My Life — Volume 1
Childhood and Schooldays... and Geyer is introduced as the family benefactor and stepfather — a known biographical detail in this volume.
Here is the description:
My Life is the dictated autobiography of the composer Richard Wagner, set down over several years by his wife Cosima at his own urging. This first volume opens with his birth at Leipzig in 1813 and follows his early life through childhood, schooldays, and the discovery of his musical vocation. It carries the story from his Saxon upbringing — shadowed by the early death of his father and the devoted care of his stepfather, the actor Ludwig Geyer — through his first marriage, his struggling years in Paris, and his rise in Dresden with operas such as Rienzi, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin, ending amid the revolutionary upheavals that drove him into exile.
Wagner insists the work's value lies in its unadorned veracity, and its candor makes it a remarkable record of nineteenth-century artistic and political life. It illuminates the formation of one of music's most consequential and controversial figures, tracing how poverty, ambition, and rebellion shaped the man who would remake opera.
How it begins
The contents of these volumes have been written down directly from my dictation, over a period of several years, by my friend and wife, who wished me to tell her the story of my life. It was the desire of both of us that these details of my life should be accessible to our family and to our sincere and trusted friends; and we decided therefore, in order to provide against a possible destruction of the one manuscript, to have a small number of copies printed at our own expense. As the value of this autobiography consists in its unadorned veracity, which, under the circumstances, is its only justification, therefore my statements had to be accompanied by precise names and dates; hence there could be no question of their publication until some time after my death, should interest in them still survive in our descendants, and on that point I intend leaving directions in my will. If, on the other hand, we do not refuse certain intimate friends a sight of these papers now, it is that, relying on their genuine interest in the contents, we are confident that they will not pass on their knowledge to any who do not share their feelings in the matter. Richard Wagner CONTENTS Part I. 1813-1842 Childhood and Schooldays Musical Studies Travels in Germany (First Marriage) Paris: 1839-42 Part II.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain.