168-611: The Richard Wagner Foundation (in German Richard-Wagner-Stiftung ) was formed in 1973, when, faced with overwhelming criticism and infighting amongst the descendants of Richard Wagner , the Bayreuth Festival and its assets were transferred to the newly created Foundation. The board of directors included members of the Wagner family and others appointed by the state. The Wagner family handed over
336-574: A "final attempt at an understanding". His reply was conciliatory; he wrote: "You have preferred to consecrate the treasures of your heart and mind to a higher being: far from censuring you for this step, I approve of it". Legal processes extended the marriage until 18 July 1870, when the divorce was finally sanctioned by a Berlin court. After the divorce von Bülow distanced himself from both Wagner and Cosima; he never again spoke to Wagner, and 11 years passed before his next meeting with Cosima. Wagner and Cosima were married at Lucerne, on 25 August 1870, in
504-668: A Berlin court on 18 July 1870. Richard and Cosima's wedding took place on 25 August 1870. On Christmas Day of that year, Wagner arranged a surprise performance (its premiere) of the Siegfried Idyll for Cosima's birthday. The marriage to Cosima lasted to the end of Wagner's life. Wagner, settled into his new-found domesticity, turned his energies towards completing the Ring cycle. He had not abandoned polemics: he republished his 1850 pamphlet "Judaism in Music", originally issued under
672-544: A Parisian by upbringing, found it hard to adjust to life in Berlin, which was then a more provincial city than Paris. Her attempts to mix with local society, according to Marie zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, were handicapped by "[h]er exaggerated self-esteem and innate causticity", which alienated the men and women in her circle. At least initially, Cosima took an interest in her husband's career, encouraging him to extend his activities into composition. On one occasion she provided him with
840-469: A Protestant church. Cosima's journal for that day records: "May I be worthy of bearing R's name!" Liszt was not informed in advance of the wedding, and learned of it first through the newspapers. The year ended on a high note for the Wagners: on 25 December, the day on which Cosima always celebrated her birthday although she had been born on the 24th, she awoke to the sounds of music. She commemorated
1008-500: A change in their lives was called for and in 1855 he arranged (over their mother's bitter protests) for them to move to Berlin. Here they were placed in the care of Baroness Franziska von Bülow, member of the prominent Bülow family , whose son Hans was Liszt's most outstanding pupil; he would take charge of the girls' musical education while Frau von Bülow supervised their general and moral welfare. Hans von Bülow, born in 1830, had abandoned his legal education after hearing Liszt conduct
1176-478: A concert in Leipzig ; Wagner records that, during a rehearsal, "I felt utterly transported by the sight of Cosima ... she appeared to me as if stepping from another world". In these years Wagner's emotional life was in disarray. He was still married to his first wife, Minna Planer (she was to die in 1866), and was involved in several extramarital relationships. On 28 November 1863 Wagner visited Berlin; while Bülow
1344-500: A daughter, Eva , was born at Tribschen on 17 February 1867. Through all this, von Bülow retained his devotion to Wagner's music. He had been appointed music director of the Munich Hofoper, and threw himself into the preparations for the premiere of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg . This took place on 21 June 1868 under his baton, and was a great success. Shortly afterwards, Cosima rejoined Wagner at Tribschen; Wagner explained to
1512-533: A daughter, Blandine-Rachel. In the following two years Liszt and Marie travelled widely in pursuit of his career as a concert pianist. Late in 1837, when Marie was heavily pregnant with their second child, the couple were at Como in Italy. Here, on 24 December in a lakeside hotel in Bellagio , a second daughter was born. They named her Francesca Gaetana Cosima, the unusual third name being derived from St Cosmas ,
1680-517: A daughter, named Isolde , a child not of Bülow but of Wagner. Cosima was 24 years younger than Wagner and was herself illegitimate, the daughter of the Countess Marie d'Agoult , who had left her husband for Franz Liszt . Liszt initially disapproved of his daughter's involvement with Wagner, though nevertheless the two men were friends. The indiscreet affair scandalised Munich, and Wagner also fell into disfavour with many leading members of
1848-408: A disciple of Proudhon he saw Jewry as "the embodiment of possession, of monopoly capitalism". Cosima's had no such basis, and whereas Wagner retained an ability to revise his views on the basis of his experiences, Cosima's anti-Semitism was visceral and remained unchanged. Cosima records Levi's astonishment on being informed of his appointment. Ludwig was insistent that, despite Wagner's objections,
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#17327718383902016-566: A distance, [was] a menace to his peace of mind." Wagner continued his correspondence with Mathilde and his friendship with her husband Otto, who maintained his financial support of the composer. In an 1859 letter to Mathilde, Wagner wrote, half-satirically, of Tristan : "Child! This Tristan is turning into something terrible . This final act!!!—I fear the opera will be banned ... only mediocre performances can save me! Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive people mad." In November 1859, Wagner once again moved to Paris to oversee production of
2184-532: A dynastic succession. Beidler's claims were dismissed by Cosima and by Siegfried; he never conducted at Bayreuth again, and the rift between the Beidlers and Cosima developed in due course into a major family feud. Cosima moved into rooms to the rear of Wahnfried, away from the house's daily bustle, where she passed her days surrounded by Wagner's possessions and numerous family portraits. Although at first Siegfried discussed his festival plans with her, she avoided
2352-457: A fervent Wagner admirer, first visited Wahnfried in 1923, and although he was not received by Cosima he befriended the family and was thereafter a regular visitor. The Chamberlains, together with Winifred, became enthusiastic members of the Nazi Party , and the 1924 festival became an overt rally for the party and its leading supporters. That year Cosima, then 86, ended her long absence from
2520-485: A friend that "since February 1865 I was in absolutely no doubt about the extremely peculiar nature of the situation". Wagner, anxious to avoid associating Cosima in a public scandal, deceived Ludwig into issuing a statement in June 1866 which declared the unbroken sanctity of the von Bülows' marriage, and promised retribution for those daring to suggest otherwise. By this time Cosima was pregnant with her second child by Wagner;
2688-523: A head in 1849, when the unsuccessful May Uprising in Dresden broke out, in which Wagner played a minor supporting role . Warrants were issued for the revolutionaries' arrest. Wagner had to flee, first visiting Paris and then settling in Zürich where he at first took refuge with a friend, Alexander Müller . Wagner was to spend the next twelve years in exile from Germany. He had completed Lohengrin ,
2856-527: A lakeside retreat at Lake Starnberg , and a grand house in Munich. At Wagner's instigation, von Bülow accepted a post as Ludwig's "royal pianist"; he and Cosima moved to Munich, and took a house conveniently close to Wagner's, ostensibly so that Cosima could work as the composer's secretary. From 29 June 1864 Cosima spent more than a week alone with Wagner at Lake Starnberg, before von Bülow joined them on 7 July. According to Wagner's housekeeper, Anna Mrazek, "it
3024-547: A large lakeside house, the Villa Tribschen . Wagner made immediate arrangements to rent the house, at the king's expense, and by 15 April was installed in his new home. Immediately upon signing the lease, Wagner invited the von Bülows and their children to stay with him. They spent the summer there, returning briefly to Munich before von Bülow left for Basel while Cosima went back to Tribschen. By now von Bülow understood his wife's relationship with Wagner; he wrote to
3192-425: A lengthy Prelude (Vorspiel).... At a specially-appointed Festival, I propose, some future time, to produce those three Dramas with their Prelude, in the course of three days and a fore-evening [emphasis in original]. Wagner began composing the music for Das Rheingold between November 1853 and September 1854, following it immediately with Die Walküre (written between June 1854 and March 1856). He began work on
3360-481: A letter to Mathilde from him. After the resulting confrontation with Minna, Wagner left Zürich alone, bound for Venice , where he rented an apartment in the Palazzo Giustinian , while Minna returned to Germany. Wagner's attitude to Minna had changed; the editor of his correspondence with her, John Burk, has said that she was to him "an invalid, to be treated with kindness and consideration, but, except at
3528-404: A letter to her daughter Daniela: "There is nothing left for me to do, except to grieve for the woman that brought me into the world". From June onwards, Cosima's journal entries consist almost entirely of comments on the forthcoming festival's rehearsals, sometimes warmly approving, often critical and anxious; for example, she found the costumes "reminiscent throughout of Red Indian chiefs ... all
