Le Guitarrero

When Richard Wagner arrived in Paris in September 1839, he had grand plans: Paris was to help him achieve his international breakthrough as an opera composer. But these hopes proved all too soon to be illusions. Even the support of Giacomo Meyerbeer, who wielded great influence in Parisian musical life, was not enough. Wagner therefore found himself forced to earn a living by other means.

He wrote articles for newspapers such as the Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, including the story Eine Pilgerfahrt zu Beethoven (A Pilgrimage to Beethoven), which later became famous, and he  produced – something he had probably never even imagined in his wildest dreams – arrangements of works by other composers.

The opera arrangements consisted, as was customary at the time, of piano reductions for two and four hands and those without text, of individual pieces, known as ‘Morceaux détachés’, as well as versions for quartet (string quartet or flute and string trio), for two violins and for cornet à pistons. Some of these, such as the latter, have not survived. Nor is it definitively established how many arrangements Wagner actually produced. Some appeared in print without the arranger’s name being mentioned, and furthermore, a certain Paul Wagner was also working in Paris at the time alongside Richard Wagner, so that the name Wagner on the title page alone is not sufficient to attribute an arrangement to Richard Wagner. However, the arrangements presented here – the musical text based on the complete edition – were certainly produced by Richard Wagner, as relevant documents attest.

Fromenthal Halévy’s opéra comique Le Guitarrero premiered on 21 January 1841 at the Opéra-comique in Paris. The arrangement WWV 62D presented here were created between February and April 1841 and, according to an advertisement, were published on 2 May 1841 by Maurice Schlesinger in Paris.