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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2015
Fromental Halévy’s five-act grand opera La Reine de Chypre premiered in Paris in 1841. Many critics viewed the work as a great success and seen as a true rival to La Juive (1835). Wagner, who was in Paris at the time, even went so far as to claim the composition ‘a new step forward’ in the world of opera, evidenced in the many review articles and publications he wrote about the work. This article attempts to uncover what Wagner admired about Halévy’s composition, especially within the context of the German composer’s ‘artistic exile’ in France (1839–1842) and the completion of a new dramatic conception of German romantic opera in Der Fliegende Holländer (1843). The connections between the two works are explored, revealing an affinity for the exile and the desire for redemption.
1 See the composer’s own account of this period in Mein Leben, I, ed. Martin Gregor-Dellin (Munich: List, 1969): 180–220; see also commentary by Scholz, Dieter David, Richard Wagner: Eine europäische Biographie (Berlin: Parthas, 2006): 87–106Google Scholar; Ellis, William Ashton, Life of Richard Wagner (New York: Da Capo, 1977): I: 269–340Google Scholar and Newman, Ernest, The Life of Richard Wagner, I: 1813–1848 (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1933): 256–324Google Scholar.
2 Wagner saw Paris entirely controlled by money, deceit, national interest and bourgeois tastes, as witnessed by his article ‘Pariser Fatalitäten für Deutsche’ (‘Traps for Unwary Germans in Paris’) for the journal Europa in 1841; see Jacobs, Robert Louis and Skelton, Geoffrey, Wagner Writes from Paris: Stories, Essays, and Articles by the Young Composer (New York: J. Day, 1973): 18–35Google Scholar. Although Meyerbeer introduced Wagner to many individuals of the French music establishment, including Léon Pillet, the director of the Paris Opéra, and Maurice Schlesinger, the influential music publisher, Wagner continued to blame Meyerbeer for his lack of success in the French capital. As is well known, Wagner’s thoughts on what he perceived was a conspiracy against his artistic works, sabotaged by the French music industry, were projected into several essays of the late 1840s and early 1850s, most notably ‘Die Kunst und die Revolution’ (1849), ‘Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft’ (1849) and ‘Das Judentum in der Musik’ (1850).
3 La Favorite was widely popular throughout the nineteenth century. By 1918, the work received over 690 performances at the Paris Opéra alone; see Ashbrook, William, ‘Favorite, La’, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1992): II: 140–143Google Scholar. While La Reine de Chypre did not enjoy the same level of success as La Favorite, the Halévy work did receive by 1876 its 118th performance at the Paris Opéra, over 30 years after the 1841 premiere; see de Lajarte, Théodore Dufaure, Bibliothèque musicale du Théâtre de l’Opéra (Paris: Librairie des bibliophiles, 1878): 169Google Scholar.
4 All of the arrangements listed here can be found in the critical editions by Egon Voss: Wagner, Richard, Sämtliche Werke, XX.2B: Opernbearbeitungen, II: Gaetano Donizetti, ‘La Favorite’ (Mainz: Schott Music, 2009)Google Scholar and Wagner, Richard, Sämtliche Werke, XX.2C: Opernbearbeitungen, III: Fromental Halévy, ‘La Reine de Chypre’ (Mainz: Schott Music, 2007)Google Scholar. In addition, the arrangements are listed in Wagner’s complete catalogue of works as WWV62B and WWV62E, respectively; see Wagner Werk-Verzeichnis (WWV): Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke Richard Wagners und ihrer Quellen (Mainz: Schott Music, 1986), ed. John Deathridge, Martin Geck and Egon Voss.
5 Wagner also arranged suites of various works for cornet à piston (WWV62A); Grand fantaisie sur la Romanesca, Op. 111 by Henri Herz for piano four hands (WWV62C); piano arrangements of Halévy’s three-act opera Le Guitarrero (WWV62D); and a string quartet arrangement of Daniel Auber’s three-act opera Zanetta, ou, Jouer avec le feu (WWV62F), which was completed in Dresden in 1842 but later published in Paris in 1843. For more information on all of the arrangements Wagner completed while in Paris, see Wagner, Richard, Sämtliche Werke, XX.2A: Opernbearbeitungen, I: Bearbeitungen (Mainz: Schott Music, 1999)Google Scholar, ed. Voss, Egon, and Bauer, Hans-Joachim, Richard Wagner: Einführungen in sämtliche Kompositionen (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2004): 128–129Google Scholar.