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#17327718383903696-408: A lioness", but soon gave up the struggle. Though they were living in the same city, she did not see either of her daughters for five years, until 1850. Cosima and Blandine remained with Anna Liszt until 1850, joined eventually by Daniel. Cosima's biographer George Marek describes Anna as "a simple, uneducated, unworldly but warmhearted woman ... for the first time [the girls] experienced what it
3864-426: A little later, from Bülow, "an anti-Semite of the first order". Thus Cosima's anti-Semitism predates her association with Wagner, although Marek observes that he nurtured it in her, to the extent that derogatory references to Jews occur, on average, on every fourth page of her 5,000-page journal. The musicologist Eric Werner argues that Wagner's anti-Semitism derived in part from his initial revolutionary philosophy; as
4032-419: A major event in the world of musical theatre. During her directorship, Cosima opposed theatrical innovations and adhered closely to Wagner's original productions of his works, an approach continued by her successors long after her retirement in 1907. She shared Wagner's convictions of German cultural and racial superiority, and under her influence, Bayreuth became increasingly identified with antisemitism . This
4200-748: A new revision of Tannhäuser , staged thanks to the efforts of Princess Pauline von Metternich , whose husband was the Austrian ambassador in Paris. The performances of the Paris Tannhäuser in 1861 were a notable fiasco . This was partly a consequence of the conservative tastes of the Jockey Club , which organised demonstrations in the theatre to protest at the presentation of the ballet feature in Act ;1 (instead of its traditional location in
4368-432: A pastoral opera based on Goethe 's Die Laune des Verliebten ( The Infatuated Lover's Caprice ), written at the age of 17, Die Hochzeit ( The Wedding ), on which Wagner worked in 1832, and the singspiel Männerlist größer als Frauenlist ( Men are More Cunning than Women , 1837–1838). Die Feen ( The Fairies , 1833) was not performed in the composer's lifetime, and Das Liebesverbot ( The Ban on Love , 1836)
4536-572: A patron saint of physicians and apothecaries; it was as "Cosima" that the child became known. With her sister she was left in the care of wet nurses (a common practice at the time), while Liszt and Marie continued to travel in Europe. Their third child and only son, Daniel, was born on 9 May 1839 in Venice. In 1839, while Liszt continued his travels, Marie took the social risk of returning to Paris with her daughters. Her hopes of recovering her status in
4704-542: A piano transcription of the 9th Symphony. He was also greatly impressed by a performance of Mozart 's Requiem . Wagner's early piano sonatas and his first attempts at orchestral overtures date from this period. In 1829 he saw a performance by dramatic soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient , who became his ideal of the fusion of drama and music in opera. In Mein Leben Wagner wrote, "When I look back across my entire life I find no event to place beside this in
4872-408: A pietistic Catholic until her dying day". On 31 October 1872 Cosima received her first Protestant sacrament alongside Wagner: "a deeply moving occasion ... what a lovely thing religion is! What other power could produce such feelings!" In March 1876, Cosima and Wagner were in Berlin when they learned that Marie d'Agoult had died in Paris. Unable to attend the funeral, Cosima expressed her feelings in
5040-410: A project that would occupy him for most of the next five years. Cosima's influence was such that Wagner asserted that he would not have written another note, had she not been there. On a practical level, when the festival's creditors began to press for payment, Cosima's personal plea to Ludwig in 1878 persuaded the king to provide a loan to pay off the outstanding debt and open the door to the prospect of
5208-602: A prominent Frankfurt banking family, had married a French nobleman, the Comte de Flavigny. Marie had been married since 1827 to Charles, Comte d'Agoult, and had borne him two daughters, but the union had become sterile. Drawn together by their mutual intellectual interests, Marie and Liszt embarked on a passionate relationship. In March 1835 the couple fled Paris for Switzerland; ignoring the scandal they left in their wake, they settled in Geneva where, on 18 December, Marie gave birth to
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5376-453: A pseudonym, under his own name in 1869, extending the introduction and adding a lengthy final section. The publication led to several public protests at early performances of Die Meistersinger in Vienna and Mannheim. In 1871, Wagner decided to move to Bayreuth , which was to be the location of his new opera house. The town council donated a large plot of land—the "Green Hill"—as a site for
5544-655: A reconciliation with Minna during this Paris visit, and although she joined him there, the reunion was not successful and they again parted from each other when Wagner left. The political ban that had been placed on Wagner in the North German Confederation after he had fled Dresden was fully lifted in 1862. The composer settled in Biebrich , on the Rhine near Wiesbaden in Hesse . Here Minna visited him for
5712-626: A scant living by writing articles and short novelettes such as A pilgrimage to Beethoven , which sketched his growing concept of "music drama", and An end in Paris , where he depicts his own miseries as a German musician in the French metropolis. He also provided arrangements of operas by other composers, largely on behalf of the Schlesinger publishing house. During this stay he completed his third and fourth operas Rienzi and Der fliegende Holländer . Wagner had completed Rienzi in 1840. With
5880-466: A scenario she had written for an opera based on the story of Merlin , court magician to King Arthur . However, nothing came of this project. Bülow's crowded professional schedule left Cosima alone for long periods, during which she worked for the French-language magazine Revue germanique as a translator and contributor. In December 1859 she was saddened by the death of her brother Daniel, at
6048-474: A second Bayreuth Festival. For Cosima's birthday on 25 December 1878, Wagner hired an orchestra to play the newly composed prelude to Parsifal . The concert also included the Siegfried Idyll ; Cosima wrote afterwards: "There stands he who has called forth these wonders, and he loves me. He loves me!". Progress on Parsifal was hampered by Wagner's recurrent ill-health, but by late 1880 he announced
6216-415: A small pension which she maintained until 1859. With help from her friend Jessie Laussot, this was to have been augmented to an annual sum of 3,000 thalers per year, but the plan was abandoned when Wagner began an affair with Mme. Laussot. Wagner even plotted an elopement with her in 1850, which her husband prevented. Meanwhile, Wagner's wife Minna, who had disliked the operas he had written after Rienzi ,
6384-581: A spasm!". Cosima's journal entry for 12 February 1883—the last she was to make—records Wagner reading Fouqué's novel Undine , and playing the Rhinemaidens' lament from Das Rheingold on the piano. However, it has been alleged that an underlying cause of domestic friction may have surfaced concerning Carrie Pringle , an English soprano from the Parsifal cast who may have been rumoured to be having an affair with Wagner. According to Isolde, recalling
6552-476: A telegram from Bülow: "Soeur il faut vivre" ("Sister, it is necessary to live"). Wagner had left neither a will, nor instruction on the management of the Bayreuth Festival after his death. He had written of the future: "I ... cannot think of a single person who could say what I believe needs to be said ... there is practically no one on whose judgement I could rely". The festival's uncertain outlook
6720-421: A young conductor, Franz Beidler [ de ] , on 20 December 1900. The youngest daughter, Eva , rejected numerous suitors to remain her mother's secretary and companion for the rest of Cosima's tenure. On 8 December 1906, having directed that year's festival, Cosima suffered an Adams-Stokes seizure (a form of heart attack) while visiting her friend Prince Hohenlohe at Langenburg . By May 1907 it
6888-486: Is German?" (1878, but based on a draft written in the 1860s), repeated Wagner's antisemitic preoccupations. Wagner completed Parsifal in January 1882, and a second Bayreuth Festival was held for the new opera, which premiered on 26 May. Wagner was by this time extremely ill, having suffered a series of increasingly severe angina attacks. During the sixteenth and final performance of Parsifal on 29 August, he entered
Richard Wagner Foundation - Misplaced Pages Continue
7056-501: The Bayreuth Festival following the decision of Wolfgang Wagner to stand down. Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( / ˈ v ɑː ɡ n ər / VAHG -nər ; German: [ˈʁɪçaʁt ˈvaːɡnɐ] ; 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, " music dramas "). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both
7224-484: The Centennial March for America, for which he received $ 5,000. Following the first Bayreuth Festival, Wagner began work on Parsifal , his final opera. The composition took four years, much of which Wagner spent in Italy for health reasons. From 1876 to 1878 Wagner also embarked on the last of his documented emotional liaisons, this time with Judith Gautier , whom he had met at the 1876 Festival. Wagner
