VILLA WESENDONCK
VILLA WESENDONCK
Museum Rietberg, “Villa Wesendonck” / Gablerstrasse 15. Domicile of the Wesendonck Family from 1857 to 1871. Built by Otto Wesendock based on blueprints by the architect Leonhard Zeugheer, 1856-1857.
Still an exclusive and popular meeting point in Zurich. The best café in town as well as a collection of East Asian art all over the world invite to the modern day Muesum Rietberg. Mathilde Wesendock composed the poem “Buddha” in this villa. The original script can now be found in the Zurich Staatsarchiv. Sculptures are a reminder of the suprat-emporal essence of the meeting of free spirits in this – in our opinion – most beautiful place in Zurich.
Near the entrance of the villa one can find the headstone of Guido Wesendonck (13/09/1855 – 18/10/1858), the Wesendonck’s son. Otto Wesendonk offered Wagner the godparenthood for son Guido in 1855. Wagner refused because he considered it as unlucky.
In the stairwell of the mostly preserved Villa, Richard Wagner performed the song “Träume” for violin and small orchestra as a birthday serenade for Mathilde Wesendonck (23 December 1857). Otto Wesendock was on a business trip in America. The scandal unsettled the relationship between the Wagner family and Wesendock family, however it lasted – despite all reason – until the end of the lives of everyone involved. Wagner fled to Venice and later from there to Lucerne, where he finished “Tristan und Isolde” in the hotel “Schweizerhof” on 6 August 1859. Otto Wesendock acquired the full score for his wife. Before this, Wesendock had already bought the score for “Ringe des Nibelungen” and offered it to his wife Mathilde.
Wagner paid homage to his first and only love by sending the manuscript for piano of the concert finale and the programmatic annotations to the prelude of “Tristan und Isolde”. Twenty-three years later, Mathilde Wesendock attended five performances of “Parsifal” in Bayreuth, and describes the experience in a letter to her old friend Johann Jakob Sulzer in Zurich as follows: "… I would have preferred nirvana had I been Christ on the Cross …”
