Richard Wagner and His Poetical Work, from "Rienzi" to "Parsifal" — Text and Context

A Memoirist's Approach to the Libretto

Gautier frames her first pages as 'a fragment of reminiscences,' a gesture that distinguishes her book from contemporary biographies by Glasenapp or Kastner. She does not pretend to offer a final estimate—the introduction itself admits that 'it will take years, perhaps decades, before a final and just estimate can be formed.' Instead, she draws the reader into specific moments: the serenade scene in Die Meistersinger, where the orchestra 'wickedly reminds' Beckmesser of his bruises, or the moment when Eva, 'beautifully adorned for the festival, but with a sad, pale face,' enters Sachs's studio on a pretext of a shoe that 'hurts her.' Gautier's prose lingers on physical details—the shoeless foot, the sheet of paper left on the table, the trumpet that disperses the crowd 'as if by magic.' These are not plot summaries but interpretive descriptions, shaped by a writer who witnessed Wagner's world firsthand.

The Text as a Work of Poetry

Gautier consistently treats Wagner's libretti as 'poetical work,' a phrase that recurs in her title and shapes her analysis. She notes how Sachs instructs Walter to 'make me a poem upon the dream,' and how the verses are written on a sheet of paper that Beckmesser later misreads as a rival's entry. The competition itself unfolds on a meadow 'on the border of the river in which Nuremberg reflects its pointed roofs, towers, and ramparts.' Gautier's eye for setting—the flag-bedecked boats, the rustic waltz on the grass, the city trumpets—mirrors Wagner's own stage directions, but she also attends to the verbal texture: the way Sachs's troubled question ('Well, does the shoe fit at last?') carries emotional weight, or how Eva's weeping into Sachs's arms resolves the scene without musical commentary. For Gautier, the libretto is not a skeleton for music but a literary object with its own rhythms and revelations.

Tensions Between Biography and Analysis

The book's structure creates a persistent tension between the biographical frame and the analytical core. The American introduction sketches Wagner's career in broad strokes—his theatre orchestras in Magdeburg, Königsberg, Riga; his flight to Paris in 1839; the disastrous 1861 Tannhäuser—but Gautier herself rarely pauses to connect these events to the texts she discusses. When she describes the Meistersinger riot, she does not mention Wagner's own political exile or his fraught relationship with Parisian audiences. Instead, she lets the scene stand on its own, as if the libretto's internal drama were sufficient. This restraint is both a strength and a limitation: readers seeking biographical keys to the operas will find few, while those interested in Gautier's literary judgment will find a sharp, scene-focused intelligence at work. The result is a hybrid work—part memoir, part criticism—that resists easy categorization.

Gautier's book is best read as a contemporary's response to Wagner's texts, not as a comprehensive guide. The translator's note that the pages 'have gone through several European editions' suggests their early reception, but the value now lies in Gautier's eye for telling detail—the moon behind the gable, the shoe that pinches, the sheet of paper left on the table. Readers interested in Wagner's libretti as literary works will find a thoughtful, if partial, companion.

Reading Gautier’s account of the Mastersingers’ street chaos brought back an old evening, lying on a rug, the music faint through another room. It felt like slipping into a known world, yet strange. Stories from the operas — Inside the Classic once gave me that same hush, folding familiar plots into something newly intimate, less a retelling than a quiet, private listening.