7392-599: The National Theatre Munich on 10 June 1865, the first Wagner opera premiere in almost 15 years. (The premiere had been scheduled for 15 May, but was delayed by bailiffs acting for Wagner's creditors, and also because the Isolde, Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld , was hoarse and needed time to recover.) The conductor of this premiere was Hans von Bülow , whose wife, Cosima , had given birth in April that year to
7560-471: The Philharmonic Society of London , including one before Queen Victoria . The Queen enjoyed his Tannhäuser overture and spoke with Wagner after the concert, writing in her diary that Wagner was "short, very quiet, wears spectacles & has a very finely-developed forehead, a hooked nose & projecting chin." Wagner's uneasy affair with Mathilde collapsed in 1858, when Minna intercepted
7728-626: The Reichstag tirelessly, and was assured by Kaiser Wilhelm II of his support. These efforts failed to bring about any change in the law. In 1903, taking advantage of the lack of a copyright agreement between the United States and Germany, Heinrich Conried of the New York Metropolitan Opera announced that he would stage Parsifal later that year. Cosima was enraged, but her efforts to prevent him were to no avail;
7896-514: The Ring cycle (which was not resumed for the next twelve years) and begin work on Tristan . While planning the opera, Wagner composed the Wesendonck Lieder , five songs for voice and piano, setting poems by Mathilde. Two of these settings are explicitly subtitled by Wagner as "studies for Tristan und Isolde ". Among the conducting engagements that Wagner undertook for revenue during this period, he gave several concerts in 1855 with
8064-490: The Ring cycle. In 1886, her first year in charge, she added Tristan und Isolde to the canon. Amid the bustle of the festival Cosima refused to be distracted by the illness of her father, Liszt, who collapsed after attending a performance of Tristan and died several days later. Cosima supervised her father's funeral service and burial arrangements, but refused a memorial concert or any overt display of remembrance. According to Liszt's pupil Felix Weingartner , "Liszt's passing
8232-568: The Ring , and the other operas Wagner planned. Wagner also began to dictate his autobiography, Mein Leben , at the King's request. Wagner noted that his rescue by Ludwig coincided with news of the death of his earlier mentor (but later supposed enemy) Giacomo Meyerbeer , and regretted that "this operatic master, who had done me so much harm, should not have lived to see this day." After grave difficulties in rehearsal, Tristan und Isolde premiered at
8400-532: The Wagner family . Although the festival's historian, Frederic Spotts , suggests that Cosima was more creative than she affected to be, the primary purpose of all her productions was to follow the instructions and reflect the wishes of the Master: "There is nothing left for us here to create, but only to perfect in detail". This policy incurred criticism, among others from Bernard Shaw , who in 1889 mocked Cosima as
8568-473: The libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer , Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. The drama
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#17327718383908736-446: The "chief remembrancer". Shaw scorned the idea that Wagner's wishes were best represented by the slavish copying in perpetuity of the performances he had witnessed. Ten years later Shaw highlighted as a feature of the "Bayreuth style" the "intolerably old-fashioned tradition of half rhetorical, half historical-pictorial attitudes and gestures", and the characteristic singing, "sometime tolerable, sometimes abominable". The subordination of
8904-460: The Bayreuth Festival. Guided by Groß, but also using her own acumen—Werner calls her a "superb business woman"—she succeeded in making the festival first solvent, then profitable. While acknowledging that Cosima was an effective "keeper of the flame", commentators have criticised the nature of her legacy. The Ring historian J. K. Holman describes it as one of "stifling conservatism". Her policy of sticking to Wagner's original stage conceptions
9072-602: The Emperor Pedro II of Brazil , Anton Bruckner , Camille Saint-Saëns and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky . Wagner was far from satisfied with the Festival; Cosima recorded that months later his attitude towards the productions was "Never again, never again!" Moreover, the festival finished with a deficit of about 150,000 marks. The expenses of Bayreuth and of Wahnfried meant that Wagner still sought further sources of income by conducting or taking on commissions such as
9240-524: The European royal families. Many of Europe's leading composers came: Bruckner , Tchaikovsky , Saint-Saëns , and Cosima's father, Liszt, who held court at Wahnfried among the notables who gathered there. Also in Bayreuth was Wagner's current mistress, Judith Gautier . It is unlikely that Cosima knew of the affair at this time, though she may have harboured a degree of suspicion. Cosima's demeanour as
9408-522: The Festpielhaus, content to read reports of the productions. Siegfried made few changes to the production traditions set by Wagner and Cosima; Spotts records that "whatever had been laid down by his parents was preserved unchanged out of a sense of strict filial duty". Only in matters on which they had not spoken was he prepared to exercise his own judgement. As a result, the original Parsifal sets remained in use even when they were visibly crumbling;
9576-880: The Festspielhaus and the Richard Wagner Archive to the Foundation and donated Wagner's villa Wahnfried to the town of Bayreuth . In 1976 the National Archive of the Richard Wagner Foundation (formerly known as the Richard Wagner Family Archive or Wahnfried Archive), was deposited with the Foundation. In 2008 the Foundation's 24 board members, mostly descendants of Wagner, selected Katharina Wagner and her sister Eva Wagner-Pasquier to lead
9744-583: The French newspaper Le Figaro , which called the music "the dream of a lunatic". The disillusioned included Wagner's (then) friend Friedrich Nietzsche , who, having published his eulogistic essay "Richard Wagner in Bayreuth" before the festival as part of his Untimely Meditations , was bitterly disappointed by what he saw as Wagner's pandering to increasingly exclusivist German nationalism; his breach with Wagner began at this time. The festival firmly established Wagner as an artist of European, and indeed world, importance: attendees included Kaiser Wilhelm I ,
9912-608: The Leipzig church registers. She and her family moved to Geyer's residence in Dresden . Until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. He almost certainly thought that Geyer was his biological father. Geyer's love of the theatre came to be shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in his performances. In his autobiography Mein Leben Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel. In late 1820, Wagner
10080-548: The Wahnfried garden. Cosima's life mission was total service to Wagner and his works; in the words of the music critic Eric Salzman she "submitted herself body and soul to the Master". In Wagner's lifetime she fulfilled this purpose primarily by recording in her journal every facet of his life and ideas. After his death the journal was abandoned; she would henceforth serve the master by perpetuating his artistic heritage through
10248-582: The age of twenty, after a long wasting illness. Cosima's first child, a daughter born on 12 October 1860, was named Daniela in Daniel's memory. A further, unexpected blow for Cosima fell in September 1862, when her sister Blandine, who had shared much of her upbringing, died in childbirth—she had been married to Émile Ollivier , a Parisian lawyer, since October 1857. Cosima's second daughter, born in March 1863,
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#173277183839010416-450: The appointment would stand. Levi would subsequently establish himself as the supreme conductor of the work, held by critical opinion to be "beyond praise". At the second Bayreuth Festival Parsifal was performed 16 times; at the last performance on 29 August, Wagner himself conducted the final scene. Cosima wrote afterwards of how different the orchestra and singers sounded under Wagner. Overall, she and Wagner were entirely satisfied with
10584-490: The architect Gottfried Semper . Wagner's involvement in left-wing politics abruptly ended his welcome in Dresden. Wagner was active among socialist German nationalists there, regularly receiving such guests as the conductor and radical editor August Röckel and the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin . He was also influenced by the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Ludwig Feuerbach . Widespread discontent came to
10752-594: The arts throughout the 20th century; his influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, the visual arts and theatre. Richard Wagner was born on 22 May 1813 to an ethnic German family in Leipzig , then part of the Confederation of the Rhine . His family lived at No 3, the Brühl ( The House of the Red and White Lions ) in Leipzig's Jewish quarter . He was baptised at St. Thomas Church . He
10920-528: The child as his own, and registered her as "the legitimate daughter" of Hans and Cosima von Bülow. Wagner attended the Catholic baptism on 24 April. On 10 June 1865, at the Munich Hofoper , von Bülow conducted the premiere of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde . Wagner's role at Ludwig's court became controversial; in particular, Ludwig's habit of referring Wagner's policy ideas to his ministers alarmed
