ottmar hörl wagner dirigiert bayreuth - Maisenbacher-art.com

– 46 –tions, a small secret room that nobody but he could enter: „A singleroom [...] was furnished with profligate extravagance according toWagner‘s precise specifications. The walls were lined with silk, and garlandswere hung all around. From the ceiling a wonderful lamp provideddim lighting. [...] he told me once that he felt particularly comfortablein such a room, because the blaze of colours stimulated him to work.“ 13Unfortunately, however, Bertha Goldwag does not give us any detailsabout the palette of this „blaze of colours“. We can deduce the latter,however, thanks to the convoluted correspondence with orders and invoicesbetween Wagner and his milliner, in which he made exact specificationsfor colour and material. The colours pink, lilac and violet arementioned again and again. Also, a fabric sample has survived from theTribschen period that corresponds exactly to this colouring (fig. 3). 14 Adiary entry by Cosima refers to an interesting association that Wagnerobviously had with the colours violet and green: „[Books] by Schiller andLessing – he has had them rebound – give him great pleasure; whatmade him think of violet and green for Schiller is a childhood memory ofa performance of The Bride of Messina, in which Don Manuel [...] appearedin violet velvet and green silk, so that he always associatedthese colours with Schiller – with gentle masculinity.“ 15We know quite a lot about the interior design of Wagner‘s home inBayreuth thanks to Heinrich Habel‘s comprehensive study of the Wahnfriedhouse. 16 However, here again the focus is more on the architecture,the distribution of the rooms and the furniture than on the colouring.According to Wagner‘s first biographer, Carl Friedrich Glasenapp, the entrancehall was resplendent in fiery Pompeian reddish brown. 17 SusanneSchinkel painted a watercolour of the large library with red curtains anda patterned carpet in bright, warm tones (fig. 4). 18 Years later, Paul vonJoukowsky, the creator of the Parsifal decorations, painted the wall coveringof the salon at Wahnfried in 1882 in sea-green silk with the richChinese ornamental patterns that Wagner loved. 19 The composer occasionallyused this spacious room for working. His actual work room, theprivate study at Wahnfried, in which he completed the Ring score andwrote Parsifal, was on the upper floor. According to the painter FranzStassen, an acquaintance of Siegfried Wagner‘s and a regular guest atWahnfried, Wagner had had „this simple room lined with green satin;just one picture [...] by Lenbach, showing his wife Cosima as a youngwoman, was recessed into the wall.“ 20 This description contrasts oddlywith the statements by Bertha Goldwag about Wagner‘s opulent studyrooms in Penzing, Munich and Tribschen, so that the account by a contemporaryaccording to which the studio had different wallpapers on akind of roller blind that could be drawn down alternately so that Wagnercould have pink or blue walls around him according to his taste andmood 21 appears quite plausible.Wagner loved bright colours in his private sphere; Cosima tells us aboutthis in her diary entry of 17 July 1880: „In the morning he speaks enthusiasticallyabout the joy of colours, saying that life actually beginswith pink. Yellow, blue etc., all that is about attitude and personal tasteand whatever you please, but pink is life.“ 22 Pink is the colour of life,which obviously held a special fascination for Wagner, as another diaryentry of Cosima confirms: „He looks happily at his room where he has thepink that can no longer be found anywhere, and says: this is why I despisethe whole of modern civilization, because it is incapable of producingthis pink.“ A sample of this pink fabric is enclosed with the diary