Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( VAHG-nər ; german : [ ˈʁɪçaʁt ˈvaːɡnɐ ] ( ) ; 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883 ) was a german composer, theater film director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his opera ( or, as some of his mature works were late known, “ music drama ” ). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the quixotic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ( “ full work of art ” ), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, ocular, musical and dramatic arts, with music subordinate to drama. He described this sight in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most amply in the first one-half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen ( The Ring of the Nibelung ). His compositions, particularly those of his subsequently period, are celebrated for their complex textures, rich people harmonies and orchestration, and the elaborate use of leitmotiv —musical phrases associated with individual characters, places, ideas, or diagram elements. His advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and promptly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music. His Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the begin of modern music.
Reading: Richard Wagner
Wagner had his own opera house built, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which embodied many novel design features. The Ring and Parsifal were premiered here and his most important stage works continue to be performed at the annual Bayreuth Festival, run by his descendants. His thoughts on the relative contributions of music and drama in opera were to change again, and he reintroduced some traditional forms into his stopping point few stage works, including Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg ( The Mastersingers of Nuremberg ). Until his final years, Wagner ‘s animation was characterised by political exile, churning love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors. His controversial writings on music, drama and politics have attracted extensive comment – particularly, since the late twentieth hundred, where they express anti-semitic sentiments. The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of the arts throughout the twentieth century ; his influence dispersed beyond composition into impart, doctrine, literature, the ocular arts and theater .
biography [edit ]
early years [edit ]
Richard Wagner was born to an cultural german kin in Leipzig, who lived at No 3, the Brühl ( The House of the Red and White Lions ) in the jewish quarter. [ newton 1 ] He was baptized at St. Thomas Church. He was the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a salesclerk in the Leipzig police overhaul, and his wife, Johanna Rosine ( née Paetz ), the daughter of a baker. [ normality 2 ] Wagner ‘s church father Carl died of typhus six months after Richard ‘s birth. Afterwards, his mother Johanna lived with Carl ‘s supporter, the actor and dramatist Ludwig Geyer. In August 1814 Johanna and Geyer probably married—although no documentation of this has been found in the Leipzig church service registers. She and her family moved to Geyer ‘s residence in Dresden. Until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. He about surely thought that Geyer was his biological father. Geyer ‘s sexual love of the theater came to be shared by his stepson, and Wagner took share in his performances. In his autobiography Mein Leben Wagner recalled once playing the part of an saint. In late 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzel ‘s school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano education from his Latin teacher. He struggled to play a proper scale at the keyboard and preferable play dramaturgy overtures by ear. Following Geyer ‘s death in 1821, Richard was sent to the Kreuzschule, the boarding school of the Dresdner Kreuzchor, at the expense of Geyer ‘s brother. At the senesce of nine he was enormously impressed by the Gothic elements of Carl Maria von Weber ‘s opera Der Freischütz, which he saw Weber demeanor. At this time period Wagner entertained ambitions as a dramatist. His first creative attempt, listed in the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis ( the standard number of Wagner ‘s works ) as WWV 1, was a calamity called Leubald. Begun when he was in school in 1826, the bid was strongly influenced by Shakespeare and Goethe. Wagner was determined to set it to music and persuaded his kin to allow him music lessons. [ n 3 ] By 1827, the family had returned to Leipzig. Wagner ‘s first lessons in harmony were taken during 1828–31 with christian Gottlieb Müller. In January 1828 he first heard Beethoven ‘s 7th Symphony and then, in March, the same composer ‘s 9th Symphony ( both at the Gewandhaus ). Beethoven became a major inspiration, and Wagner wrote a piano arrangement of the 9th Symphony. He was besides greatly impressed by a performance of Mozart ‘s Requiem. Wagner ‘s early piano sonatas and his first attempts at orchestral overtures date from this time period. In 1829 he saw a performance by dramatic soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, and she became his ideal of the fusion of drama and music in opera. In Mein Leben, Wagner wrote, “ When I look back across my stallion life I find no event to place beside this in the impression it produced on me, ” and claimed that the “ profoundly human and ecstatic operation of this incomparable artist ” kindled in him an “ about demonic ardor. ” [ newton 4 ] In 1831, Wagner enrolled at the Leipzig University, where he became a member of the Saxon student brotherhood. He took composition lessons with the Thomaskantor Theodor Weinlig. Weinlig was so impress with Wagner ‘s melodious ability that he refused any payment for his lessons. He arranged for his student ‘s Piano Sonata in B-flat major ( which was consequently dedicated to him ) to be published as Wagner ‘s Op. 1. A year late, Wagner composed his symphony orchestra in C major, a Beethovenesque work performed in Prague in 1832 and at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in 1833. He then began to work on an opera, Die Hochzeit ( The Wedding ), which he never completed .
early on career and marriage ( 1833–1842 ) [edit ]
In 1833, Wagner ‘s brother Albert managed to obtain for him a side as choirmaster at the dramaturgy in Würzburg. In the same year, at the long time of 20, Wagner composed his first dispatch opera, Die Feen ( The Fairies ). This work, which imitated the manner of Weber, went unproduced until half a century late, when it was premiered in Munich concisely after the composer ‘s death in 1883. Having returned to Leipzig in 1834, Wagner held a abbreviated appointment as musical director at the opera house in Magdeburg during which he wrote Das Liebesverbot ( The Ban on Love ), based on Shakespeare ‘s Measure for Measure. This was staged at Magdeburg in 1836 but closed before the second performance ; this, together with the fiscal collapse of the dramaturgy company employing him, left the composer in bankruptcy. Wagner had fallen for one of the leading ladies at Magdeburg, the actress Christine Wilhelmine “ Minna ” Planer and after the disaster of Das Liebesverbot he followed her to Königsberg, where she helped him to get an employment at the field. The two married in Tragheim Church on 24 November 1836. In May 1837, Minna left Wagner for another man, and this was but only the first débâcle of a angry marriage. In June 1837, Wagner moved to Riga ( then in the Russian Empire ), where he became music director of the local opera ; having in this capacity engaged Minna ‘s sister Amalie ( besides a singer ) for the dramaturgy, he presently resumed relations with Minna during 1838. By 1839, the couple had amassed such large debts that they fled Riga on the run from creditors. Debts would plague Wagner for most of his life. Initially they took a stormy sea passage to London, from which Wagner drew the inspiration for his opera Der fliegende Holländer ( The Flying Dutchman ), with a plat based on a sketch by Heinrich Heine. The Wagners settled in Paris in September 1839 and stayed there until 1842. Wagner made a stint living by writing articles and short-change novelettes such as A pilgrimage to Beethoven, which sketched his growing concept of “ music drama ”, and An end in Paris, where he depicts his own miseries as a german musician in the french city. He besides provided arrangements of operas by other composers, largely on behalf of the Schlesinger publication firm. During this stay he completed his third and fourth operas Rienzi and Der fliegende Holländer .
