the Napoleonic yoke that the child's baptism was deferred several
months. To his schooldays reference has been made already, and we may
therefore pass on to the time when he tried to make his living as an
operatic conductor. Although he was then only twenty-one years old, he
showed remarkable aptitude for this kind of work from the beginning, and
it was through no fault of his that misfortune overtook every opera
company with which he had anything to do. The bankruptcy, in 1836, of
the manager of the Magdeburg Opera, affected him most disastrously, for
it came at the moment when he had arranged for the first performance of
an opera he had written, entitled, "Das Liebesverbot," or "The Novice of
Palermo," and which therefore was given only once. Many years later an
attempt was made to revive this juvenile work at Munich, but the project
was abandoned because, as the famous Wagnerian tenor, Heinrich Vogl,
informed the writer of this article, "Its arias and other numbers were
such ludicrous and undisguised imitations of Donizetti and other popular
composers of that time that we all burst out laughing, and kept up the
merriment throughout the rehearsal." This is of interest because it
shows that Wagner, like that other great reformer, Gluck, began his
career by writing fashionable operas in the Italian style. A still
earlier opera of his, "The Fairies,"--the first one he completed,--was
not produced till 1888, fifty-five years after it had been written, and
five years after Wagner's death. This has been performed a number of
times in Munich, but it is so weak and uninteresting in itself that it
required a splendid stage setting, and the "historic" curiosity of
Wagner's admirers to make it palatable. It is significant that already
in these early works, Wagner wrote his own librettos,--a policy which he
pursued to the end.

Königsberg was the next city where the opera company with which he was
connected, failed. This was the more embarrassing to him, as he had in