was not revived in his lifetime. Nonetheless, it brought him to the attention of the press and attracted the publishing firm Enoch & Costallat, who published his works during the rest of his life. Above all, as a result of L'étoile he ceased to be regarded as a talented amateur. The same year Saint-Saens gave the first public performance of his 1865 Impromptu, his first piano piece of real importance with his personal stamp of originality. Full-time composer Like many progressively-minded French composers of the time, Chabrier was greatly interested in the music of Wagner. As a young man he had copied out the full score of Tannhäuser to gain an insight into the composer's creative process. On a trip to Munich with Henri Duparc and others in March 1880, Chabrier first saw Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde; he wrote to the personnel director at the ministry saying he had to go to Bordeaux on private matters, but in confidence confessed that for ten years he had wanted to see and hear Wagner's opera, and promised that he would back at his desk the following Wednesday. D'Indy, who was among the group, recorded that Chabrier was moved to tears at hearing the music, saying of the prelude, "I have waited ten years of my life to hear that A in the cellos". This event led Chabrier to conclude that he must single-mindedly pursue his vocation as a composer, and after several periods of absence he left the Ministry of the Interior in late 1880. In a 2001 study, Steven Huebner writes that there may have been additional factors in Chabrier's decision: "the growing momentum of his musical career … his high hopes for the Gwendoline project, and the first signs of a nervous disorder, probably the result of a syphilitic condition, that would claim his life 14 years later." The project to which Huebner refers was the operatic tragedy Gwendoline, on which Chabrier had begun working in 1879. The librettist was Catulle Mendès, described by the pianist and scholar Graham Johnson as "a relentlessly ambitious member of the literary establishment". Mendès wrote texts that were set by at least seven French composers, including Fauré, Massenet, Debussy and Messager; none of his operatic works were successful, and Johnson rates the libretto for Gwendoline as "catastrophic". Chabrier worked on the piece until 1885. The conductor Charles Lamoureux appointed Chabrier as his chorus