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Updated: June 18, 2025
His new villa at Bayreuth he called "Wahnfried," setting over the door a fresco of mythological figures, symbolising music and tragedy; in whom are portrayed Cosima Wagner, his final ideal, and Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient, who had been his first inspiration, and also figures of Wotan and Siegfried; the former being the portrait of Franz Betz, the singer of the rôle, and the latter being the child Siegfried Wagner.
He had started a day in advance, and we exhausted ourselves in singing his praises, though I added with jesting familiarity, 'There was no necessity for him to marry Cosima. And Liszt added, bowing slightly, 'That was a luxury.
It is in a letter to his friend, Richard Pohl, written the day before his wedding, that Von Bülow mentions the "Wagnerstadt," Zurich, as the aim of his wedding journey. Was it Fate or fatality that led him thither with Cosima?
He was rather an undersized man with an uncontrollable temper. As he let himself go in his music, so did he let himself go in his daily life. To any but the most patient he must have proved an impossible personage; Madame Cosima Wagner must have possessed the temper of an angel and the understanding of an archangel to put up with him.
In a letter written by Wagner in June, 1864, occurs this significant sentence: "There is one good being who brightens my household." The "good being" was Cosima, who from now on was destined to fill his life with the sunshine of love and of devotion to his art.
Nevin was one of the honored four, and appeared at the unique public Zuhören of that year, devoted exclusively to the works of Brahms, Liszt, and Raff. Among the forty or fifty studious listeners at these recitals, Frau Cosima Wagner, the violinist Joachim, and many other celebrities were frequently present.
At last Wagner appeared in company with Cosima and Goldmark. I bowed to Cosima very respectfully, but she evidently did not think it worth while to honour me with a single glance.
Were it not for Liszt's letters, meagre would be the information regarding Cosima before her marriage to Wagner. But by going over his voluminous correspondence and picking out references to her here and there, I am able to give at least some idea of her earlier life.
I obtained the money for this, and apparently she spent the summer in tolerable spirits in the very place in which a year ago I had met Cosima undergoing a cure. Once more I turned to my work, to which I always had recourse as the best means of raising my spirits so soon as interruptions were removed. One night I was disturbed by a strange event.
Wagner does not seem to have seen Cosima after the Von Bülows' second visit to him at Zurich until they came to him for a visit at Biebrich during the summer of 1862. What a contrast Cosima must have seemed to poor Minna who, in the same house and but a short time before, had desecrated the manuscript of "Die Meistersinger" by allowing a bread-ball to roll over it!
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