Next to the evil Bertram is portrayed, in his coronation robes, John of Leyden, the chief character in "Le Prophete," which had its first representation in 1849. "John, an innkeeper of Leyden, loves Bertha, a village maiden, who dwells near Dordrecht. Unfortunately, her liege lord, the Count of Oberthal, has designs upon the girl himself, and refuses his consent to the marriage. Bertha escapes from his clutches and flies to the protection of her lover, but Oberthal secures the person of Fides, John's old mother, and, by threats of putting her to death, compels him to give up Bertha. Wild with rage against the vice and lawlessness of the nobles, John joins the ranks of the Anabaptists, a revolutionary sect pledged to the destruction of the powers that be. Their leaders recognise him as a prophet promised by Heaven, and he is installed as their chief. The Anabaptists lay siege to Munster, which falls into their hands, and in the cathedral John is solemnly proclaimed the Son of God. During the ceremony he is recognised by Fides, who, believing him to have been slain by the false prophet, has followed the army to Munster in hopes of revenge. She rushes forward to claim her son, but John pretends not to know her. To admit an earthly relationship would be to prejudice his position with the populace, and he compels her to confess that she is mistaken. The coronation ends with John's triumph, while the hapless Fides is carried off to be immured in a dungeon. John visits her in her cell, and obtains her pardon by promising to renounce his deceitful splendour, and to fly with her. Later he discovers that a plot against himself has been hatched by some of the Anabaptist leaders, and he destroys himself and them by blowing up the palace of Munster."

In front of John of Leyden are the leading personages in "Les Huguenots." Raoul is kneeling to Valentine, while the wounded Marcel stands by, sword in hand. Eugene Scribe was the author of the words of this opera, which dates from 1836, and is thus summarised: "Marguerite de Valois, the beautiful Queen of Navarre, who is anxious to reconcile the bitterly hostile parties of Catholics and Huguenots, persuades the Comte de Saint Bris, a prominent Catholic, to allow his daughter Valentine to marry Raoul de Nangis, a young Huguenot noble. Valentine is already betrothed to the gallant and amorous Comte de Nevers, but she pays him a nocturnal visit in his own palace, and induces him to release her from her engagement. During her interview with Nevers, she is perceived by Raoul, and recognised as a lady whom he lately rescued from insult and has loved passionately ever since. In his eyes there is only one possible construction to be put upon her presence in Nevers's palace, and he hastens to dismiss her from his mind. Immediately upon his decision comes a message from the queen, bidding him hasten to her palace in Touraine upon important affairs of state. When he arrives she unfolds her plan, and he, knowing Valentine only by sight, not by name, gladly consents. When, in the presence of the assembled nobles, he recognises in his destined bride the presumed mistress of Nevers, he casts her from him, and vows to prefer death to such intolerable disgrace. The scene of the next act is in the Pre aux Clercs, in the outskirts of Paris. Valentine, who is to be married that night to Nevers, obtains leave to pass some hours in prayer in a chapel. While she is there she overhears the details of a plot devised by Saint Bris for the assassination of Raoul, in order to avenge the affront put upon himself and his daughter. Valentine contrives to warn Marcel, Raoul's old servant, of this, and he assembles his Huguenot comrades hard by, who rush in at the first cliquetis of steel and join the general melee. The fight is interrupted by the entrance of the queen. When she finds out who are the principal combatants, she reproves them sharply, and en passant tells Raoul the real story of Valentine's visit to Nevers. The act ends with the marriage festivities, while Raoul is torn by an agony of love and remorse. In the next act Raoul contrives to gain admittance to Nevers's house, and there has an interview with Valentine. They are interrupted by the entrance of Saint Bris and his followers, whereupon Valentine conceals Raoul behind the arras. From his place of concealment he hears Saint Bris unfold the plan of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, which is to be carried out that night. The conspirators swear a solemn oath to exterminate the Huguenots, and their daggers are consecrated by attendant priests. Nevers alone refuses to take part in the butchery. When they all have left, Raoul comes out of his hiding-place, and, in spite of the prayers and protestations of Valentine, leaps from the window at the sound of the fatal tocsin, and hastens to join his friends. In the last act, Raoul first warns Henry of Navarre and the Huguenot nobles, assembled at the Hotel de Sens, of the massacre, and then joins the melee in the streets. Valentine has followed him, and, after vainly endeavouring to make him don the white scarf, which is worn that night by all Catholics, she throws in her lot with him, and dies in his arms, after they have been solemnly joined in wedlock by the wounded and dying Marcel."



