ABSTRACT
'Liszt, Wagner, and Weimar' is the article promised at the end of 'Three Months in Weimar' and like its predecessor is an expansion of George Eliot's Journal 'Recollections of Weimar'. To her personal observations she has added a lengthy discussion of Wagner and a summary of three of his operas, giving the article a special historical interest. Before 1855, Wagner as a composer was almost totally unknown in England. In that year, however, he came at the invitation of the London Philharmonic to conduct a series of eight concerts, from 12 March to 25 June, and included a number of his own works in the concert programmes. Though Victoria and Albert attended the seventh concert, hearing the overture to Tannhäuser, Wagner was very roughly handled by the London press, and it was no doubt the sensation stirred up by his appearance before English audiences that prompted George Eliot to add an account of Wagner to the otherwise personal recollections of her German trip. 1
