Richard Wagner Museum Luzern

One of the reasons we visited Luzern was the Wagner museum, in Tribschen, on the lake, now a city park area. Wagner spent most of his many years in exile from Germany in Switzerland, and 1866-72 in Tribschen. The house he lived in is now the museum, and it has many important artifacts.

Wagner museum, Tribschen; on the steps

the Siegfried Idyll was first performed

Luzern had a copy of the face death-mask; but the real

right-hand cast

Nietzche's death mask; he visited Wagner

some 23 times in Tribschen; then went on

to other things; should they ever make a

movie of Nietzsche's life, I nominate Sam

Elliot to play the role of The Philosopher

Wagner's Erard piano; if you have seen the epic movie

Wagner (Richard Burton's last film), you will appreciate

that this is the piano depicted in many scenes, as the

composer moves from country to country in his exile years

Renoir's charcoal study for his several

Wagner portraits (the Tribschen museum

also has the very famous Beckmann

painting of Wagner, Cosima, Liszt, et al.,

but the lighting had too much glare)

One of the earliest pix of The Master, in all

his megalomaniacal finery, seated in

This, his easy chair; somehow I can't imagine

the man long in an easy chair...

The second floor of the museum used to be the standard

collection of 19th century musical instruments; but now

it is temporary Wagner exhibits, this one, really

interesting for me, based on a recent book by two Swiss

music historians about Wagner's various walks and

scrambles amongst the Swiss Alps (I wonder if he

ever ran into Whymper) and how they bear on his

work, especially the Ring cycle; the large 1850s wall

map depicts his various hikes...

The Master's walking hat (alas, not a Tilley)

View of the house from lakeside