Venom - Blackened Are The Priests

By the second performance, held on October 26, Wagner hastily introduced some cuts to the original text of the opera. He even planned to divide it into two parts - “The Greatness of Rienzi” and “The Fall of Rienzi” - and perform it for two evenings so as not to tire the audience. But soon this idea had to be abandoned: the public decided that for one opera a double entrance fee was taken from it, and considered it a sheer deception. Therefore, Wagner finally settled on the option with minor reductions. By the way, the example of a successful first performance of Rienzi convincingly proved to him that the audience is quite capable of sustaining a performance that is almost twice as large as the usual operas if you keep it energized by action (and Rienzi is distinguished by the intensity of the scenes and the rich content) .This gave him the courage to go beyond the rigid framework of generally accepted opera volumes and the confidence that the prepared audience would live with the composer the lives of his heroes, and not suffer in anticipation of the end of the supposedly artificially prolonged performance (such accusations have already been voiced by some critics against Wagner )