ear. The invertebrate flunkeys attached to every Court were jealous of
his influence over the King, and did what they could to hinder the
execution of his plans. But Wagner was not the man to be hindered, and
if these backboneless crawling things made life at Munich so loathsome
to him that he sought peace to complete his work at Triebschen, near
Lucerne, nevertheless his plans were carried out. _Tristan and Isolda_
was produced in 1865 and _The Mastersingers of Nuremberg_ three years
later. If I had space, it would be amusing to quote the contemporary
criticisms passed on the first. _Tristan_ was hopelessly misunderstood
at the time, and even now it is misunderstood by many professed
Wagnerites. It created an uproar in Germany; in England our sires were
too busy singing the oratorios of Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn to pay
any attention.

_Tristan_ was the first opera to be finished after Wagner had published
his many theories, and it was their completest refutation. He himself
wrote afterwards that in composing it he found how far he had gone ahead
of his doctrines; but, as a matter of fact, he had not gone ahead of
them at all: he simply forgot all about them, and composed as if they
had no existence. In no opera in the world is there such an entire
absence of the calculation that working to a theory would have
involved. It is the most intense and, to use Wordsworth's word, the most
inevitable opera ever written. Words, music and action seem to have
originated simultaneously in the creator's brain. Writing to Liszt,
Wagner said he meant to express a love such as he had never experienced.
It was as well that he never experienced it: no human creature could
endure the strain for twenty-four hours. Here we have the elemental
passion of man for woman and woman for man in a degree of intensity that
is nothing less than delirium. The action is simple, the story is
simple. Isolda has nursed Tristan when he was picked up wounded; she has