Tonhalle Zürich

This guide to the Tonhalle Zurich follows Richard Wagner, who fled a warrant for his arrest after Dresden's 1849 uprising and found nine years of shelter in Zurich. It traces his frustrating stint conducting the city's amateur orchestra in a converted grain warehouse that seated fourteen hundred people, and his 1855 resignation over a hall he judged unfit for real music. Listen for how long that grievance lingered in a city that had sheltered a wanted man for nearly a decade.