“The Ring of the Nibelung”

Introduction

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) revolutionized classical music with his Tristan und Isolde (1859) and The Ring (1874). His tremendous influence on opera came from his “musical dramas,” including the “Ring Cycle” and the Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Because Wagner wanted the perfect stage for his productions, he custom built his now famous Festival Hall in Bayreuth, still today the home of the annual Bayreuth Festival (Bayreuther Festspiele). Wagner’s supporters say his music transcends his dark side as an antisemite, a deadbeat, and a philanderer. His life was also intertwined with that of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who supported Wagner financially over many years beginning in 1864, but did not agree with the composer’s antisemitic views.

Richard Wagner led a turbulent, strife-filled life marked by controversy, political exile, illicit love affairs, constant poverty and pleas for funding, with repeated flights from creditors. But his music still appeals to audiences today, and he is considered one of the most influential composers and dramatists of all time.

Leipzig and Dresden: The Early Years
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was born on 22 May 1813 in Leipzig in the family’s modest residence at 3 Brühl Street in the Jewish Quarter (although the Wagners were not Jewish). Leipzig was then in the Kingdom of Saxony, and Wagner spoke with a strong Saxon German accent all his life. Richard was the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife, Johanna Rosine (née Pätz). In August he was christened in Leipzig’s famous Thomaskirche (the Lutheran St. Thomas Church; photo below), where Johann Sebastian Bach had been Kapellmeister in the 18th century.

Only six months after his birth Richard’s father died of typhus. His mother remarried in August 1814. Her new husband and Richard’s new stepfather was a portrait artist, actor, and playwright named Ludwig Geyer (1779-1821). That same year, the family moved to Dresden. In the fall of 1817 Richard was enrolled in school under the name Richard Geyer, the name Wagner went by until he was 14 years old. After falling ill, Ludwig Geyer died on 30 September 1821. Richard was only eight years old. It is said that Richard gained his love of theater from his stepfather.

After his stepfather’s death, Richard was taken in by Ludwig’s brother, who paid for boarding school at the Kreuzschule run by the Dresden Kreuzchor, a boys’ choir with a centuries-long history and 150 members today. The Geyer family moved to Prague in 1826, but Richard remained in Dresden for school. Richard was a poor student, mostly because he easily lost focus on subjects once they became more complex or failed to spark his intense interest. By 1827 the family was back in Leipzig, where Richard had lessons in music and harmony – although surprisingly he never showed any special talent for playing the piano or violin. But he did enjoy call kinds of music. In 1828 he first heard Beethoven’s 7th and 9th Symphonies at the famous Gewandhaus concert hall in Leipzig, the first of three halls to bear that name. In Leipzig Richard was also was exposed to a lot of classical music, including Mozart’s Requiem.

In 1831 Wagner began musical studies at the university in Leipzig. At this time he also began more serious efforts in composing his own musical works, including his Piano Sonata in B-flat major and his Symphony in C major, a Beethoven-inspired work that was performed in Prague and Leipzig. He also began work on an opera, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), which was never completed.

Würzburg and Magdeburg

In 1833 Wagner’s eldest brother Albert, a tenor in the theater company in Würzburg, helped him get the position of choirmaster there. Wagner was entered in the official residency records of Würzburg as a “music student from Leipzig.” Now a young man of 20, Wagner composed his first complete opera, Die Feen (The Fairies), but it was not until half a century later that it premiered in Munich shortly after the composer’s death in 1883. After barely a year in Würzburg, Wagner returned to Leipzig in 1834. While there he received a job offer in Bad Lauchstädt, a once splendid spa town where Schiller and Goethe had hung out. (The local Kurtheater later became the Goethe Theater, which is still standing.) After seeing the dreary backwater, Wagner was inclined to turn the job down, but then he met the company’s leading actress.

Christine Wilhelmine “Minna” Planer was a lovely 25-year-old with a daughter (Nathalie) she had at 15 after being seduced by a captain in the Saxon Guards. That didn’t bother Wagner, and Wagner’s chronic skin condition (erysipelas, “Holy Fire”) that at times of stress left his face and other areas covered with red blotches and lesions didn’t seem to bother her. After a mere few minutes of conversation, Wagner was so smitten with Minna that he changed his mind about leaving. He ended up as musical director for the summer season in Bad Lauchstädt, and later at the opera house in Magdeburg, where the company had its winter season. He used his time there to write Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love). But soon the financial collapse of the Magdeburg theater company would result in the first of many bankruptcies that Wagner would suffer in his life.

Now unemployed and in financial straits, Wagner followed Minna to Königsberg (today’s Kaliningrad, Russia), where she was appearing on stage. Wagner proposed to Minna there and she accepted. After arguing with each other en route to the church, they were married in the Lutheran Tragheim Church on 24 November 1836. After a year of strife and constant fighting, in May 1837 Minna left Wagner for another man, a preview of what was to be a tempestuous marriage. He would later call it his biggest mistake. It would be a 30-year-long mistake.

Wagner later tracked Minna down in Dresden, where her parents lived, and they were back together briefly before she was gone again, this time with an admirer. In the meantime, Wagner had found another job and was starting a new opera: Rienzi: the Last of the Tribunes.

Riga and Paris

In June 1837, with Rienzi half finished, Wagner went to Riga (then in the Russian Empire, now the capital of Latvia) to become the music director at the opera there. He was happy with the new German-language theater and the appreciative audiences. In 1838 he and Minna reconciled, and she was able to star in several productions in Riga. But after two years in the cold, fog-bound city, Wagner was heavily in debt and unhappy with his situation. His passport had been confiscated. It was time to leave Riga. Even though he spoke no French, Wagner had Paris in mind. It was the center of the opera world at that time.

In summer 1839 the Wagners decided to flee Riga in order to escape numerous creditors. Minna’s final performance paid for their getaway. The trip was further complicated by Wagner’s insistence on not leaving Robber, his beloved Newfoundland dog, behind. The 160-pound dog he acquired in Riga was the reason they decided to shorten their coach ride and then travel by ship. Their stormy four-week sea voyage from Pillau (today’s Baltiysk, Russia) aboard the merchant ship Thetis via Norwegian ports to London later inspired Wagner to create his opera Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman).

The Wagners were fascinated by London, but only stayed briefly. They had their first train ride ever to Gravesend, crossing the Channel by steamer to Boulogne. After a few days they travelled on to Paris in September 1839, settling in an apartment in the building where Molière had been born. They resided in Paris until 1842, most of the time in impoverished conditions. So poor, in fact, that when Robber wandered off one day and never returned, they were actually relieved. (Wagner would have many dogs during his lifetime. His last canine friend, Russ, is buried next to him in Bayreuth.)

But it was in France that Wagner completed his opera Rienzi (1840) and wrote and composed The Flying Dutchman (1841). In order to keep his head above water in Paris, Wagner took on various writing assignments and did musical arrangements for operas by other composers. He also began to take an interest in French leftist revolutionary politics, a tendency that would later cause him problems in Dresden.

Dresden: Wagner as the Royal Saxon Court Conductor

With support from the German-Jewish Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the leading opera composers in Paris, Wagner was able to have his opera Rienzi accepted for performance by the Dresden Court Theater (Hofoper) in the Kingdom of Saxony. In 1842 Wagner left Paris for Dresden. He expressed his great relief at returning to German-speaking Europe in his “Autobiographic Sketch” of 1842, writing that, “For the first time I saw the Rhine – with hot tears in my eyes, I, poor artist, swore eternal fidelity to my German fatherland.” Wagner enjoyed acclaim when Rienzi was staged in Dresden on 20 October 1842.

Wagner lived in Dresden for the next six years, eventually being appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. During this period, he staged Der fliegende Holländer (2 January 1843) and Tannhäuser (19 October 1845), the first two of his three middle-period operas. In January 1848 Wagner’s mother died in Leipzig. It was in spring 1848 in Dresden when Wagner’s long friendship with Franz Liszt began. Shortly thereafter Wagner paid a return visit to Liszt in Weimar. But his relatively good life in Dresden was nearing its end.

