town taking pick-up conductor jobs. Furthermore none of his operas had been given exposure except under very limited circumstances (and none of those, by the way, are ones upon which his fame rests). By 1839 when he was 26 he decided to leave Germany and seek his fortune in the then musical capital of the world, Paris. For a young, single man with savings the move certainly made sense. However, for a man who met none of these criteria it didn’t. He would have to have, in short, an instant success for things to work out. And they didn’t; he sold no music, although he sold a libretto. So by the early 1840’s he was all but out of money, and his first wife had left him. (When she returned, he forgave her and took her back.) In order to bring in some money, he went back to his old love: writing. He banged out, for a Paris paper, a number of articles and fictional stories. Among the latter, the best is the short story “An End in Paris” – a work in the then popular style and spirit of Poe. In late 1841 came word from Germany that an opera house there had accepted Rienzi – an opera he had written for the Paris stage. He grabbed his wife and took the first boat home! His life after Paris was to be a bumpy ride at times but by the latter part of the 19th century, in most people's eyes, Wagner could walk on water. And although today he is no longer up there in the clouds with his own gods, his fame is still very great. But I am getting ahead of my story. By the end of the 19th century, an English translation was made of Wagner’s collected works by a man named Ellis. In the 1980's I took his translation of the story from this collection and made it into a radio drama. Ellis's translation is very bad, mainly because he uses a flowery Victorian style and makes little attempt to capture the Gothic nature of the original story. Add to these problems the difficulty of moving from one medium (prose) to another (radio drama) and I had to change the Ellis somewhat. But it was changed back to the spirit and style of the original I have been told by Wagner scholars.
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