WAGNER.

"Had it not been for Meyerbeer, my wife and I would have starved in Paris," Wagner once told a friend, in speaking of his dark days, and he always esteemed the composer as a man, though his honesty in art matters forced him to condemn Meyerbeer's music.

Wagner wandered over Europe for many years. Born in Leipsic and dying in Venice, he lived in many cities during the years between. His youth was spent at Leipsic and Dresden; then he was choir-master at Wurzburg; next musical director at the Magdeburg theatre, conductor at Koenigsberg and at Riga. Proceeding thence by way of London to Paris, in 1839, he remained in the French capital until the spring of 1842, thence going to Dresden, where he served as court conductor for seven years. Forced to fly from Dresden because of his part in the uprising of 1849, he at first went to Liszt at Weimar, and then to Zurich by way of Paris. At Zurich he stayed, with some intermission, until 1861, when he received permission to return to Germany. The misfortunes he met there decided him, after three years, to return to Switzerland, and he was on his way thither when Ludwig II. ascended the throne of Bavaria, and invited him to go to Munich and work. The end of 1865 found Wagner at the lovely Villa Triebschen, on Lake Lucerne, where he composed the "Meistersinger," and worked on the "Nibelungen." In 1872, Wagner settled in Bayreuth, where, soon after, the house which he called "Wahnfried" was built for him.

At last the great composer's wanderings were coming to an end, but, as we have said, he died in Venice, and not at his own home. He was, however, buried there, in the garden of the villa.

It is at "Wahnfried" that the artist has drawn Wagner discussing some musical question with Liszt, Frau Wagner seated near by.



Wagner's first wife was a beautiful and talented actress and singer, by name Wilhelmina Planer, whom he married at Riga in 1834. She was a faithful helpmate for years, sacrificing to him her own career, but did not comprehend his genius, and as years went by they drifted apart. The composer's professional intercourse with Hans von Buelow led to an intimacy with the latter's wife, Cosima von Buelow, who was an illegitimate daughter of Liszt by the Countess d'Agoult. In 1861 Richard and Wilhelmina Wagner separated, and in 1866 she died. Four years later, Cosima, then divorced from Von Buelow, was married to Wagner, whom she both worshipped and well understood. Their union was a very happy one, blest with one son named Siegfried, and Madame Wagner long survived her illustrious husband, and laboured indefatigably to carry on his work and increase his fame.

Wagner owed much to Cosima, born Liszt, and still more to her father, who was a never-failing friend. In a work published in 1851, Wagner says: "I was thoroughly disheartened from undertaking any artistic scheme. Only recently I had proofs of the impossibility of making my art intelligible to the public, and all this deterred me from beginning new dramatic works. Indeed, I thought that everything was at an end with artistic creativeness. From this state of mental dejection I was raised by a friend. By most evident and undeniable proofs, he made me feel that I was not deserted, but, on the contrary, understood deeply by those even who were otherwise most distant from me; in this way he gave me back my full artistic confidence.

"This wonderful friend, Franz Liszt has been to me. I must enter a little more deeply into the character of this friendship, which to many has seemed paradoxical; indeed, I have been compelled to appear repellent and hostile on so many sides, that I almost feel the want of disclosing all that relates to this sympathetic intercourse.

