Stewart Spencer, Wagner and Gaetano Ghezzi

If the name of Bertha Goldwag is familiar to most Wagnerians, that of her successor, Gaetano Ghezzi, is barely known at all. Just as the former supplied Wagner with copious quantities of silks and satins and helped him to furnish his rooms at Penzing, Munich and Tribschen between December 1863 and January 1868, so it is clear from the following correspondence, much of it previously unpublished, that Gaetano Ghezzi, together with his wife, Carlotta (or Charlotte) Chaillon, performed a similar service for Wagner and Cosima between 1869 and 1874. And just as details of Bertha Goldwag’s life remain sketchy, so we know very little about Gaetano Ghezzi and Carlotta Chaillon.