‘Wotan married Minna’? Eva Rieger shows that Minna’s relationship with Richard Wagner was more complicated than the composer would have us believe, writes Anna Stoll Knecht

Chris Walton’s elegant translation of Eva Rieger’s Minna und Richard Wagner: Stationen einer Liebe, which was first published in German in 2003 and revised in 2019, offers the opportunity for readers without a high level of German to discover this fascinating account of Wagner’s first marriage. The focus on the Bayreuth dynasty has long over-shadowed the personality of the talented actress who shared Wagner’s life for thirty years.