"I met Liszt for the first time in Paris, and at a period when I had renounced the hope, nay, even the wish, of a Parisian reputation; and, indeed, was in a state of internal revolt against the artistic life I found there. At our meeting Liszt appeared the most perfect contrast to my own being and situation. In the Parisian society, to which it had been my desire to fly from my narrow circumstances, Liszt had grown up from his earliest age, so as to be the object of general love and admiration, at a time when I was repulsed by general coldness and want of sympathy. In consequence, I looked upon him with suspicion. I had no opportunity of disclosing my being and work to him, and therefore the reception I met with on his part was altogether of a superficial kind, as indeed was quite natural in a man to whom every day the most divergent impressions claimed access. But I was not in a mood to look with unprejudiced eyes for the natural cause of his behaviour, which, friendly and obliging in itself, could not but hurt me in that state of my mind. I never repeated my first call on Liszt, and, without knowing or even wishing to know him, I was prone to look upon him as strange and adverse to my nature.

"My repeated expression of this feeling was afterward reported to Liszt, just at the time when the performance of my 'Rienzi,' at Dresden, attracted general attention. He was surprised to find himself misunderstood with such violence by a man whom he had scarcely known, and whose acquaintance now seemed not without value to him. I am still touched at recollecting the repeated and eager attempts he made to change my opinion of him, even before he knew any of my works. He acted not from any artistic sympathy, but led by the purely human wish of discontinuing a casual disharmony between himself and a fellow creature; perhaps he also felt an infinitely tender misgiving of having hurt me unconsciously. He who knows the terrible selfishness and insensibility in our social life, and especially in the relations of modern artists to each other, cannot but be struck with wonder, nay, delight, by the treatment I experienced from this extraordinary man.

"Liszt soon afterward witnessed a performance of 'Rienzi,' at Dresden, on which he had almost to insist, and after that I heard from all the different corners of the world, where he had been on his artistic excursions, how he had everywhere expressed his delight with my music, and indeed had—I would rather believe unintentionally—canvassed people's opinions in my favour.

"This happened at a time when it became more and more evident that my dramatic works would have no outward success. But just when the case seemed desperate, Liszt succeeded by his own energy in opening a hopeful refuge to my art. He ceased his wanderings, settled down in the small and modest Weimar, and took up the conductor's baton, after having been at home so long in the splendour of the greatest cities of Europe. At Weimar I saw him for the last time, when I rested a few days in Thuringia, not yet certain whether my threatening prosecution would compel me to continue my flight from Germany. The very day when my personal danger became a certainty, I saw Liszt conducting a rehearsal of my 'Tannhaeuser,' and was astonished at recognising my second self in his achievements. What I had felt in inventing the music, he felt in performing it; what I wanted to express in writing it down, he proclaimed in making it sound. Strange to say, through the love of this rarest friend, I gained, at the moment of becoming homeless, a real home for my art, which I had longed and sought for always in the wrong place.

"At the end of my last stay at Paris, when ill, broken down, and despairing, I sat brooding over my fate, my eyes fell on the score of my 'Lohengrin,' totally forgotten by me. Suddenly I felt something like compassion that this music should never sound from off the death-pale paper. I wrote two lines to Liszt; his answer was the news that preparations for the performance were being made on the largest scale the limited means of Weimar would permit. Everything that men and circumstances could do was done in order to make the work understood. . . . Errors and misconceptions impeded the desired success. What was to be done to supply what was wanted, so as to further the true understanding on all sides, and with it the ultimate success of the work? Liszt saw it at once and did it. He gave to the public his own impression of the work in a manner the convincing eloquence and overpowering efficacy of which remain unequalled. Success was his reward, and with this success he now approaches me, saying: 'Behold, we have come so far, now create us a new work that we may go still further.'"



LISZT.

In a letter written to Franz von Schober, the poet and writer, and the intimate friend of Schubert, in 1840, Liszt says: "Most affectionate remembrances to Kriehuber. His two portraits of me have been copied in London. They are without doubt the best."

Joseph Kriehuber, whose fine drawing of Liszt at the piano, playing Beethoven's C sharp minor sonata to some friends, we reproduce, was a Viennese artist of great talent, who made many excellent portraits in pencil, lithography, water-colours, and miniatures. In this work, Kriehuber has introduced a portrait of himself seated at the left of the pianist, with pencil and sketchbook in hand. Behind the piano stands Berlioz, and next him is Czerny, the celebrated music teacher and composer, and the teacher of Liszt.



