Much would have turned out differently, had she been born a boy. Her dominant manner, her impulsive nature and her musical and artistic gifts made her stand out from her brothers even as a child – if she had been a boy, her pre-eminence among them would surely have been undisputed. Her ‘bad luck’, so to speak, was to have come into the world as a girl. Her grandfather Richard Wagner had in his day regarded his son Siegfried as the sole guarantor of the survival of his legacy, and Siegfried's birth had prompted an overwhelming sense of joy such as the composer had never before experienced. After the birth of his daughters Isolde and Eva, the birth of a male heir seemed to him to be an act of redemption and Siegfried was accordingly celebrated as a demi-god. ‘O hail to the day that illuminates us, hail to the sun that shines upon us,’ cried Cosima Wagner, Richard's second wife, quoting the close of the opera Siegfried from the Ring of the Nibelung. Richard was going to build a house just for his son and he wanted him to have a wild, oat-sowing youth – quite in contrast to the staid fate intended for his sisters. The birth of this son was immortalized in music in the Siegfried Idyll, composed by the proud father for Cosima and first performed on Christmas Day 1870.