Johanna Jachmann-Wagner
She was the natural daughter of a soldier named Bock von Wülfingen, and was adopted[2] by Albert Wagner (1799–1874) (eldest brother of Richard) and his wife Elise (1800–1864).
Owing to poor health she went to stay with her aunt Christine Gley, a singer and mother of the Vienna actress Julie Rettich [de] (1809–1866).
In Bernburg she gained favourable notice by standing in to take the role of Marguerite de Valois in a performance attended by Duke Leopold.
In 1846, after singing excerpts from Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orpheus in concert, with financial support from the King of Saxony she left for Paris to study with Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García (and/or with Pauline García-Viardot) for whom she sang Agathe's first aria in Der Freischütz to audition.
After hearing Giulia Grisi as Norma she studied the role with him (in Italian), and also Valentine in Les Huguenots (in French), though his attempt to teach her Rosina met with less success.
He suggested she should sing in Paris: she declined, but while there she saw Frédéric Chopin play, saw Rachel as Jean Racine's Phèdre, and Habeneck conduct Ludwig van Beethoven's 7th Symphony.
The Dresden revolution of 1848/49, which resulted in Richard Wagner's exile and Mme Schröder-Devrient's temporary imprisonment, found Johanna singing in Hamburg, as Valentine and Leonore.
However the Royal Opera House management (Frederick Gye) sought to tempt her away, an offer which Albert Wagner (always Johanna's agent) accepted.
After a very busy and triumphant tour of German towns in 1860 and a visit to Warsaw in rebellion (where she was first hissed, and then sang under police protection), she decided to make her farewell from the opera stage and to continue her career as a tragédienne.
Her contract renegotiated, she studied the role of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Iphigenie under the guidance of Auguste Crelinger, the actress whose mantle she was to inherit, and performed it in September 1861 at the Royal Theatre, Berlin, for Queen Augusta's birthday, and soon afterwards was Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart, and Countess Orsina in Emilia Galotti.
In May 1872 Johanna fulfilled a promise to her uncle Richard Wagner, singing alto in the solo quartet in the performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony at the foundation-stone laying of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
She also participated in the first Bayreuth Festival of 1876, taking the role of Schwertleite in Die Walküre and First Norn in Götterdämmerung in the original first full production of Der Ring des Nibelungen.
She was not now capable of Brünnhild as originally intended, but as the Valkyr, her dramatic control of the scenes, and the energy she infused into them, in rehearsal and performance, realised the composer's true intentions, and set a precedent which was later imitated.
Alfred Jachmann's fortune crashed again after the Franco-Prussian War, and at Würzburg Johanna, with her pension from the Berlin Hochspielhaus,[clarification needed] continued her work as a singing teacher, and retained the friendship of kings and princes which she had long held.
A London reviewer is quoted to have written, "Her range comprises the soft female loveliness of a soprano and is equally fine in the low tones of a contralto.
On each occasion that a peculiarly fine change from one range to another was accomplished by this incomparable singer the effect was as overwhelming as it was unexpected... Deceit, passion, love, fear and despair were expressed in each note.
On the other hand, Benjamin Lumley wrote of her 1856 appearance as Romeo in terms that make one imagine the Brünnhilde she ought to have been: "She appeared: tall, stately, self-possessed, clothed in glittering gilded mail, with her fine fair hair flung in masses upon her neck: a superb air that seemed to give full earnest of victory, and a step revealing innate majesty and grandeur in every movement... She sang!