6 Letter from Wagner to King Ludwig II of Bavaria 18 July 1867, quoted and translated by Jacobs and Skelton, Wagner Writes from Paris, frontispiece.
7 Wagner, Richard, ‘Bericht über eine neue Pariser Oper’, Dresdener Abend-Zeitung, 26 January 1842; trans. William Ashton Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. VII (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1898): 220Google Scholar.
8 Wagner, ‘Bericht über eine neue Pariser Oper’, Dresdener Abend-Zeitung, 26 and 29 January 1842; trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VII, 206–22, and Jacobs and Skelton, Wagner Writes from Paris, 163–77.
9 Wagner, Richard, ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 27 February 1842, 13 March 1842, 24 April 1842 and 1 May 1842; trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1899): 175–200Google Scholar.
10 Wagner, Richard, ‘Ein Pariser Bericht’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 22 February 1842Google Scholar; trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 172.
11 Several other critics reviewed the Halévy work, including Hector Berlioz, who thought very highly of the work, even going so far as to proclaim that the score rivalled that of Halévy’s earlier triumph, La Juive (1835); see Berlioz, Hector, Journal des Débats: Politiques et Littéraires, 30 January 1842Google Scholar, 2. For a reprint of the French reviews published soon after the premiere of the opera, see La Reine de Chypre: Dossier de presse parisenne (1841), ed. Anne-Sophie Métérie (Weinsberg: Musik-Edition Lucie Galland, 2007).
12 Following Der fliegende Holländer in 1843, Wagner’s next two works – Tannhäuser (1845) and Lohengrin (1848) – were also designated as romantische Oper. Although Die Feen (1834) was the first of Wagner’s operas to be labelled as ‘romantic’ (that is to say, a Grosse romantische Oper), it was not performed until 1888, five years after the composer’s death.
13 The term was first coined by Wagner in the 1849 essay ‘Art and Revolution’. For information on how Der fliegende Holländer fits within Wagner’s overall dramatic concept as espoused in his later operatic works, see (to name a few) McClatchie, Stephen, ‘Canonizing the Dutchman: Bayreuth, Wagnerism, and Der fliegende Holländer’, Richard Wagner Der fliegende Holländer, ed. Thomas Grey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 151–165Google Scholar; Gross, Arthur, ‘Back to the Future: Hermeneutic Fantasies in Der fliegende Holländer’, 19 th -Century Music, 19 (1995–96): 191–211Google Scholar and Dahlhaus, Carl, ‘The Flying Dutchman’, in Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas, English trans. Mary Whittall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979): 7–20Google Scholar.
14 The motif of the exile, or, more accurately, the wanderer, is found throughout several German writings of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, collectively known as Bildungsroman. Publications such as Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Berlin: J.F. Unger, 1795–6); Ludwig Tieck’s Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen (Berlin: J.F. Unger, 1798) and Heinrich Heine’s Reisebilder, I (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1826) and II (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1827) were extremely popular ever since their initial publications and encouraged many a young man to step wilfully out their door and into the wilderness, exiling themselves from hearth and home in order to achieve ‘a new understanding of the self as the object of knowledge and of ameliorative action’ (Cusack, Andrew, The Wanderer in Nineteenth-Century German Literature: Intellectual History and Cultural Criticism (Rochester: Camden House, 2008), 4Google Scholar). Wagner was certainly familiar with Heine’s Reisebildern, one of the source texts for Der fliegende Holländer, and Goethe’s fantasy writings of travel and history.
15 Published at the beginning of the libretto is a ‘Notice historique sur Catarina Cornaro, Reine de Chypre’, which is taken from Count Pierre-Antoine Daru, Histoire de la République de Venise (Paris: F. Didot, 1819); see de Saint-Georges, Jules-Henri Vernoy, La Reine de Chypre, opéra en cinq actes, paroles de M. de Saint-Georges (Paris: Maurice Schlesinger, 1841): 5–6Google Scholar.
16 Eugène Scribe (1791–1861) was the author of the libretto for La Juive, thus it contains the dramatic ingredients of the Frenchman’s oft-imitated ‘well-made play’ (pièce bien faite) structure with its formulated system of plot twists, visual display, opposing social groups and dramatic climaxes; see Pendle, Karin, Eugène Scribe and French Opera of the Nineteenth Century (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1979)Google Scholar.