11088-443: The city were dented when her influential mother, Madame de Flavigny, refused to acknowledge the children; Marie would not be accepted socially while her daughters were clearly in evidence. Liszt's solution was to remove the girls from Marie and place them with his mother, Anna Liszt, in her Paris home while Daniel remained with nurses in Venice. By this means, both Marie and Liszt could continue their independent lives. Relations between
11256-436: The conclusion of the festival Cosima received a long, critical memorandum from an unknown observer, which highlighted numerous divergences from Wagner's directions. This, says Marek, proved to be a critical factor in determining her future life's mission: the maintenance of Wagner's heritage creations through the preservation of his interpretations. In her seclusion, Cosima learned of an abortive plan masterminded by Julius Kniese,
11424-596: The conclusion of the festival the Wagner family departed for an extended stay in Venice. To accommodate the large party of children, servants and expected guests they took a spacious apartment in the Palazzo Vendramin Calergi , overlooking the Grand Canal . The principal concern during the autumn and winter months was Wagner's declining health; his heart spasms had become so frequent that on 16 November 1882 Cosima recorded: "Today he did not have
11592-458: The conductor Hans von Bülow . Although the marriage produced two children, it was largely a loveless union, and in 1863 Cosima began a relationship with Wagner, who was 24 years her senior. They married in 1870; after Wagner's death in 1883 she directed the Bayreuth Festival for more than 20 years, increasing its repertoire to form the Bayreuth canon of ten operas and establishing the festival as
11760-452: The couple cooled, and by 1841 they were seeing little of each other; it is likely that both engaged in other affairs. By 1845 the breach between them was such that they were communicating only through third parties. Liszt forbade contact between mother and daughters; Marie accused him of attempting to steal "the fruits of a mother's womb", while Liszt insisted on his sole right to decide the children's future. Marie threatened to fight him "like
11928-435: The couple had amassed such large debts that they fled Riga on the run from creditors. Debts plagued Wagner for most of his life. Initially the pair took a stormy sea passage to London, from which Wagner drew the inspiration for his opera Der fliegende Holländer ( The Flying Dutchman ), with a plot based on a sketch by Heinrich Heine . The Wagners settled in Paris in September 1839 and stayed there until 1842. Wagner made
12096-570: The couple's first son, Wieland , was born on 5 January 1917, Cosima celebrated by playing excerpts from the Siegfried Idyll on Wagner's piano. The outbreak of the First World War curtailed the 1914 festival; the conflict and the political and economic upheavals that followed the war closed the Festpielhaus until 1924. Plans for the festival's resumption coincided with an upsurge in Germany of extreme nationalist politics. Adolf Hitler ,
12264-443: The court, who were suspicious of his influence on the King. In December 1865, Ludwig was finally forced to ask the composer to leave Munich. He apparently also toyed with the idea of abdicating to follow his hero into exile, but Wagner quickly dissuaded him. Ludwig installed Wagner at the Villa Tribschen , beside Switzerland's Lake Lucerne . Die Meistersinger was completed at Tribschen in 1867, and premiered in Munich on 21 June
12432-483: The court. When Wagner demanded the sacking both of Ludwig's cabinet secretary and of his prime minister, there was a public outcry, and in December 1865 Ludwig reluctantly told Wagner to leave Bavaria. The king did not, however, withdraw his patronage or financial support. After a few months' wandering, in March 1866 Wagner arrived in Geneva , where Cosima joined him. They travelled together to Lucerne where they found
12600-677: The elaborate use of leitmotifs —musical phrases associated with individual characters, places, ideas, or plot elements. His advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres , greatly influenced the development of classical music; his Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music . As he matured, he softened his ideological stance against traditional operatic forms (ie. arias, ensembles and choruses ), reintroducing them into his last few stage works, including Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg ( The Mastersingers of Nuremberg ) and Parsifal . To properly present his vision of
12768-401: The embalming process, which occupied the next two days, Cosima sat with the body as often as possible, to the dismay of her children. She also asked her daughters to cut her hair, which was then sewn into a cushion and placed on Wagner's breast. On 16 February the journey back to Bayreuth began, and on Sunday 18 February the cortège processed to Wahnfried, where, following a brief service, Wagner
12936-764: The entire Bayreuth project; he was distracted from such thoughts by an invitation to conduct a series of concerts in London. Leaving the children behind, he and Cosima enjoyed a two-month break in England where, among others, Cosima met the novelist George Eliot , the poet Robert Browning , and the painter Edward Burne-Jones (who made a number of sketches of Cosima from which no finished painting emerged). On 17 May both Wagners were received by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle . The English tour raised little money but restored Wagner's spirits. On his return he began work on what would prove to be his final stage work, Parsifal ,
13104-409: The entire work "divinely composed", and that of the French newspaper Le Figaro who called the music "the dream of a lunatic". Wagner himself was far from satisfied; in a letter to Ludwig he denounced the singers Albert Niemann and Franz Betz as "theatrical parasites" and complained that Richter had not got a single tempo correct. Months later, Cosima records, his attitude towards the productions
13272-524: The event in her journal: "... music was sounding, and what music! After it had died away, R ... put into my hands the score of his "Symphonic Birthday Greeting. ... R had set up his orchestra on the stairs, and thus consecrated our Tribschen forever!" This was the first performance of the music that became known as the Siegfried Idyll . Wagner's deception over his relationship with Cosima had seriously damaged his standing with Ludwig. Matters were worsened by Ludwig's insistence, over Wagner's objections, that
13440-422: The family home, " Wahnfried ", into which Wagner, with Cosima and the children, moved from their temporary accommodation on 18 April 1874. The theatre was completed in 1875, and the festival was scheduled for the following year. Commenting on the struggle to finish the building, Wagner remarked to Cosima: "Each stone is red with my blood and yours." For the design of the Festspielhaus, Wagner appropriated some of
13608-435: The festival was deferred. To raise funds for the construction, " Wagner societies " were formed in several cities, and Wagner began touring Germany conducting concerts. By the spring of 1873, only a third of the required funds had been raised; further pleas to Ludwig were initially ignored, but early in 1874, with the project on the verge of collapse, the King relented and provided a loan. The full building programme included
13776-531: The festival's chorus-master, by which Liszt was to assume the role of music director and Bülow would be chief conductor. Neither Liszt nor Bülow was interested in this arrangement, and the plan died. With Groß's assistance, Cosima pre-empted any further attempts by outsiders to assume control of the Wagner legacy, by obtaining legal recognition of herself and Siegfried as sole heirs to all Wagner's property, physical and intellectual . By this means she secured an unassailable advantage over any other claim on direction of
13944-498: The festival's future. In 1885 Cosima announced that she would direct the 1886 festival. Her tenure as Bayreuth's director lasted for 22 years, until 1907. During that time she oversaw 13 festivals, and by gradually increasing the repertory established the " Bayreuth canon " of ten mature Wagner works. Her triumvirate of conductors—Levi, Richter and Felix Mottl —shared the musical direction until 1894, when Levi left. Richter and Mottl served throughout Cosima's years, joined by several of
14112-488: The festival's hostess was described by a young American visitor in fulsome terms: "Mme Wagner is exceedingly gracious and affable ... a magnificent-looking woman, a perfect queen ..." The festival began on 13 August and lasted until 30th. It consisted of three full Ring cycles, all under the baton of Hans Richter . At the end, critical reactions ranged between that of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg , who thought
14280-422: The first evening of the complete Ring cycle; the 1876 Bayreuth Festival therefore saw the premiere of the complete cycle, performed as a sequence as the composer had intended. The 1876 Festival consisted of three full Ring cycles (under the baton of Hans Richter ). At the end, critical reactions ranged between that of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg , who thought the work "divinely composed", and that of