Dresden ( 1842–1849 ) [edit ]
Wagner c. 1840, by Ernest Benedikt Kietz Wagner had completed Rienzi in 1840. With the solid support of Giacomo Meyerbeer, it was accepted for operation by the Dresden Court Theatre ( Hofoper ) in the Kingdom of Saxony and in 1842, Wagner moved to Dresden. His relief at returning to Germany was recorded in his “ Autobiographic Sketch “ of 1842, where he wrote that, en route from Paris, “ For the first time I saw the Rhine —with hot tears in my eyes, I, hapless artist, swore endless fidelity to my german fatherland. ” Rienzi was staged to considerable acclaim on 20 October. Wagner lived in Dresden for the next six years, finally being appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. During this period, he staged there Der fliegende Holländer ( 2 January 1843 ) and Tannhäuser ( 19 October 1845 ), the beginning two of his three middle-period operas. Wagner besides mixed with artistic circles in Dresden, including the composer Ferdinand Hiller and the architect Gottfried Semper. Wagner ‘s affair in leftist politics abruptly ended his welcome in Dresden. Wagner was active among socialist german nationalists there, regularly receiving such guests as the conductor and group editor August Röckel and the russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. He was besides influenced by the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Ludwig Feuerbach. widespread discontentment came to a head in 1849, when the unsuccessful May Uprising in Dresden broke out, in which Wagner played a minor subscribe function. Warrants were issued for the revolutionaries ‘ apprehension. Wagner had to flee, first visiting Paris and then settling in Zürich [ newton 5 ] where he at first took safety with a acquaintance, Alexander Müller. [ 50 ]
In exile : Switzerland ( 1849–1858 ) [edit ]
justify for the collar of Richard Wagner, issued on 16 May 1849 Wagner was to spend the adjacent twelve years in exile from Germany. He had completed Lohengrin, the death of his middle-period operas, before the Dresden originate, and now wrote desperately to his acquaintance Franz Liszt to have it staged in his absence. Liszt conducted the premier in Weimar in August 1850. [ 51 ] however, Wagner was in grim personal straits, isolated from the german musical world and without any regular income. In 1850, Julie, the wife of his supporter Karl Ritter, began to pay him a modest pension which she maintained until 1859. With help from her friend Jessie Laussot, this was to have been augmented to an annual kernel of 3,000 Thalers per class, but the design was abandoned when Wagner began an affair with Mme. Laussot. Wagner tied plotted an elopement with her in 1850, which her conserve prevented. meanwhile, Wagner ‘s wife Minna, who had disliked the opera he had written after Rienzi, was falling into a intensify depression. Wagner fell victim to ill-health, according to Ernest Newman “ largely a matter of distraught nerves ”, which made it difficult for him to continue writing. [ nitrogen 6 ] Wagner ‘s primary published output during his first years in Zürich was a determined of essays. In “ The Artwork of the Future “ ( 1849 ), he described a vision of opera as Gesamtkunstwerk ( “ full exploit of artwork ” ), in which the respective arts such as music, song, dance, poetry, ocular arts and stagecraft were unified. “ Judaism in Music “ ( 1850 ) [ n 7 ] was the first of Wagner ‘s writings to feature anti-semitic views. In this polemic Wagner argued, frequently using traditional anti-semitic misuse, that Jews had no connection to the german spirit, and were therefore capable of producing entirely shallow and artificial music. According to him, they composed music to achieve popularity and, thereby, fiscal success, as opposed to creating genuine works of art. In “ Opera and Drama “ ( 1851 ), Wagner described the aesthetics of play that he was using to create the Ring operas. Before leaving Dresden, Wagner had drafted a scenario that finally became the four-opera bicycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. He initially wrote the libretto for a single opera, Siegfrieds Tod ( Siegfried’s Death ), in 1848. After arriving in Zürich, he expanded the narrative with the opera Der junge Siegfried ( Young Siegfried ), which explored the bomber ‘s background. He completed the text of the cycle by writing the libretto for Die Walküre ( The Valkyrie ) and Das Rheingold ( The Rhine Gold ) and revising the early libretto to agree with his new concept, completing them in 1852. The concept of opera expressed in “ Opera and Drama ” and in early essays efficaciously renounced the opera he had previously written, up to and including Lohengrin. Partly in an attack to explain his change of views, Wagner published in 1851 the autobiographical “ A communication to My Friends “. [ 59 ] This contained his first public announcement of what was to become the Ring bicycle :
I shall never write an Opera more. As I have no wish to invent an arbitrary title for my works, I will call them Dramas … I propose to produce my myth in three complete play, preceded by a drawn-out Prelude ( Vorspiel ). … At a specially-appointed Festival, I propose, some future time, to produce those three Dramas with their Prelude, in the course of three days and a fore-evening [ stress in master ] .
Wagner began composing the music for Das Rheingold between November 1853 and September 1854, following it immediately with Die Walküre ( written between June 1854 and March 1856 ). He began make on the third gear Ring opera, which he nowadays called merely Siegfried, credibly in September 1856, but by June 1857 he had completed only the first two acts. He decided to put the work aside to concentrate on a new mind : Tristan und Isolde, based on the arthurian love history Tristan and Iseult.
