'Wir welken und sterben dahinnen': Carrie Pringle and the solo Flowermaidens of 1882

Musical Times, Spring 2005 by Cormack, David

Unfortunately [sic], Cosima's Diaries break off on 12 February 1883. The true course of events on that fateful thirteenth of February, however, is known to us thanks to a second indiscretion, committed this time by Isolde [...]. Garrulous by nature, Isolde points to a second possibility. She reports a violent disagreement in the family circle over the announced visit of the singer Carrie Pringle, one of the sweetly smelling flower-maidens in whom Wagner had shown such great interest both before and during the première of Parsifal. Contrary to her usual custom, Cosima had to raise her voice and the composer retired to his study, in a state of some agitation. A short time afterwards, a servant heard him groaning and asking for 'my wife and the doctor'. Cosima rushed upstairs and saw before her the fatal consequences of the argument which had taken place a little while earlier.30

The author, who was born in 1941, died in 2002 and cannot be interrogated on his sources. The letter from Groß (1845-1931) to Keppler (1841-1908) has not survived.31

There are even more extravagant references to Carrie Pringle in Martin Gregor-Dellin's biographical studies of Wagner. Like Amerongen, the author (born 1926, died 1988) is unable to elucidate them for us. In his 1982 coffee-table Richard Wagner: eine Biographie in Bildern Gregor-Dellin went so far as to reproduce a studio photograph he alleged to be of Carrie Pringle, though strangely it is one of the few illustrations whose source is unacknowledged. Its caption reads: 'Carrie Pringle, solo Flowermaiden in Parsifal in 1882, English-born, studied in Italy. As the last of her gender, she attracted Wagner's attention during the Festival and through the announcement of her visit to Venice itself might unwittingly have caused a furore shortly before his death.'32 Readers can assay at their leisure a comparison of this portrait with the 1882 group photographs of the Flowermaidens.

There are textual differences between Gregor-Dellin's treatment of the Pringle episode in his principal study Richard Wagner: sein Leben, sein Werk, sein Jahrhundert (Munich 1980) and its shortened English translation by J. Maxwell Brownjohn (London 1983). In neither edition are his conjectures about Carrie Pringle, insinuated among details of established fact, underpinned by references. It is perhaps worth quoting in extenso, with a few excisions from the English version restored (the additional dates are mine).

In August [1881], a young English soprano presented herself at Wahnfried and secured an engagement as one of the solo Flower Maidens in Parsifal. Carrie Pringle by name, she sang Agathe's aria 'very tolerably.' Nothing more is known about this evening audition and little more about the singer herself, though she must have been an attractive creature.33 [Her role in the final act of this life's drama is shrouded in a not altogether solvable mystery. Carrie Pringle will make one more appearance: as a shadow in the last tableau.34]

[...]

Of the ensuing performances, Wagner saw little but the Flower Maidens' scene in the magic garden. On August 3 [1882], during a reception at Wahnfried, he sat joking with them beside the drawing-room stove. A mysterious accident occurred during one of the later performances. One of the six solo Flower Maidens - none other than Carrie Pringle, who had just secured an engagement at Milan's La Scala - dashed out of Klingsor's enchanted garden and fell. Whether or not she had tripped over a cord, as someone claimed, she was slightly hurt and had to be driven by cab to her lodgings [in the home of the master forester Frölich] on Wahnfriedstrasse, near the Hofgarten. Had the accident been engineered by some ill-wisher? The fact is, we know as little about it as we do about Wagner's strange predilection for the 'blossoms' in Klingsor's garden, a shadowy subject only hinted at by his daughter Isolde and a few cryptic remarks in Cosima's diary. On September 6, when the festival was over, Cosima noted that her husband still missed the Flower Maidens. 'He had been unable to show sufficiently how pleased with them he was, even though, at every performance, he had loudly called "Bravo" over the heads of the entire audience.' His allusion to 'Undine creatures' on the eve of his death undoubtedly related, not only to the Rhine Maidens, but also to them, the creatures who, for all their innocence, present an image of temptation to man. Glasenapp's assertion that he turned to Cosima and added, 'Are you one too?' was a brazen fabrication.35