The domestic career of Richard Wagner has formed the subject for endless discussions. His birth, his early studies, his university career, and his start as a professional musician, all took place in Leipsic. There, too, he met the famous opera singer, Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient, whose gifts made such an impression on the young composer. It was the excellence of her acting, as well as her singing, that gave the embryo reformer his first ideas of the intimate union of drama and music that is one phase of his later operatic greatness. Many of his leading roles were written for her, and as late as 1872 he stated that whenever he conceived a new character he imagined her in the part. His work as leader took him first to Magdeburg. The failure of his early opera, "Das Liebesverbot," put an end to this enterprise, and soon afterward he appeared as concert leader in Koenigsberg. There he met and married his first wife, Wilhelmina (or Minna) Planer. Their natures were different in many respects. While he displayed many of the vagaries of genius, she was patient and practical, and, if not wholly understanding the highest side of his nature, she gave up her own career to help him through his days of poverty and struggle. The first venture of the wedded pair was at Riga, where Wagner was engaged for a term to conduct in a new theatre. After this, they took ship for Paris, and the stormy passage gave Wagner many a suggestion for his "Flying Dutchman." It was in the French capital that Minna's domestic qualities were given their most severe trial, for the composer found little or no chance to produce his own works, and was forced to gain a precarious living by the commonest musical drudgery. Probably her constant care and economy were all that turned the scale in favour of success. At length the Dresden authorities became interested in some of the earlier operas, and Wagner was liberated from his dependent position.