One reference of inspiration for Tristan und Isolde was the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, notably his The World as Will and Representation, to which Wagner had been introduced in 1854 by his poet supporter Georg Herwegh. Wagner later called this the most important event of his life. [ nitrogen 8 ] His personal circumstances surely made him an easy convert to what he understood to be Schopenhauer ‘s doctrine, a deeply pessimistic opinion of the human condition. He remained an adherent of Schopenhauer for the rest of his life. [ 64 ] One of Schopenhauer ‘s doctrines was that music held a sovereign function in the arts as a calculate formulation of the global ‘s perfume, namely, subterfuge, impulsive will. This doctrine contradicted Wagner ‘s view, expressed in “ Opera and Drama ”, that the music in opera had to be slavish to the drama. Wagner scholars have argued that Schopenhauer ‘s determine caused Wagner to assign a more control character to music in his belated operas, including the latter half of the Ring cycle, which he had yet to compose. [ 66 ] [ north 9 ] Aspects of Schopenhauerian doctrine found their room into Wagner ‘s subsequent libretto. [ north 10 ] A second source of inspiration was Wagner ‘s infatuation with the poet-writer Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of the silk merchant Otto Wesendonck. Wagner met the Wesendoncks, who were both great admirers of his music, in Zürich in 1852. From May 1853 onwards Wesendonck made several loans to Wagner to finance his family expenses in Zürich, and in 1857 placed a bungalow on his estate at Wagner ‘s administration, which became known as the Asyl ( “ mental hospital ” or “ place of rest ” ). During this period, Wagner ‘s growing love for his patron ‘s wife inspired him to put aside oeuvre on the Ring cycle ( which was not resumed for the following twelve years ) and begin shape on Tristan. While planning the opera, Wagner composed the Wesendonck Lieder, five songs for voice and piano, setting poems by Mathilde. Two of these settings are explicitly subtitled by Wagner as “ studies for Tristan und Isolde “. Among the conduct engagements that Wagner undertook for tax income during this period, he gave several concerts in 1855 with the Philharmonic Society of London, including one before king Victoria. The Queen enjoyed his Tannhäuser overture and spoke with Wagner after the concert, writing of him in her diary that he was “ short, identical quietly, wears spectacles & has a very finely-developed frontal bone, a hook nose & project kuki. ” [ 75 ]
In exile : Venice and Paris ( 1858–1862 ) [edit ]
Wagner in Paris, 1861 Wagner ‘s awkward affair with Mathilde collapsed in 1858, when Minna intercepted a letter to Mathilde from him. After the resulting confrontation with Minna, Wagner left Zürich alone, bandaged for Venice, where he rented an apartment in the Palazzo Giustinian, while Minna returned to Germany. Wagner ‘s attitude to Minna had changed ; the editor of his parallelism with her, John Burk, has said that she was to him “ an invalid, to be treated with kindness and consideration, but, except at a distance, [ was ] a menace to his peace of mind. ” Wagner continued his commensurateness with Mathilde and his friendship with her conserve Otto, who maintained his fiscal subscribe of the composer. In an 1859 letter to Mathilde, Wagner wrote, half-satirically, of Tristan : “ child ! This Tristan is turning into something terrible. This concluding dissemble ! ! ! —I fear the opera will be banned … only mediocre performances can save me ! absolutely full ones will be bound to drive people delirious. ” [ 79 ] In November 1859, Wagner once again moved to Paris to oversee production of a new rewrite of Tannhäuser, staged thanks to the efforts of Princess Pauline von Metternich, whose conserve was the austrian ambassador in Paris. The performances of the Paris Tannhäuser in 1861 were a luminary debacle. This was partially a consequence of the conservative tastes of the Jockey Club, which organised demonstrations in the dramaturgy to protest at the display of the ballet sport in act 1 ( alternatively of its traditional localization in the second work ) ; but the opportunity was besides exploited by those who wanted to use the occasion as a veiled political protest against the pro-Austrian policies of Napoleon III. It was during this visit that Wagner met the french poet Charles Baudelaire, who wrote an appreciative booklet, “ Richard Wagner et Tannhäuser à Paris “. The opera was withdrawn after the third performance and Wagner left Paris soon after. He had sought a reconciliation with Minna during this Paris visit, and although she joined him there, the reunion was not successful and they again parted from each other when Wagner left .
Return and revival ( 1862–1871 ) [edit ]
The political bachelor of arts in nursing that had been placed on Wagner in Germany after he had fled Dresden was fully lifted in 1862. The composer settled in Biebrich, on the Rhine near Wiesbaden in Hesse. here Minna visited him for the last meter : they parted irrevocably, though Wagner continued to give fiscal confirm to her while she lived in Dresden until her death in 1866 .
In Biebrich, Wagner at last began work on Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, his lone ripe drollery. Wagner wrote a first draft of the libretto in 1845, and he had resolved to develop it during a visit he had made to Venice with the Wesendoncks in 1860, where he was inspired by Titian ‘s painting The Assumption of the Virgin. Throughout this menstruation ( 1861–64 ) Wagner sought to have Tristan und Isolde produced in Vienna. Despite many rehearsals, the opera remained unperformed, and gained a repute as being “ impossible ” to sing, which added to Wagner ‘s fiscal problems. Wagner ‘s fortunes took a dramatic upturn in 1864, when King Ludwig II succeeded to the throne of Bavaria at the old age of 18. The young king, an ardent admirer of Wagner ‘s opera, had the composer brought to Munich. The King, who was homosexual, expressed in his symmetry a passionate personal adoration for the composer, [ north 11 ] and Wagner in his responses had no scruples about feigning reciprocal feelings. [ n 12 ] Ludwig settled Wagner ‘s considerable debts, and proposed to stage Tristan, Die Meistersinger, the Ring, and the other opera Wagner planned. Wagner besides began to dictate his autobiography, Mein Leben, at the King ‘s request. Wagner noted that his rescue by Ludwig coincided with news program of the death of his earlier mentor ( but former supposed enemy ) Giacomo Meyerbeer, and regretted that “ this operatic master, who had done me then much damage, should not have lived to see this day. ” After dangerous difficulties in rehearsal, Tristan und Isolde premiered at the National Theatre Munich on 10 June 1865, the first Wagner opera premier in about 15 years. ( The premier had been scheduled for 15 May, but was delayed by bailiffs acting for Wagner ‘s creditors, and besides because the Isolde, Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld, was gruff and needed time to recover. ) The conductor of this premier was Hans von Bülow, whose wife, Cosima, had given give birth in April that class to a daughter, named Isolde, a child not of Bülow but of Wagner. Cosima was 24 years younger than Wagner and was herself illegitimate, the daughter of the Countess Marie d’Agoult, who had left her husband for Franz Liszt. Liszt initially disapproved of his daughter ‘s affair with Wagner, though however, the two men were friends. The indiscreet affair scandalised Munich, and Wagner besides fell into disadvantage with many leading members of the court, who were leery of his influence on the King. In December 1865, Ludwig was last forced to ask the composer to leave Munich. He obviously besides toyed with the mind of abdicating to follow his champion into exile, but Wagner quickly dissuaded him .