17 Unless otherwise stated, all music examples are taken from the piano-vocal score edited by Wagner as found in the critical edition by Egon Voss, Richard Wagner, Sämtliche Werke, XX.2C: Opernbearbeitungen, III: Fromental Halévy, ‘La Reine de Chypre’ (Mainz: Schott Music, 2007). Music examples are used by permission of European American Music Distributers Company, sole US and Canadian agent for Schott Music GmbH & Co. KG.
18 Wagner, Richard, ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, 195Google Scholar.
19 The motive is first heard in the orchestra on Mocénigo’s words ‘cet hymen’ [this wedding]. Note that Halévy progresses the motive from a place of harmonic stability (bars 55–56, B–D♯–F♯), increasing the harmonic tension (bars 57–58, B–D♯–F–A) to a more dissonant region (bars 59–62, E♯–G♯–B–D) when Andréa realizes that he must break his word and stop the wedding.
20 Saint-Georges, , La Reine de Chypre, Act I Scene 2; English trans. Bénédict Henry Révoil, La Reine de Chypre, Grand Opéra in Cing Actes, de M. de St.-Georges, Musique d’Halévy (New Orleans: J. Schweitzer, 1857): 6Google Scholar.
21 Wagner viewed this air as containing ‘a tender, naïve buoyancy, and withal a stoutness of heart, that initiate us into the young man’s character’. Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, 194Google Scholar.
22 Curiously, the Act 3 duet remains the only selection from the opera that is commercially recorded; see Jean Noté: Historical Recordings 1902 (Cypres Records, 1996) with Charles Fontaine and Jean Noté; and Opera Encores (CBC Records, 2000) with Benjamin Butterfield and Brett Polegato.
23 Wagner, ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis 198. Later in the same article, Wagner noted the importance of this duet to the entire drama: ‘Enthusiastic chivalry and virile nobleness are painted in this piece, one of the most important in the score; for it is from this point that the tragic interest is given a definite direction … all that emotion has of most profound, all that chivalric courage has of most manly and exalted, are blent here in one single melody, with a matchless art whose simpleness of means but heightens its merit’. Ibid., 198.
24 Wagner would utilize the Bar Form (Stollen, Stollen, Abgesang) to great effect in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868) to establish the medieval setting of the opera and to characterize the actions of Walter; see Barry Millington, ‘Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Die’, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, III: 312–16. Although the work premiered in 1868, Wagner already conceived the opera soon after Der fliegende Holländer in 1845 as ‘a comic appendage to Tannhäuser’ (Ibid., 312).
25 Saint-Georges, La Reine de Chypre, Act 5 Scene 7; trans. Révoil, 36.
26 Saint-Georges, La Reine de Chypre, Act 5 Scene 7; trans. Révoil, 36.
27 Note the similarity of this final tableau to Eugène Delacroix’s famous painting La Liberté guidant le people (1830). Ever since the popularity of Joan of Arc in the historical writings of the time (for example, Jules Michelet, Histoire de France, V (Paris, 1841)) female figures continued to serve as symbols of liberty and national unity in France. In addition, motherhood took on a greater symbolic reference for post-revolutionary France during a time of political rebirth. For a general discussion of the image and perception of women in nineteenth-century France, see McMillan, James F., France and Women, 1789–1914: Gender, Society, and Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 2000)Google Scholar and Wood, Lisa, Modes of Discipline: Women, Conservatism, and the Novel after the French Revolution (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.
28 Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, 200Google Scholar.
29 Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, 193Google Scholar. The revolutionary symbolism in this final scene was certainly not lost on Wagner, who was harbouring not only revolutionary musical concepts at this time but also political ones; see Cohen, Mitchell, ‘To the Dresden Barricades: The Genesis of Wagner’s Political Ideas’, The Cambridge Companion to Wagner, ed. Thomas S. Grey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008): 47–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Often hailed as ‘the head of a new French school’, Halévy was certainly one of the most celebrated French opera composers during the 1840s, second only to Meyerbeer. His detractors, however, frequently commented that his music was ‘too learned’ and composed in too much haste; see Ellis, Katharine, Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 1834–80 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995): 190–194CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 Wagner, Richard, ‘Bericht über eine neue Pariser Oper’, Dresdener Abend-Zeitung, 26 January 1842Google Scholar; trans. by Skelton, Jacobs and, Wagner Writes from Paris, 164Google Scholar.
32 Wagner, , ‘Bericht über eine neue Pariser Oper’, trans. Jacobs and Skelton, Wagner Writes from Paris, 166Google Scholar.
