Chris Walton, Zurich’s ‘Villa Rienzi’: A Newly Discovered Picture of Wagner’s Lakeside Home

When Richard Wagner fled to neutral Switzerland in late May 1849 to escape the consequences of his participation in the Dresden Uprising, he found lodgings in Zurich with an old friend, Alexander Müller. Wagner had no intention of staying long, and was on his way to Paris barely three days later. But the French capital proved as reluctant to welcome him as ever it had (and ever would), so by July he was back with Müller in Zurich, this time with nowhere else to go. He was fortunate in that Swiss society was well disposed to the many foreigners arriving after the failure of the various revolutions taking place across central Europe, and as a prominent Dresden kapellmeister he found that he already enjoyed a certain status among the local music-loving bourgeoisie.