Life of Richard Wagner and the Wagnerian Drama

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (1813-1883), a German poet and composer, he was educated at the Dresden Kreuzs-chule and at the Leipzig University. He studied music under Weinlig, and became chorus master at the Wurzburg Theatre in 1833, and conductor at Madgeburg in 1834. Here he produced his opera, Das Liebesverbot, founded on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. In 1836 he married, and two years later he became music director at Riga, Russia. He turned his attention to the composing of Rienzi, an opera in five acts, which, after having been refused in Paris, was brought out in Dresden in 1842. From 1842 to 1849 he was conductor of the royal opera at Dresden. In 1843 The Flying Dutchman was composed and performed, and two years afterward he produced Tannh user at Dresden. These works constitute Wagner's early operas; and being based upon the accepted forms, are held by many to be his best efforts. He produced Lohengrin in 1850 From 1855 to 1863 he conducted performances in Germany and Russia, and a series of concerts in London. In 1864 he won the ear of his famous patron, Ludwig II. of Bavaria, and thereafter he wanted nothing that the extravagant wealth of the royal amateur could command. He now began Der Ring des Nibelungen; and the first two parts, The Rhinegold and The Valkyrie, were given at Munich in 1869 and I 870, respectively. This installment of the great tetralogy, or opera in series, completed by the production of the third and fourth parts, Siegfried and G tterd mmerung, at Bayreuth in 1876, was the fulfilment of much of what Lohengrin had only been the herald. Two other equally advanced works, Tristan and Isolde (1865), and The Mastersingers of Nuremburg (1868), had already, however, embodied the Wagnerian theory of the importance of dramatic truth as well as of musical beauty. Parsifal, his last great work, was produced in 1882. In 1870 Wagner married again, this time Cosima von B low, n e Liszt, with whom he settled in 1872 at Bayreuth. Here he built the large opera house in which in 1876, in the presentation of the complete Ring des Nibelungen, his musical theories first found full expression. In 1876 he visited London to conduct a Wagner festival, and in 1883 he paid a visit to Italy, where he breathed his last. The list of his operas include, besides the works already mentioned, Die Hochzeit (1833), an unpublished fragment, and Die Feen (1833). He also published numerous songs, and wrote many articles, libretti, and the like, not contained in his collected writings, or cancelled. It is by no means only as a mucisian that Wagner will be remembered. His many prose writings, which have been collected m ten volumes, show that he would have made his mark as a philosophical and polemical essayist had not music itself supervened. He was always his own librettist, and the text of his musical works has a very considerable poetical value.Falkayn, David is the author of 'Life of Richard Wagner and the Wagnerian Drama' with ISBN 9781589639270 and ISBN 1589639278.