Truly great compositions spring, like Athena from Zeus' skull, at the
juncture of genius and passion. In Mathilde Wesendonck: Isolde's Dream,
author Judith Cabaud calls on a host of heretofore undiscovered
resources to tell the story of Mathilde Wesendonck, muse and paramour to
Richard Wagner and, later, Johannes Brahms. Alma Mahler, eat your heart
out. In or about August 1857, Richard Wagner's character changed. He
abandoned Der Ring des Nibelungen, the Gesamtkunstwerk he'd begun work
on nearly a decade earlier, tore through a short set of songs now known
as the Wesendonck Lieder, and dove headlong into Tristan und Isolde,
eine Handlung whose seminal influence would ricochet down the ensuing
century of Western romantic music. Why the dramatic shift? Wagner had
been struck by lightning - twice. The first bolt was sighted across
Europe; his name was Arthur Schopenhauer. The second was restricted to a
insular social world centered at the estate of Otto Wesendonck, one of
Wagner's patrons. Her name was Mathilde Wesendonck, and this is her
story.