Of the more unusual characters who inhabit the operatic stage, the strangest of all must be Kundry. In the first act of Wagner’s Parsifal we see her as almost a wild creature, sleeping in hedgerows and running errands for the Grail Knights; in the second she is a fabulously beautiful seductress who lures the knights to their doom, and in the third she becomes a Magdalen-like penitent, achieving at last the peace for which she has been searching through numerous incarnations.

Kundry is a creature of Wagner’s imagination but she resembles to a remarkable degree a woman he actually knew. That ‘Kundry’ in real life was Lola Montez. After a rebellious upbringing and disastrous marriage, Lola re-invented herself as a dancer of Spanish aristocratic descent, born in Seville in 1833. In reality she was Eliza Gilbert, born into modest circumstances in County Sligo, Ireland in 1821. Her masquerade led to affairs with some of the most prominent men in Europe, amongst them the composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt, and King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Liszt managed, eventually, to disentangle himself, but the king’s infatuation led to his abdication in 1848. Lola came to Australia in 1855 and created quite...