Richard Wagner Biography: His Life and Work

Wilhelm Richard Wagner, born May 22, 1813, became a composer, conductor, music theorist and essayist. He believed in the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, or total artwork, which refers to a synthesis of the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, which many critics feel Wagner epitomized in his four-opera cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen." Wagner even built his own opera house so he could have these works performed exactly how he imagined them.
 
Wagner often wrote the scenario and libretto for his operas himself, unlike many other opera composers. In addition, he became known for his extensive use of leitmotifs, which are musical themes associated with specific characters, plot elements or locales.

Richard Wagner: The Beginning

Wagner's father died six months after his birth. A year later, his mother remarried the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer. The hasty match led Wagner to suspect Geyer may have been his biological father.

Although Geyer died when Wagner was 8 years old, during that time he imparted to the young Wagner a great love of the theater. Wagner decided he wanted to be a playwright himself and attempted his first play at school in 1826. It was a tragedy called "Leubald," heavily influenced by Goethe and Shakespeare. Shortly thereafter, he decided he wanted to set this play to music and asked his family for music lessons.

At the age of 20, in 1833, Wagner completed his first opera, "Die Feen" ("The Fairies"). However, it wasn't produced until after his death, 50 years later. To earn a living, Wagner took short assignments as an opera house musical director. He wrote his next opera, "Das Liebesverbot" ("The Ban on Love") during this time, but it closed before the second performance.

To complicate Wagner's fledgling career and financial difficulties further, he married a woman named Christine Wilhelmine "Minna" Planer and moved with her to the city of Riga, then part of the Russian Empire. A few weeks after their marriage, she ran off with an army officer. When he then abandoned her, Minna returned to Wagner, who took her back. But the marriage remained troubled throughout their three decades together. The couple fled Riga in debt in 1839, traveling to London, then Paris, while Wagner worked writing articles and arranging operas composed by others.

Wagner's First Success

At last, in 1842, Richard Wagner had his third opera, "Rienzi," performed in Dresden to critical acclaim. During his six years in the city, he had two more operas staged and became the Royal Saxon Court conductor.
 
However, Wagner's leftist political sympathies caused him to be exiled from Germany after the May Uprising of 1849, in which he played a minor role.

Wagner's Most Famous Works

Wagner wrote his notable opera "Lohengrin" before the revolution in Dresden, but he had to flee before he could have it staged. His friend Franz Liszt answered his desperate letters and conducted the premiere himself in Weimar in 1850.

Most people today know at least one piece from "Lohengrin," even if they do not realize it: The famous wedding song "Here Comes the Bride" comes from this opera. This opera also reflects the theme of redemption through a woman's love, which is common in Wagner's works.

Wagner wrote the libretto to his epic composition, the four-opera cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen," known as "The Ring Cycle," from 1848 to 1852. During this time he also published the extremely controversial anti-Semitic essay "Jewishness in Music."

He started composing two of the ring operas, "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walküre," in 1853 and 1854, respectively.

In 1854, Wagner discovered the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who believed that music reigned supreme among the arts due to its lack of concern with the material world. Wagner became devoted to this doctrine, even though he had previously written that music should be subservient to the drama in an opera. But Schopenhauer's influence on Wagner's music can be heard in the commanding role music assumes in his work, first apparent in his composition "Tristan and Isolde."

His deep infatuation for Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a silk merchant, partly inspired this work, which Wagner based on the Arthurian love story. But in 1858 Minna discovered a letter Wagner had written to Mathilde, after which he left alone for Venice.

His exile from Germany ended in 1861.

The Later Work of Richard Wagner

Upon returning to Germany, Wagner wrote "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg," and in spite of the misery of his life at this time, it is his happiest work. He left Minna for good in 1862, but his career continued to deteriorate when "Tristan and Isolde" gained a reputation for being "unplayable" and went unperformed in spite of over 70 rehearsals.

When King Ludwig II assumed the throne, however, Wagner's luck finally changed. The king paid all of Wagner's debts and brought him to Munich, where "Tristan and Isolde" at last premiered in 1865. It was a huge success, and was Wagner's first premiere in 15 years.

But Wagner's affair with the married Cosima von Bülow, who gave birth to his illegitimate daughter, scandalized the court and forced the king to send him away again. Ludwig settled Wagner and Cosima near Switzerland's Lake Lucerne, where Wagner continued to compose and at last finished "The Ring Cycle." It premiered in August 1876 in the opera house he designed in Bayreuth.

His final opera, "Parsifal," took four years to write and premiered in January 1882. A year later, on Feb. 13, 1883, Wagner died of a heart attack. He was buried in Bayreuth.

Resources

Boynick, Matt (February, 1996). Richard Wagner (1813-1883). Retrieved January 14, 2008 from the Classical Music Pages Web site: http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/wagner.html.

Vargas, Vincent (n.d.). Wagner Operas.com. Retrieved January 14, 2008, from the WagnerOperas Web site: http://www.wagneroperas.com/.