Exile in Switzerland (1849-1858)

In 1849 there was widespread unrest in Saxony. When the unsuccessful May Uprising in Dresden broke out, in which Wagner played an active, if minor role, Wagner suddenly became a wanted man. A warrant/”wanted” notice (Steckbrief) was issued for Wagner’s arrest. To avoid arrest, he (and his architect friend Gottfried Semper) had to flee Saxony with a forged passport. After a brief stay in Paris, Wagner then settled in Zürich. His 12 years of exile, first in Switzerland (until 1858) and later in Venice and Paris, were not generally very pleasant. He was isolated from the German music scene, and once again had to depend on the kindness of strangers in order to survive. And his romantic involvement with another woman who was not his wife made his situation even more precarious.

In 1850 the wife of a friend began paying Wagner a modest pension, which she paid until 1859. Her friend, Jessie Laussot, in turn, was to have added an annual stipend that would have allowed Wagner to live comfortably if not lavishly. But Wagner’s wandering eye once again got him into trouble. An affair with Jessie in Bordeaux, France led to a failed plan to elope with her, but Mr. Laussot prevented that. Jessie returned to her unhappy marriage, and Wagner went back to his wife in Zurich. Minna was by now suffering from severe depression, and Wagner’s health was suffering from nerves. But it was not all pain and suffering. During his Swiss exile, Wagner still managed to travel to Italy, London, and Paris – where he met with his friend Franz Liszt and first laid eyes on Liszt’s illegitimate 15-year-old daughter, Cosima.

During his time in Zurich, always on the hunt for sources of revenue, Wagner gave several concerts in 1855 with the Philharmonic Society of London, including one before Queen Victoria. The Queen enjoyed his Tannhäuser overture and spoke with Wagner after the concert. Her later diary entry described the composer thus: “…short, very quiet, wears spectacles & has a very finely-developed forehead, a hooked nose & projecting chin.”

Somehow in Zurich, in the 1850s, Wagner managed to find another source of financial help, and to begin composing the music for Rheingold and Walküre (1853/1854), and to write “Opera and Drama” (1851) – in which he wrote: “I shall never write another ‘opera’… I will call them ‘dramas.'” He was inspired by (1) the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, and (2) the poet-writer Mathilde Wesendonck. Mathilde had an important added attraction: She was married to the wealthy silk merchant Otto Wesendonck. Both Herr and Frau Wesendonck were great admirers of Wagner’s music, an admiration they expressed beginning in 1853 by granting Wagner several loans to help with his household expenses, and buying a summer country house near their Zurich estate for Wagner and Minna to live in. Wagner named their new abode Asyl (“place of refuge”), but it soon became anything but.

Otto Wesendonck apparently was unaware of Richard Wagner’s reputation with other men’s wives, but in 1858 he found out – after Wagner’s wife discovered a letter that revealed her husband’s affair with Mathilde. Minna caused a major scene with the Wesendoncks, and the Wagner’s 22-year marriage began to crumble a bit more. The battered Wesendoncks left Zurich even as Richard and Minna Wagner went their separate ways. She was packed off to Dresden, but still had time to infuriate her husband yet again by placing an ad in the local papers offering their personal belongings at cut-rate prices due to “sudden departure.” He headed for Venice, where he wanted to resume his work on the second act of Tristan und Isolde.