Richard and Cosima Wagner, photographed in 1872 Ludwig installed Wagner at the Villa Tribschen, beside Switzerland ‘s Lake Lucerne. Die Meistersinger was completed at Tribschen in 1867, and premiered in Munich on 21 June the keep up year. At Ludwig ‘s imperativeness, “ extra preview ” of the first two works of the Ring, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, were performed at Munich in 1869 and 1870, but Wagner retained his dream, first expressed in “ A communication to My Friends ”, to present the first complete cycle at a particular festival with a fresh, dedicated, opera theater. [ 109 ] Minna had died of a heart attack on 25 January 1866 in Dresden. Wagner did not attend the funeral. [ newton 13 ] Following Minna ‘s death Cosima wrote to Hans von Bülow several times asking him to grant her a divorce, but Bülow refused to concede this. He consented only after she had two more children with Wagner ; another daughter, named Eva, after the heroine of Meistersinger, and a son Siegfried, named for the hero of the Ring. The divorce was finally sanctioned, after delays in the legal process, by a Berlin court on 18 July 1870. Richard and Cosima ‘s wedding took target on 25 August 1870. On Christmas Day of that year, Wagner arranged a surprise performance ( its premiere ) of the Siegfried Idyll for Cosima ‘s birthday. [ north 14 ] The marriage to Cosima lasted to the end of Wagner ‘s life sentence. Wagner, settled into his new-found domesticity, turned his energies towards completing the Ring cycle. He had not abandoned polemics : he republished his 1850 tract “ Judaism in Music ”, originally issued under a pseudonym, under his own diagnose in 1869. He extended the introduction, and wrote a drawn-out extra final section. The publication led to several populace protests at early performances of Die Meistersinger in Vienna and Mannheim .
Bayreuth ( 1871–1876 ) [edit ]
In 1871, Wagner decided to move to Bayreuth, which was to be the placement of his new opera house. The town council donated a large plot of land—the “ Green Hill ” —as a site for the dramaturgy. The Wagners moved to the town the following year, and the foundation garment stone for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus ( “ Festival Theatre ” ) was laid. Wagner initially announced the beginning Bayreuth Festival, at which for the first clock the Ring bicycle would be presented complete, for 1873, but since Ludwig had declined to finance the project, the start of build was delayed and the proposed go steady for the festival was deferred. To raise funds for the construction, “ Wagner societies “ were formed in respective cities, and Wagner began touring Germany conducting concerts. By the spring of 1873, merely a one-third of the command funds had been raised ; further pleas to Ludwig were initially ignored, but early in 1874, with the project on the verge of crash, the King relented and provided a loanword. [ nitrogen 15 ] The full construction program included the family home, “ Wahnfried “, into which Wagner, with Cosima and the children, moved from their temp accommodation on 18 April 1874. The theater was completed in 1875, and the festival scheduled for the follow year. Commenting on the struggle to finish the build up, Wagner remarked to Cosima : “ Each stone is bolshevik with my blood and yours ”. [ 125 ]
For the design of the Festspielhaus, Wagner appropriated some of the ideas of his early colleague, Gottfried Semper, which he had previously solicited for a proposed new opera house at Munich. Wagner was responsible for several theatrical performance innovations at Bayreuth ; these include darkening the auditorium during performances, and placing the orchestra in a pit out of view of the hearing. The Festspielhaus finally opened on 13 August 1876 with Das Rheingold, at final taking its target as the first evening of the complete Ring cycle ; the 1876 Bayreuth Festival consequently saw the premiere of the arrant cycle, performed as a succession as the composer had intended. The 1876 Festival consisted of three broad Ring cycles ( under the truncheon of Hans Richter ). At the end, critical reactions ranged between that of the norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, who thought the solve “ divinely composed ”, and that of the french newspaper Le Figaro, which called the music “ the dream of a lunatic ”. The disillusioned included Wagner ‘s acquaintance and disciple Friedrich Nietzsche, who, having published his encomiastic essay “ Richard Wagner in Bayreuth ” before the festival as function of his Untimely Meditations, was piercingly disappointed by what he saw as Wagner ‘s gratify to increasingly exclusivist german patriotism ; his breach with Wagner began at this time. The festival hard established Wagner as an artist of european, and indeed global, importance : attendees included Kaiser Wilhelm I, the Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, Anton Bruckner, Camille Saint-Saëns and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Wagner was far from satisfied with the Festival ; Cosima recorded that months former, his position towards the productions was “ never again, never again ! ” furthermore, the festival finished with a deficit of about 150,000 marks. [ 133 ] The expenses of Bayreuth and of Wahnfried intend that Wagner calm sought further sources of income by conducting or taking on commissions such as the Centennial March for America, for which he received $ 5000 .
survive years ( 1876–1883 ) [edit ]
Following the foremost Bayreuth Festival, Wagner began work on Parsifal, his final opera. The writing took four years, much of which Wagner spend in Italy for health reasons. From 1876 to 1878 Wagner besides embarked on the survive of his document emotional liaisons, this time with Judith Gautier, whom he had met at the 1876 Festival. Wagner was besides much trouble by problems of finance Parsifal, and by the candidate of the cultivate being performed by other theatres than Bayreuth. He was once again assisted by the liberality of King Ludwig, but was inactive forced by his personal fiscal situation in 1877 to sell the rights of respective of his unpublished works ( including the Siegfried Idyll ) to the publisher Schott .
The Wagner grave in the Wahnfried garden ; in 1977 Cosima ‘s ashes were placed alongside Wagner ‘s body Wagner wrote respective articles in his late years, frequently on political topics, and frequently reactionary in timbre, repudiating some of his earlier, more liberal, views. These include “ Religion and Art ” ( 1880 ) and “ Heroism and Christianity ” ( 1881 ), which were printed in the journal Bayreuther Blätter, published by his supporter Hans von Wolzogen. [ 139 ] Wagner ‘s sudden interest in Christianity at this period, which infuses Parsifal, was contemporary with his increasing conjunction with german nationalism, and required on his part, and the part of his associates, “ the rewriting of some holocene wagnerian history ”, indeed as to represent, for exemplar, the Ring as a work reflecting christian ideals. many of these late articles, including “ What is german ? ” ( 1878, but based on a conscription written in the 1860s ), repeated Wagner ‘s anti-semitic preoccupations. Wagner completed Parsifal in January 1882, and a second Bayreuth Festival was held for the new opera, which premiered on 26 May. Wagner was by this clock highly ill, having suffered a series of increasingly severe angina attacks. During the one-sixteenth and concluding performance of Parsifal on 29 August, he entered the pit spiritual world during work 3, took the baton from conductor Hermann Levi, and led the performance to its termination. After the festival, the Wagner kin journeyed to Venice for the winter. Wagner died of a heart attack at the age of 69 on 13 February 1883 at Ca ‘ Vendramin Calergi, a 16th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal. The caption that the attack was prompted by argument with Cosima over Wagner ‘s purportedly amatory sake in the singer Carrie Pringle, who had been a Flower-maiden in Parsifal at Bayreuth, is without credible testify. After a funerary gondola car bore Wagner ‘s remains over the Grand Canal, his body was taken to Germany where it was buried in the garden of the Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth .
Works [edit ]
Wagner ‘s melodious output is listed by the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis ( WWV ) as comprising 113 works, including fragments and projects. [ 148 ] The beginning complete scholarly edition of his musical works in print was commenced in 1970 under the auspices of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and the Akademie five hundred Wissenschaften und five hundred Literatur of Mainz, and is soon under the editorship of Egon Voss. It will consist of 21 volumes ( 57 books ) of music and 10 volumes ( 13 books ) of relevant documents and text. As at October 2017, three volumes remain to be published. The publisher is Schott Music .