We will quote here an interesting letter, written from Paris by Liszt to Czerny. At this time Liszt was but seventeen years old.

"MY VERY DEAR MASTER:—When I think of all the immense obligations under which I am placed toward you, and at the same time consider how long I have left you without a sign of remembrance, I am perfectly ashamed and miserable, and in despair of ever being forgiven by you! 'Yes,' I said to myself, with a deep feeling of bitterness, 'I am an ungrateful fellow, I have forgotten my benefactor, I have forgotten that good master to whom I owe both my talent and my success.' . . . At these words a tear starts to my eyes, and I assure you that no repentant tear was ever more sincere! Receive it as an expiation, and pardon me, for I cannot any longer bear the idea that you have any ill-feeling toward me. You will pardon me, my dear master, won't you? Embrace me then . . . good! Now my heart is light.

"You have doubtless heard that I have been playing your admirable works here with the greatest success, and all the glory ought to be given to you. I intended to have played your variations on the 'Pirate' the day after to-morrow, at a very brilliant concert, that I was to have given at the theatre of H. R. H. Madame, who was to have been present as well as the Duchess of Orleans; but man proposes and God disposes. I have suddenly caught the measles, and have been obliged to say farewell to the concert; but it is not given up because it is put off, and I hope, as soon as ever I am well again, to have the pleasure of making these beautiful variations known to a large public.

"Pixis and several other people have spoken much to me of four concertos that you have lately finished, and the reputation of which is already making a stir in Paris. I should be very much pleased, my dear master, if you would commission me to get them sold. This would be quite easy for me to do, and I should also have the pleasure of playing them from first hand, either at the opera or at some big concerts. If my proposition pleases you, send them to me by the Austrian Embassy, marking the price that you would like to have for them. As regards any passages to be altered, if there are any, you need only mark them with a red pencil, according to your plan which I know so well, and I will point them out to the editor with the utmost care. Give me at the same time some news about music and pianists in Vienna; and finally tell me, dear master, which of your compositions you think would make the best effect in society.

"I close by sending you my heartfelt greetings, and begging you once more to pardon the shameful silence I have kept toward you: be assured that it has given me as much pain as yourself!

"Your very affectionate and grateful pupil,

"F. LISZT. "December 23, 1828.

"P. S.—Please answer me as soon as possible, for I am longing for a letter from you; and please embrace your excellent parents from me. I add my address (Rue Montholon, No. 7bis)."

Returning to Kriehuber's picture, we see, on the master's right, Ernst, the famous violinist. Writing to his pupil and friend, Franz Kroll, from Weimar in 1845, Liszt speaks thus of Ernst:

"Ernst has just been spending a week here, during which he has played some hundred rubbers of whist at the 'Erbprinz.' His is a noble, sweet, and delicate nature, and more than once during his stay I have caught myself regretting you for him, and regretting him for you. Last Monday he was good enough to play, in his usual and admirable manner, at the concert for the Orchestral Pension Fund. The pieces he had selected were his new 'Concerto Pathetique' (in F sharp minor) and an extremely piquant and brilliant 'Caprice on Hungarian Melodies.' (This latter piece is dedicated to me.) The public was in a good humour, even really warm, which is usually one of its least faults."

The following epistle, written by Liszt to Ernst, and dated at Weimar, May 30, 1849, is of special interest because of its references to Wagner.

"DEAR FRIEND:—Weimar has not forgotten you, and I hope soon to be able, after the return of the hereditary prince, whom we expect for the day of his fete, by the 24th of May at the very latest, to forward to you the token of the distinguished remembrance in which you are held. It pleases me to think that it will be agreeable to you, and that it will tend to attach you more in the sequel to people worthy to appreciate you.

"I should have desired to tell you sooner of this, but the inevitable delays in present circumstances postpone more than one wish.

