FIRST EDITION, PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed by Wagner on the title ("Seinen werthen Freunden auf dem grünen Hügel in dankbarer Erinnerung. Richard Wagner. Mai 1868"). 402 pages, large 4to (32.7 x 25.5cms), music plate no.18975, nineteenth-century red morocco, white silk endpapers, binding worn, covers becoming loose

WWV 96, Drucke XV (p.481); Richard Wagner an Mathilde Wesendonk: Tagebuchblätter und Briefe, 1853-1871 (Berlin 1904), pp.XXX-XXXI

Only 150 copies of the engraved first edition, including the prelude arranged by Hans von Bülow, were printed in 1868. Wagner sent various copies with inscriptions to friends and admirers, among them one of his greatest patrons in the 1850s, Otto Wesendonck and his wife Mathilde. Der “grüne Hügel” refers to the couple’s home in Zurich (today Museum Rietberg, Gablerstr. 15), where Wagner had lived for about a year and which he called affectionately his “asylum” until he was forced to leave Zurich in August 1858 after having started an affair with Mathilde. Despite the amorous entanglement Wagner sustained a lasting friendship with the couple. Otto attended the premiere of the Meistersinger in Munich in 1868 on the occasion of which he will have been sent this inscribed copy.