Wagner’s Antisemitism • The 1850 Essay The most obvious evidence of Wagner’s obsessive antisemitism (but not the only proof) is the essay he published anonymously in September 1850. Das Judenthum in der Musik (“Jewishness in Music”) was published under the pseudonym K. Freigedank (“K. Freethought”) in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (NZM) in Leipzig (circulation 2,000-3,000). For some reason, Wagner felt the need to reissue his diatribe in an expanded edition under his own name in 1869. (Something even his antisemitic wife, Cosima, felt was unwise.) It is considered a significant landmark in the history of German antisemitism. In his essay Wagner attacked Jews in general and a few Jewish composers in particular. Throughout his life, Wagner consistently held ugly anti-Jewish views, but he was not always consistent in how he personally dealt with Jews with whom he worked. Among those in Wagner’s circle of friends were his favorite conductor, Hermann Levi, the pianists Carl Tausig and Joseph Rubinstein, the writer Heinrich Porges, and other Jews. But no one should ignore Wagner’s and his descendants’ ugly attitudes toward Jews. Wagner’s second wife, Cosima, held even stronger antisemitic views than her husband, and after his death she discriminated against Jews in running the Bayreuth Festival. After the death of Wagner’s homosexual son Siegfried in 1930, his English-born wife Winifred Wagner (1897-1980) took over the Festival. She was an avid and early (1923) supporter of Adolf Hitler, who was a frequent guest at their Wahnfried home. In 2012, the Bayreuth Festival set up a permanent outdoor exhibit (“Silenced Voices”) commemorating the Festival’s antisemitic history.

Wagner’s Years on the Move (Venice, Lucerne, Paris, 1859–1862)

In Venice Wagner rented an apartment in the Palazzo Giustinian overlooking the Grand Canal. He had his bed and his new Érard piano shipped down from Zurich. Following a dreary winter alone in Italy, Wagner had to leave Venice in the spring of 1859 after learning that the Austrian administration there had finally bowed to pressure from the Saxon court, and was planning to arrest him. He returned to Switzerland, this time to Lucerne, ensconced in the Hotel Schweizerhof on the shore of Lake Lucerne. His Érard piano had been sent ahead. He spent much of the rest of 1859 completing Act III of Tristan, the funereal music influenced by his funereal mood from Venice.

Partial Amnesty in 1860
Wagner’s supporters, who had long been trying to gain amnesty for their hero, finally had a degree of success in August 1860, when the Saxon king granted Wagner partial amnesty within the German Confederation – but not in Saxony. This meant that Wagner, after more than a decade of exile, could once again travel freely in German lands – except Saxony. But first he had business in France.

1860-1861
In November 1859, Wagner was off to Paris to conduct and to oversee the production of a new French version of Tannhäuser. But first, in January and February 1860, he conducted three concerts of his music. Then he turned to his opera. In September the Tannhäuser rehearsals began. Unknown to the composer and beyond his control, various elements would combine to turn the Paris production of Tannhäuser into a fiasco.

One element was the Jockey Club de Paris, a so-called gentlemen’s club, that had a secret agenda of political protest. A second factor was the changes demanded of Wagner, that he was forced to agree to. Another was the differing tastes of French audiences, although Wagner later had many French admirers.

On 13 March 1861, Tannhäuser debuted at the Opéra Garnier. It was a disaster, and after only three performances frequently interrupted by booing, Wagner closed it down. As it had often been before, Paris again turned out to be a curse for Wagner.

As if that weren’t enough, Minna arrived in Paris for the second performance, sitting with her husband and Princess Metternich – until the Jockey Club members showed up near the end of Act II, yelling and stopping the production for at least ten minutes. The couple’s effort at reconciliation went about as well as the opera performance. Wagner and Minna would meet only one more time before agreeing that they should no longer be together.

Amazingly, Wagner had remained in touch with the Wesendoncks, exchanging letters with both Mathilde and Otto! Wagner even continued to receive financial support from Otto. In November 1860 he had visited with the Wesendoncks in Venice, where he was inspired by Titian’s 16th century painting The Assumption of the Virgin. On the train from Venice to Vienna, Wagner began to formulate the elements of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, a project he had begun thinking about 16 years earlier.

Biebrich in 1862
Already in 1861, Wagner had wanted to use his new travel freedom to persuade German royalty to support the production of his operas. But he soon discovered that his new-found freedom and his usual powers of persuasion didn’t result in immediate success. Failing to find anything grander, for now Wagner settled in the town of Biebrich, on the Rhine near Wiesbaden in Hesse. He began serious work on Die Meistersinger.

