Isolde. Richard Wagner’s Daughter

Isolde von Bülow, born on 10 April 1865, used to be her mother Cosima’s favourite daughter. To her biological father Richard Wagner, she was his »curious wunderkind«. She wrote poetry and composed pieces of music at the age of thirteen, designed costumes, and the feminist Malwida von Meysenbug, a friend of the family, recommended training her »strong bright soprano«. Cosima wanted only the best for her daughter – namely an eligible match. The musician and conductor Franz Beidler, whom Isolde married in December 1900, was not that. He lacked a »noble disposition« – according to Cosima, who banished him from the family’s Bayreuth estate when he refused to take a conducting appointment. Isolde took revenge by informing her mother that her beloved son Siegfried was homosexual – a serious offence at the time. As a result, Isolde was deprived of Richard Wagner’s parentage and her own son was thus disinherited. And so an unprecedented mudslinging began.

»Eva Rieger's Isolde fulfils all ... hopes. Isolde becomes tangible as an individual and a woman in an environment that was blatantly anti-emancipatory even for her time, vividly accompanied by a piece of Bayreuth theatre history ...« Judith von Sternburg, Berliner Zeitung