But vast as the imaginative growth had been from _Rienzi_ to _Lohengrin_, it seems almost like a mere marking time in comparison with the subsequent development. Most instructive in this respect are the alterations Wagner made in his earlier works in later life. The _Flying Dutchman_ ends with the destruction of the Dutchman's ship as Senta leaps into the sea. The stage directions in the first edition run thus: "In the glow of the setting sun the glorified forms of the Dutchman and Senta are seen rising above the wreck, clasped in each other's arms, soaring heavenward"; and the final page of the opera in its original form consisted of the "Redemption" motive followed by the motive of the Dutchman, the opera ending with the latter. When Wagner revised the work some years later, he was conscious of the abruptness and inconclusiveness of this ending. His pictorial imagination saw the transfigured forms of Senta and the Dutchman more vividly, and the more luminous vision found expression in the great stroke of genius with which the opera as we now have it ends. The thundering theme of the Dutchman no longer has the last word; the fortissimo swell of the full orchestra suddenly breaks, and in a slower _tempo_ there steals out in the soft, pure tones of the wood-wind and harps the theme of "Redemption" in the form it first assumes in Senta's ballad, but with an unexpected heavenward ascent in the violins at the finish--
The effect is precisely as if the clouds had parted, and the figures of the Dutchman and Senta were seen soaring aloft in their purified and transfigured form.[403]
As the first version of the _Faust_ Overture (1840) has not been published, it is impossible to compare it with the version we now have, which was made in 1855; but we may be certain that the comparison would prove as interesting as that between the earlier and the later versions of the _Flying Dutchman_ finale. But the new Venusberg music that he wrote for the Paris production of _Tannhäuser_ (1861) shows as emphatically as the altered _Flying Dutchman_ ending how immeasurably greater than all his development from _Die Feen_ to _Lohengrin_ was the development from _Lohengrin_ to _Tristan_--for it was in the _Tristan_ period that he made this wonderful addition to _Tannhäuser_, the effect of which is to make the remainder of the score seem almost cold in comparison, a pale moon against a fiery sun. Had Wagner died after _Lohengrin_ he would still have been the greatest operatic composer of his time. But the work of the later years is so stupendous in every respect, imaginative, inventive, and technical, that even _Lohengrin_ seems hardly to be the product of the same mind.