Minna came to see him in February 1862. He described her Biebrich visit as “ten days in hell.” They both knew it was the end. They would see each other one more time in Dresden in November, when Wagner agreed to financially support her, which he did until her death in 1866.

In March 1862 Wagner finally got his full amnesty from Saxony. He was now free to travel, but he continued to be faced with failure on almost every front. Although he was now able to travel freely across Europe to conduct his music, he was basically dependent on the kindness of dukes, princes, and other benefactors he could wangle baubles or money out of. Despite concert tours that took him from Berlin to St. Petersburg, from Prague to Budapest, he was pretty much penniless.

But that did not prevent him from furnishing his new bachelor pad in the Penzing district of Vienna luxuriously. He celebrated his 50th birthday on 23 May 1863 with a lavish party there. In July his European concert tour resumed. In November he met the von Bülows in Berlin, where Richard Wagner and Cosima von Bülow decide they are soulmates. No matter that they are each still married to someone else.

In spring 1864, with mounting debt and unpaid taxes, Wagner did what he usually did when all his options had run out: He skipped town. In this case the town was Vienna. His destination was also familiar: Switzerland. In Zurich he had the nerve to ask the Wesendoncks if he could stay with them. Their answer was a flat no. Everywhere he turned in desperation, he got a similar response. Finally Elisabeth Wille, the wife of his doctor, let him stay in an empty next-door house she and the doctor owned. Taking pity on him, Mathilde Wesendonck provided some furniture. His situation was dire, especially for a man accustomed to living high on the hog, even if he couldn’t pay for the hog. Sitting in his cold, empty house like a prisoner, Wagner’s inbound mail brought only bad news. Then Dr. Wille returned. He insisted that Wagner had to go.

In May 1864 Wagner then reached out to Karl Anton Eckert (1820-1879), a friend who was at that time the Hofkapellmeister in Stuttgart. As head conductor at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna, Eckert had conducted the premieres of Lohengrin (1858) and Tannhäuser (1859). Now Eckert was kind enough to host Wagner for dinner at a local restaurant, but there wasn’t much else he could do for the destitute composer.

And then a miracle happened.

The King is Dead. Long Live the King

On 10 March 1864, King Maximilian II of Bavaria died suddenly at the age of only 53. That same day his 18-year-old son ascended the throne as Ludwig II. To Wagner’s great fortune, the new Bavarian king had been an ardent fan of Wagner’s operas since age 12. He had read all of Wagner’s books and attended his operas. Soon after assuming the throne, King Ludwig II tried to track Wagner down. After a fruitless search in Vienna and Zurich, King Ludwig’s emissary at last found the composer while he was in Stuttgart.

The emissary, Franz von Pfistermeister, Ludwig’s royal secretary, had first tried to contact Wagner when he was dining with Eckert in Stuttgart. Pfistermeister had sent a messenger to their table, who handed Wagner a card bearing the words “Secretary to the King of Bavaria.” Skeptical and fearing it was a ruse by a debt collector, Wagner shooed the messenger away and later tried to sneak out of the restaurant undetected. But the dogged Pfistermeier had followed him back to his hotel and made an appointment with Wagner for the following day.

When he met with Wagner, the royal secretary presented him with a ring, a photograph of the king, and a letter written by the king. Upon reading Ludwig’s letter, Wagner began to cry tears of joy, relief, and wonderment. In his missive, King Ludwig was offering Wagner more than he could have ever hoped for. For Wagner it was truly a miracle coming at the lowest point in his life. He and the king would soon be part of a mutual admiration society, which the king would be funding. Although there would be some bumps in the road, the Bavarian king would be Wagner’s faithful patron and savior until Wagner died. (The younger king only outlived Wagner by about three years.) Without King Ludwig, most of the Wagnerian works we know today likely would never have been composed or presented. Wagner’s legacy would have been greatly diminished had the king not come along when he did.

