The Opera Composer Who Believed in the Absolute Oneness of Drama and Music

Giuseppe Verdi is one of the most popular opera composers of all time. His work is characterized by its dramatic intensity and musical unity.

The life of Richard Wagner

Although Richard Wagner is most commonly associated with the genre of opera, he was also a conductor, theatre director, and essayist. His operas are characterized by their use of leitmotifs, which are recurring themes that are associated with a particular character, object, or idea. Wagner’s writings on music and drama, in which he outlined his theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”), had a significant influence on subsequent generations of thinkers.

His childhood and family

Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, Germany, on May 22, 1813. His father died shortly after his birth, and his mother remarried a year later. Wagner was educated at the Thomasschule in Leipzig and then spent two years at the Metropolitan School of Music in Dresden. He began his musical career as a member of an opera company in Würzburg and then worked as a conductor in Magdeburg, Riga, and Königsberg before settling in Dresden.

Wagner married Minna Planer in 1836. The couple had nine children, only two of whom survived to adulthood. Wagner also had several extramarital affairs, most notably with the actress Pauline von Wesendonck.

Wagner’s first opera, Die Feen (The Fairies), was a flop, and his next two operas met with little success. However, his opera Rienzi (1842) was a huge hit, and Wagner became one of the most celebrated composers in Europe.

His formative years

Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, Germany, on May 22, 1813. His father died before his first birthday, and his mother remarried soon after. Wagner was raised by his stepfather, a policeman who died when Wagner was six. He then went to live with his guardians in Dresden.

Wagner’s musical talent was evident at an early age. He began taking piano lessons at age seven and started composing soon after. When he was nine years old, he wrote his first piece of music, a polka called “Happy Farmers’ Children”. When he was eleven, he began attending the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, where he studied music theory and composition with Christian Gottlieb Mittler.

Wagner graduated from St. Thomas in 1831 and began working as a chorusmaster and conductor in Würzburg and Magdeburg. In 1833, he became the kapellmeister (conducting director) of the Opera of Magdeburg. However, the Opera went bankrupt soon after Wagner took over, and he was dismissed from his position.

His years as a composer

Wagner was born in Leipzig, Germany, on May 22, 1813. His father died when Wagner was only six years old, and his early childhood was spent in poverty . As a result, very little is known about his upbringing or about what kind of education he received. However, it is clear that music played an important role in Wagner’s life from an early age.

At the age of 17, Wagner left home to study at the University of Leipzig. However, he did not stay at the university for long and instead decided to pursue a career in music. He worked as a composer and conductor for a number of years, and his early operas – including ‘Der fliegende Holländer’ (‘The Flying Dutchman’) and ‘Tannhäuser’ – were moderately successful.

In 1849, Wagner staged a production of his opera ‘Rienzi’ in Dresden. The opera was well-received by the public but less so by the critics. As a result, Wagner became involved in a dispute with one of the leading music critics of the time, Eduard Hanslick. This dispute led Wagner to write an essay entitled ‘Opera and Drama’, in which he outlined his ideas about how music and drama could be merged to create a new type of art form that he called the ‘music drama’.

Wagner’s music

Wagner’s music is some of the most controversial and influential of the Romantic era. His unique approach to composition integrated all aspects of the arts, most notably drama and music. This was a radical departure from the traditional understanding of opera as a primarily musical experience.

His early operas

In the early 1850s, Wagner completed a series of five operas that are collectively known as The Ring of the Nibelung. These works, based on ancient Germanic and Norse mythology, represent the peak of Wagner’s dramatic and musical achievement. The Ring Cycle, as it is commonly known, consists of the four-opera sequence Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) and the opera Parsifal.

His later operas

Wagner completed the libretto for his next opera, “The Flying Dutchman,” in 1842, and the work was first performed in Dresden in January 1843. The story is based on the legend of a supernatural figure, the Flying Dutchman, who is doomed to wander the seas forever. The character of the Dutchman was inspired by a real person, a captain named Hendrick Vanderdecken, who was said to have been lost at sea in 1641 while trying to round the Cape of Good Hope in a storm.

“The Flying Dutchman” was not a success at its premiere, but Wagner revised it and it has since become one of his most popular operas. It is characterized by its use of leitmotifs, or recurring musical themes that represent certain characters or ideas.

In 1845, Wagner began work on “Tannhäuser,” an opera set in the 13th century about the conflict between love and religion. The work caused a scandal when it was first performed in Dresden in October 1845 because of its subject matter and because Wagner used leitmotifs to represent sexual desire. “Tannhäuser” was not performed again until 1860, when it was staged in Munich with some changes to the libretto.

Wagner’s next opera, “Lohengrin,” which he completed in 1848, is based on a medieval German legend about a knight who comes to the rescue of a maiden accused of witchcraft. The work contains some of Wagner’s most beautiful music, including the famous bridal chorus “Treulich geführt.” “Lohengrin” was first performed in 1850 and remains one of Wagner’s most popular operas.

Wagner’s next project was an enormous undertaking: an epic cycle of four operas based on Norse mythology called “The Ring of the Nibelung.” He began work on the first opera in the cycle, “Das Rheingold,” in 1853 and completed it four years later. He then wrote the music for all three remaining operas— “Die Walküre” (1856-1857), “Siegfried” (1869-1871), and “Götterdämmerung” (1869-1874)— over the next 17 years.

His music and its influence on other composers

Wagner’s music had a profound influence on the development of other composers. Richard Strauss, perhaps the most important composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was deeply impressed by Wagner’s work. The Italian composer Giacomo Puccini also drew inspiration from Wagner, as did the French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.

Wagner’s legacy

When Wagner died in 1883, The Times of London called him “the most conspicuous figure” of the nineteenth century. He was, in the opinion of the newspaper, “the man who has done more than any other to change the course of musical history.”

His impact on the opera world

Richard Wagner was one of the most influential opera composers of the 19th century. He not only composed some of the most legendary operas ever written, but also championed a new style of opera that emphasized the oneness of drama and music. This “total work of art” approach to opera would have a profound impact on the course of opera history.

His impact on music as a whole

Wagner’s greatest contribution to music was his unswerving advocacy of what he called the “absolute” oneness of drama and music. To him, all music was dramatic, or at least potentially so; and all drama, if it was to have any real artistic value, must be suffused with music. This belief led him to eschew conventional operatic forms and give free rein to his own musical and dramatic instincts in the cycle of four monumental works that constitute his principal achievement, the so-called Ring of the Nibelung.