The fourth concert on the 30th April nearly led to a rupture between Wagner and the directors. The programme was as follows:--
Symphony in B flat Lucas. Romanza (“Huguenots”) Meyerbeer. Nonetto for string and wind instruments Spohr. Recitative and Aria Beethoven. Overture (“Ruler of the Spirits”) Weber. Symphony No. 7 Beethoven. Duetto (“cosi fan Tutti”) Mozart. Overture (“l’Alcade de la Velga”) Onslow.
Wagner had a decided objection to long programmes. The London public, he said, “overfeed themselves with music; they cannot healthily digest the lengthy menu provided for them.” This programme was distasteful, and what a scene did it produce! During the aria from “Les Huguenots,” the tenor, Herr Reichardt, after a few bars’ rest, did not retake his part at the proper moment, upon which Wagner turned to him,--of course without stopping the band,--whereupon the singer made gestures to the audience indicating that the error lay with Wagner. At the end of the vocal piece a slight consternation ensued. Wagner was well aware of the unfriendliness of a section of the critics, and in all probability capital would be made out of this. At the end of the first part of the concert I went to him in the artists’ room. His high-pitched excitement and uncontrolled utterances, it was easy to foresee, boded no good. And so when we reached home after the concert there ensued a positive storm of passion. Wagner at his best was impulsive and vehement; suffering from a miserable insinuation as to his incapacity, he grew furious. On one point he was emphatic,--he would return to Switzerland the next day. All entreaties and protestations were unavailing. Sainton, Lüders, and myself actually hung upon him, so ungovernable was his anger. He knew how I had suffered in the press for championing his cause. “Chef-de-claque,” “madman,” and “tutto quanti” were the elegant epithets bestowed upon me in print; and if Wagner left now, the enemy would have some show of truth in charging him with admitted incompetence: however, after two or three hours’ talking he engaged to stay and see whether he could not win success with the “Tannhäuser” overture, which was to be performed at the next concert.
A distorted report of this event appearing in certain German musical papers, he wrote an explanatory letter to Dresden, in which he stated, “I need not tell you that it was only the entreaties of Ferdinand Praeger and those friends who accompanied me home, that dissuaded me from my somewhat impulsive determination.”