RICHARD WAGNER MUSEUM LUCERNE
Opera Composer’s Exile Idyll on Lake Lucerne
Richard
Wagner, famous composer of those most Germanic of grand operas of gods
and knights, is most
associated
with his home country of Germany,
but spent several years of his productive life in Switzerland. Wagner
moved around over the years. He was born in Leipzig, went to grammar
school in Dresden, back to Leipzig for university, and served as a choirmaster
in Würzburg and musical director at opera houses in Magdeburg and
Königsberg, performed operas in Paris. And from many of the places
he lived, he needed to beat a hasty retreat. He became involved in nationalist
politics his home region of Saxony and found himself having to make an
escape 
after
the failed “May Uprising” against King Frederick
Augustus. King Ludwig II of bavaria, familiarly known as “Mad King
Ludwig” famous for his castles (see Ludwig’s
Fantasy Castle Neuschwanstein), was a huge fan of Wagner’s
operas and brought him to Munich. But there, Wagner’s personal
life became even more complicated, having a scandalous illicit affair
with the married illegitimate
daughter of his friend Franz Liszt, King Ludwig paid for Wagner to take
up residence in a house on the shores of Lake Lucerne.
Richard
Wagner lived in the 18th Century manor house in Tribschen, a small
enclave just outside
the city of
Lucerne from 1866 to 1872 and
called his six years on the lake shore his Tribschen idyll. While living
in the modest Tribschen lakeside villa he married his mistress and second
wife, Cosima Liszt von Bülow, had a couple of children with her
and presented her with a composition for her birthday in 1870, the “Siegfried
Idyll”, first performed on the stairway of the house. The Siegfried
idyll was a part of his Ring Cycle of operas, a good portion of which
was composed during his Switzerland years, and partially inspired from
his climb up nearby Mt Pilatus with its near Valhalla-like Alps views
before the railway was built (see Mount
Pilatus Cog Rail). While in the Lake Lucerne house,
Wagner entertained a series of famous
guests,
Liszt,
King
Ludwig,
and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, with whom 
Wagner
developed a close friendship. Wagner left the house in Tribschen in 1872
to move
to Bayreuth to establish his festival opera theater. The house remained
mostly a rental villa on Lake Lucerne until 1931, when the city of Lucerne
acquired the country manor house and its surrounding parkland to establish
the Richard Wagner Museum. The house contains some items of memorabilia
from Wagner’s tenure there, displayed on the lower floor, most
importantly the Erard Grand Piano upon which Wagner composed “Die
Meistersinger von Nurnberg”, along with photographs and paintings
relating to Wagner’s life and work, as well as a collection of
letters and musical scores. Much of the attraction to the Wagner Museum
in Lucerne for music fans has little to do with Wagner in particular.
on the upper floor can be found the Schumacher Musical Instrument Collection.
A Lucerne based paint manufacturer, Heinrich Schumacher, began collecting
historic musical instruments starting in 1881 and by 1906 had gathered
330 examples dating from the 17th to 19th Centuries, now a noted private
collection of the music instrument craft and art. He had intended that
all the instruments be playable and brought Seyffarth de Wit to Lucerne
in 1905 to oversee a restoration. The collection has acquired significant
additions in recent years.
Visiting the Richard Wagner Museum on Lake Lucerne
The Richard Wagner Museum of Lucerne is open from Tuesday to Sunday 10 to noon and 2 to 5 pm, mid-March thru November. If you get there when the museum in closed between 12 and 2 you can stroll the little park grounds. The museum can be reached by city bus line 6, 7 or 8 to the Wartegg stop with a little walk, allow 20 minutes from the Lucerne Bahnhof main rail station, and the afternoons from April to October by ferry boat from the lake pier opposite the very modern Luzern Culture Center and Art Museum (see Lake Lucerne Cruises). © Bargain Travel Europe
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These articles are copyrighted and the sole property of Bargain Travel Europe and WLPV, LLC. and may not be copied or reprinted without permission. Photos courtesy Wagner Museum.
SEE ALSO:
MT. TITLUS ROTAIR TO GLACIER PARK
BUCHERER "AION" ROLLING BALL CLOCK
