‘Mathilde will be concerned about Otto, so we must make sure she is diverted,’ he said to Minna at breakfast. Outside, their view of the lake was becoming less impeded by the falling leaves of autumn.
‘You don’t think you have diverted her enough?’ said Minna. The former actress in her thought the archness in the delivery was a triumph.
‘It’s her birthday next month. I’m arranging to perform a setting of one of her poems with a small orchestra at the villa.’
‘I thought we were here for you to compose for the benefit of our family, rather than someone else’s.’
‘My work will benefit,’ Wagner said, once again placing himself at the centre of the discussion. ‘The music in this setting of “Dreams” is a precursor to the duet between Tristan and Isolde in Act Two. If I can capture that sense of otherworldly love, then I’ll know where to go when I arrive at that point in the drama.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Still in Act One. Tristan and Isolde are just about to take the love potion. I’ll play the sequence to Mathilde later this morning.’
Minna looked at Richard with a slight sense of relief. She should never have doubted that everything in his life was fodder for his work – even his emotional states. Was his obvious closeness to Mathilde inspiring his thoughts about Tristan? Or was it the other way around? She wondered if one even had to be in love in order to describe it. Perhaps one loved only when something inside gave the instruction for the door to be opened. Who on earth could love like Tristan and Isolde, anyway? By the sound of it, their level of passion had to be induced with a spiked drink.
If Richard was cultivating Mathilde’s affection purely for the sake of his work, there was little for Minna to worry about. As soon as Isolde died in the opera, it was inevitable that Mathilde would ‘die’ too; she would be discarded, her usefulness as muse at an end. Richard would return to some normality in their married life.
Minna corrected herself with a start. What normality? There had never been anything ‘normal’ in more than twenty years together. How could there be, with someone like Richard Wagner? His mission in life was to be anything but normal, to be a sort of ‘super’ being, destined to re-establish music and drama as the salvation of Western thought. He literally burned with this ambition, the skin on his face blistering with erysipelas, his eyes too sensitive to light not generated by his own declared brilliance, his conversation only a vehicle for the expression of his ideas. To be involved with Richard was not to feel any sort of soft complicity; it was to be drawn into a bonfire of a unique mind. That was the most attractive thing about him; certainly not his small size, his profile with that beaky nose, those fanatical pale blue eyes, or the high forehead that parted the air in front of him like the prow of a ship so that his ideas could burn through the gap.
December 23rd was a clear winter day on the Wesendonck estate, and at seven o’clock in the morning the entrance hall of the villa was full of musicians. While Richard conducted, a violinist played the vocal part of Dreams in birthday homage to the poet.
Mathilde stood in the doorway of her bedroom, her face glowing with pleasure, as the strange harmonies floated up like incense from below.
Minna handed out sandwiches and coffee after the unorthodox performance. Everyone stood around admiring the sumptuous décor of the marble walls and tessellated floors in the hall and looked forward to meeting the beautiful young chatelaine of Villa Wesendonck when she would finally complete her toilette and come downstairs to join them.
The new music also attracted comment.
‘I don’t know what she’s supposed to be singing about, but it certainly isn’t about flowers in the spring,’ said the horn player.
‘Well, it’s called “Dreams”, isn’t it?’ noted another.
‘Judging by what Herr Wagner has come up with, it’s the sort of dream I’d definitely have if Frau Wesendonck could be in it,’ whispered a portly violist.
‘Definitely the whiff of a smoking loin,’ giggled the bassoonist.
‘I wonder what the husband thinks about it?’ asked the horn player.
‘What he doesn’t know won’t concern him,’ said the violist. ‘He’s not even here.’
‘More to the point – I wonder what the wife thinks about it?’ said a violinist, indicating Minna across the room. ‘She’s here.’
‘Gentlemen!’ Wagner’s voice punctuated the gossip.
Mathilde descended the grand stairway of the hall to take Wagner’s hand and be led into the circle of admirers. Several people applauded. Minna was not one of them.
