Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1813. His legal father died just six months later; however, there is reason to believe that Wagner's true father was an actor - possibly a Jewish actor - named Ludwig Geyer, whom his mother married a year later. Moving to Dresden, young Richard was surrounded by theater people and musicians yet showed no special interest or affinity for either. It wasn't until Wagner, at the age of fifteen, experienced Beethoven's opera Fidelio and his immortal Ninth Symphony, that he turned his attention to composing. Wagner believed Beethoven's Ninth was, in fact, the key to an entirely new development in the arts: "Beyond it no further step is possible, for upon it the perfect art work of the future alone can follow: the universal drama for which Beethoven forged the key."

Despite his inability to play an instrument and a lack of formal training, the mostly self-taught Wagner, by studying Beethoven's scores, developed the instincts and understanding to begin work on his own compositions in a relatively short time. His first complete opera, Die Feen (The Fairies) was finished in 1833 and, although it wasn't performed until half a century later, it did give Wagner the credentials to obtain a job as musical director of a Magdeburg theater company. It was there that the young composer fell in love with actress Minna Planer, whom he convinced to marry him in 1836. Together, they moved from town to town, running up debts and making influential enemies as he worked on Rienzi, the opera that would catapult Wagner to fame.

In 1839, Wagner fled by boat to France with his creditors nipping at his heels (a trip that reportedly inspired Wagner's The Flying Dutchman). He and Minna settled in Paris, where they captured the attention of Giacomo Meyerbeer, an important opera composer who convinced Dresden Opera to give Wagner a chance. The company's production of Rienzi was an enormous hit followed by the less successful premiere of The Flying Dutchman and a job as Kapellmeister for Dresden Opera. In Wagner's case, success was bittersweet: He antagonized the orchestra by trying to do away with "seniority" and alienated audiences with his intensely personal interpretations of the great operas. He also continued to write and compose, completing Tannhäuser in 1845. Wagner had also, by this time, arrived at the notion of a unified art work, the Gesmankunstwerk, based on pre-Christian poetry and mythology. He abandoned recitatives in favor of leitmotifs (recognizable, miniature themes) to hold his works together. Above all, Wagner made the orchestra itself an equal partner in the drama.

Personally, Wagner operated by his own code of ethics, one that excused him from most of the prevailing rules of civilized behavior. He spent other people's money - lavishly - and became intimate with other men's wives on a regular basis, saying "The world owes me what I need."

He began work on his greatest masterpiece, the Ring Cycle, while exiled in Switzerland in the 1850's. Tristan und Isolde was completed in 1859 with no production in sight. The composer ranted: "Mine is a highly susceptible, intense, voracious sensuality which must somehow or other be indulged, if my mind is to accomplish the agonizing labor of calling a non-existent world into being." Poverty and infidelity eventually took their toll and Minna left Wagner for good in 1862.

Two years later, Wagner was saved by "Mad" King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who worshipped Wagner's music and wrote him a blank check to produce his operas. Wagner summoned conductor Hans von Bülow to Munich and commenced an affair with his wife, Cosima, the daughter of famed pianist/composer Franz Liszt. Wagner's arrogance, reckless behavior, profligate spending and dabbling in Bavarian politics spelled his doom. However, King Ludwig kept paying the composer's expenses, even after his move to a palatial estate on Lake Lucerne. The long-suffering Bülow finally divorced Cosima in 1870, after she had borne Wagner's third child.

Wagner began making plans for a theater that would be dedicated solely to his works, and launched an international money-raising effort to purchase land in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth. After numerous delays, the first festival was conducted in 1876 - three performances of the complete Ring Cycle. The subsequent debts were so huge another production couldn't be mounted until 1882. It has been seriously argued that the first festival may have been the most important musical event of the century. Journalists and visitors from throughout the world attended, including both New York City music critics, and the entire continent was suddenly "Wagner crazy."

Berlin Opera produced 38 performances of the composer's works during the 1877-1878 Season and within a decade, Wagner had swept the world. Meanwhile, the composer was developing highly idiosyncratic non-musical ideas as well: that the world could be saved by vegetarianism, and that Jesus Christ was not Jewish but, rather, a member of a community founded by the famed Greek mathematician, Pythagorus, to name a few.

Richard Wagner died in Venice in 1883 at the age of 69. His body was returned to Bayreuth for burial. As Wagner's coffin was lowered, an orchestra, fittingly, played the solemn funeral march from Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods).