Zanetta ou Jouer avec le feu

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. In his luggage he carried his comic opera Das Liebesverbot oder: Die Novize von Palermo and the as yet unfinished score of his tragic opera  Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen. He hoped to stage them at one of the Parisian opera houses or – even better  – to be commissioned to compose a new opera. 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. None of this was done voluntarily, but out of sheer financial necessity, and Wagner evidently suffered from having to carry out this ‘hired work’, as he later dismissively called it.

Wagner arranged the operas La Favorite by Gaetano Donizetti, Le Guitarrero and La Reine de Chypre by Fromenthal Halévy, as well as Zanetta ou Jouer avec le feu by Daniel François Esprit Auber, and the original two-hand version of Grande fantaisie sur la Romanesca, op. 111, by Henri Herz for piano four hands. All these arrangements, insofar as they have been preserved, are included in a critical edition within the Complete Works of Wagner: Richard Wagner, Sämtliche Werke, Vol. 20, II A-C. 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.

However much Wagner may have regarded this ‘hired work’ as humiliating and shameful – and his autobiographical writings leave no doubt of this – it is equally certain that the study of the scores of the works to be arranged, which was necessary for his role as an arranger, was nothing less than a learning phase on the path to composing in his own right. It is therefore no coincidence that during the years of his first stay in Paris, 1839–1842, Wagner took a significant step closer to developing his own style.

Daniel François Esprit Auber’s opéra comique Zanetta ou Jouer avec le feu premiered on 18 May 1840 at the Opéra-comique in Paris. The arrangements WWV 62F presented here were composed in July 1842 in Teplitz and Dresden. During his time in Paris, Wagner had received an advance for them, which he only cashed in after his return to Germany. The arrangements were published in 1843 by Eugène Troupenas & Cie., Paris.

- Egon Voss