‘Please meet the inspiration for both “Dreams” and its bigger sibling, a magnificent music drama that I intend to complete next year. Madame,’ he said, turning to face her, ‘please accept the winter flower of “Dreams” for your Christmas tree. It is full of sweet honey, without the smallest bane.’
Mathilde nodded, her eyes moistening, and a few of the players applauded.
Leave the bane to me, Minna thought.
‘Gentlemen, I propose a toast to Frau Wesendonck on her birthday, and of course to my wife. It is a fact that women are the music of life.’
There was a small silence, then a few dutiful chuckles.
‘You know, I thought the composer of Tannhäuser might have come up with a better line than that,’ said the bassoonist.
Otto Wesendonck returned home from New York the very next day, Christmas Eve, having sorted his business affairs to his satisfaction. Now it looked as if things needed to be fixed at home.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked his wife. ‘I go away for a month, and when I come back everything around here is changed. We have more servants, different mealtimes – even the heating has been altered.’
‘Richard decided to take charge of things in your absence, dear,’ explained Mathilde. ‘He saw that our routine in the new house was still developing and had some ideas about improving our level of comfort.’
‘Herr Wagner should be concerned only with the level of comfort in his own house,’ said Wesendonck. ‘And he should be amply comfortable by now in Asyl, given the amount of rent he owes us. If he wants to continue as a tenant, that should be his first priority rather than busying himself to ensure my wife is sufficiently warm at night.’
‘Otto! I’m not sure that I like your inference.’
‘Madame, I am sure that I dislike the stories I am beginning to hear around Zurich. The Wagners are here entirely by our indulgence. They need to show some respect for that, and restore some sense of propriety to the arrangement.’
‘I assure you that the relationship I have with Richard is purely a meeting of minds,’ said Mathilde, her heart racing. ‘He is creating great art: a drama about transcendent love, infidelity, and the negation of will. He wishes to have me as a sounding board while he brings these ideas to life. That is all.’
‘Well, that makes me feel a whole lot better,’ said Otto. ‘Madame, it is said that art imitates life. I trust that isn’t the case here, but I also require Herr Wagner’s assurance of it. Please have him come to see me without delay.’
‘So be it, dear husband, but bear in mind it is my wish that the Wagners stay here until such time as Richard can complete his work. He always says that what is being achieved in the peace of Asyl is more important than the petty transactions of this world.’
‘I don’t mind respecting your wishes, Madame. But Herr Wagner needs to be reminded how much his current peace is reliant upon the success of my petty transactions.’
Wagner left for Paris the following week to let things cool down. By the time he was due to return, Minna had planted out the kitchen garden in readiness for spring, and Mathilde looked to be taking a keen linguistic interest in her handsome new Italian tutor, Signor de Sanctis, who preferred to teach only during afternoon teas or long drives. Minna could not help but make a comparison between the hothouse love of Tristan and the fickle infatuations coursing around the Wesendonck estate. Richard would be livid wi
th jealousy. Good. The situation was not yet so reassuring that the frantic beating of her heart would calm down and allow her to sleep through the night.
Wagner swept back into Asyl, shrouded in the passion and longing for darkness in Tristan’s second act now forming in his head. And the rail trip hadn’t helped.
‘What is wrong with people?’ he lamented to Mathilde one evening as he sat in her salon on one of his so-called Twilight Man visits. ‘I could see in their dead eyes that none of them was capable of negation of the will.’
‘Richard, there is much to restore here before you concern yourself with strangers on a train,’ she said, trying to be helpful. ‘You honoured me with a birthday concert during Otto’s absence. Now you should honour him the same way. His will is still far from positive as far as you are concerned.’
‘Which of my works do you think he should hear?’ Wagner asked.