14448-616: The first of 11 performances took place on 24 December 1903. The enterprise was a popular and critical success, though in Cosima's view it was a "rape"; her hostility towards the Metropolitan lasted for the remainder of her life. By the beginning of the new century three of Cosima's daughters had married: Blandina to Count Biagio Gravina in the closing days of the 1882 festival, Daniela to Henry Thode , an art historian, on 3 July 1886, and Isolde, Cosima's first child by Wagner, who married
14616-476: The five Ring cycles; he remained one of Bayreuth's regular conductors for the remainder of Cosima's tenure. In common with Wagner, Cosima was willing to shelve her anti-Semitic prejudices in the interests of Bayreuth, to the extent of continuing to employ Levi for whom she developed considerable artistic respect. However, she frequently undermined him behind his back in private letters, and allowed her children to mimic and mock him. Cosima expressed to Weingartner
14784-444: The following year. At Ludwig's insistence, "special previews" of the first two works of the Ring , Das Rheingold and Die Walküre , were performed at Munich in 1869 and 1870, but Wagner retained his dream, first expressed in "A Communication to My Friends", to present the first complete cycle at a special festival with a new, dedicated, opera house . Minna died of a heart attack on 25 January 1866 in Dresden. Wagner did not attend
14952-416: The funeral. Following Minna's death Cosima wrote to Hans von Bülow several times asking him to grant her a divorce, but Bülow refused to concede this. He consented only after she had two more children with Wagner: another daughter, named Eva, after the heroine of Meistersinger , and a son Siegfried , named after the hero of the Ring . The divorce was finally sanctioned, after delays in the legal process, by
15120-428: The ideas of his former colleague, Gottfried Semper, which he had previously solicited for a proposed new opera house in Munich. Wagner was responsible for several theatrical innovations at Bayreuth; these include darkening the auditorium during performances, and placing the orchestra in a pit out of view of the audience. The Festspielhaus finally opened on 13 August 1876 with Das Rheingold , at last taking its place as
15288-605: The immediate aftermath of Cosima's death, some writers heaped copious praise on her. Ernest Newman , Wagner's biographer, called her "the greatest figure that ever came within [Wagner's] circle"; Richard Du Moulin-Eckart [ de ] , Cosima's first biographer, introduced her as "the greatest woman of the century". In time judgements became more measured, and divided. Marek closes his account by emphasising her role not only as Wagner's protector but as his muse: "Without her there would have been no Siegfried Idyll , no Bayreuth, and no Parsifal ". In Hensher's judgement, "Wagner
15456-524: The importance of the orchestra is equal to that of the singers. The orchestra's dramatic role in the later operas includes the use of leitmotifs , musical phrases that can be interpreted as announcing specific characters, locales, and plot elements; their complex interweaving and evolution illuminate the progression of the drama. These operas are still, despite Wagner's reservations, referred to by many writers as "music dramas". Wagner's earliest attempts at opera were often uncompleted. Abandoned works include
15624-778: The impression it produced on me," and claimed that the "profoundly human and ecstatic performance of this incomparable artist" kindled in him an "almost demonic fire". In 1831, Wagner enrolled at the Leipzig University , where he became a member of the Saxon student fraternity . He took composition lessons with the Thomaskantor Theodor Weinlig . Weinlig was so impressed with Wagner's musical ability that he refused any payment for his lessons. He arranged for his pupil's Piano Sonata in B-flat major (which
15792-540: The journal Bayreuther Blätter , published by his supporter Hans von Wolzogen . Wagner's sudden interest in Christianity at this period, which infuses Parsifal , was contemporary with his increasing alignment with German nationalism , and required on his part, and the part of his associates, "the rewriting of some recent Wagnerian history", so as to represent, for example, the Ring as a work reflecting Christian ideals. Many of these later articles, including "What
15960-568: The king that she could not bear the insults to which she was continually subjected in Munich, and wished to escape from the world. In October 1868 Cosima asked her husband for a divorce, to which he would not initially agree. To sceptical enquirers he explained her absence from the von Bülow family home by a supposed visit to her half-sister in Versailles. In June 1869, immediately after the birth of her and Wagner's third and final child, Siegfried , Cosima wrote to von Bülow in what she called
16128-539: The last hundred years, although the overture to Rienzi is an occasional concert-hall piece. Die Feen , Das Liebesverbot , and Rienzi were performed at both Leipzig and Bayreuth in 2013 to mark the composer's bicentenary. Cosima Wagner Francesca Gaetana Cosima Wagner ( née Liszt ; 24 December 1837 – 1 April 1930) was the daughter of the Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt and Franco-German romantic author Marie d'Agoult . She became
16296-563: The last of his middle-period operas, before the Dresden uprising, and now wrote desperately to his friend Franz Liszt to have it staged in his absence. Liszt conducted the premiere in Weimar in August 1850. Nevertheless, Wagner was in grim personal straits, isolated from the German musical world and without any regular income. In 1850, Julie, the wife of his friend Karl Ritter, began to pay him
16464-477: The last time: they parted irrevocably, though Wagner continued to give financial support to her while she lived in Dresden until her death in 1866. In Biebrich, Wagner, at last, began work on Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg , his only mature comedy. Wagner wrote a first draft of the libretto in 1845, and he had resolved to develop it during a visit he had made to Venice with the Wesendoncks in 1860, where he
16632-403: The leading conductors of the day, although Bülow resisted all offers to participate. In the course of her long stewardship Cosima overcame the misgivings of the hardline Wagnerites patrons who believed that Wagner's works should not be entrusted to a non-German. Under her watch the festival moved from an uncertain financial basis into a prosperous business undertaking that brought great riches to
16800-439: The marks of provincial tastelessness". From the beginning of August 1876 distinguished guests began to converge on the town; Ludwig, incognito, attended the final dress rehearsals between 6 and 9 August, but then left the town, reappearing in time to attend the final performances of the festival. Among other royal visitors were the German emperor Wilhelm I , Dom Pedro II of Brazil and an assortment of princes and grand dukes from
16968-531: The masses in order to achieve fame and financial success, rather than creating genuine works of art. In " Opera and Drama " (1851), Wagner described the aesthetics of music drama that he was using to create the Ring cycle. Before leaving Dresden, Wagner had drafted a scenario that eventually became Der Ring des Nibelungen . He initially wrote the libretto for a single opera, Siegfried's Tod ( Siegfried's Death ), in 1848. After arriving in Zürich, he expanded
17136-443: The match, and the marriage took place at St. Hedwig's Cathedral , Berlin, on 18 August 1857. During their honeymoon, along with Liszt they visited Wagner at his home near Zurich. This visit was repeated the following year, when Cosima, on taking her leave, shocked Wagner with an emotional demonstration: "[S]he fell at my feet, covered my hands with tears and kisses ... I pondered the mystery, without being able to solve it". Cosima,
17304-516: The most important event of his life. His personal circumstances certainly made him an easy convert to what he understood to be Schopenhauer's philosophy, sometimes categorised as " philosophical pessimism ". He remained an adherent of Schopenhauer for the rest of his life. One of Schopenhauer's doctrines was that music held a supreme role in the arts as a direct expression of the world's essence, namely, blind, impulsive will. This doctrine contradicted Wagner's view, expressed in "Opera and Drama", that
17472-418: The music in opera had to be subservient to the drama. Wagner scholars have argued that Schopenhauer's influence caused Wagner to assign a more commanding role to music in his later operas, including the latter half of the Ring cycle, which he had yet to compose. Aspects of Schopenhauerian doctrine found their way into Wagner's subsequent libretti. A second source of inspiration was Wagner's infatuation with
17640-407: The music to text, diction and character portrayal was a specific feature of the Bayreuth style; Cosima, according to Spotts, turned the principle of clear enunciation into "a fetish ... The resulting harsh declamatory style came to be derided as ... the infamous Bayreuth bark". Parsifal was shown alongside other works at each of Cosima's festivals except for 1896, which was devoted to a revival of
17808-580: The next festival for 1882, to be devoted entirely to the new work. Wagner secured Ludwig's agreement that Parsifal should be staged exclusively at Bayreuth, but in return, Ludwig required that his current Munich Kapellmeister , Hermann Levi , should conduct the festival. Wagner objected on the grounds of Levi's Jewish faith; Parsifal , he maintained, was a "Christian" opera. Both he and Cosima were vehement anti-Semites; Hilmes conjectures that Cosima inherited this in her youth, from her father, from Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, probably from Madame Patersi and,
