Editing Richard Wagner (section)

=== In exile: Switzerland (1849–1858) ===
[[File:Richard Wagners Steckbrief 1849.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=A printed notice in German with elaborate Gothic capitals. Wagner is described as 37 to 38 of middle height with brown hair and glasses.|Warrant for the arrest of Richard Wagner, issued on 16 May 1849]]
Wagner was to spend the next twelve years in exile from Germany. He had completed ''[[Lohengrin (opera)|Lohengrin]]'', the last of his middle-period operas, before the Dresden uprising, and now wrote desperately to his friend [[Franz Liszt]] to have it staged in his absence. Liszt conducted the premiere in [[Weimar]] in August 1850.<ref>{{harvnb|Wagner|1987|p=199}}. Letter from Richard Wagner to Franz Liszt, 21 April 1850. See also {{harvnb|Millington|2001a|pp=282, 285}}</ref>

Nevertheless, Wagner was in grim personal straits, isolated from the German musical world and without any regular income. In 1850, Julie, the wife of his friend Karl Ritter, began to pay him a small pension which she maintained until 1859. With help from her friend Jessie Laussot, this was to have been augmented to an annual sum of 3,000 [[thaler]]s per year, but the plan was abandoned when Wagner began an affair with Mme. Laussot. Wagner even plotted an elopement with her in 1850, which her husband prevented.{{sfn|Millington|2001a|pp=27, 30}}{{sfn|Newman|1976|loc=II, pp. 133–56, 247–48, 404–05}} Meanwhile, Wagner's wife Minna, who had disliked the operas he had written after ''Rienzi'', was falling into a deepening [[depression (mood disorder)|depression]]. Wagner fell victim to ill health, according to [[Ernest Newman]] "largely a matter of overwrought nerves", which made it difficult for him to continue writing.{{sfn|Newman|1976|loc=II, pp. 137–38}}{{refn|Gutman records him as suffering from [[constipation]] and [[Herpes zoster|shingles]].{{sfn|Gutman|1990|p=142}}|group=n}}

Wagner's primary published output during his first years in Zürich was a set of essays. In "[[The Artwork of the Future]]" (1849), he described a vision of opera as ''[[Gesamtkunstwerk]]'' (total work of art), in which music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts and stagecraft were unified. "[[Judaism in Music]]" (1850){{refn|Full English translation in {{harvnb|Wagner|1995c}}|group=n}} was the first of Wagner's writings to feature [[antisemitism|antisemitic]] views.{{sfn|Conway|2012|pp=197–98}} In this polemic Wagner asserted—often with vulgar, abusive language—that Jews lived as "outsiders" amid European societies and were disconnected from the national spirit ([[Geist#Volksgeist|''Volksgeist'']]) of these countries, thus capable of producing only shallow and artificial imitations of European art music, despite having achieved technical proficiency in its study. According to Wagner, Jews such as Meyerbeer commercialised music catered to the masses in order to achieve fame and financial success, rather than creating genuine works of art.{{sfn|Conway|2012|pp=261–63}}

In "[[Opera and Drama]]" (1851), Wagner described the [[aesthetics]] of music drama that he was using to create the ''Ring'' cycle. Before leaving Dresden, Wagner had drafted a scenario that eventually became ''[[Der Ring des Nibelungen]]''. He initially [[Der Ring des Nibelungen: Composition of the poem|wrote the libretto]] for a single opera, ''{{ill|Siegfrieds Tod|fr}}'' (''Siegfried's Death''), in 1848. After arriving in Zürich, he expanded the story with ''Der junge Siegfried'' (''Young Siegfried''), which explored the [[Sigurd|hero's]] background. He completed the text of the cycle by writing the libretti for ''[[Die Walküre]]'' (''The [[Valkyrie]]'') and ''[[Das Rheingold]]'' (''The Rhine Gold'') and revising the other libretti to conform to his new concept, completing them in 1852.{{sfn|Millington|2001a|p=297}} The concept of opera expressed in "Opera and Drama" and in other essays effectively renounced all the operas he had previously written through ''Lohengrin.'' Partly in an attempt to explain his change of views, Wagner published in 1851 the autobiographical "[[A Communication to My Friends]]".<ref>See {{harvnb|Treadwell|2008|pp=182–90}}</ref> This included his first public announcement of what was to become the ''Ring'' cycle:
<blockquote>I shall never write an ''Opera'' more. As I have no wish to invent an arbitrary title for my works, I will call them Dramas&nbsp;...

I propose to produce my myth in three complete dramas, preceded by a lengthy Prelude (Vorspiel)....