Wagner and Ludwig Meet in Munich

On 4 May 1864, Richard Wagner, now 51 years of age, accepted King Ludwig II’s invitation to an audience at the Royal Palace in Munich. For an unprecedented one hour and 45 minutes Wagner and the King met in what is today the Residenz, the former palace of the Wittelsbach monarchs, including Ludwig II.

True to his word, Ludwig almost immediately helped Wagner by paying off his debts, providing him a place to live, and arranging to stage his works in Munich. Within a year after meeting the King, Wagner’s latest work, Tristan und Isolde, premiered at the Munich Royal Court Theater (now the Bavarian State Opera).

At first the King was staying at Berg Castle. Wagner was nearby in a large house on Lake Starnberg (then known as the Würmsee, later Starnbergersee). Ludwig had him transported each day by royal carriage to visit with the King. Wagner felt protective of the vulnerable King and enjoyed their discussions. But when Ludwig was away for official duties, the composer invited Hans and Cosima von Bülow to stay with him at his house by the lake. Hans was ill, so only Cosima and her two daughters arrived. It was during this time that Cosima became pregnant with Richard Wagner’s child. In October Wagner moved into a grand house in Munich courtesy of Ludwig. People took notice and soon Wagner was dubbed “Lola II,” in reference to Lola Montez, the despised mistress of Ludwig’s grandfather, Ludwig I. She had lived in a house not far from where Wagner was now living.

In November 1864, Ludwig decided he would support Wagner request to design and build a theater in Munich suited to his requirements. Working with his fellow Dresdner, the architect Gottfried Semper (1803-1879), who had designed the first Königliches Hoftheater in Dresden (1841), Wagner was at first enthusiastic about the idea. But as the project progressed, Wagner began to think that it might not be suitable for what he originally had in mind as a platform for his operas. By the time he was forced to leave Munich, he was almost relieved that he could now try something else. In the end, his dream was realized in Bayreuth, not Munich. But Ludwig would still be the primary source of funding.

Over time several factors combined to bring Wagner’s good life in Munich to an end. First, there was Wagner’s lifestyle and his total disregard for the social conventions of the day. Second, many of Ludwig’s subjects and most of his advisors were not pleased with what they viewed as the King’s extravagant support of Wagner. Ludwig at first refused to recognize the libertine ways of his hero, but growing public pressure forced his hand. It seemed that all of Munich knew about Wagner and Cosima, and there were even press reports about the situation.

On 10 April 1865, Cosima gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Isolde, in Munich. The premiere of Tristan und Isolde took place on 10 June in Munich under the direction of Cosima’s husband, Hans von Bülow. In July Wagner began dictating his autobiography, Mein Leben (My Life).

Finally, on 6 December 1865, as the scandal of the Wagner-Cosima affair came to a head, Ludwig reluctantly informed Wagner that he had to leave Bavaria. But at the same time he promised to help Wagner pay for a place to live in Switzerland. The distraught Ludwig even considered abdicating to follow Wagner, but Wagner talked him out of that idea. He knew what a catastrophe it would be without a king to support his work. Unlike the other times Wagner had been forced to leave town, in this case he would continue to live luxuriously, with his royal patron picking up the tab.

Even while Wagner was away from the Bavarian capital, the King continued to promote his works. In Tribschen Wagner completed Die Meistersinger, which premiered in Munich in 1868. After Wagner returned to his “Ring Cycle,” Ludwig demanded “special previews” of the first two works – Das Rheingold (1869) and Die Walküre (1870) – in Munich, against Wagner’s wishes. Wagner viewed The Ring as an entire work that should be presented as a unit in a venue fully suited to it. And that was not Munich. Their differences over this would lead to a later split, complicated by the Wagner-Cosima scandal breaking into the open.

Four days after Ludwig’s request Wagner left Munich by train for Switzerland.

The Tribschen Years (Lucerne, 1866-1872)

Wagner traveled alone to Geneva, Switzerland, where he spent his first few months. His first exile in Switzerland had been in German-speaking Zurich from 1848 to 1858. This time he went to the French-speaking city of Geneva, where he rented a country house named “Les Artichauts” (“the artichokes”) near the Jardin des Cropettes. Cosima visited him there for at least three weeks in early March 1866 so they both could look for a suitable place to live in Switzerland. They soon found something they liked in Lucerne, a large house on a promontory called Tribschen that jutted into Lake Lucerne (der Vierwaldstättersee).

