Wagner's Wanderings
When Wagner began the composition of the Ring in November 1853 he was living with his first wife Minna Planer at 13 Zeltweg, Zürich, and it was there that Das Rheingold, Die Walküre and the first act of Siegfried were for the most part composed. At this time Wagner's straitened circumstances compelled him to accept financial assistance from a wealthy silk merchant, Otto Wesendonck. On 28 April 1857 Wagner and Minna moved into the Asyl, a small cottage on Wesendonck's new estate near Zürich, which the generous patron had placed at Wagner's disposal. It was there that Wagner resumed work on Siegfried in May 1857.
In August 1858, however, Wagner was forced to leave Zürich alone, following an argument with Minna over his questionable relationship with Wesendonck's wife Mathilde; he and Minna were formally separated in 1862, though Wagner continued to support her financially until her death in 1866. From 1858 to 1864 Wagner spent six restless years wandering across Europe. During this period he lived in several different cities – Venice, Lucerne, Paris, Vienna, Weimar, Karlsruhe, Zürich, Munich, Nürnberg, Leipzig, Dresden, Biebrich and Stuttgart among them – and all this time Siegfried languished unfinished.
In 1864 Wagner finally settled in Munich at the behest of his enthusiastic new patron Ludwig II of Bavaria, and it was there in September that he took up Siegfried once again; more than seven years had elapsed since he had last worked on it. He resumed the task of making a fair copy of Act I, finishing Scene 2; then, between 22 December 1864 and 2 December 1865, he wrote out the full score of Act II. But that same month he was forced to leave Bavaria, having scandalized Ludwig's court by conducting an adulterous affair with Liszt's married daughter Cosima. On 30 March 1866 Wagner moved into a villa in Tribschen, on the shores of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland; Cosima joined him there two months later. Tribschen was to be Richard and Cosima's home for the next six years. They were eventually married on 25 August 1870.
Read more about this topic: Der Ring Des Nibelungen: Composition Of The Music
Famous quotes containing the words wagner and/or wanderings:
“Well then! Wagner was a revolutionary—he fled the Germans.... As an artist one has no home in Europe outside Paris: the délicatesse in all five artistic senses that is presupposed by Wagner’s art, the fingers for nuances, the psychological morbidity are found only in Paris. Nowhere else is this passion in questions of form to be found, this seriousness in mise en scène—which is Parisian seriousness par excellence.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
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