62 Facts About Cosima Wagner

Francesca Gaetana Cosima Wagner was the daughter of the Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt and Franco-German romantic author Marie d'Agoult.

Cosima Wagner became 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.

Cosima Wagner shared Wagner's convictions of German cultural and racial superiority, and under her influence, Bayreuth became increasingly identified with antisemitism.

Cosima Wagner 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 Wagner were seeing their mother again; his response, guided by 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.

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Blandine and Cosima Wagner were subjected to the Patersi curriculum for four years.

Cosima Wagner seems to have made little impression on him; in his memoirs he merely recorded that both girls were very shy.

At least initially, Cosima Wagner took an interest in her husband's career, encouraging him to extend his activities into composition.

Cosima Wagner's first child, a daughter born on 12 October 1860, was named Daniela in Daniel's memory.

Cosima Wagner's second daughter, born in March 1863, was named Blandine Elisabeth Veronica Theresia.

Wagner records that Cosima became "transfigured" by his rendering of "Wotan's Farewell" from Die Walkure.

Cosima Wagner was still married to his first wife, Minna Planer, and was involved in several extramarital relationships.

On 28 November 1863 Wagner visited Berlin; while Bulow 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".

At Wagner's instigation, von Bulow 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 Bulow joined them on 7 July.

When Cosima 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 Cosima Wagner to leave Bavaria.

Immediately upon signing the lease, Cosima Wagner invited the von Bulows and their children to stay with him.

Cosima Wagner had been appointed music director of the Munich Hofoper, and threw himself into the preparations for the premiere of Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.

Shortly afterwards, Cosima rejoined Wagner at Tribschen; Wagner explained to 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 Wagner asked her husband for a divorce, to which he would not initially agree.

In June 1869, immediately after the birth of her and Wagner's third and final child, Siegfried, Cosima wrote to von Bulow in what she called a "final attempt at an understanding".

Cosima Wagner's 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".

Wagner and Cosima were married at Lucerne, on 25 August 1870, in a Protestant church.

Cosima 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 Wagner visited in April 1871 they decided immediately that they would build their theatre there, and that the town would be their future home.

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Cosima Wagner announced the first Bayreuth Festival for 1873, at which his full Ring cycle would be performed.

Unable to attend the funeral, Cosima Wagner expressed her feelings in 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".

Cosima 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.

Cosima Wagner's mood was such that he seriously contemplated giving up the entire Bayreuth project; he was distracted from such thoughts by an invitation to conduct a series of concerts in London.

Cosima's influence was such that Wagner asserted that he would not have written another note, had she not been there.

For Cosima's birthday on 25 December 1878, Wagner hired an orchestra to play the newly composed prelude to Parsifal.

Cosima 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.

Cosima Wagner objected on the grounds of Levi's Jewish faith; Parsifal, he maintained, was a "Christian" opera.

The musicologist Eric Werner argues that Cosima Wagner's anti-Semitism derived in part from his initial revolutionary philosophy; as 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.

Nietzsche considered Parsifal an abomination for which Cosima was responsible; she had corrupted Wagner, and as a non-German she had no business meddling in matters of German culture.

Cosima's journal entry for 12 February 1883—the last she was to make—records Wagner reading Fouque's novel Undine, and playing the Rhinemaidens' lament from Das Rheingold on the piano.

At around noon on that day, Cosima Wagner suffered a fatal heart attack, and he died in the middle of the afternoon.

Cosima Wagner asked her daughters to cut her hair, which was then sewn into a cushion and placed on Wagner's breast.

Cosima Wagner 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 went to fetch her".

Cosima Wagner had left neither a will, nor instruction on the management of the Bayreuth Festival after his death.

Richter and Mottl served throughout Cosima Wagner's years, joined by several of the leading conductors of the day, although Bulow resisted all offers to participate.

Shaw scorned the idea that Cosima Wagner's wishes were best represented by the slavish copying in perpetuity of the performances he had witnessed.

Amid the bustle of the festival Cosima Wagner 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 Wagner supervised her father's funeral service and burial arrangements, but refused a memorial concert or any overt display of remembrance.

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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.

Cosima Wagner expressed to Weingartner the view that "between Aryan and Semite blood there could exist no bond whatever".

Cosima Wagner was determined to preserve Bayreuth's exclusive right, acknowledged by Ludwig, to perform Parsifal.

Cosima Wagner lobbied members of the Reichstag tirelessly, and was assured by Kaiser Wilhelm II of his support.

Cosima Wagner was enraged, but her efforts to prevent him were to no avail; the first of 11 performances took place on 24 December 1903.

On 8 December 1906, having directed that year's festival, Cosima Wagner suffered an Adams-Stokes seizure while visiting her friend Prince Hohenlohe at Langenburg.

The succession was accomplished against a background of family disagreement; Beidler thought that he had rights, based partly on his greater conducting experience and because he and Isolde had produced Cosima Wagner's only grandchild, a son born in October 1901, who could establish a dynastic succession.

Cosima Wagner had known Cosima since 1888, though his affinity with Wagner extended back to 1882, when he had attended the premiere of Parsifal.

Cosima Wagner had successively courted Blandina and then Isolde, before settling on Eva.

Cosima Wagner had considerable empathy with his theories; according to Carr "she came to love him as her son—perhaps even more".

Adolf Hitler, 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.

Cosima Wagner died, aged 92, on 1 April 1930; after a funeral service at Wahnfried her body was taken to Coburg and cremated.

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 was on grounds of commercial prudence rather than sensitivity.

In 1881 she encouraged Cosima Wagner to write his essay "Know Thyself", and to include in it a tirade against Jewish assimilation.

Cosima Wagner tried to turn Bayreuth into a centre for the cult of German purity.

Cosima Wagner's diaries were published in Germany in 1976 and translated into English in 1978.

Under Cosima Wagner Parsifal was performed 97 times, Tristan und Isolde 24, Die Meistersinger 22, Tannhauser 21, Lohengrin 6, the Ring cycle 18 and Der fliegende Hollander 10.