_Rienzi_ was now getting ready at Dresden, and thither Wagner went in April, 1842. The opera was produced in October, with enormous success, and the name of Wagner became famous throughout Germany. Nowadays so much of the music appears so very cheap and tawdry that it is only after a severe mental struggle one can understand the enthusiasm the work aroused. We must put away all thought of the later Wagner; we must forget that when _Rienzi_ was produced the _Dutchman_ had already been some time finished. We must remember the sort of music the Dresden public had suffered under: dull, workmanlike operas, without an original touch, without the breath of life in them--in a word, kapellmeister music. The pomp and outward show of that remarkable heavy-weight Spontini must have come as a relief after the Dresden opera-goer's ordinary fare; but Spontini, though he lays on his colours with a barbarian regal hand, never sparkles; he is altogether lacking in vivacity, elasticity; he had no gift for gracious or piquant melody. Of the operas of Marschner much the same must be said; in them we find the tricks of the Romantics without the best Romantics' sense of beauty, all the horrors of Weber without Weber's passion. Black woods, supernatural fireworks by night, enchantments, vampires, guns that went off by themselves--all this jugglery was fast being done to death, and what at first had been a nerve-shaking novelty was becoming a mere tedium. In opera _The Castle of Otranto_ was played out. Into this region of inspissated gloom Richard burst with _Rienzi_, the brilliant, the fearless, the tragic hero; all was blazing light and colour; it sparkled; if the champagne of it was of an inferior quality--often, indeed, poor goose-berry--yet it bubbled and frothed gaily. Besides, there were great sweeping tunes--such as the hackneyed prayer--and plenty of really dainty, if very Weberesque, melodies. All that Meyerbeer had to teach was there, and the stolid Dresdener gazed with delight on the brilliance of the latest Parisian musical fashions. So Wagner gained his first success, and deserved it. It was not the Paris success he had dreamed of a few years before, when fame, money and all worldly things desirable were to be his. But it meant bread-and-butter without drudging for the publishers or the press; it meant the means of living while he wrote masterpieces which were to set half the world against him and eventually make him immeasurably the greatest musical figure of his time. He was appointed Court kapellmeister, and there he remained until 1849. Before proceeding to this next period of seven years we must consider _The Flying Dutchman_.