Bayreuth

Last week, instead of firing rockets, sizzling pinwheels, Germans went to recitals, read appreciations, climbed a long hill outside Bayreuth, Bavaria, where dwells old

Cosima Wagner, widow of Wilhelm Richard Wagner, who first triumphed in Gemany just 50 years ago. The old woman sees onetime King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, onetime Field Marshal Ludendorff, but few others. Germany did not always pay homage to her husband. France had detested him also. He once rendered Tannhaeuser at the Grand Opera in Paris. He had rehearsed 164 times. Mesdames, seigneurs, laced perfumed lords chitchatted, watched the composer's rotund drab figure squirm in his seat. Wagner's back itched. Princes? Metternich nodded, smiled, as from the orchestra swelled forth great chords, low symphony. Wagner sat tense--slumped down aghast, ashamed at whistles, catcalls, boos, hisses. Princess Metternich sobbed. Wagner went to Vienna, since Germany had exiled him. Again, Prince Metternich, please. . . Tristan und Isolde was accepted, rehearsed 57 times, abandoned--the tenor was incompetent. Vexed, Wagner produced Der Ring des Nibelungen. King Ludwig of Bavaria gazed on that pageant with vacuous wondering eye. He was no fool. Even Frederick the Great had bent the knee to Voltaire. Ludwig would have Wagner's exile canceled, would give him a house. Soon the rotund, drab little man grubbed with filthy hands in his own garden at Wahnfried, Bayreuth, Bavaria. He was building a tomb in that garden, near where Liszt slept. Perhaps his German premiere would fail like his others. Then. . . . . But when he ambled vaguely down the aisle of his own theatre on the night of August 13, 1876, he felt he would not fail. His wife, Cosima, Liszt's daughter, talked excitedly, pointed to majestic Hans Richter. He was to direct. Wagner himself was calm, sat gazing stodgily at paunched barons, at fierce mustachioed warlords, at old Emperor William I who wiggled. Emperor William's back itched. This time barons ceased their chit-chat as from the orchestra swelled forth the great chords, low symphony of Das Rhemgold.Wagner tensed--wept in ecstasy as nothing could check storms of frenzied applause. . . . One midnight, seven years later, King Ludwig rode on a black horse alone to Wahnfried, bowed in a garden over the tomb of one of the world's greatest dramatic composers.