Richard Wagner

	Portrait of Wagner

Wagner was born on May 22, 1813 in Leipzig and baptised Wilhelm Richard. His father Carl Friedrich Wagner died in November of the same year and his mother Johanna Rosine Pätz married her very good friend, the actor, painter, and alleged father of the baby Ludwig Geyer one year later in 1814. Six years later, the family moved to Dresden where young Wagner took music lessons at the Dresdener Kreuzschule. In 1828, they move back to Leipzig and Wagner enters the University of Leipzig as a music student, to graduate in 1831. His first assignment is the job of chorus master at the Würzburg Theatre. He also works in Magdeburg, Riga and Konigsberg during the 1830's. Riga was important because of the lowered orchestra pit he discovered there, and the custom of dimming the lights during performance, two unusual features that would return in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Wagner begins to compose his first operatic works, beginning very traditional with Die Feen (finished in 1834) and Das Liebesverbot (finished in 1836). Opera was a very popular art form at the time, if predominantly reserved for the nobility - after 1848 this would change considerably and opera would become a popular (and some say vulgarised) entertainment for the higher middle class. In 1836, while conducting in Konigsberg, Wagner married the actress Minna Planer. It would be a troublesome relationship and end in divorce.

Wagner was promoted to the post of musical director of the Konigsberg Theatre in 1837 and somewhat later, he began to compose Rienzi, finishing it in 1840.

There is a clear development noticeable, not only in his musical compositions but also in his political thought and the two seem to be closely connected. Wagner identified himself with the increasing gulf of nationalism in Germany in the 1830's. Living in a shattered country, he strongly desired the rise of a German nation. Especially after the French July-revolution of 1830, this feeling was growing stronger all over Europe. From 1839 until 1842, Wagner lived in Paris and elaborated his nationalistic thoughts. The search for the national identity (his treatise called Über deutsche Musik dates from 1840) coincided with the development of a new art form, beginning with Wagner's Der Fliegende Holländer he composed at the time. This is the first work with the distinct features of the Wagnerian music drama. Not the musical score but the dramatic dialogue is the basis of this type of opera. Wagner wanted to create a national art founded in the cultural past shared by the nation. The later Ring der Nibelungen, an adaptation of the twelfth-century German Nibelungenlied, would be the culmination of that idea.

From 1842 onwards, Wagner went to live in Dresden where he got the job as music master of the court chapel. Here in Dresden Rienzi (1842) and Der Fliegende Holländer (1843) were performed for the first time. Tannhäuser, performed in 1845 caused somewhat of a row because it was so novel to the audience and the critics, nevertheless Franz Liszt, a dear friend of Wagner, produced Tannhaüser three years later in Weimar (he would also produce Lohengrin in 1850). Meanwhile Wagner became very active politically. He became acquainted with revolutionaries such as August Röckel and Michail Bakunin. After he took part in the 1848 Dresden Revolution, Wagner had to flee Prussia, first to Liszt and thereafter to Zürich, Switzerland.

He withdrew himself somewhat from political life and wrote works on art such as The Artwork of the Future (1849) and Opera und Drama (1851). In 1853, he began to compose the first part the Ring-tetralogy, Das Rheingold, finished in 1854. Two years later, he finished Die Walküre, the second part of the Ring. He was able to return to Prussia in 1861, but his marriage was breaking apart (leading to divorce in the same year) and Wagner's financial situation was getting very difficult. Ludwig II, the young king of Bavaria and admirer of Wagner's music, had the composer called to Munich where they made enthusiastic plans for a festival theatre. Meanwhile Wagner led the Munich rehearsals of Tristan and Isolde, performed in 1865 at the court theatre.

Wagner had to flee the city when public opinion (and the officials of the Bavarian court) turned against him, and again heading for Switzerland, he settled in Triebschen. The plans for a Munich theatre were not given up but the outbreak of the Prussian-Austrian War in 1866 caused another delay. Eventually the project was abandoned. Wagner then took up the plan to build his own theatre in order to produce his works himself. King Ludwig had Der Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1867) performed in Munich and now demanded the scores of both Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. He was the legal owner of the work, but Wagner was very reluctant about it; he'd rather have all the Ring-parts performed together and in his own manner. Ludwig had his way, however and produced Rheingold in 1869 and Die Walküre one year later at the Munich Court Theatre. In 1870, Wagner married Cosima von Bülow, Liszt's daughter, who had recently divorced from her husband. Together they settled in Bayreuth where Wagner wanted to build his festival theatre. Allegedly Wagner and Cosima discovered the town of Bayreuth with its famous eighteenth-century opera house in Brockhaus’ Conversation Lexicon but apparently, Wagner had already made a brief stop in the town in 1835. Anyway, Bayreuth is the place where Wagner had his theatre build despite an awful amount of financial difficulties and rows with Ludwig on the score of Siegfried, completed in 1871, which Wagner refused to turn over. The year 1874 saw the completion of the final part of the Ring, Götterdämmerung. The Bayreuth Festspielhaus was completed in 1875 and inaugurated with a four-day Festival production of the Ring der Nibelungen, August 13-17, 1876.

Between 1865 and 1880, Wagner wote an autobiography titled Mein Leben. His life ended suddenly with a heart attack on February 13, 1883 in Venice.

This is a list of Wagner’s opera’s. Because Wagner worked for a long period on some of his opera’s, the dates indicate the year the opera was performed for the first time.

1836: Das Liebesverbot oder die Novize von Palermo

1842: Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen

1843: Der Fliegende Holländer

1845: Tannhäuser

1850: Lohengrin

1865: Tristan und Isolde

1868: Der Meistersinger von Nürnberg

1869: Das Rheingold (first part of the Ring der Nibelungen)

1870: Die Walküre (second part of the Ring)

1876: Der Ring der Nibelungen (four parts: Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung)

1882: Parsifal

1888: Die Feen

Wagner was also a prolific writer.