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Retired art and music historian Megan Crespi is traveling across Europe doing research for a book on Cosima Wagner, daughter of Franz Liszt, wife of Richard Wagner, and defiant protector of Bayreuth's Wagner theater and its Wagner-only operas. With Megan are three colleagues from the fields of museums, music, and photography who had previously joined her in an investigation of composer Fanny Mendelssohn. Switching their group name from the "Mendelssohn Quartet" to the "Wagner Quartet," they soon become bound up in a series of anti-Wagner protests that quickly grow from harmless picket lines to physical sabotage of opera houses presenting Wagner operas. The Quartet's travels take them from London and Paris to Leipzig, Dresden, Riga in Latvia, Weimar, Zurich, Tribschen on Lake Lucerne, Munich, Bayreuth, and finally to Venice where Richard Wagner died a sudden death in 1883. Perhaps Megan's richest discovery on this trip was the unearthing of Wagner's forgotten first wife of some thirty years, Minne Planer. How will this affect her book on Cosima Wagner?
About the author
Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, Alessandra Comini was awarded Austria's Grand Medal of Honor for her books on Viennese artists Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. Her Egon Schiele's Portraits was nominated for the National Book Award and her The Changing Image of Beethoven is used in classrooms around the country. Both books in new editions are now available from Sunstone Press as well as Egon Schiele, Gustave Klimt, and Schiele in Prison. Comini's travels, recorded in her memoir, In Passionate Pursuit, also from Sunstone Press, extend from Europe to Antarctica and are reflected in her Megan Crespi Mystery Series: The Munch Murders, Killing for Klimt, The Schiele Slaughters, The Kokoschka Capers, and The Kollwitz Calamities, all published by Sunstone Press.