17976-524: The occasion much later, the Pringle suspicions led to a furious row between Cosima and Wagner on the morning of 13 February. There is no evidence of an affair between Wagner and Pringle, nor is Isolde's story of a row supported by any other testimony. At around noon on that day, Wagner suffered a fatal heart attack, and he died in the middle of the afternoon. Cosima sat with Wagner's body for more than 24 hours, refusing all refreshment or respite. During
18144-478: The operas he had previously written through Lohengrin. Partly in an attempt to explain his change of views, Wagner published in 1851 the autobiographical " A Communication to My Friends ". This included his first public announcement of what was to become the Ring cycle: I shall never write an Opera more. As I have no wish to invent an arbitrary title for my works, I will call them Dramas ... I propose to produce my myth in three complete dramas, preceded by
18312-439: The outcome of the festival which, unlike its predecessor, had made a handsome profit: "[N]ot once did the spirit of toil and dedication on the part of the artists abate ... I believe one may be satisfied". One dissident voice was that of Friedrich Nietzsche , once a devoted friend of Wagner's but latterly a harsh critic. Nietzsche considered Parsifal an abomination for which Cosima was responsible; she had corrupted Wagner. At
18480-506: The pit unseen during act 3, took the baton from conductor Hermann Levi , and led the performance to its conclusion. After the festival, the Wagner family journeyed to Venice for the winter. Wagner died of a heart attack at the age of 69 on 13 February 1883 at Ca' Vendramin Calergi , a 16th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal . The legend that the attack was prompted by an argument with Cosima over Wagner's supposedly amorous interest in
18648-565: The poet-writer Mathilde Wesendonck , the wife of the silk merchant Otto Wesendonck. Wagner met the Wesendoncks, who were both great admirers of his music, in Zürich in 1852. From May 1853 onwards Wesendonck made several loans to Wagner to finance his household expenses in Zürich, and in 1857 placed a cottage on his estate at Wagner's disposal, which became known as the Asyl ("asylum" or "place of rest"). During this period, Wagner's growing passion for his patron's wife inspired him to put aside work on
18816-509: The premiere of Parsifal . He had successively courted Blandina and then Isolde, before settling on Eva. Cosima had considerable empathy with his theories; according to Carr "she came to love him as her son—perhaps even more". Chamberlain became the dominant figure within the Wagner circle, and was largely responsible for the increasing alienation of the Beidlers. Cosima may have been unaware of Isolde's attempts at rapprochement, because Eva and Chamberlain withheld Isolde's letters. In 1913 Isolde
18984-435: The premiere of Wagner's Lohengrin at Weimar in August 1850, and had decided to dedicate his life to music. After a brief spell conducting in small opera houses, Bülow studied with Liszt, who was convinced that he would become a great concert pianist. Bülow was quickly impressed by Cosima's own skill as a pianist, in which he saw the stamp of her father, and the pair developed romantic feelings for each other. Liszt approved
19152-412: The premieres of the two completed Ring operas, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre , be given at once, in Munich, rather than as part of a complete Ring cycle on some future date at a venue of Wagner's choosing. To Wagner's mortification these premieres took place, under Franz Wüllner , on 22 September 1869 and 26 June 1870 respectively. The need for a theatre of his own, and full artistic control,
19320-566: The prestigious Lycée Bonaparte. In 1847 Liszt met Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein , the estranged wife of a German prince who lived in Russia. By the autumn of 1848 she and Liszt had become lovers, and their relationship lasted for the remainder of his life. She quickly assumed responsibility for the management of Liszt's life, including the upbringing of his daughters. Early in 1850 Liszt had been disturbed to learn that Blandine and Cosima were seeing their mother again; his response, guided by
19488-513: The princess, was to remove them from their school and place them into the full-time care of Carolyne's old governess, the 72-year-old Madame Patersi de Fossombroni. Liszt's instructions were clear—Madame Patersi was to control every aspect of the girls' lives: "She alone is to decide what is to be permitted them and what forbidden". Blandine and Cosima were subjected to the Patersi curriculum for four years. Cosima's biographer Oliver Hilmes likens
19656-476: The proposed date for the initial festival was deferred. By the spring of 1873 only a third of the required funds had been raised; further pleas to Ludwig were initially ignored, but early in 1874, with the entire project on the verge of collapse, the king relented and provided a loan. The full building programme included a handsome villa, "Wahnfried", into which Wagner, with Cosima and the children, moved from their temporary accommodation on 18 April 1874. The theatre
19824-556: The regime to that used for breaking in horses, though Marek describes it as exacting but ultimately beneficial to Cosima: "Above all, Patersi taught her how a 'noble lady' must behave, how to alight from a carriage, how to enter a drawing room, how to greet a duchess as against a commoner ... and how not to betray herself when she was hurt". On 10 October 1853 Liszt arrived at the Patersi apartment, his first visit to his daughters since 1845. With him were two fellow-composers: Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner . Carolyne's daughter Marie, who
19992-441: The second act); but the opportunity was also exploited by those who wanted to use the occasion as a veiled political protest against the pro-Austrian policies of Napoleon III . It was during this visit that Wagner met the French poet Charles Baudelaire , who wrote an appreciative brochure, " Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris ". The opera was withdrawn after the third performance and Wagner left Paris soon after. He had sought
20160-463: The second wife of the German composer Richard Wagner , and with him founded the Bayreuth Festival as a showcase for his stage works; after his death she devoted the rest of her life to the promotion of his music and philosophy. Commentators have recognised Cosima as the principal inspiration for Wagner's later works, particularly Parsifal . In 1857, after a childhood largely spent under the care of her grandmother and with governesses, Cosima married
20328-689: The singer Carrie Pringle , who had been a Flower-maiden in Parsifal at Bayreuth, is without credible evidence. After a funerary gondola bore Wagner's remains over the Grand Canal, his body was taken to Germany where it was buried in the garden of the Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth. Wagner's musical output is listed by the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis (WWV) as comprising 113 works, including fragments and projects. The first complete scholarly edition of his musical works in print
20496-423: The story with Der junge Siegfried ( Young Siegfried ), which explored the hero's background. He completed the text of the cycle by writing the libretti for Die Walküre ( The Valkyrie ) and Das Rheingold ( The Rhine Gold ) and revising the other libretti to conform to his new concept, completing them in 1852. The concept of opera expressed in "Opera and Drama" and in other essays effectively renounced all
20664-632: The strong support of Giacomo Meyerbeer , it was accepted for performance by the Dresden Court Theatre ( Hofoper ) in the Kingdom of Saxony , and in 1842 Wagner moved to Dresden. His relief at returning to Germany was recorded in his " Autobiographic Sketch " of 1842, where he wrote that, en route from Paris, "For the first time I saw the Rhine —with hot tears in my eyes, I, poor artist, swore eternal fidelity to my German fatherland." Rienzi
20832-412: The task of writing the libretto (the text and lyrics) to others, Wagner wrote his own libretti, which he referred to as "poems". From 1849 onwards, he urged a new concept of opera often referred to as "music drama" (although he later rejected this term), in which all musical, poetic and dramatic elements were to be fused together—the Gesamtkunstwerk . Wagner developed a compositional style in which
21000-432: The theatre by attending the dress rehearsals for Parsifal , and watching the first act at the opening performance on 23 July. The tenor Lauritz Melchior remembered Siegfried returning from frequent visits to a small gallery above the stage and saying "Mama wants..." By 1927, the year of her 90th birthday, Cosima's health was failing. The birthday was marked in Bayreuth by the naming of a street in her honour, although she
21168-709: The theatre in Würzburg . In the same year, at the age of 20, Wagner composed his first complete opera, Die Feen ( The Fairies ). This work, which imitated the style of Weber, went unproduced until half a century later, when it was premiered in Munich shortly after the composer's death in 1883. Having returned to Leipzig in 1834, Wagner held a brief appointment as musical director at the opera house in Magdeburg during which he wrote Das Liebesverbot ( The Ban on Love ), based on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure . This
