It is interesting to observe that Wagner in his early days attached no little importance to the ballet in opera. He was disappointed at not being able to carry out his original intention of introducing into _Rienzi_ the story of the rape of Lucrece and the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome in the form of a ballet. He intended the ballet in the Venusberg scene in _Tannhaüser_ to be something more that a mere interlude and to have a serious interest of its own. “I have in my mind,” he wrote, “an epitome of everything the highest dancing and mimic art can offer, a wild yet seductive chaos of movement and grouping.” The argument of this wild scene was set forth at considerable length in the score, but it failed of realisation on the stage on account of the exigencies of the production. When Wagner explained to the _maître de ballet_ of the Paris Opera House that the conventional ballet steps would not be in accord with his music, and asked him to supply something “bold and savagely sublime,” the ballet-master replied: “I see what you want, but it would need a corps of first dancers.” It was in some measure owing to his determination to make the ballet an integral part of the opera that he wrecked his chances of success in Paris. At that period it was customary for the ballet to be performed at an hour sufficiently late in the evening to allow time for the latest patrons of the opera to get to their places. Its inclusion in the first act aroused the wrath of Parisian society, and of the influential members of the French Jockey Club in particular. In later days Wagner wrote of the “fripperies of opera and ballet.” Perhaps he would have allowed the ballet a more serious importance if he could have seen the Russian dancers in _Prince Igor_, a performance which must have realised his ideal of a dance “bold and savagely sublime.”