In March 1872, Cosima Wagner, Richard’s second wife, wrote in her diary: “Richard calls to me: What’s the difference between Wotan and Siegfried? Wotan married Minna, but Siegfried married Cosima.” In Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, Fricka is Wotan’s nagging wife, constantly reminding him of his obligations and needling him with barbed comments. By contrast, Siegfried’s love for Brünnhilde is an ecstatic passion that overwhelms them both like a force of nature. Wagner used comparisons like this to encourage what became the stereotypical image of his first wife Minna, one that has dominated her reception down to the present day.

But Minna Wagner saw her relationship with Richard from a different perspective, one that seems more realistic. In 1855, when they were living in Zurich, she declined a joint invitation from friends by writing: “My lord and master is still unwell, so we were unable to come and hear Mrs. Hoffmann sing […] I simply had to stay and take care of my child.” Describing Richard as both “lord and master” and “child” in the same sentence offers us a succinct summing-up of their respective roles in their marriage, as Minna saw things. She was the lover-cum-mother, while Richard, the supposed patriarch, was in fact emotionally dependent on her. In the years when they lived together, Minna washed and mended his clothes, massaged him with olive oil, and heated his bathwater; but she also listened patiently to his plans and ideas, and let him play his operas to her as he wrote them. She shielded him from outside disturbances, haggled with servants, and even took on the lowliest chores when servants were beyond their means, sewing his underwear and his dressing gowns. In short: she ran the whole household and provided him with his creature comforts. It was Richard who was always running up debts, not her; but when these became so great that illicit escape was the only option, she joined him in moonlight flits across fields on all fours and endured perilous storms at sea by his side, though the strain of it stretched her sanity to its breaking point.