183
Richard Wagner Wagner was born in Leipzig
in 1813 and was drawn to the
theatre at an early age, also
developing an obsession with
music—particularly Beethoven.
His early years were dominated
by instability, exacerbated by his
irresponsible attitude toward
money. His operas began to see
success in the 1840s, and a job as
Kapellmeister in Dresden followed,
but both were jeopardized by his
political activism.
Forced into exile in Switzerland
in the 1850s, he set about a
wholesale reform of opera: first in
theoretical essays, then in practice,most ambitiously in The Ring. In
the 1860s, his fortunes improved
thanks to the financial aid of
King Ludwig II of Bavaria, which
gave him new artistic freedom.
Wagner died in Venice in 1883,
the year after Parsifal premiered
in Bayreuth.(“The fairies,” 1834) delved deep
into Romanticism, while his second,
Das Liebesverbot (“The ban on love,”
1836), loosely based on Shakespeare’s
Measure for Measure, was closer to
Italian comic opera.
A largely unsuccessful period in
Paris in the late 1830s exposed the
young composer to the bel canto of
Vincenzo Bellini (whom he much
admired) as well as to grand opéra,
a local genre whose extravagant
scenic features would broaden his
theatrical horizons. The German-
born composer Giacomo Meyerbeer
was among the most successful
exponents of this type of operatic
spectacle. Wagner’s next work,
Rienzi (1840), was modeled closely
on Meyerbeer’s style and proved to
be his first breakthrough, leading
to Wagner’s appointment as
Kapellmeister (director of music)
at the Dresden Court Theatre.
Wagner’s subsequent works in
the 1840s, Der fliegende Holländer
(The Flying Dutchman), Tannhäuser,
and Lohengrin, are the earliest
operas included in the canon of
works performed at the festival thatWagner founded at Bayreuth. They
show the composer increasingly
breaking down the traditional
structures of opera—blurring the
lines between individual arias,
duets, and choruses, and focusing
on the psychological development
of characters of unprecedented
complexity. The operas addressed
subjects that would concern him
for the rest of his creative life:
redemption, the nature of desire,
and, in Tannhäuser, how religion
can and should temper this desire.Theory and practice
Wagner’s involvement in the
uprising in Dresden in 1849—part
of a series of republican revolts
that swept through Germany
and other parts of Europe—led
to a warrant being issued for his
arrest, forcing him into exile in
Switzerland. During the first five
years in exile, he did not compose a
single note of music, concentrating
instead on setting out the
foundations for his operatic reforms
in a series of long essays. It was
during this period that Wagnercame up with the idea of the
Gesamtkunstwerk (literally
“complete art work”), which would
combine all the elements of stage
performance in one. His new works
would amalgamate the genius of
Beethoven and Shakespeare and
be modeled on ancient Greek
drama, which, as far as Wagner
understood it, not only combined
all the arts but did so in a way
that was essential for uniting a ❯❯See also: The Magic Flute 134 –137 ■ The Barber of Seville 14 8 ■ Der Freischütz 149 ■ La traviata 174 –175 ■ Tosca 194 –197 ■
The Wreckers 232–239 ■ Peter Grimes 288–293ROMANTIC 1810 –1920
Other key works1841 The Flying Dutchman
1848 Lohengrin
1859 Tristan und Isolde
1867 Die Meistersinger
von Nürnberg
1882 ParsifalWith one bound I became
a revolutionist, and acquired
the conviction that every
decently active being ought
to occupy himself with
politics exclusively.
Richard WagnerUS_180-187_Wagner.indd 183 26/03/18 1:01 PM