Richard and Cosima Wagner. Biography of a Marriage

In 1864 Richard Wagner was summoned to Munich by the young and handsome but mentally unstable King Ludwig II of Bavaria. With the king's patronage he was given the means to complete his Ring cycle and to produce his works under ideal circumstances. There began the intimate association between Wagner and Franz Lizt's daughter Cosima. Both were married. She was twenty-six and a mother of two; he was fifty-one. Cosima's husband, Hans von Bulow, was the prinicpal conductor of Wagner's work. Drawing on new sources, most notably Cosima's Diaries and Wagner's Brown Book, Geoffrey Skelton retells the story of Richard Wagner's last years and of his marraige to Cosima, casting new light on the Wagners and on Hans von Bulow, and reconstructing a more balanced picture of the relationship between Wagner and King Ludwig than has hitherto been available.