Backtalk to Bayreuth

In the Bavarian village of Bayreuth there lies dying of old age the widow of the late great Wilhelm Richard Wagner. Among the neighbors an air of secrecy pervades regarding her condition. She is rarely rational--that much is known. And on warm, sunshiny days she may sometimes be seen lying on a balcony over-looking the garden and Wagner's grave.

Slowly, tediously is passing Cosima Wagner, once the high-handed daughter of Composer Franz Liszt, once the wife of Composer Hans von Bulow. It was while married to von Bulow that she met Richard Wagner, himself married to an exactress, Minna Planer. Minna had shared Wagner's poverty, put up with his adulteries, including the Mathilde Wesendonck affair which supposedly inspired Tristan und Isolde. But Wagner left Minna to live with Cosima, 25 years his junior. She bore him three children-before he married her, took her to live at the Villa Wahnfried provided at Bayreuth by Mad King Ludwig who also loved him.

At Wahnfried during the period that followed was perpetrated the great Wagner lie, or such is the contention of Philip Button Hum and Waverly Lewis Root in a book published last week called The Truth about Wagner,* Their reference is to Mein Leben, perhaps the most elaborate autobiographical account left by an artist. Authors Hum and Root claim now that much of it is false, base their statements on a manuscript collection made by the late Hon. May Burrell, wife of the Hon. Willoughby Burrell, daughter of a mathematics professor at Trinity College. Dublin. Mrs. Burrell had herself intended to write a Wagner biography, accumulated a vast amount of invaluable literature to that end. But for the 30-odd years since her death it has lain neglected in a safe-deposit vault, some of the papers found only recently in an old clothes hamper. It is with the support of this important collection that Authors Hum and Root have undertaken to deface Wagner's self-portrait, creating in its stead one of a mean, unscrupulous, supremely arrogant person; one which comes as no surprise to the unprejudiced Wagnerian. In so doing they point darkly at the dying lady at Bayreuth, accuse her of influencing Wagner, even of distorting facts herself for the sake of proving Minna a shrewish, ill-bred woman and herself the ultimate inspiration, the great love of Wagner's life. That the Burrell documents provide a strong case none will deny. Minna was evidently a generous, badly abused soul and Wagner loved her. But Authors Hum and Root have weakened their argument by conducting it in a spirit of backtalk, by forgetting in their vindictiveness, that Tristan and Gotterdammerung will endure long after the names of Minna and Cosima have passed out of human remembrance.

*Isolde, Eva and Helferich Siegfried Richard. The last, best known as Siegfried, lives at Bayreuth with his mother, his English wife and three children. He rarely mixes with the townsfolk, is not popular with them. (Stokes ($3).

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