"After the deplorable days in Dresden Wagner came here, and only departed again in order to escape from a warrant (lettre de cachet) with which the Saxon government is pursuing him. I hope that at the present moment he will have arrived safe and well in Paris, where his career of dramatic composer cannot fail to be extended, and in grand proportions. He is a man of evident genius, who must of necessity obtrude himself on the general admiration, and hold a high place in contemporary art. I regret that you have not had the opportunity of hearing his 'Tannhaeuser,' which is for me the most lyric of dramas, the most remarkable, the most harmonious, the most complete, the most original and selbstwuerdig (the most worthy of his country), both in foundation and form, that Germany has produced since Weber. Belloni has, I believe, written to you on the subject of Wagner, to ask for information as to the actual state of the English opera in London.

"I make no doubt that if it were possible for Wagner to obtain from the directors a tour of performances in the course of the year for a new work ('Lohengrin,' the subject of which, having reference to the Knights of the Round Table who went to search for the Holy Grail, is of the most poetic interest), he would make a great sensation and large receipts by it. As soon as he tells me the news of his arrival in Paris, allow me to induce him to write to you direct, if his plans do not change in this matter."

As for Berlioz, we find Liszt in 1854 endeavouring to aid him in securing a production of "Benvenuto Cellini." Liszt writes about it to Wilhelm Fischer, chorus director at Dresden, thus:

"DEAR SIR AND FRIEND:—Your letter has given me real pleasure, and I send you my warmest thanks for your artistic resolve to bring 'Cellini' to a hearing in Dresden. Berlioz has taken the score with him to Paris from Weimar, in order to make some alterations and simplifications in it. I wrote to him the day before yesterday, and expect the score with the pianoforte edition, which I will immediately send you to Dresden. Tichatschek is just made for the title role, and will make a splendid effect with it; the same with Mitterwurzer as Fieramosca, and Madame Krebs as Ascanio, a mezzo-soprano part. From your extremely effective choruses, with their thorough musicianly drilling, we may expect a force never yet attained in the great carnival scene (finale of the second act); and I am convinced that, when you have looked more closely into the score, you will be of my opinion that 'Cellini,' with the exception of the Wagner operas,—and they should never be put into comparison with one another,—is the most important, most original musical dramatic work of art which the last twenty years have to show.

"I must also beg for a little delay in sending you the score and the pianoforte edition, as it is necessary entirely to revise the German text and to have it written out again. I think this work will be ready in a few weeks, so you may expect the pianoforte edition at the beginning of February. At Easter Berlioz is coming to Dresden to conduct a couple of concerts in the theatre there. It would be splendid if you should succeed in your endeavours to make Herr von Luttichau fix an early date for the 'Cellini' performance, and if you could get Berlioz to conduct his own work when he is in Dresden. In any case, I shall come to the first performance, and promise myself a very satisfactory and delightful result.

"Meanwhile, dear friend, accept my best thanks once more for this project, and for all that you will do to realise it successfully, and receive the assurance of the high esteem of

Yours very truly, "F. LISZT,

"Weimar, January 4 (1854)."

A few years later, in 1862, Liszt addresses his friend, Dr. Franz Brendel, the writer on music, saying:

"I have just received a few lines from Berlioz. Schuberth, whom I commissioned before I left to send the dedication copy of the 'Faust' score to Berlioz, has again in his incompetent good nature forgotten it, and perhaps even from motives of economy has not had the dedication plate engraved at all! Forgive me, dear friend, if I trouble you once more with this affair, and beg you to put an execution on Schuberth in order to force a copy with the dedication page from him. The dedication shall be just as simple as that of the Dante symphony, containing only the name of the dedicatee, as follows:

"'To Hector Berlioz.'

"After this indispensable matter has been arranged, I beg that you will be so kind as to have a tasteful copy, bound in red or dark green, sent perhaps through Pohl (?) to Berlioz at Baden (where he will be at the beginning of August)."

Liszt was always generous to a fault; he carried charity almost to excess. If it were possible that his art could be forgotten, his name would still be gratefully remembered for his numberless deeds of kindness. We have quoted Wagner's acknowledgment of Liszt's exertions in his cause, and his efforts on behalf of Robert Franz rescued that composer from poverty when old age was coming upon him. Beethoven was always the object of Liszt's worship, and the monument to the master at Bonn was reared chiefly through his labours of love.



THE END.