Operas [edit ]
Leitmotif associated with the horn-call of the hero of Wagner’s opera Siegfried Wagner ‘s operatic works are his primary coil artistic bequest. Unlike most opera composers, who by and large left the job of writing the libretto ( the text and lyrics ) to others, Wagner wrote his own libretto, which he referred to as “ poems ”. From 1849 onwards, he urged a modern concept of opera much referred to as “ music play ” ( although he former rejected this term ), [ n 16 ] in which all musical, poetic and dramatic elements were to be fused together—the Gesamtkunstwerk. Wagner developed a compositional style in which the importance of the orchestra is equal to that of the singers. The orchestra ‘s dramatic character in the later operas includes the function of leitmotiv, musical phrases that can be interpreted as announcing specific characters, locales, and plot elements ; their complex weave and development illuminates the progress of the drama. These operas are inactive, despite Wagner ‘s reservations, referred to by many writers [ 154 ] as “ music play ”. [ 155 ]
early works ( to 1842 ) [edit ]
Wagner ‘s earliest attempts at opera were frequently uncompleted. Abandoned works include a bucolic opera based on Goethe ‘s Die Laune des Verliebten ( The Infatuated Lover’s Caprice ), written at the age of 17, Die Hochzeit ( The Wedding ), on which Wagner worked in 1832, and the singspiel Männerlist größer als Frauenlist ( Men are More Cunning than Women, 1837–38 ). Die Feen ( The Fairies, 1833 ) was not performed in the composer ‘s life and Das Liebesverbot ( The Ban on Love, 1836 ) was withdrawn after its first performance. Rienzi ( 1842 ) was Wagner ‘s foremost opera to be successfully staged. The compositional style of these early work was conventional—the relatively more sophisticate Rienzi showing the clearly charm of Grand Opera à la Spontini and Meyerbeer—and did not exhibit the innovations that would mark Wagner ‘s home in musical history. Later in animation, Wagner said that he did not consider these works to be separate of his oeuvre ; and they have been performed only rarely in the last hundred years, although the preliminary to Rienzi is an episodic concert-hall piece. Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot, and Rienzi were performed at both Leipzig and Bayreuth in 2013 to mark the composer ‘s bicentennial. [ 158 ]
Der fliegende Holländer in Wagner’s hand and with his notes to the publisher open of overture toin Wagner ‘s hand and with his notes to the publisher
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Wagner ‘s middle stage output signal began with Der fliegende Holländer ( The Flying Dutchman, 1843 ), followed by Tannhäuser ( 1845 ) and Lohengrin ( 1850 ). These three operas are sometimes referred to as Wagner ‘s “ amatory opera ”. [ 159 ] They reinforced the reputation, among the public in Germany and beyond, that Wagner had begun to establish with Rienzi. Although distancing himself from the expressive style of these operas from 1849 onwards, he however reworked both Der fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser on several occasions. [ newton 17 ] These three operas are considered to represent a significant developmental degree in Wagner ‘s musical and operatic maturity as regards thematic handle, portrayal of emotions and orchestration. They are the earliest works included in the Bayreuth canon, the mature operas that Cosima staged at the Bayreuth Festival after Wagner ‘s death in accordance with his wishes. All three ( including the differing versions of Der fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser ) continue to be regularly performed throughout the global, and have been frequently recorded. [ nitrogen 18 ] They were besides the operas by which his fame spread during his life. [ normality 19 ]
Starting the Ring [edit ]
Wagner ‘s belated drama are considered his masterpieces. Der Ring des Nibelungen, normally referred to as the Ring or “ Ring cycle ”, is a set of four operas based broadly on figures and elements of Germanic mythology —particularly from the subsequently Norse mythology —notably the Old Norse Poetic Edda and Volsunga Saga, and the Middle high German Nibelungenlied. [ 164 ] Wagner specifically developed the libretto for these operas according to his interpretation of Stabreim, highly alliterative rhyming verse-pairs used in erstwhile Germanic poetry. They were besides influenced by Wagner ‘s concepts of ancient greek drama, in which tetralogies were a component of athenian festivals, and which he had amply discussed in his essay “ Oper und Drama “. The first two components of the Ring hertz were Das Rheingold ( The Rhinegold ), which was completed in 1854, and Die Walküre ( The Valkyrie ), which was finished in 1856. In Das Rheingold, with its “ relentlessly chatty ‘realism ‘ [ and ] the absence of lyric ‘ numbers ‘ ”, Wagner came very close to the musical ideals of his 1849–51 essays. Die Walküre, which contains what is virtually a traditional aria ( Siegmund ‘s Winterstürme in the first act ), and the quasi- chorale appearance of the Valkyries themselves, shows more “ operatic ” traits, but has been assessed by Barry Millington as “ the music play that most satisfactorily embodies the theoretical principles of ‘Oper und Drama ‘ … A arrant deduction of poetry and music is achieved without any noteworthy sacrifice in musical expression. ”
Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger [edit ]
While composing the opera Siegfried, the third partially of the Ring cycle, Wagner interrupted employment on it and between 1857 and 1864 wrote the tragic love floor Tristan und Isolde and his merely senesce comedy Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg ( The Mastersingers of Nuremberg ), two works that are besides part of the regular operatic canon .
Die Meistersinger, and sang Wotan in the first complete Ring cycleFranz Betz (by Fritz Luckhardt ), who created the role of Hans Sachs in, and sang Wotan in the first completecycle Tristan is frequently granted a limited stead in musical history ; many see it as the begin of the move away from conventional harmony and key and consider that it lays the groundwork for the management of classical music music in the twentieth hundred. Wagner felt that his musico-dramatical theories were most perfectly realised in this cultivate with its habit of “ the art of transition ” between dramatic elements and the balance achieved between song and orchestral lines. Completed in 1859, the work was given its first performance in Munich, conducted by Bülow, in June 1865. Die Meistersinger was in the first place conceived by Wagner in 1845 as a sort of amusing chandelier to Tannhäuser. Like Tristan, it was premiered in Munich under the baton of Bülow, on 21 June 1868, and became an immediate success. Millington describes Meistersinger as “ a full-bodied, perceptive music drama widely admired for its warm world ”, but its potent german nationalist overtones have led some to cite it as an example of Wagner ‘s reactionary politics and anti-semitism. [ 177 ]
Completing the Ring [edit ]
When Wagner returned to writing the music for the last act of Siegfried and for Götterdämmerung ( Twilight of the Gods ), as the concluding separate of the Ring, his vogue had changed once more to something more recognizable as “ operatic ” than the aural worldly concern of Rheingold and Walküre, though it was silent thoroughly stamped with his own originality as a composer and suffused with leitmotiv. This was in character because the libretto of the four Ring operas had been written in change by reversal order, so that the reserve for Götterdämmerung was conceived more “ traditionally ” than that of Rheingold ; still, the self-imposed strictures of the Gesamtkunstwerk had become relax. The differences besides result from Wagner ‘s exploitation as a composer during the menstruation in which he wrote Tristan, Meistersinger and the Paris adaptation of Tannhäuser. From act 3 of Siegfried onwards, the Ring becomes more chromatic melodically, more complex harmonically and more developmental in its discussion of leitmotiv. Wagner took 26 years from writing the first draft of a libretto in 1848 until he completed Götterdämmerung in 1874. The Ring takes about 15 hours to perform and is the only undertaking of such size to be regularly presented on the populace ‘s stages .