21336-586: The theatre. The two married in Tragheim Church on 24 November 1836. In May 1837, Minna left Wagner for another man, and this was only the first débâcle of a tempestuous marriage. In June 1837, Wagner moved to Riga (then in the Russian Empire ), where he became music director of the local opera; having in this capacity engaged Minna's sister Amalie (also a singer) for the theatre, he presently resumed relations with Minna during 1838. By 1839,
21504-475: The theatre. The Wagners moved to the town the following year, and the foundation stone for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus ("Festival Theatre") was laid. Wagner initially announced the first Bayreuth Festival, at which for the first time the Ring cycle was presented complete, for 1873, but since Ludwig had declined to finance the project, the start of building was delayed and the proposed date for
21672-613: The third Ring drama, which he now called simply Siegfried , probably in September 1856, but by June 1857 he had completed only the first two acts. He decided to put the work aside to concentrate on a new idea: Tristan und Isolde , based on the Arthurian love story Tristan and Iseult . One source of inspiration for Tristan und Isolde was the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer , notably his The World as Will and Representation , to which Wagner had been introduced in 1854 by his poet friend Georg Herwegh . Wagner later called this
21840-426: The throne of Bavaria at the age of 18. The young king, an ardent admirer of Wagner's operas, had the composer brought to Munich. The King, who was homosexual, expressed in his correspondence a passionate personal adoration for the composer, and Wagner in his responses had no scruples about feigning reciprocal feelings. Ludwig settled Wagner's considerable debts and proposed to stage Tristan , Die Meistersinger ,
22008-461: The time she died, Wagner's reputation was ... at the forefront of a terrible political dynamism: antique stagings of his works were presented to audiences of Brownshirts ". The close association of the festival with Hitler and the Nazis during the 1930s was much more the work of Winifred—an overt Hitler supporter—than of Cosima, though Hensher asserts that "Cosima was as much to blame as anyone". In
22176-411: The town would be their future home. Wagner announced the first Bayreuth Festival for 1873, at which his full Ring cycle would be performed. Aware of the honour that such an event would bring to the town, the local council donated a large plot of land—the "Green Hill"—overlooking the town, as a site for the theatre. Since Ludwig had declined to finance the project, the start of building was delayed and
22344-478: The view of Cosima and her daughters was that no changes should ever be made to stage sets "on which the eye of the Master had rested". In December 1908 Eva, then 41, married Houston Stewart Chamberlain , a British-born historian who had adopted as his personal creed a fanatical form of German nationalism based on principles of extreme racial and cultural purity. He had known Cosima since 1888, though his affinity with Wagner extended back to 1882, when he had attended
22512-438: The view that "between Aryan and Semite blood there could exist no bond whatever". In accordance with this doctrine, she would not invite Gustav Mahler (born Jewish though a convert to Catholicism) to conduct at Bayreuth, although she frequently took his advice over artistic matters. Cosima was determined to preserve Bayreuth's exclusive right, acknowledged by Ludwig, to perform Parsifal . After Ludwig's death in 1886 this right
22680-521: The works, Wagner had his own opera house built to his specifications: the Bayreuth Festspielhaus , which featured many innovative design elements intended to immerse the audience in the drama. The premieres of The Ring and Parsifal took place there, and his most important stage works are performed at the annual Bayreuth Festival . The early success of the festival was secured by the efforts of his wife, Cosima Wagner , and has since been maintained by their descendants , attracting audiences from around
22848-452: The world. Wagner's unorthodox operas, essays, and personal dealings engendered considerable controversy during his lifetime, and continue to do so. Declared a "genius" by some and a "disease" by others, his music is widely performed, but his views on religion, politics, and social life are debated—most notably on the extent to which his antisemitism finds expression in his stage and prose works. The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of
23016-424: Was "Never again, never again!". After the conclusion of the festival and the departure of the guests, Wagner and Cosima left with the children for Venice, where they remained until December. The festival had accumulated a large financial deficit; this, and Wagner's deep artistic dissatisfaction, precluded the possibility of any repeat in the near future. Wagner's mood was such that he seriously contemplated giving up
23184-469: Was a defining aspect of Bayreuth for decades, into the Nazi era which closely followed her death there in 1930. Thus, although she is widely perceived as the saviour of the festival, her legacy remains controversial. In January 1833 the 21-year-old Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt met Marie d'Agoult , a Parisian socialite six years his senior. Marie's antecedents were mixed; her German mother, from
23352-414: Was aggravated by Cosima's total withdrawal from all contact except that of her daughters and her friend and adviser Adolf von Groß. Without Cosima's participation the 1883 festival, as planned by Wagner—12 performances of Parsifal —went ahead, with Emil Scaria (who sang the role of Gurnemanz in the opera) doubling as artistic director. The cast was largely that of 1882, and Levi remained as conductor. At
23520-650: Was also much troubled by problems of financing Parsifal , and by the prospect of the work being performed by other theatres than Bayreuth. He was once again assisted by the liberality of King Ludwig, but was still forced by his personal financial situation in 1877 to sell the rights of several of his unpublished works (including the Siegfried Idyll ) to the publisher Schott . Wagner wrote several articles in his later years, often on political topics, and often reactionary in tone, repudiating some of his earlier, more liberal, views. These include "Religion and Art" (1880) and "Heroism and Christianity" (1881), which were printed in
23688-526: Was briefly challenged by his successor, an attempt swiftly defeated by Cosima with the help of Groß. A more serious threat arose from the German copyright laws, which only protected works for 30 years following the creator's death; thus Parsifal would lose its protection in 1913 regardless of any agreement with the Bavarian court. In anticipation, in 1901 Cosima sought to have the period of copyright protection extended by law to 50 years. She lobbied members of
23856-412: Was buried in the garden. Cosima remained in the house until the ceremonies were over; according to her daughter Daniela she then went to the grave "and for a long time lay down on the coffin until Fidi (Siegfried) went to fetch her". Afterwards she went into seclusion for many months, barely even seeing her children, with whom she communicated mainly through written notes. Among many messages, she received
24024-497: Was clear that her health was such that she could no longer remain in charge at Bayreuth; this responsibility now passed to Siegfried, her long-designated heir. The succession was accomplished against a background of family disagreement; Beidler thought that he had rights, based partly on his greater conducting experience and also because he and Isolde had produced Wagner's only grandchild, a son born in October 1901, who could establish
24192-627: Was commenced in 1970 under the aegis of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur of Mainz , and is presently under the editorship of Egon Voss . It will consist of 21 volumes (57 books) of music and 10 volumes (13 books) of relevant documents and texts. As at October 2017, three volumes remain to be published. The publisher is Schott Music . Wagner's operatic works are his primary artistic legacy. Unlike most opera composers, who generally left
24360-565: Was completed in 1875, and the festival scheduled for the following year. Commenting on the struggle to finish the building Wagner remarked to Cosima: "Each stone is red with my blood and yours". During this period Cosima admitted to Liszt, who had taken minor orders in the Catholic Church, that she intended to convert to Protestantism. Her motive may have been more the desire to maintain solidarity with Wagner than from religious conviction; Hilmes maintains that at heart, "Cosima remained
24528-525: Was consequently dedicated to him) to be published as Wagner's Op. 1. A year later, Wagner composed his Symphony in C major , a Beethovenesque work performed in Prague in 1832 and at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1833. He then began to work on an opera, Die Hochzeit ( The Wedding ), which he never completed. In 1833, Wagner's brother Albert managed to obtain for him a position as choirmaster at
24696-487: Was determined to set it to music and persuaded his family to allow him music lessons. By 1827, the family had returned to Leipzig. Wagner's first lessons in harmony were taken during 1828–1831 with Christian Gottlieb Müller. In January 1828 he first heard Beethoven 's 7th Symphony and then, in March, the same composer's 9th Symphony , both at the Gewandhaus . Beethoven became a major inspiration, and Wagner wrote
