Richard
Wagner was born in Leipzig but brought up in Dresden, where his family moved
soon after his birth. Though he developed early passions for philosophy and
literature, it was music he went to study at Leipzig University in 1831. His
early pieces include a symphony and two concert overtures, and in 1833 he began
his first opera, Die Feen, but the
work was never performed during his lifetime.
Wagner's
first work in the opera world was as a choral conductor at Wurzburg, followed a
year later by an appointment as musical director of Magdeburg Opera. There he
saw Das Liebesverbot (Forbidden Love)
performed, his first opera to gain a hearing. In 1836 he married a singer and
actress, Minna Planer, a union that lasted 30 years, although Wagner's frequent
affairs were the cause of much unhappiness for Minna.
Desperately
wanting to compose rather than conduct, Wagner embarked on a series of travels.
In Paris he was reduced to arranging dance music and writing songs and articles.
The Wagners returned to Germany in 1842 almost destitute, but not before Richard
had composed two valuable opera scores: Rienzi,
a grand historical opera influenced by both Italian and French opera; and The
Flying Dutchman, the first of Wagner's operas that points the way ahead to
his own mature style.
Both
were great successes when first performed in Dresden in 1842 and 1843 and led to
Wagner's being appointed Court Opera conductor in the city. During his time
there he wrote Tannhauser and Lohengrin, both
addressing themes of spiritual and sensual love. As with all Wagner's operas,
the librettos are his own, Tannhauser adapted
from a thirteenth-century German poem and Lohengrin
from an anonymous epic.
In
1849 Wagner was forced to flee Saxony when a warrant was issued for his arrest
following his support for revolutionary causes. He spent most of his 12-year
exile in Switzerland. There he wrote books on subjects such as race,
vegetarianism and hygiene, as well as two influential volumes on music and art.
It
was also during this period that he began his monumental masterpiece Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). This huge work
consists of four full-length operas -
Rheingold, Die Walkure (The Valkyrie), Siegfried
and Gotterdammerung (Twilight of
the Gods) - and occupied Wagner intermittently until 1874. He found the source
for his libretto in the ancient Nibelung saga, which explores the theme (among
many others) of the conflict between love and money. The Ring
exemplifies Wagner's revolutionary approach to opera, which sees him
dispense with recitative and individual numbers in favour of long stretches of
continuous music. Also distinctive is Wagner's use of 'leitmotifs' - tunes or
phrases that represent a character or an idea, and are used to evoke or chart
some development in the thing they represent.
Wagner
broke off from writing Siegfried to work on Tristan
und Isolde, inspired in part by his affair with Mathilde Wesendonck, the
impetus too for the songs known as Wesendonck
Lieder. Tristan deals with the theme of an all-embracing love, denied on
earth and attainable only in death. Its startling harmonies foreshad- owed the
work of Schoenberg and Berg half a century later and resulted in an opera of
great passion and beauty so difficult to stage that the original production was
abandoned after 77 rehearsals.
One
of Wagner's few purely instrumental pieces is Siegfried
Idyll, composed as a birthday present for his new wife Cosima, whom he
married in 1870 following Minna's death. It was performed outside Cosima's
bedroom on Christmas morning 1870, with Wagner conducting.
During
a respite from The Ring, Wagner
also composed his only comic opera, Die
Meistersinger von Nurnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg), produced in
Munich in 1868. During its composition Wagner's desperate financial difficulties
were relieved by the young King of Bavaria, Ludwig II, a fanatical admirer of
Wagner's music. His funds enabled Wagner to pursue his dream of establishing a
festival devoted to his own operas. At an opera house built at Bayreuth in
southern 
Germany,
the festival was inaugurated in 1876 with a production of The Ring. Despite interruptions during the World Wars, the festival
continues; to this day the opera house has never been used to stage an opera not
written by Wagner.
For
his final masterpiece, Parsifal, Wagner
drew on the ancient legend of the Holy Grail, advancing the themes of love,
renunciation and redemption explored in earlier works. Because of the work's
sacred nature Wagner wished it to be performed only at Bayreuth, but when the
copyright lapsed in 1913 his heirs could not prevent performances elsewhere.
A
year after the completion of Parsifal in 1882,
Wagner suffered a fatal heart attack in Venice. His operas and forceful
personality had dominated German music in the second half of the nineteenth
century, a powerful influence that has not waned in the intervening hundred
years.
Gotterdammerung
Tristan und Isolde
Tannhauser
Lohengrin
Das Rheingold
Die Walkure
Siegried
Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg
Parsifal
