AMOURS OF WAGNER

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 935, 31 March 1930, Page 16

AMOURS OF WAGNER

LOVE ADVENTURES REVEALED NEW LETTERS PUBLISHED Sensational revelations of the mar-1 ried life and amazing- love affairs of ! Richard Wagner were published in ! London last month. These many amatory adventures i are disclosed in hitherto unpublished j letters given in a new book by two j American authors, Philip Dutton Hum 1 and Waverley Lewis Root, entitled j “The Truth About Wagner.” It is alleged that the inventors of j the “Bayreuth Tradition” have made j desperate efforts to secure possession of these letters. They are part of the Burrell Collection of Wagner documents now in a London safe. The collection inabout 100 letters secured by Mrs. Burrell, a lover of Wagner's music, who died in IS9S, from Natalie, i the natural daughter of Minna Planer, J the composer’s first wife. Blind Widow of 93 The object of the book is ostensibly to re-establish the reputation of j Minna Planer, the actress, who was j the great composer’s first wife. Frau Cosima Wagner, his widow, J still living in Bayreuth at the great j age of 93, and totally blind, is repre- i sented as having suppressed facts of | Wagner’s life with Minna, in order to rob her of her share in the musician’s glory. The generally accepted view of Minna is that she was a commonplace and bad-tempered woman, totally un suited to be the wife of a genius. Throughout the book Minna is pictured as a faithful woman who served Wagner through penury and want with wifely devotion, and then after 25 years was forced to leave him owing to his amours with other women. Minna died ignored and in loneliness. “Star” as Drudge On Wagner himself the two authors are devastating, as the following extracts show: —- Wagner turned Minna from a stage star into an overworked lrouse-frau. Artists have always had the reputation of being careless about making money . . . Wagner was careless about repaying it —or, perhaps it might be more accurate to say that he was careful not to repay it. Wagner’s surest method of financing himself was to make love to the wives of wealthy husbands. Throughout their book the Amer- j ican writers portray the great com- j poser as an audacious libertine and I arch deceiver. One of the fictions said to have been invented about Minna is that the i young Wagner was forced almost un- j willingly to marry her. The two authors retort by publish- ! ing for the first time a remarkable ! love letter written by Wagner to Minna before they were married, in the following terms: “Ah, alas! Minna, I could scream aloud with misery and pain. . . . To do without you another three months is impossible—either you must come to me or I to you. . . “i entreat you once more make every effort so that we can marry soon and end this state of misery! “Yesterday the whole story of our love touched my heart —beginning with our first meeting at Leuchstadt : until now. It is said that love is more glowing and ardent in the beginning—but where during the whole period of two years that we have ai- i ready loved each other do I find again j such a state as the present one, this fiery passion and fretting? No. never will anyone love again as I love. . . . “Minna, thus we aro wasting our youth! Do end this state. I have already suffered too much. ... “This you must know, girl, no one | has ever loved before as 1; no one | has ever been loved as yon! . . . Oh, j why must I cry farewell to you! Why can’t I kiss you until I die?” Even the modern orchestra, say the writers, is hardly equipped to cope with such a passion! Another scret letter now published is the supposed “Lost letter” which caused Minna finally to break with Wagner. This was written to Frau Wesendonck, wife of one of Wagner’s benefactors, and was intercepted by Minna. Part of .it reads: “In the morning I was rational again, and from the depth of my heart could pray to my angel; and this prayer is Love. Love! Deepest i soul's jby in this love, the source of my redemption! “When I see your eye, I simply cannot speak any more; then everything I might have to say simply becomes void! Look, then everything becomes so indisputably true to me . . . when this wonderful, holy eye rests upon me. . . .” Wagner’s many amorous adventures are touched upon—those with Biandine Ollivier, wife of a Paris lawyer; Seraphine Mauro, Malwina Von Meysenberg, Friederike Meyer, Mathilde Maier and even Marie, a servant girl, whom he addressed —according to another new letter—as “My Best Sweetheart.”