Richard Pennycuick & Virginia Knight wrote about visiting graves of the
greatly revered.

At the age of 20 at the Salzburg Festival, about to see my first
Rosenkavalier (della Casa/Jurinac & Karajan, 1960 - ticket 2), a little old
lady took me in hand to explain the whole opera to me - it took her several
hours - beginning at the church of Maria Plain and ending in the cemetery
where Richard Mayr (the first Baron Ochs) is buried.  The whole day made an
extraordinary impression and I have never forgotten her kindness and on
every occasion since my wife and I always make a point of passing that way
and stopping for a moment.  Today nobody stops any more;  I assume people
no longer know who he was or, if they do, where he is buried.  I submitted
Mayr's name to this site last year so maybe it is now mentioned.

Many years later whilst living in Paris we went in search of Delius' house
at Gres-sur-Loing (SSE of Paris down the old N7, I think).  A teenage girl
in a small shop directed us to the house in the main street of the village
where we were greeted warmly by a multi-lingual white-russian lady of
aristocratic bearing and who was not in the least put out by the intrusion.
The beauty of the house, and above all the gardens leading down across the
lawns to the slow moving river with its wweping willows, was memorable.

As we were leaving our hostess, who had been most gracious, remarked, "I
can never understand why anyone should want to see where a composer lived
and worked" - I have never been able to work out this unfathomably strange
observation but have always assumed that music mean nothing to her at all.

And yes, the Wagner tomb behind Wahnfried is indeed austere but no less
moving (and not well sign-posted the first time one goes seeking it out!).

John G. Deacon
Home page: www.ctv.es/USERS/j.deacon