‘I think that Beethoven would be more favoured under the circumstances,’ she said, not having the heart to tell him outright that Otto had refused to allow another note of Wagner’s to be heard in the house – or that her tutor did not find Richard the man or composer at all to his taste. An aesthetics lecturer at Zurich’s Polytechnic, Francesco had convinced her of his qualifications to make such a judgement over the course of a passionate afternoon tea some days earlier.
So it was the older German master’s music that filled Villa Wesendonck during Holy Week. While the Allegretto from the Seventh Symphony was played, Minna watched Mathilde, who gazed at Francesco, and Otto switched his attention between Mathilde and Wagner. Richard looked at the score, aware of how much the A minor tonality in the music and its shuffling tread added to his growing sense of despondency. His muse still showed some interest in Tristan’s progress, but these days she appeared equally fascinated by conjugating Italian verbs with her tutor. When he was presented with an ivory baton at the end of the evening’s concert all he wanted to do was beat time with it on de Sanctis’ head.
A week later, he tried to explain himself.
‘I have just finished the full score of Tristan’s first act, my angel,’ he said to Mathilde. ‘It is the greatest work I have ever done. The music passes directly into experience; it glows with new passion and arousal. But outside, everything else feels in decline, like the potential climax of a vital love has been reached.’
‘Richard, you know you can’t use that word within the walls of my house,’ Mathilde said nervously, casting a glance at her Dante text on the table.
‘If you feel it, why can’t you say it?’ he cried as quietly as he could. ‘Why can’t you act upon it? Why won’t you renounce this world, as Tristan and Isolde do theirs?’
‘And how do you propose I do that, Richard?’
‘We leave our partners, leave this place, and marry each other.’
Months before, Mathilde would say only yes to his every pronouncement. Not now that the wall between Tristan and the world had been breached by a single proposition.
‘That is impossible, Richard. Worse still, it would be sacrilege.’
Sacrilege? He was aghast that someone who had shown an almost erotic pleasure at the thought of her operatic incarnation being unfaithful to a husband should suddenly revert to such a bourgeois sentiment. This was no time to be ordinary; the world would excuse any consequence of Richard Wagner’s love.
The salon door opened, and de Sanctis slid into the room, aware that he was interrupting something.
‘Signora!’ he said, with gratuitous theatricality. ‘It is late, I know, but we have a pact tonight to finish our Dante – si?’
Wagner looked at them both, and then left. That night, he and his wife lay awake in their separate rooms.
The next morning, Minna guessed there was something afoot in the way the gardener looked from side to side before starting to cross the kitchen garden in the direction of Villa Wesendonck, clutching a letter in his hand.
‘Friedrich!’ she called, attempting to sound as insouciant as possible.
He stopped, turning scarlet.
‘Urgent delivery?’ she said.
‘Some music for Frau Wesendonck,’ he said truthfully, embarrassed more at looking like a furtive messenger. ‘Herr Wagner has already left for his daily walk.’
‘I am going up to the Wesendoncks’ anyway,’ said Minna. ‘Let me take it.’
He blushed further, but passed her the scroll without demur.
Minna opened it. Inside, several sheets of pencilled manuscript were furled around a letter. She saw that the music was the sketch of Tristan’s Prelude; there was no point in trying to make head or tail of it.
The letter was titled ‘Morning Confession’. This was better. She was always interested in a confession not meant for her.
When she had finished reading, Minna resolved on two courses of action.
First, she would go indoors and take something for her heart.
Indeed, she might need to be looked at in a sanatorium somewhere, because she didn’t feel right at all.
Second, though, she would fulfil her husband’s wish and deliver the letter to Mathilde Wesendonck.
‘If I were any ordinary woman,’ said Minna Wagner, ‘I should take this letter to your husband.’
Mathilde sat at the reading table in her salon, the ‘Morning Confession’ trembling in her hands.
‘Madame, I have never presumed you to be ordinary,’ she replied with total insincerity. ‘It is my duty to take this to him.’