Parsifal [edit ]
Wagner ‘s final examination opera, Parsifal ( 1882 ), which was his entirely work written specially for his Bayreuth Festspielhaus and which is described in the score as a “ Bühnenweihfestspiel “ ( “ festival turn for the consecration of the stage ” ), has a storyline suggested by elements of the caption of the Holy Grail. It besides carries elements of Buddhist repudiation suggested by Wagner ‘s readings of Schopenhauer. Wagner described it to Cosima as his “ stopping point card ”. It remains controversial because of its treatment of Christianity, its eroticism, and its expression, as perceived by some commentators, of german patriotism and anti-semitism. Despite the composer ‘s own description of the opera to King Ludwig as “ this most christian of works ”, Ulrike Kienzle has commented that “ Wagner ‘s change state to Christian mythology, upon which the imagination and spiritual contents of Parsifal perch, is idiosyncratic and contradicts christian dogma in many ways. ” musically the opera has been held to represent a continuing development of the composer ‘s vogue, and Millington describes it as “ a diaphanous score of spiritual beauty and refinement ” .
Non-operatic music [edit ]
L’Éclipse 18 April 1869André Gill suggesting that Wagner’s music was ear-splitting. Cover of18 April 1869 apart from his operas, Wagner composed relatively few pieces of music. These include a symphony in C major ( written at the age of 19 ), the Faust Overture ( the only complete part of an mean symphony orchestra on the subject ), some concert overtures, and chorale and piano pieces. His most normally performed work that is not an educe from an opera is the Siegfried Idyll for chamber orchestra, which has several motifs in common with the Ring cycle. The Wesendonck Lieder are besides frequently performed, either in the original piano version, or with orchestral complement. [ newton 20 ] More rarely performed are the American Centennial March ( 1876 ), and Das Liebesmahl der Apostel ( The Love Feast of the Apostles ), a musical composition for male choruses and orchestra composed in 1843 for the city of Dresden. After completing Parsifal, Wagner expressed his intention to turn to the write of symphonies, and several sketches dating from the late 1870s and early 1880s have been identified as work towards this goal. The overtures and certain orchestral passages from Wagner ‘s center and late-stage operas are normally played as concert pieces. For most of these, Wagner wrote or rewrote short passages to ensure melodious coherence. The “ Bridal Chorus “ from Lohengrin is frequently played as the bridget ‘s processional wedding march in english-speaking countries .
Prose writings [edit ]
Wagner was an highly prolific writer, authoring many books, poems, and articles, deoxyadenosine monophosphate good as voluminous parallelism. His writings covered a wide range of topics, including autobiography, politics, philosophy, and detail analyses of his own operas. Wagner planned for a gather edition of his publications deoxyadenosine monophosphate early as 1865 ; he believed that such an version would help the world understand his intellectual development and aesthetic aims. The first such edition was published between 1871 and 1883, but was doctored to suppress or alter articles that were an embarrassment to him ( e.g. those praising Meyerbeer ), or by altering dates on some articles to reinforce Wagner ‘s own history of his progress. Wagner ‘s autobiography Mein Leben was in the first place published for close friends alone in a very small version ( 15–18 copies per volume ) in four volumes between 1870 and 1880. The foremost populace edition ( with many passages suppressed by Cosima ) appeared in 1911 ; the first attack at a full edition ( in German ) appeared in 1963. There have been modern complete or overtone editions of Wagner ‘s writings, including a centennial edition in german edited by Dieter Borchmeyer ( which, however, omitted the test “ Das Judenthum in five hundred Musik ” and Mein Leben ). The english translations of Wagner ‘s prose in eight volumes by W. Ashton Ellis ( 1892–99 ) are silent in print and normally used, despite their deficiencies. The first complete historic and critical edition of Wagner ‘s prose works was launched in 2013 at the Institute for Music Research at the University of Würzburg ; this will result in at least eight volumes of text and several volumes of comment, totalling over 5,000 pages. It was in the first place anticipated that the visualize will be completed by 2030. [ 201 ] A complete edition of Wagner ‘s correspondence, estimated to amount to between 10,000 and 12,000 items, is under way under the supervision of the University of Würzburg. As of January 2021, 25 volumes have appeared, covering the period to 1873. [ 202 ]
influence and bequest [edit ]
charm on music [edit ]
Wagner ‘s later musical style introduced new ideas in harmony, melodious process ( leitmotiv ) and operatic social organization. notably from Tristan und Isolde onwards, he explored the limits of the traditional tonal system, which gave keys and chords their identity, pointing the manner to atonality in the twentieth century. Some music historians date the beginning of modern classical music to the inaugural notes of Tristan, which include the alleged Tristan chord .
