Soap Opera Wedding Rings
The Promiscuity of Richard Wagner by michael walsh
If x-rated entertainment is music to your ears then Richard Wagner’s classical compositions may be just what you are looking for. Enthusiasts of television soaps will possibly eat their hearts out if they wake up to what Wagner fans have been enjoying for the last two-hundred years. A hint at the various opera plots and they will understand why his enthusiasts have been glued to their sets; the theatrical ones that is.
How does a constant visual diet of violent blood-letting with plenty of incest, deformities, and necrophilia sound; or a brutish dwarf having his wicked way with a dead maiden? This is none of your bodice-ripping paperback nonsense; this is Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, which is four operas in one: The Ring, Rheingold, Valkyrie and Gotterdammerung.
The God’s Lecherous Eye
Wotan is the plot’s rogue. Although he is married to Fricka he is an ardent CK fan but we are talking carnal knowledge not Calvin Klein. The god’s lecherous eye settles on his wife’s sister whilst he is simultaneously cavorting with a female human. At the same time Erda the Earth Goddess and their illegitimate daughters, the Valkyries, are included in Wotan’s heavy-breathing pursuit of steamy lurve. The hero of this cracking yarn, Siegfried, is the son of an incestuous union between brother and sister Siegmund and Sieglinde
Composers of great orchestral works had much in common with their musical extravaganzas. There is hardly a great musician whose lifestyle could be described as mediocre. Richard Wagner by all accounts was not the most agreeable of men. The ultimate egotist he was selfish, inconsiderate, bombastic, and ruthless. Nor was modesty his forte. He believed that he was on earth to carry out God’s work.
He was unambiguous in his certainty of deity approval: “I am being used as the instrument for something higher than my own warrants. I am in the hands of the Immortal Genius I serve for the span of my life and his intention that I complete only what I can achieve.” Wagner made King Ludwig 11 of Bavaria his patron and servant. The funds he generously made available to Wagner came very close to bankrupting the Kingdom of Bavaria. Even his critics have cast him in the mould of a deity. Followers cite his mysterious birth, they experience a gospel-like fascination of his works; the immortal Bayreuth temple was created to celebrate his genius.
The Wildest of Womanisers
Richard Wagner was an orchestral super-star and a rebel with more than a revolutionary cause up his sleeve. As a student he was expelled from university: There he was notorious for drinking, gambling, duelling and, chasing skirt. He made an attempt at settling down by marrying the actress, Wilhelmine Plana. Known as Minna, she was a pretty woman but it never curbed her newly wedded husband’s lust for a comely wench. Among his many conquests was the 21-year old English wife of a wine merchant.
Apart from being a serial wife-cheater the budding musician was a political revolutionary. He was also twice imprisoned for debt and had fled from justice several times before he was thirty years of age. He was constantly engaged in a string of extramarital affairs, one of which conquests was the twenty-one year old English wife of a wine merchant.
Richard in 1856, whilst working on The Ring, was guest of the wealthy wine merchant Otto Wesendonck. He repaid his host’s charity be seriously bonking is wife Mathilde. If that revelation of dewy-eyed debauchery doesn’t float your boat then his opera Irish channel hopping Tristan and Isolde saga, said to have been inspired by this love affair, undoubtedly will. Tiring of listening to the sound of his rival’s twanging bedsprings his silk merchant mentor eventually gave Wagner and his wife Minna enough money to leave his home.
Faithfully accompanying her errant husband she took with them their dog and parrot. She apparently suffered no more infidelity until the bed-hopping Wagner ended up in the four-poster bed of Cosima von Bulow, the wife of the distinguished pianist and conductor, Hans von Bulow. She also happened to be the daughter of his friend and mentor, Franz Liszt. They had two illegitimate daughters; Isolde and Eva, before the cuckolded wife Mina died in 1866. Interestingly and within character the composer bedded Cosima only after he had tried her sister out first.
Footnote: Richard Wagner’s luxurious villa at Bayreuth was named Wahnfried. It means ‘Free from Delusion. ‘ ©
About the Author
An entertaining and informative professional writer; weekly media columnist; excellent reputation. Fiction and non-fiction ghost-writing. Copywriting: service and product copy content for web and hard copy. Small Press publishing. http://www.michaelwalsh.es/ / http://wwwquitewrite.blogspot.com/
GH 2 22 11 Sonny & Brenda -Wedding pt 4-With this Ring I Thee WED!!