Cosima Wagner - Retirement, Decline and Death

Retirement, Decline and Death

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 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; 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 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 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 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 it closed the Festpielhaus until 1924. Plans for the festival's resumption coincided with an upsurge in Germany of extreme nationalist politics; 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. 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 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 visibly failing. The birthday was marked in Bayreuth by the naming of a street in her honour, although she 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 only lucid at intervals. She died, aged 92, on 1 April 1930; after a funeral service at Wahnfried her body was taken to Coburg and cremated.