At a specially-appointed Festival, I propose, some future time, to produce those three Dramas with their Prelude, ''in the course of three days and a fore-evening'' [emphasis in original].{{sfn|Wagner|1994c|loc=391 and n}}</blockquote>

Wagner began composing the music for ''Das Rheingold'' between November 1853 and September 1854, following it immediately with ''Die Walküre'' (written between June 1854 and March 1856).{{sfn|Millington|2001a|pp=289, 292}} He began work on the third ''Ring'' drama, which he now called simply ''[[Siegfried (opera)|Siegfried]]'', probably in September 1856, but by June 1857 he had completed only the first two acts. He decided to put the work aside to concentrate on a new idea: ''[[Tristan und Isolde]]'',{{sfn|Millington|2001a|pp=289, 294, 300}} based on the [[Matter of Britain|Arthurian]] love story ''[[Tristan and Iseult]]''.

[[File:Mathilde Wesendonck by Karl Ferdinand Sohn, 1850.jpg|thumb|right|upright=0.8|Portrait of [[Mathilde Wesendonck]] (1850) by [[Karl Ferdinand Sohn]]|alt=A three-quarter length portrait of a young white woman in the open air. She wears a shawl over an elaborate long-sleeved dress that exposes her shoulders and has a hat on over her centrally parted dark hair.]]
One source of inspiration for ''Tristan und Isolde'' was the philosophy of [[Arthur Schopenhauer]], notably his ''[[The World as Will and Representation]]'', to which Wagner had been introduced in 1854 by his poet friend [[Georg Herwegh]]. Wagner later called this the most important event of his life.{{sfn|Wagner|1992|pp=508–510}}{{refn|Others agree on the profound importance of this work to Wagner – see {{harvnb|Magee|2000|pp=133–34}}|group=n}} His personal circumstances certainly made him an easy convert to what he understood to be Schopenhauer's philosophy, sometimes categorised as "[[philosophical pessimism]]". He remained an adherent of Schopenhauer for the rest of his life.<ref>See e.g. {{harvnb|Magee|2000|pp=276–78}}</ref>

One of Schopenhauer's doctrines was that music held a supreme role in the arts as a direct expression of the world's essence, namely, blind, impulsive will.{{sfn|Magee|1988|pp=77–78}} This doctrine contradicted Wagner's view, expressed in "Opera and Drama", that the music in opera had to be subservient to the drama. Wagner scholars have argued that Schopenhauer's influence caused Wagner to assign a more commanding role to music in his later operas, including the latter half of the ''Ring'' cycle, which he had yet to compose.<ref>See e.g. {{harvnb|Dahlhaus|1979}}</ref>{{refn|The influence was noted by Nietzsche in his "[[On the Genealogy of Morality]]": "[the] fascinating position of Schopenhauer on art&nbsp;... was apparently the reason Richard Wagner first moved over to Schopenhauer&nbsp;... That shift was so great that it opened up a complete theoretical contrast between his earlier and his later aesthetic beliefs."{{sfn|Nietzsche|2009|loc=III, p. 5.}}|group=n}} Aspects of Schopenhauerian doctrine found their way into Wagner's subsequent libretti.{{refn|For example, the self-renouncing cobbler-poet [[Hans Sachs]] in ''[[Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg]]'' is a "Schopenhauerian" creation; Schopenhauer asserted that goodness and salvation result from renunciation of the world, and turning against and denying one's own will.<ref>See {{harvnb|Magee|2000|pp=251–53}}</ref>|group=n}}

A second source of inspiration was Wagner's infatuation with the poet-writer [[Mathilde Wesendonck]], the wife of the silk merchant {{ill|Otto Wesendonck|de|Otto Wesendonck (Kaufmann)}}. Wagner met the Wesendoncks, who were both great admirers of his music, in Zürich in 1852. From May 1853 onwards Wesendonck made several loans to Wagner to finance his household expenses in Zürich,{{sfn|Newman|1976|loc=II, pp. 415–18, 516–18}} and in 1857 placed a cottage on his estate at Wagner's disposal,{{sfn|Gutman|1990|pp=168–69}}{{sfn|Newman|1976|loc=II, pp. 508–09}} which became known as the ''Asyl'' ("asylum" or "place of rest"). During this period, Wagner's growing passion for his patron's wife inspired him to put aside work on the ''Ring'' cycle (which was not resumed for the next twelve years) and begin work on ''Tristan''.{{sfn|Millington|2001b}} While planning the opera, Wagner composed the ''[[Wesendonck Lieder]]'', five songs for voice and piano, setting poems by Mathilde. Two of these settings are explicitly subtitled by Wagner as "studies for ''Tristan und Isolde''".{{sfn|Millington|2001a|p=318}}

Among the conducting engagements that Wagner undertook for revenue during this period, he gave several concerts in 1855 with the [[Royal Philharmonic Society|Philharmonic Society of London]], including one before [[Queen Victoria]].{{sfn|Newman|1976|loc=II, pp. 473–76}} The Queen enjoyed his ''Tannhäuser'' overture and spoke with Wagner after the concert, writing in her diary that Wagner was "short, very quiet, wears spectacles & has a very finely-developed forehead, a hooked nose & projecting chin."<ref>Cited in {{harvnb|Spencer|2000|p=93}}</ref>