Richard Wagner

C

Years of Exile

In 1850 Liszt conducted the premiere of Lohengrin in Weimar, Germany. Wagner could not attend, however; he had been banned from the country for his political activities. Between 1849 and 1853 Wagner wrote little music but a great deal of argumentative prose, including “Die Kunst und Die Revolution” (1849, “Art and Revolution”), “Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft” (1849, “The Artwork of the Future”), Oper und Drama (1850-1851, “Opera and Drama”), and the anti-Semitic essay “Das Judentum in der Musik” (1850, “Judaism in Music”). He also completed the libretto for his massive four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), comprising Das Rheingold (1854), Die Walküre (1856), Siegfried (1871), and Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods, 1874) (see Nibelungenlied). Between 1853 and 1857 Wagner composed the music for the first two Ring operas, which he called music dramas. Wagner also completed the first two acts of Siegfried before breaking off work on the Ring to compose Tristan und Isolde (1859).

In late 1859 the Wagners returned to Paris, where the following year rehearsals began for a revised Tannhäuser at the Opéra; however, the production failed due to political protests. On the bright side, Wagner was granted partial amnesty in 1860, and two years later the last restrictions were lifted, leaving him free to reenter Germany.

D

A Royal Patron

By 1862 Wagner's marriage, which had been under considerable strain for some time, broke down completely and the couple separated. (Minna died four years later.) Wagner spent the next two years conducting performances of his own music, but mounting debts brought him to the brink of arrest. However, help was at hand: In May 1864 he was summoned to Munich by the 18-year-old King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who settled Wagner's debts, paid him a generous allowance, and provided him with housing. Wagner was soon joined in his new home by Cosima von Bülow, Liszt’s daughter and the wife of German conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow. Wagner and Cosima began a relationship that produced three children before the dissolution of the Bülows' marriage in 1870. Mounting hostility toward Wagner by members of Ludwig’s court resulted in Wagner's banishment from Munich in December 1865, six months after the premiere of Tristan. He moved into a house called Tribschen on the Lake of Lucerne (Vierwaldstätter See) in Switzerland, where Cosima joined him in late 1868; they married in 1870.

In 1867 Wagner completed his great comic opera Die Meistersinger, which received a triumphant premiere the following year in Munich under Bülow. In March 1869 Wagner resumed work on the Ring; the first two Ring operas had already premiered in Munich, over Wagner’s strenuous objections. Convinced that the Ring could never be adequately performed in existing opera houses, Wagner decided to build a new theater in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth specially for this purpose.

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E

The Master of Bayreuth

In May 1872 Wagner laid the foundation stone for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus (festival theater). Two years later he and Cosima moved into Haus Wahnfried, a new home paid for by King Ludwig. Wagner completed Götterdämmerung in 1874, and rehearsals began in 1876 for the first Bayreuth festival (with three Ring cycles), which took place in August 1876.

Wagner completed his final opera, Parsifal (which he called a 'festival drama of dedication' for the Festspielhaus), in 1882, and it premiered that July. In September Wagner moved to Venice, where in February 1883, after a heated argument with Cosima, he suffered a fatal heart attack. He was buried in Bayreuth.

III

Music and Thought

In the early 19th century, an opera was structured as a succession of conventional self-contained forms such as aria (a vocal solo), duet, or chorus, and these individual 'numbers' were connected by dialogue, either sung (recitative) or spoken. Wagner would change all of this.

A

Early Operas (1833-1840)

Each of Wagner's first three completed operas (now seldom performed) follows a different stylistic principle. Die Feen, with its succession of individual numbers, is a German romantic opera of the sort composed by Carl Maria von Weber, Heinrich Marschner, and Beethoven. Its dramatic themes of redemption, forbidden questions, and love between a mortal and a supernatural being recur in Wagner's later works. Das Liebesverbot, especially in its vibrant melodic lines, betrays the influence of the fashionable Italian and French repertoire—operas by Gioacchino Rossini and Ferdinand Hérold, for example—that Wagner conducted at Würzburg and Magdeburg. The story glorifies freedom in love, a concept that would resurface in Tannhäuser. Rienzi is a historically based five-act grand opera, in which Wagner attempted to outdo such composers as Gasparo Spontini and Giacomo Meyerbeer. Although Rienzi is filled with the marches, processions, and ballets characteristic of grand opera, it begins to break down the barrier between recitative and aria. In this opera Wagner also associated recurring orchestral motifs (short musical themes) with aspects of the drama; such motifs would become increasingly important in his later works. Rienzi’s monumental length and scope, although typical of grand opera, forecast the huge scale of Wagner’s later music dramas.

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