33 Wagner, , ‘Bericht über eine neue Pariser Oper’, trans. Jacobs and Skelton, Wagner Writes from Paris, 166Google Scholar.
34 Wagner, , ‘Bericht über eine neue Pariser Oper’, trans. Jacobs and Skelton, Wagner Writes from Paris, 166, 173–174Google Scholar.
35 Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, 193Google Scholar.
36 Wagner, Richard, ‘Bericht über eine neue Pariser Oper’, Dresdener Abend-Zeitung, 26 January 1842; trans. Jacobs and Skelton, Wagner Writes from Paris, 175Google Scholar.
37 Wagner, , ‘Bericht über eine neue Pariser Oper’, trans. Jacobs and Skelton, Wagner Writes from Paris, 175Google Scholar.
38 Wagner, , ‘Bericht über eine neue Pariser Oper’, trans. Jacobs and Skelton, Wagner Writes from Paris, 175Google Scholar.
39 Wagner, , ‘Bericht über eine neue Pariser Oper’, trans. Jacobs and Skelton, Wagner Writes from Paris, 176Google Scholar.
40 Wagner, , ‘Bericht über eine neue Pariser Oper’, trans. Jacobs and Skelton, Wagner Writes from Paris, 176Google Scholar.
41 Between the Dresden and Paris reviews, Wagner wrote a short review for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik on 5 February 1842; it was published a couple weeks later on 22 February. Similar to the Dresden review, Wagner consistently viewed the Halévy work as ‘striving for simplicity … particularly in the instrumentation’ (trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 172).
42 Wagner, ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 27 February 1842, trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 175.
43 Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 176Google Scholar. In many ways, Wagner is presenting here some self-flattery on his own process for writing ‘perfect operas’.
44 Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 176Google Scholar.
45 Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 177Google Scholar.
46 Wagner is also referring to La Juive (1835), which established Halévy’s career as a first-rate composer of grand opéra.
47 Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 178Google Scholar.
48 Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 183Google Scholar.
49 Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 181Google Scholar.
50 Wagner is referring to Halévy’s simple or declamatory writing for the voice; see Hallman, Diana R., ‘The grand operas of Fromental Halévy’, The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, ed. David Charlton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 240–245Google Scholar.
51 Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 182Google Scholar.
52 Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 184Google Scholar.
53 Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 187Google Scholar.
54 Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 189–190Google Scholar. Although Wagner viewed Mendelssohn’s instrumental music as ‘profoundly German’, he thought this current leader of the German school could not write dramatic music, where one ‘needs passions strong and deep, and further must possess the faculty of painting them vigorously and with breadth of stroke’. Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 189Google Scholar.
55 Wagner most likely heard La Juive for the first time in Königsberg in 1836. Along with Bellini’s Norma and Il Puritani, La Juive was part of the repertoire of the 1836–37 opera season at the Königsberg Theatre; see Ellis, , Life of Richard Wagner, I: 219–220Google Scholar.
56 See Skelton, Jacobs and, Wagner Writes from Paris, 122–123Google Scholar, 163–77.
57 Wagner, Richard, ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 1 May 1842Google Scholar; see Ellis, , Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 200Google Scholar.
58 Although it was first performed in Dresden in 1842, Rienzi was composed between the summer of 1837 and the fall of 1840.
59 Although Wagner would often ‘edit’ his remembrances so as to make the events and acts of the past coincide with his current thoughts and visions, he was remarkably consistent with his self-evaluation of the dramatic works before and after Der fliegende Holländer, see Thomas Grey, ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son: Wagner and Der fliegende Holländer’, in Richard Wagner Der fliegende Holländer, 3–5.
60 Wagner, Richard, Gesammelte Schriften Dichtungen, I (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1887): 3Google Scholar.
61 The libretto was first sketched in French in May of 1840 as a single undivided act, while the German version was completed in May of 1841 as a three-scene, one act ‘Romantische Oper’ to eventually become a three-act opera a month or so later; see Barry Millington, ‘The Sources and Genesis of the Text’, Richard Wagner Der fliegende Holländer, 32. In the original Paris version of the text, the opera takes place off the coast of Scotland (not Norway as in later versions), which is similar to the location found in Heinrich Heine’s 1834 publication of the legend in Aus den Memoiren des Herrn von Schnabelewopski (Hamburg, 1834), the main source for Wagner’s opera. Other alterations include changing the name of the huntsman Georg to Erik and the sailor Donald to Daland. It is interesting to note that no other work by Wagner (except for Tannhäuser, his next opera) went through so many revisions as Der fliegende Holländer; see Wagner, Richard, Sämtliche Werke, IV.1: Der fliegende Holländer, ed. Isolde Vetter (Mainz: Schott Music, 1983): vii–ixGoogle Scholar.
