Wagner, Richard (1813-1883)

Wagner, Richard (1813-1883)

German musician and author. His major works, though often called operas, were designed as Gesammtkunstwerke ("works of all-arts-inone") with poetry, music, dance, etc., collaborating under the authorship of one creative genius. Posterity has decided that Wagner was (first) a great musician, (second) a secondrate poet, and (third) a man of various avocations. His "music dramas" (the term is his) stress characterization and continuity of action, they work with Leitmotiv and endless melodies, and abandon the bravura and stilted artifice of the operatic tradition. The subject matter of most of his works is drawn from Teutonic and German mythology or history. Wagner has been both praised and attacked as an exponent of heroic or tin-and-brass nationalism. Nietzsche, who had admired him greatly, came to despise him ferociously. For the performance of his works he founded the Festspielhaus (completed 1876), at Bayreuth.

His major work is Der Ring Des Nibelungen, based on the Nibelungenlied, the Völsunga Saga, and the Edda, and comprising an introduction, Das Rheingold (1st performance, 1869), and 3 parts: Die Walküre (1st performance, 1870); Siegfried (1st performance, 1876); and Götterdämmerung (1st performance, 1876). His only comedy, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1st performance, 1868), is a flawless masterpiece. It is performed, in Europe as well as in the U.S., more often than any of his other works.

His wife, Cosima Wagner, née Liszt ( 18371930), a daughter of Franz Liszt, was instrumental in securing funds for the establishment of the Bayreuther Festspielhaus. Their son, Siegfried Wagner ( 1869-1930), also a musician, was conductor of his father's works at Bayreuth.