David Cormack, An Abduction from the Seraglio: Rescuing Jessie Laussot

March 2012, Volume 6, Number 1, 50–63.

Wagner’s heirs, especially his widow Cosima, were condemned for their willingness to edit, suppress and even destroy biographical material. Yet when it was published to the world in 1911, twenty-eight years after his death, Wagner’s autobiography Mein Leben was found to be surprisingly authentic and forthright, even about matters downplayed by his official biographer (then still living) Carl Friedrich Glasenapp. In 1919, ‘with the amicable consent of the Wagner family’, the heirs of Wagner’s Dresden benefactor, the widow Julie Ritter, entrusted to Siegmund von Hausegger the editing of a further collection of the composer’s letters. After their publication in 1920 the true facts became known about Wagner’s intended elopement in 1850 to the ‘Orient’ (on an English boat scheduled to leave Marseilles on 7 May for Greece and Asia Minor via Malta) with the married Jessie Laussot.