24864-406: Was easy to tell that something was going on between Frau Cosima and Richard Wagner". Mrazek said that later in the visit von Bülow found his wife in Wagner's bedroom, but nevertheless made no demands for an explanation, either from Wagner or from his wife. Nine months after this visit, on 10 April 1865, Cosima gave birth to a daughter, Isolde . Such was von Bülow's devotion to Wagner that he accepted
25032-501: Was effectively disinherited when she sought to confirm her rights as a co-heir to the considerable Wagner fortunes in a court case, which she lost. After this she withdrew, and to the time of her death in 1919 never again saw or communicated directly with Cosima. A happier family event from Cosima's standpoint was Siegfried's marriage in 1915, at the age of 46, to Winifred Williams , the 18-year-old foster-daughter of Karl Klindworth who had been friends with both Wagner and Liszt. When
25200-543: Was enrolled at Pastor Wetzel's school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano instruction from his Latin teacher. He struggled to play a proper scale at the keyboard and preferred playing theatre overtures by ear . Following Geyer's death in 1821, Richard was sent to the Kreuzschule , the boarding school of the Dresdner Kreuzchor , at the expense of Geyer's brother. At the age of nine he
25368-567: Was falling into a deepening depression . Wagner fell victim to ill health, according to Ernest Newman "largely a matter of overwrought nerves", which made it difficult for him to continue writing. Wagner's primary published output during his first years in Zürich was a set of essays. In " The Artwork of the Future " (1849), he described a vision of opera as Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), in which music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts and stagecraft were unified. " Judaism in Music " (1850)
25536-577: Was hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Carl Maria von Weber 's opera Der Freischütz , which he saw Weber conduct. At this period Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright. His first creative effort, listed in the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis (the standard listing of Wagner's works) as WWV 1, was a tragedy called Leubald . Begun when he was in school in 1826, the play was strongly influenced by Shakespeare and Goethe . Wagner
25704-466: Was inspired by Titian 's painting The Assumption of the Virgin . Throughout this period (1861–1864) Wagner sought to have Tristan und Isolde produced in Vienna. Despite many rehearsals, the opera remained unperformed, and gained a reputation as being "impossible" to sing, which added to Wagner's financial problems. Wagner's fortunes took a dramatic upturn in 1864, when King Ludwig II succeeded to
25872-666: Was named Blandine Elisabeth Veronica Theresia [ de ] . Bülow was committed to Wagner's music; in 1858 he had undertaken the preparation of a vocal score for Tristan und Isolde , and by 1862 he was making a fair copy of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg . A social relationship developed, and during the summer of 1862 the Bülows stayed with Wagner at the composer's home at Biebrich . Wagner records that Cosima became "transfigured" by his rendering of "Wotan's Farewell" from Die Walküre . In October 1862, just after Blandine's death, Wagner and Bülow shared conducting duties at
26040-518: Was not fully abandoned until after the Second World War , when a new generation took charge of the festival. Hilmes likens Cosima's role to that of the abbess of a religious community: "a cohesive, quasi-religious congregation of Bayreuthians sharing a common philosophical outlook". Anti-Semitism was integral to this philosophy; although in 1869 Cosima had opposed the re-publication of Wagner's anti-Jewish treatise Jewishness in Music , this
26208-414: Was not of sufficient importance to dim the glory of the Festival, even for a moment". Die Meistersinger was added in 1888, Tannhäuser in 1891, Lohengrin in 1894 and Der fliegende Holländer in 1901. After the 1894 festival Levi resigned, the years of working in an anti-Semitic ambience having finally had their effect. At the 1896 festival Siegfried made his Bayreuth conducting debut in one of
26376-440: Was now clear to Wagner. On 5 March 1870 Cosima, according to her journal, advised him to "look up the article on Baireuth [ sic ] in the encyclopaedia". Wagner knew the town from a short visit he had made there in 1835; he was attracted to it by its central location and by its quiet non-fashionability. When he and Cosima visited in April 1871 they decided immediately that they would build their theatre there, and that
26544-436: Was on grounds of commercial prudence rather than sensitivity. In 1881 she encouraged Wagner to write his essay "Know Thyself", and to include in it a tirade against Jewish assimilation. The critic and one-time librettist Philip Hensher writes that "under the guidance of her repulsive racial-theorist son-in-law [Chamberlain] ... Cosima tried to turn Bayreuth into a centre for the cult of German purity." Thus, he continues, "By
26712-493: Was present, described Cosima's appearance as "in the worst phase of adolescence, tall and angular, sallow ... the image of her father. Only her long golden hair, of unusual sheen, was beautiful". After a family meal, Wagner read to the group from his text for the final act of what was to become Götterdämmerung . Cosima seems to have made little impression on him; in his memoirs he merely recorded that both girls were very shy. As his daughters approached womanhood, Liszt felt that
26880-454: Was rehearsing a concert, Wagner and Cosima took a long cab ride through Berlin and declared their feelings for each other: "with tears and sobs", Wagner later wrote, "we sealed our confession to belong to each other alone". In 1864 Wagner's financial position was transformed by his new patron, the 18-year-old King Ludwig II of Bavaria , who paid off the composer's debts and awarded him a generous annual stipend. Ludwig also provided Wagner with
27048-426: Was staged at Magdeburg in 1836 but closed before the second performance; this, together with the financial collapse of the theatre company employing him, left the composer in bankruptcy. Wagner had fallen for one of the leading ladies at Magdeburg, the actress Christine Wilhelmine "Minna" Planer , and after the disaster of Das Liebesverbot he followed her to Königsberg , where she helped him to get an engagement at
27216-508: Was staged to considerable acclaim on 20 October. Wagner lived in Dresden for the next six years, eventually being appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. During this period, he staged there Der fliegende Holländer (2 January 1843) and Tannhäuser (19 October 1845), the first two of his three middle-period operas. Wagner also mixed with artistic circles in Dresden, including the composer Ferdinand Hiller and
27384-498: Was the first of Wagner's writings to feature antisemitic views. In this polemic Wagner asserted—often with vulgar, abusive language—that Jews lived as "outsiders" amid European societies and were disconnected from the national spirit ( Volksgeist ) of these countries, thus capable of producing only shallow and artificial imitations of European art music, despite having achieved technical proficiency in its study. According to Wagner, Jews such as Meyerbeer commercialised music catered to
27552-434: Was the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife, Johanna Rosine (née Pätz), the daughter of a baker. Wagner's father Carl died of typhoid fever six months after Richard's birth. Afterwards, his mother Johanna lived with Carl's friend, the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer . In August 1814 Johanna and Geyer probably married, although no documentation of this has been found in
27720-595: Was to be presented as a continuously sung narrative, without conventional operatic structures like arias and recitatives . He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the 16-hour, four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen ( The Ring of the Nibelung , also known simply as The Ring ). Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures , rich harmonies and orchestration , and
27888-410: Was to be touched by love". Of the sisters, Blandine was evidently the prettier; Cosima, with her long nose and wide mouth was described as an " ugly duckling ". Although Liszt's relations with his children were formal and distant, he provided for them liberally, and ensured that they were well educated. Both girls were sent to Madame Bernard's, an exclusive boarding school, while Daniel was prepared for
28056-407: Was unaware; the family thought that knowledge of the celebrations would overexcite her. In her last years she was virtually bedridden, became blind, and was lucid only at intervals. She died, aged 92, on 1 April 1930; after a funeral service at Wahnfried her body was taken to Coburg and cremated. In 1977, 47 years after her death, Cosima's urn was recovered from Coburg and buried alongside Wagner in
28224-520: Was withdrawn after its first performance. Rienzi (1842) was Wagner's first opera to be successfully staged. The compositional style of these early works was conventional—the relatively more sophisticated Rienzi showing the clear influence of Grand Opera à la Spontini and Meyerbeer—and did not exhibit the innovations that would mark Wagner's place in musical history. Later in life, Wagner said that he did not consider these works to be part of his oeuvre , and they have been performed only rarely in
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