In mid-April, with King Ludwig paying the first year’s rent in advance, Richard Wagner moved into his new villa. Ever since his stay at the Hotel Schweizerhof working on Tristan in 1859, Wagner had considered Lucerne one of his favorite cities. He would live here at Tribschen, later together with Cosima, for the next six years. In gratitude, Wagner wrote to the King: “Wherever I cast my gaze from my house, I am surrounded by a true wonder world. I know of no more beautiful place on this earth, no place I feel more at home than this one.”*

For now, Cosima only visited Wagner in Tribschen from time to time, returning to her husband in Munich. Minna’s death in January meant that Wagner was now free to marry Cosima. Her marriage was already falling apart, but she didn’t leave her husband until 1868, and Hans von Bülow would not grant her a divorce until 1870.

On 22 May King Ludwig paid a visit to Tribschen to surprise the “Dear One” on his birthday. But the Cosima scandal would break out into the open in June, forcing the King again to face the reality of the Dear One’s libertine ways.

Richard and Cosima’s second child was born at Tribschen on 17 February. They named their new daughter Eva, as usual after a character in Wagner’s latest opera, the heroine in Meistersinger, which Wagner completed and presented to Ludwig on Christmas Day, which was also Cosima’s birthday. (She was actually born on Christmas Eve, but she and Wagner always celebrated her birthday on 25 December.) But in 1867 she was celebrating her birthday in Munich with her girls and her husband. In April Hans had been appointed Kapellmeister to King Ludwig II, and he would be conducting Meistersinger. And who arrived to prepare the debut of his latest opera? Richard Wagner. And where did he stay? At the von Bülow home. The tensions at home and during rehearsals must have been high.

But six months later, on 21 June 1868, the premiere of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg delighted opera-goers in Munich, including Ludwig and Wagner, who sat together in the royal box. This act caused a stir among some in Bavarian aristocracy, but the audience displayed affection for their king. Unfortunately, within a year, Ludwig and Wagner would not be so happy with each other.

As part of his financial support of Wagner, in 1864, the King had bought the rights to Wagner’s not-yet-completed Der Ring des Niebelungen for 30,000 florins. Ludwig felt that his rights purchase entitled him to some say in where The Ring, or its parts, should be performed. Wagner of course had entirely different ideas about how and where his masterwork should be performed. The National Theater in Munich was not the right place, and it was inconceivable that The Ring be broken up and performed in bits and pieces rather than as the complete work he had not yet even fully created. Over and over, Wagner explained his unified Ring concept to Ludwig, but there was no persuading His Highness. In the end, over his strenuous objections, Das Rheingold (1869) and Die Walküre (1870) premiered in Munich – both boycotted by the composer.

It was now clear to Wagner what he had to do. He had to design and build his own theater where he could have total control over his musical dramas. But where?

*„Wohin ich mich aus meinem Haus wende, bin ich von einer wahren Wunderwelt umgeben: ich kenne keinen schöneren Ort auf dieser Welt, keinen heimischeren als diesen.“ – from www.wagner200.com

Bayreuth and Wahnfried

In April 1871, Wagner and his wife traveled to Bayreuth in northern Bavaria (Upper Franconia, Oberfranken). Bayreuth, first indicated in official records in 1194 (as Baierrute), had only been part of Bavaria since 1810. Prior to that the town was part of the Principality of Bayreuth (since 1398) and it was Protestant, unlike most of largely Catholic Bavaria.

Wagner had heard about the Margravial Opera House (Markgräfliches Opernhaus) in Bayreuth, and wanted to see if it might be suitable for his purposes. It soon became clear that it was not at all suitable. But Wagner and the Bayreuth city fathers soon came to an agreement granting land and a willingness to let the composer build a new theater of his own design. All he needed now was the money to pay for his project.

