From September, 1839 through April, 1842 Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was living in Paris having escaped creditors and given up his position of musical director of the opera theatre in Riga. The Paris years were difficult ones for Wagner and his wife Minna. The composer was forced to eke out a living by making orchestral arrangements of other men’s works and by writing critiques of musical and cultural life in the French capitol. He tried his best to make connections with the guiding lights of opera in the city at the time, particularly Eugene Scribe the librettist, and Giacomo Meyerbeer, the reigning composer at the Paris Opéra. Unfortunately these connections did not come to much, for which he later viciously blamed the Jewish Meyerbeer. Wagner always had a short memory: it was Meyerbeer who, through his reputation and influence, arranged an invitation to produce Wagner’s opera Rienzi at the Dresden Hofoper. By the time of its production in 1842, Wagner (again, just ahead of angry creditors) began his move back to Germany.
Rienzi and Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) were written at essentially the same time and were both eventually produced at Dresden: Rienzi in October, 1842 and Dutchman in January, 1843. Rienzi was a resounding success, Dutchman less so. (Rienzi, clocking in at six hours, was enthusiastically received. Even the composer, however, suggested cuts. The creator of the title role, tenor Joseph Tichatschek, would have none of it, calling every moment of the opera ‘heavenly’. Practicality finally reigned by dividing performances of the opera to take place over two evenings!) This auspicious introduction to Dresden was enough for Wagner to be given a royal appointment to the King of Saxony, that of Kapellmeister or music director. Well, this is what he was originally offered. The reality of the situation didn’t show itself until he actually took the job and realized that his predecessor, Karl Reissiger, was keeping the title and Wagner was to be second-in-charge but shouldering all of the responsibility.
Wagner’s chores in Dresden including plenty of conducting (opera and orchestral work) and composing (occasional pieces for court observances, festivals and special events). But the relative financial stability of the post allowed him enough leisure time to begin work on Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. Tannhäuser was begun in the summer of 1842, even before the successful premiere of Rienzi. Composition took two years and it was completed in 1845. The premiere took place on October 19, 1845 at the Hofoper. Reaction to the work was mixed due to the inability of the lead tenor (Tichatschek again) to grasp Wagner’s intentions. The vocal demands of the role were certainly extraordinary for the time. Despite all of this, Tannhäuser was part of the repertory in more than a score of German opera houses within a decade of its premiere.
[Wagner’s term working for the Dresden Hofoper ended suddenly when he took up with the 1848 revolutionaries. While preparing a production in Weimar under the auspices of his good friend and mentor Franz Liszt, he found that a warrant for his arrest had been issued and he had to leave the country quickly.]
Nothing prepared Wagner for the nasty reception of a revision of Tannhäuser for the Paris Opéra in March, 1861. The Emperor Napoleon III was encouraged by Princess Pauline de Metternich, whose husband was both a son of Austrian Chancellor Metternich as well as an Austrian diplomat himself, to invite Wagner to produce Tannhäuser in Paris. The Prince and his wife were inordinately influential in the court of the French Emperor and were quite unpopular because of this influence. According to esteemed Wagner historian Barry Millington in his article on Tannhäuser in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, the famous instance of booing and catcalling during the three ill-fated performances that Paris eventually saw was more a demonstration against the Princess than their upset that the Venusberg ballet was placed in Act One rather than the traditional placement in Act Two. It has been usually accepted that the members of the Jockey Club, an aristocratic claque who regularly attended the Opéra, were annoyed that upon coming late to the performance they missed seeing the sexy bacchanal which surely included some of their ‘protégées’ and mistresses!
Whatever the core reasons for the debacle, it caused Wagner no end of grief, as Paris had been the scene of such discontent twenty years before. By the end of the summer he was back in Germany after eleven years in exile, and deep into the composition of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.