62 Wagner discusses his initial inspiration for the drama in his autobiography, where he recounts a three-week sea voyage from Riga to London on his way to Paris; see Wagner, , Mein Leben, ed. Martin Gregor-Dellin, English trans. Andrew Gray (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983): 160–163Google Scholar. Nothing ever came of the Parisian premiere of The Dutchman. Wagner was eventually forced to sell the scenario to Léon Pillet, the director of the Paris Opéra, in the summer of 1841 to settle debts he accumulated while in Paris; see Grey, ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son’, 3–11.
63 See Grey, , ‘Romantic Opera as dramatic ballad’: Der fliegende Holländer and its Generic Contexts’, Richard Wagner Der fliegende Holländer, 65–91Google Scholar.
64 See Grey, ‘Richard Wagner and the Legacy of French Grand Opera’, Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, 321–343Google Scholar.
65 Wagner, , ‘Halévy et La Reine de Chypre’, trans. Ellis, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, VIII, 182Google Scholar.
66 See Wagner, Richard, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, IV, (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1887): 323Google Scholar, trans. Grey, ‘Romantic Opera as dramatic ballad’, 65.
67 Halévy, of course, is not the only French composer who used characteristic orchestration or a dramatic motive throughout the score in the early nineteenth century (for example, the ‘Ein Feste Burg’ motive in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenonts, 1836), but I believe the simple (that is to say, non-virtuosic) vocal writing at places where long and elaborate arias and duets would traditionally be heard in Italian or French opera at this time (for example, entrance arias and climatic solo or duet numbers) helped Wagner to perceive the merits of Halévy’s ‘dramatic melody’ more clearly.
68 Wagner went to Switzerland in 1849 to escape the Dresden authorities, who issued a warrant for his arrest due to his insurrectionist activity.
69 Wagner, , Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, IV, 266Google Scholar; trans. Grey, Richard Wagner: Der Fliegende Höllander, Appendix B, 182. The symbol of the Wandering Jew (‘der ewige Jude’) is a common one throughout European literature of the nineteenth century and earlier, appearing in Gothic novels (for example, Matthew G. Lewis’s ‘The Monk’ (London, 1796)), epic poems (for example, Edgar Quinet’s Ahasverus (Paris, 1833)), and operas (for example, Halévy, Le Juif errant, 1852; a grand opéra based on Eugène Sue’s 1844 novel of the same name). In Heine’s version of the legend in Aus den Memoiren des Herrn von Schnabelewopski, the Dutchman is referred to as ‘that Wandering Jew of the ocean’; see Grey, Richard Wagner: Der Fliegende Höllander, Appendix A, 167. Wagner was certainly familiar with Heine’s use of the character when writing the opera in Paris, as well as with the romantic archetype in general.
70 Grey, , ‘Text, Action, and Music’, Richard Wagner Der fliegende Holländer, 41Google Scholar. The major difference between the original 1841 score and later versions is the use of the ‘motif of redemption’ in the coda of the overture to foreshadow the ‘transfigured’ climax at the end of Act 3.
71 Wagner, Richard, Sämtliche Werke, IV. 4: Der fliegende Holländer, Romantische Oper in Drei Aufzügen (Fassung 1841–1880), ed. Isolde Vetter (Mainz: Schott Music, 2001)Google Scholar.
72 Millington, , ‘Fliegende Holländer, Der’, 231Google Scholar.
73 Emslie, Barry, Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010): 8–9Google Scholar.
74 Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, IV, 268, trans. Grey, ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son’, 10.
75 Wagner was undoubtedly influenced by Goethe’s symbolic description of such a woman in the second book of Faust (Weimar, 1832), where in Act 5 Faust is taken before the Virgin Mary in heaven so that his soul can be at rest. Here, in Goethe’s prose, women are seen to have virtues (for example, chastity, modesty, grace) that lead men to a higher calling for themselves and thus das ewig Weibliche (‘the eternal feminine’) works to redeem the destructive acts of man; see Schweitzer, Christoph E., ‘Tracking the Eternal-Feminine in Goethe’s Faust. II’, Interpreting Faust Today, ed. Jane K. Brown, Meredith Lee and Thomas Saine (Columbia: Camden House, 1994): 142–157Google Scholar.