King Ludwig did finance a large house for the Wagners in Bayreuth, which the composer named Wahnfried (“madness” + “peace”). He and the family moved into their new home in April 1874, the same year in which construction was halted on his new Festspielhaus because of a lack of funding.

Wagner, did eventually complete his Bayreuth theater – thanks to a help from the King. The first Festival in Bayreuth took place in 1876. But despite a degree of artistic success, it was a financial disaster. Wagner’s Festival Hall stood empty for another six years, and Wagner was forced to obtain an interest-free loan from the Bavarian government. On 26 July 1882, what would be Wagner’s last major work, Parsifal, premiered in Bayreuth, six months before the composer’s death while visiting Venice. He had completed his last operatic work while in Italy on the Amalfi Coast in Ravello.

The Bayreuth Festival and Richard Wagner For a full account of Wagner’s Bayreuth project and the annual Festival he created, please see: The Bayreuth Festival and Richard Wagner.

Venice and Wagner’s Last Days (1882-1883)

Richard Wagner visited Italy a total of nine times during his lifetime, sometime staying for several months. Six of those visits were to Venice. The composer claimed Venice was his favorite city of all those he had ever visited.

His very first visit to Italy was in 1852, vacationing at Lago Maggiore (and later Lugano in Italian Switzerland with Minna, his first wife). Lake Maggiore (der Langensee in German), on the south side of the Alps, has its shores in the Piedmont and Lombardy regions of Italy and the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino (Tessin) in Switzerland.

As he got older, Wagner’s visits to Italy were mostly for health reasons. He craved the Mediterranean warmth he couldn’t find in Bayreuth. In the last few years of his life he suffered several heart attacks until the last one that killed him. In early 1882 he was in Palermo, Sicily on doctor’s orders. In April 1882, having completed the Parsifal score, scheduled for the Festival in the summer of 1882, Richard and Cosima returned to Bayreuth. Following the second festival season, the Wagners rented an entire floor of the Ca’ Vendramin Calergi palace on Venice’s Grand Canal. They arrived on 16 September, and Wagner spent his last winter in the city of canals with his family. He was working in his apartment when he had a fatal heart attack and died in the afternoon of 13 February 1883. Since 1995 some of his rooms have been turned into Venice’s Wagner Museum.

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The Sorcerer of Bayreuth: Richard Wagner, his Work and his World
by Barry Millington (Kindle or hardcover)

Being Wagner: The Story of the Most Provocative Composer Who Ever Lived
by Simon Callow (Kindle, paperback or hardcover, 2018)

Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music
by Alex Ross (Kindle, audio, paperback or hardcover)

Richard Wagners Hunde: Da lernt ich wohl, was Liebe sei (from Amazon.de)
by Franziska Polanski (paperback, 2017)
Amazon.de: “Ja, es gibt ihn: den sympathischen Wagner: den Hundeliebhaber, den Tierschützer. Noch sympathischer aber sind seine Hunde. Außer dem berühmten Russ gab es noch viele weitere in seinem Leben. …”

Related Pages
AT THE GERMAN WAY

• The Bayreuth Festival and Richard Wagner – A detailed account of the festival and the theater Wagner created in Bayreuth
• King Ludwig II – The Swan King: About Wagner’s Bavarian royal patron and friend.
• Castle Guides – Castles and palaces in Germany
• Featured Biographies – More detailed bios of notable people from the German-speaking world
• Notable Germans, Austrians and Swiss – More bios
• Notable Women from Austria, Germany, Switzerland
• Famous Graves – The graves and cemeteries of the famous

ON THE WEB

• Wagner Museum – Bayreuth – Wagner’s former Wahnfried residence in Bayreuth is now a museum.
• Richard Wagner Museum – Wagner’s former residence in Tribschen (Lucerne), Switzerland. (Auch auf Deutsch)
• Wagner Museum – Venice – Richard Wagner’s rooms at the Ca’ Vendramin Calergi are now a museum.

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