Barry Millington, Edward Burne-Jones, George Eliot and Richard Wagner: A Collision of Like-minded Souls

March 2016, Volume 10, Number 1, 26–44.

The plan for Wagner’s third and final visit to London was hatched under an inauspicious star. The deficit for the first Bayreuth Festival of 1876 had been 148,000 Marks and renewed approaches to the Reich for assistance had come to nothing. It had been hoped that now the major expenditure in connection with the establishment of the new theatre was out of the way, it would be possible in future to meet annual expenses out of receipts. But it soon became evident that another festival could not be launched until at least 1878.

When Wagner received an invitation from a firm of concert agents in London, Hodge & Essex, to give a series of twenty instrumental and vocal concerts in the recently opened Royal Albert Hall, the prospect of the Bayreuth debt being paid off made it therefore an attractive proposition.