Minna was too delighted by the discomfiture of her husband’s ‘muse’ to consider the consequences of this scandal. Otto Wesendonck would hardly want the Wagners to continue as his tenants – especially when so much rent was still outstanding – and Mathilde was no longer in a position to argue their case; not when she had to explain phrases such as ‘My prayer to you is Love!’ or ‘Take my entire soul!’
It was amazing how such a genius could be so stupid. Richard had insisted for months that nothing had ‘happened’ between him and Mathilde; meaning physical intimacy, she supposed.
But an opera was taking shape on the page describing a love so intense that nobody would get out alive. Surely it was no accident that Richard had conceived the subject so soon after meeting Mathilde Wesendonck, already aware of her feelings for him. She became Isolde, the opera would be the love potion, and it followed that he, Richard, became Tristan. If this suburban, commonplace mutual infatuation on a Zurich lakeside were truly unconsummated, then all the better; the sheer tension of the situation served as Tristan’s source material.
Minna felt her hands balling into fists. Oh yes, something had ‘happened’ all right, she thought. It didn’t matter whether Mathilde Wesendonck had opened her legs for Richard or not. There was plenty of sex in the air around Asyl, and it didn’t involve herself or Otto. The musky smell of it was seeping out from the pages of that damned opera score.
It was a strange scene that met Richard upon his return from the daily forest walk.
The Wesendoncks’ carriage was being loaded with what looked to be hastily packed luggage, more than required for a short trip. Mathilde was already seated for departure, her face deathly white. Otto, talking to the driver, turned to greet Wagner with a very strange smile on his face.
Wagner continued down the path, through the kitchen garden into Asyl’s entrance hall. He thought he could hear music, and sure enough Minna was humming loudly when she emerged from the door to her bedroom. She looked radiantly happy.
‘Richard!’ she said, almost squealing with delight. ‘How was your walk?’
‘Minna?’ he said, struggling to make sense of it.
‘You’ve seen the Wesendoncks, then? It’s very exciting. They’ve decided to go on a long trip to Italy.’
‘Italy? What …?’
‘You know that Frau Wesendonck has been studying hard with her tutor? I think Otto decided to put her new knowledge to the test.’
‘W-when did …?’
‘It’s all happened
only this morning. I suppose the Wesendoncks thought it the best thing to do once we all read your letter.’
‘M-my …?’
‘You know, my dear – your “Morning Confession”. And a very touching confession it is, too. Mathilde thought it was so beautiful, she just had to pass it around.’
Richard detected the rising note of sarcasm in Minna’s voice, and his bewilderment turned to anger. It was inconceivable that Mathilde had betrayed their trust.
‘What have you done, Minna? You must be aware that this could have very … unpleasant consequences.’
‘But Richard, what unpleasantness?’ said Minna. ‘You’ve abandoned that Ring nonsense to write a more saleable love story. The Wesendoncks are taking a long holiday that Mathilde looks as if she needs, poor little pale thing.’ Her words almost turned into a snarl. ‘And both Herr Wesendonck and I get our spouses back. What we’ve had here has simply been a minor love affair. A bit of space for all concerned will calm everything down.’
Wagner turned cold at what he perceived as the final revelation of Minna’s mediocrity. How could she possibly know what was required for the creation of great art? Minna was fretting about the pointless sanctity of people’s reputations while he was focussed on something altogether greater: a musical form of greater unity and clarity than anything that had come before.
He decided that if Tristan was to continue to be realised – and it must – she could not be a party to it.
‘I cannot vouch for Otto, but as far as this marriage is concerned, you will not be getting your spouse back. It is probable we will have to leave this place because of your actions this morning. If that is so, you and I will no longer live together, madame.’
Minna started. She had expected Richard to capitulate once the futility of his attachment to Mathilde was explained, or whenever her role as Tristan’s muse expired with the completion of the opera. Indeed, Mathilde had started to drift away into a new nirvana of Italian lessons, abandoning Richard’s requirements ahead of schedule and reducing him to the authorship of this morning’s embarrassing, lovelorn document.
Symphony of Seduction Page 9