7 pieces for Goethe’s Faust, Op. 5
No. 6. Gretchen am Spinnrade
No. 7. Melodram
It is at least conceivable that Leah David’s rejection fueled Richard Wagner’s gradually growing hatred for the Jewish race. It is without doubt, however, that it peaked his interest in the opposite sex, specifically one that was not connected with this mother or his five sisters. He became friends with the beautiful illegitimate daughters of Count Jan Pachta, Jenny and Auguste Rayman.
When they first met, Wagner was fourteen and probably most interested in their soft fineries. Once he met them again at age nineteen, the focus had shifted slightly. He was particularly fond of Jenny, whom he described as an “ideal beauty.” According to legend, he sat beside her at the piano one evening, when he was overcome with tears. “He rushed outside and, at the sight of the evening star, found himself transported into a mysterious ecstasy.” Yet, as he recorded in his autobiography, “this glorious apparition liked cheap novels and flirting with aristocratic beaux. She is not worthy of my love.” Once Richard had secured an appointment as chorus master in Würzburg, it was only a matter of time before a member of the soprano section attracted him. Therese Ringelmann was the daughter of a gravedigger, and had a beautiful soprano voice. During the summer months Richard gave her private voice lessons, “by a method which has always remained a mystery to me ever since.” Apparently, Therese also took “mysterious lessons” in different subjects from someone else, and once her relatives pressed him for a formal engagement, Richard quickly ended the affair. Still in Würzburg, Wager fell in love with Friederike Galvani, the daughter of a mechanic. She was engaged to the oboist in the orchestra, but during a drunken party “we danced like mad through the many couples of peasants until at one moment we got so excited that, losing all self-control, we embraced each other while her real lover was playing the dance music.” The affair ended when Wagner accepted the musical directorship of the Magdeburg Theatre Company, and Friederike took her oboist back.
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