Isolde’s Dream: Mathilde Wesendonck

By Judith Cabaud       Amadeus Press, 2017

 

Judith Cabaud has written an imaginative, entertaining, and well-researched work that places Mathilde Wesendonck at the center of Wagner’s pivot in 1857 to the music that resulted in perhaps the greatest and most influential of all operas, Tristan und Isolde. With  research from unexpected sources and some invention, Cabaud plumbs the life of Mathilde, her husband Otto Wesendonck, and Wagner’s transition that resulted in Tristan, and eventually Meistersinger, the last act of Siegfried, and Parsifal.

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Born Agnes Luckemeyer in 1828 to a well-to-do mercantile family in Wuppertal, the Rhineland, she attended finishing school in Dunkirk and at 18 returned to Wuppertal and to the many suitors.

 

At age 20 she married Otto Wesendonck, scion of one of the major importers of silk and exotic fabrics to Europe and the United States. Otto had spent his teen years in New York; his brother emigrated to Philadelphia.

 

Mathilda’s son died in infancy. Depressed, Otto thought a new life in New York would restore her spirits. Even though they were accepted into New York’s culture of the wealthy, she longed for her family in Germany and after a year the couple returned to Europe. They chose German-speaking Zurich, a center for textiles, from where Otto ran the European operations of his company and traveled frequently to the main offices in New York.

 

Richard Wagner, still in exile from Germany, frequently visited Zurich, where he conducted and led discussions among Zurich’s intellectuals. Topics included his 500-page volume “Opera and Drama.”

Wagner lived in Zurich off and on from 1849 to 1858. He exiled to Zurich 1849-50, then in 1850 rented a house, Tribschen, near Luzern which was owned by the Wesendonck family.  In 1852-3 he returned to Zurich where he sketched Lohengrin and Tristan; in 1853-4 he rented homes and connected with Otto, and 1856-58 he lived in a small house on the grounds of Otto’s estate, where Wagner completed Tristan and, inspired by  Mathilde’s poetry, wrote the Wesendonck Lieder.

 

Cabaud writes that Wagner met almost daily with Mathilde to read  and discuss “page by page” from his book “Opera and Drama.” Then, as he began writing the music to Tristan, he would compose in the morning and meet Mathilde about 5:00 at her home (away from his unhappy wife Minna) to play and discuss the day’s musical production.

 

The relationship was intense, though never consummated. Wagner felt she was his muse. Otto, recognizing Wagner’s genius, continued to support him with housing and a stipend, but by October of 1857 Otto returned from a business trip and was infuriated by the extent to which Wagner had insinuated himself into the daily life of the Wesendonck home. And there were rumors, many instigated by Minna. It would be another six years, in 1864, before Wagner met King Ludwig, although Otto remained a patron and friend.

 

After twenty years in Zurich, Otto and Mathilda relocated to the “tradition and etiquette” of Dresden. Wagner was building the Festspeilhaus and Otto signed on. Otto and Mathilde attended the opening of the Festspeilhaus August 13-17, 1876, for the first Ring. Others in attendance were Judith Gautier, Saint-Saens, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, the critic Hanslick, Liszt, and Nietzsche.

 

Mathilde attended Bayreuth almost every year after 1882.  She died in 1902, enroute to Bayreuth. Otto died In 1896

 

Cabaud has a flair for the novelistic. She imagines, for example, “On a small, quiet street, the sounds of footsteps and swishing dresses, below with tired faces covered by mourning veils,…” (p. 26)

 

On the other hand, Cabaud finds sources in unexpected places that shed light on their relationship. Lacking Wagner’s letters to Mathilda, which Wagner’s second wife Cosima “borrowed’ and then burned. Cabaud quotes from a letter Wagner wrote to his friend Eliza Wille “She (Mathilde) is and remains my first, my only love!... the summit of my life: …Her presence and her affection contain all the loveliness of my existence.” (p.157)

 

Cabaud has certainly restored Mathilda’s proper place in the Wagner story. Invented segments forgiven, this is a readable, insightful  and enjoyable book.

 

Frederic Harwood