Wagner inspired great idolatry. For a long period, many composers were inclined to align themselves with or against Wagner ‘s music. Anton Bruckner and Hugo Wolf were greatly indebted to him, as were César Franck, Henri Duparc, Ernest Chausson, Jules Massenet, Richard Strauss, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Hans Pfitzner and many others. [ 205 ] Gustav Mahler was devoted to Wagner and his music ; aged 15, he sought him out on his 1875 visit to Vienna, became a celebrated Wagner conductor, and his compositions are seen by Richard Taruskin as extending Wagner ‘s “ maximalization ” of “ the worldly and the heavy ” in music to the populace of the symphony orchestra. The consonant revolutions of Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg ( both of whose oeuvres check examples of tonal and atonal modernism ) have frequently been traced bet on to Tristan and Parsifal. The italian form of operatic reality known as verismo owed a lot to the wagnerian concept of musical form. Wagner made a major contribution to the principles and practice of conducting. His essay “ About Conducting ” ( 1869 ) advanced Hector Berlioz ‘s technique of conducting and claimed that conduct was a mean by which a musical work could be re-interpreted, rather than just a mechanism for achieving orchestral unison. He exemplified this approach in his own conducting, which was significantly more flexible than the discipline approach of Felix Mendelssohn ; in his see this besides justify practices that would nowadays be frowned upon, such as the rewrite of scores. [ newton 21 ] Wilhelm Furtwängler felt that Wagner and Bülow, through their interpretative approach, inspired a hale new generation of conductors ( including Furtwängler himself ). Among those claiming inspiration from Wagner ‘s music are the german band Rammstein, and the electronic composer Klaus Schulze, whose 1975 album Timewind consists of two 30-minute tracks, Bayreuth Return and Wahnfried 1883. Joey DeMaio of the ring Manowar has described Wagner as “ The beget of heavy metallic element “. The slovenian group Laibach created the 2009 suite VolksWagner, using material from Wagner ‘s opera. [ 218 ] Phil Spector ‘s Wall of Sound recording proficiency was, it has been claimed, heavy influenced by Wagner .
influence on literature, doctrine and the ocular arts [edit ]
Wagner ‘s influence on literature and doctrine is meaning. Millington has commented :
[ Wagner ‘s ] protean abundance meant that he could inspire the manipulation of literary motif in many a novel employing inner soliloquy ; … the Symbolists saw him as a mysterious hierophant ; the Decadents found many a frisson in his work .
Friedrich Nietzsche was a member of Wagner ‘s inner circle during the early 1870s, and his foremost published shape, The Birth of Tragedy, proposed Wagner ‘s music as the dionysian “ metempsychosis ” of european culture in confrontation to Apollonian positivist “ degeneracy ”. Nietzsche broke with Wagner following the beginning Bayreuth Festival, believing that Wagner ‘s final examination phase represented a pander to Christian pieties and a surrender to the new German Reich. Nietzsche expressed his displeasure with the late Wagner in “ The Case of Wagner “ and “ Nietzsche contra Wagner “. The poets Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine worshipped Wagner. Édouard Dujardin, whose influential novel Les Lauriers sont coupés is in the form of an home monologue inspired by wagnerian music, founded a diary dedicated to Wagner, La Revue Wagnérienne, to which J. K. Huysmans and Téodor de Wyzewa contributed. In a list of major cultural figures influenced by Wagner, Bryan Magee includes D. H. Lawrence, Aubrey Beardsley, Romain Rolland, Gérard de Nerval, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Rainer Maria Rilke and respective others. In the twentieth hundred, W. H. Auden once called Wagner “ possibly the greatest brilliance that always lived ”, [ 225 ] while Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust were heavily influenced by him and discussed Wagner in their novels. He is besides discussed in some of the works of James Joyce, vitamin a good as W. E. B. Du Bois, who featured Lohengrin in The Souls of Black Folk. wagnerian themes inhabit T. S. Eliot ‘s The Waste Land, which contains lines from Tristan und Isolde and Götterdämmerung, and Verlaine ‘s poem on Parsifal. many of Wagner ‘s concepts, including his guess about dreams, predated their investigation by Sigmund Freud. Wagner had publicly analysed the Oedipus myth before Freud was born in terms of its psychological significance, insisting that incestuous desires are natural and normal, and perceptively exhibiting the relationship between sex and anxiety. Georg Groddeck considered the Ring as the first manual of psychoanalysis .
influence on film [edit ]
Wagner ‘s concept of the use of leitmotiv and the incorporate musical formulation which they can enable has influenced many 20th and twenty-first century film scores. The critic Theodor Adorno has noted that the wagnerian leitmotiv “ leads immediately to cinema music where the sole function of the leitmotiv is to announce heroes or situations so as to allow the hearing to orient itself more easily ”. Film scores citing wagnerian themes include Francis Ford Coppola ‘s Apocalypse Now, which features a interpretation of the Ride of the Valkyries, Trevor Jones ‘s soundtrack to John Boorman ‘s film Excalibur, and the 2011 films A Dangerous Method ( dir. David Cronenberg ) and Melancholia ( dir. Lars von Trier ). [ 235 ] Hans-Jürgen Syberberg ‘s 1977 film Hitler: A Film from Germany ‘s ocular vogue and hardened design are powerfully inspired by Der Ring des Nibelungen, musical excerpts from which are frequently used in the film ‘s soundtrack. [ 236 ]
Opponents and supporters [edit ]
Eduard Hanslick not all reaction to Wagner was positive. For a time, german musical animation divided into two factions, supporters of Wagner and supporters of Johannes Brahms ; the latter, with the corroborate of the herculean critic Eduard Hanslick ( of whom Beckmesser in Meistersinger is in part a caricature ) championed traditional forms and led the conservative front against wagnerian innovations. They were supported by the conservative leanings of some german music schools, including the conservatories at Leipzig under Ignaz Moscheles and at Cologne under the direction of Ferdinand Hiller. Another Wagner detractor was the french composer Charles-Valentin Alkan, who wrote to Hiller after attending Wagner ‘s Paris concert on 25 January 1860 at which Wagner conducted the overtures to Der fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser, the preludes to Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde, and six other extracts from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin : “ I had imagined that I was going to meet music of an advanced kind but was astonished to find a pale imitation of Berlioz … I do not like all the music of Berlioz while appreciating his fantastic understand of certain instrumental effects … but here he was imitated and caricatured … Wagner is not a musician, he is a disease. ” [ 239 ] even those who, like Debussy, opposed Wagner ( “ this old poisoner ” ) [ 240 ] could not deny his influence. indeed, Debussy was one of many composers, including Tchaikovsky, who felt the want to break with Wagner precisely because his influence was sol apparent and overpowering. “ Golliwogg ‘s cakewalk ” from Debussy ‘s Children’s Corner piano suite contains a intentionally banteringly quotation from the unfold bars of Tristan. Others who proved tolerant to Wagner ‘s operas included Gioachino Rossini, who said “ Wagner has fantastic moments, and atrocious quarters of an hour. ” [ 242 ] In the twentieth century Wagner ‘s music was parodied by Paul Hindemith [ newton 22 ] and Hanns Eisler, among others. Wagner ‘s followers ( known as Wagnerians or Wagnerites ) [ 244 ] have formed many societies dedicated to Wagner ‘s liveliness and work. [ 245 ]
Film and stage portrayals [edit ]
Wagner has been the subject of many biographic films. The earliest was a mum movie made by Carl Froelich in 1913 and featured in the title function the composer Giuseppe Becce, who besides wrote the score for the film ( as Wagner ‘s music, placid in copyright, was not available ). other film portrayals of Wagner include : Alan Badel in Magic Fire ( 1955 ) ; Lyndon Brook in Song Without End ( 1960 ) ; Trevor Howard in Ludwig ( 1972 ) ; Paul Nicholas in Lisztomania ( 1975 ) ; and Richard Burton in Wagner ( 1983 ). [ 247 ] Jonathan Harvey ‘s opera Wagner Dream ( 2007 ) intertwines the events surrounding Wagner ‘s death with the history of Wagner ‘s uncompleted opera outline Die Sieger (The Victors) .
