Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Notes on this Translation
- Introduction: “He could not breathe without her”
- 1 “I have become her despot”: From Love to Marriage
- 2 “Deprived of incipient motherhood”: Riga, London, Paris, 1836–42
- 3 “Home for me is you alone”: Dresden 1842–47
- 4 “My knucklehead of a husband”: Revolution and Its Aftermath, 1848–50
- 5 “This ridiculous, amorous intrigue”: The Jessie Laussot Affair, 1850–51
- 6 “That good, foolish man …”: Exile in Zurich, 1852–54
- 7 “I’m a poor, stupid woman to have let you go …”: Zurich and London, 1854–56
- 8 “Alas, now all our happiness is gone …”: The Wesendonck Scandal, 1857–58
- 9 The Bitter End, 1858–59
- 10 “In love and fidelity, your Emma”: Emma Herwegh
- 11 “Neither wife, housekeeper, nor friend”: Dresden, Paris, Biebrich, 1860–62
- 12 “That weak, blind man …”: The End of a Marriage, 1863–66
- References
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
3 - “Home for me is you alone”: Dresden 1842–47
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Notes on this Translation
- Introduction: “He could not breathe without her”
- 1 “I have become her despot”: From Love to Marriage
- 2 “Deprived of incipient motherhood”: Riga, London, Paris, 1836–42
- 3 “Home for me is you alone”: Dresden 1842–47
- 4 “My knucklehead of a husband”: Revolution and Its Aftermath, 1848–50
- 5 “This ridiculous, amorous intrigue”: The Jessie Laussot Affair, 1850–51
- 6 “That good, foolish man …”: Exile in Zurich, 1852–54
- 7 “I’m a poor, stupid woman to have let you go …”: Zurich and London, 1854–56
- 8 “Alas, now all our happiness is gone …”: The Wesendonck Scandal, 1857–58
- 9 The Bitter End, 1858–59
- 10 “In love and fidelity, your Emma”: Emma Herwegh
- 11 “Neither wife, housekeeper, nor friend”: Dresden, Paris, Biebrich, 1860–62
- 12 “That weak, blind man …”: The End of a Marriage, 1863–66
- References
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Summary
“Oh, my dear children, believe me, I share your feelings,” wrote Richard to Cäcilie and Eduard Avenarius on April 21, 1842:
I am still completely lukewarm in seeing to my affairs because my mind remains too full of Paris and the good, dear people there […] Minna wants things to go badly for me so that I have to arrange a contract with Schlesinger and go back to Paris:—the poor woman thinks of nothing else other than Paris.
In retrospect, Paris seemed to Minna to have been paradise in its purest form. She had left treasured friends and relatives behind there, and her thoughts were constantly of Cäcilie, her husband Eduard, and “dear, dear Paris.” Everything was transfigured in her memory. She had become especially fond of her nephew Max, Cäcilie’s son: “I want to kiss my dear little boy Max so much that he will wish his awful aunt eternal life with a thunderclap. I already have a little outfit ready for him that will be just to your taste—oh, God, if only the time were here where I could press you both to my heart!,” she wrote. Her yearnings offer evidence enough to disprove the frequent claims that Minna’s sole interests were financial security and a bourgeois environment. Three weeks later, she again wrote to Cäcilie:
Paris seems to me like heaven, and I can only think back on it in tears. Who would have imagined it, when we arrived in Paris, that it would one day be so difficult for me to leave it again! […] It has never before been so difficult for me to leave somewhere. There is nothing here that appeals to me.
While she was writing, a letter actually arrived from Cäcilie and Eduard that made both Minna and Richard burst into tears. Richard wrote back to them:
[Minna] told me just now, in floods of tears, that she would do all she could to have my operas flop, because then I’d have no choice but to go back to Paris! […] I can’t give any other reply to your dear, dear letter, Cäcilie, than a general outburst of emotion; Minna finds it impossible to add a single line, she is quite distraught.
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- Information
- Minna WagnerA Life, with Richard Wagner, pp. 70 - 98Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022