A very large deficit caused Wagner to try the experiment of grand concerts in London in 1877; but he made only $3,000 out of that venture. Wagner’s last work was now well under way. Early in life, as already noted, he had read Wolfram von Eschenbach’s “Parzival,” and in 1857, at Zurich, he began his own “Parsifal,” with a sketch of the Good Friday music. The completed libretto was published Dec. 25, 1877. The sketch of the first act was finished early in 1878, and the whole was completed April 25, 1879. The instrumentation was finished at Palermo, Jan. 13, 1882.[7] The first performance took place at Bayreuth on July 25, 1882, and the work was given altogether sixteen times that summer. The performers who alternated in the principal parts were as follows: Parsifal, Winklemann, Gudehus, and Jäger; Kundry, Materna, Brandt, and Malten; Gurnemanz, Scaria and Siehr; Amfortas, Reichmann and Fuchs; Klingsor, Hill, Degele, and Plank. Conductors, Hermann Levi and Franz Fischer. “Parsifal” was assailed fiercely by the now numerous opponents of Wagner’s musical system, but it has continued to draw great crowds to Bayreuth years after its creator’s death. The power of this and the other dramas was due not only to their inherent truth and beauty, but also to the manner of their production. As an American newspaper correspondent (W. S. B. Mathews) wrote:— “‘Parsifal,’ as here given, is a revelation. The performance is of such a consistently elevated character, and so evenly carried out in every department, as to make one realize that in his whole life he has never before witnessed an artistic presentation of opera.” [Illustration: LUIGI TREVISAN. Richard Wagner’s Venetian Gondolier. Drawn by Giacomo Favretto. ] In the autumn of 1882, Wagner went to live in Venice. His health had been failing. He recuperated sufficiently to conduct a performance of his youthful Symphony in C; but on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 1883, as M. Jullien relates, “as he was about to step into his gondola, some discussion arose, and he gave way to a fit of anger; suddenly he started up from his seat, choking, and cried, ‘I feel very badly!’ He fell fainting. They carried him to his bed, and when his physician, Dr. Keppler, arrived, in all haste, he found him dead in the arms of his wife, who believed him sleeping.” On Feb. 18 he was buried in the garden of his villa, “Wahnfried” (“Fulfillment of Ideal”), at Bayreuth. He left one son, Siegfried, the fruit of his second union. This outline of a remarkable career, in which artistic success was pursued by pecuniary embarrassment, in which envy, malice, and vituperation barked at the heels of progressive intellect, will best be closed by the quotation of a few lines concerning the man’s personality. M. Jullien, who writes with kindness and yet with candor, says:—