Bayreuth Festival [edit ]
Since Wagner ‘s death, the Bayreuth Festival, which has become an annual event, has been successively directed by his widow, his son Siegfried, the latter ‘s widow Winifred Wagner, their two sons Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner, and, presently, two of the composer ‘s great-granddaughters, Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Katharina Wagner. [ 249 ] Since 1973, the festival has been overseen by the Richard-Wagner-Stiftung ( Richard Wagner Foundation ), the members of which include some of Wagner ‘s descendants. [ 250 ]
Controversies [edit ]
Wagner ‘s operas, writings, politics, beliefs and unorthodox life style made him a controversial human body during his life. Following his death, debate about his ideas and their interpretation, peculiarly in Germany during the twentieth century, has continued .
racism and anti-semitism [edit ]
Humoristische Blätter (1873). The exaggerated features refer to rumours of Wagner’s Jewish ancestry. caricature of Wagner by Karl Clic in the Viennese satirical magazine, ( 1873 ). The exaggerated features refer to rumours of Wagner ‘s jewish ancestry. Wagner ‘s hostile writings on Jews, including Jewishness in Music, represent to some existing trends of think in Germany during the nineteenth hundred. [ 252 ] Despite his very public views on this topic, throughout his life Wagner had jewish friends, colleagues and supporters. There have been patronize suggestions that anti-semitic stereotypes are represented in Wagner ‘s opera. The characters of Alberich and Mime in the Ring, Sixtus Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger, and Klingsor in Parsifal are sometimes claimed as jewish representations, though they are not identified as such in the libretto of these operas. [ 255 ] [ normality 23 ] The subject is farther complicated by allegations, which may have been credited by Wagner, that he himself was of jewish lineage, via his supposed father Geyer. however, there is no evidence that Geyer had jewish ancestors. Some biographers have noted that Wagner in his final years developed concern in the racist doctrine of Arthur de Gobineau, notably Gobineau ‘s belief that western society was doomed because of miscegenation between “ superior ” and “ inferior ” races. According to Robert Gutman, this theme is reflected in the opera Parsifal. other biographers ( such as Lucy Beckett ) believe that this is not true, as the original drafts of the floor date back to 1857 and Wagner had completed the libretto for Parsifal by 1877, but he displayed no significant interest in Gobineau until 1880 .
other interpretations [edit ]
Wagner ‘s ideas are amenable to socialist interpretations ; many of his ideas on art were being formulated at the time of his revolutionary inclinations in the 1840s. thus, for exercise, George Bernard Shaw wrote in The Perfect Wagnerite ( 1883 ) :
[ Wagner ‘s ] picture of Niblunghome [ nitrogen 24 ] under the predominate of Alberic is a poetic vision of unregulated industrial capitalism as it was made known in Germany in the middle of the nineteenth hundred by Engels ‘s reserve The Condition of the Working Class in England .
leftist interpretations of Wagner besides inform the writings of Theodor Adorno among other Wagner critics. [ north 25 ] Walter Benjamin gave Wagner as an example of “ bourgeois false awareness ”, alienating art from its sociable context. György Lukács contended that the ideas of the early Wagner represented the political orientation of the “ true socialists ” ( wahre Sozialisten ), a movement referenced in Karl Marx ‘s “ Communist Manifesto “ as belong to the leftist of german bourgeois radicalism and associated with Feuerbachianism and Karl Theodor Ferdinand Grün, [ 263 ] while Anatoly Lunacharsky said about the late Wagner : “ The r-2 is complete. The rotatory has become a reactionary. The rebellious fiddling businessperson now kisses the skidder of the Pope, the keeper of order. ” [ 264 ] The writer Robert Donington has produced a detailed, if controversial, jungian interpretation of the Ring bicycle, described as “ an border on to Wagner by way of his symbols ”, which, for example, sees the character of the goddess Fricka as contribution of her conserve Wotan ‘s “ inner femininity ”. Millington notes that Jean-Jacques Nattiez has besides applied psychoanalytical techniques in an evaluation of Wagner ‘s life and works .
nazi annexation [edit ]
Adolf Hitler was an admirer of Wagner ‘s music and power saw in his operas an embodiment of his own sight of the german nation ; in a 1922 language he claimed that Wagner ‘s works glorified “ the heroic verse Teutonic nature … Greatness lies in the heroic. ” [ 268 ] Hitler visited Bayreuth frequently from 1923 onwards and attended the productions at the dramaturgy. There continues to be consider about the extent to which Wagner ‘s views might have influenced Nazi thinking. [ newton 26 ] Houston Stewart Chamberlain ( 1855–1927 ), who married Wagner ‘s daughter Eva in 1908 but never met Wagner, was the author of the racist book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, approved by the Nazi drift. [ normality 27 ] Chamberlain met Hitler several times between 1923 and 1927 in Bayreuth, but can not credibly be regarded as a conduit of Wagner ‘s own views. [ 274 ] The Nazis used those parts of Wagner ‘s think that were useful for propaganda and ignored or suppressed the rest. [ 275 ] While Bayreuth presented a utilitarian front for nazi acculturation, and Wagner ‘s music was used at many nazi events, [ 276 ] the Nazi hierarchy as a whole did not parcel Hitler ‘s exuberance for Wagner ‘s operas and resented attending these drawn-out epics at Hitler ‘s insistence. Some nazi ideologists, most notably Alfred Rosenberg, rejected Parsifal as excessively christian and pacifist. [ 278 ] Guido Fackler has researched evidence that indicates that it is possible that Wagner ‘s music was used at the Dachau assiduity camp in 1933–34 to “ reeducate ” political prisoners by exposure to “ home music ”. [ 279 ] There has been no testify to support claims, sometimes made, [ 280 ] that his music was played at Nazi death camps during the second World War, and Pamela Potter has noted that Wagner ‘s music was explicitly off-limits in the camps. [ nitrogen 28 ] Because of the associations of Wagner with anti-semitism and Nazism, the performance of his music in the State of Israel has been a informant of controversy. [ 281 ]
Notes [edit ]
References [edit ]
Citations [edit ]
Sources [edit ]
further read [edit ]
Operas [edit ]
Writings [edit ]
Scores [edit ]
other [edit ]
Read more: David Prowse