it was abandoned as "impossible." The next year saw the turning-point in Wagner's career. Ludwig of Bavaria invited him to come to Munich, the political ban was removed, and "Tristan und Isolde" had its first performance, to the joy of the composer and a host of his friends, on June 10, 1865, at the Royal Court Theatre of the Bavarian capital, under the direction of Hans von Bölow. The rôles of Tristan and Isolde were in the hands of Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld and his wife. Albert Niemann was prevented by the failure of the Strasburg plan from being the first representative of the hero, but to him fell the honor of setting the model for all American representations. The first performance in the United States took place in the Metropolitan Opera-house on December 1, 1886, under the direction of Anton Seidl. The cast was as follows: Isolde, Lilli Lehmann; Brangäne, Marianne Brandt; Tristan, Albert Niemann; Kurwenal, Adolf Robinson; König Marke, Emil Fischer; Melot, Rudolph von Milde; ein Hirt, Otto Kemlitz; ein Steuermann, Emil Saenger; ein Seemann, Max Alvary. Two circumstances bid us look a little carefully into the instrumental prelude with which Wagner has prefaced his drama. One is that it has taken so prominent a place in the concert-room that even those whose love for pure music has made them indifferent to the mixed art-form called the opera ought to desire acquaintance with its poetical and musical contents; the other is that the prelude, like the overture to "Fidelio" known as "Leonore No. 3," presents the spiritual progress of the tragedy from beginning to end to the quickened heart and mind of the listener freed from all material integument. To do this it makes use of the themes which are most significant in the development of the psychology of the drama, which is far and away its most important element, for the pictures are not many, and the visible action is slight. Listening to the music without thought of the drama, and, therefore, with no purpose of associating it with the specific conceptions which later have exposition in the text, we can hear in this prelude an expression of an ardent longing, a consuming hunger, which doth make The meat it feeds on, a desire that cannot be quenched, yet will not despair. Then, at the lowest ebb of the sweet agony, an ecstasy of hope, a wildly blissful contemplation of a promise of reward. If I depart here for a brief space from my announced purpose not to analyze the music in the manner of the Wagnerian commentators, it will be only because the themes of the prelude are the most pregnant of those employed in the working out of the drama, because their specific significance in the purpose of the composer is plainly set forth by their association with scenes and words, and because they are most admirably fitted by structure and emotional content to express the things attributed to them. The most important of the themes is that with which the prelude begins:-- [Musical excerpt]