Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner ("REEKKH-art VOGG-ner") was a German opera composer during the late Romantic era. He stretched the tonal systems of his day by using chromaticism for dramatic effect. He also introduced the concept of the leitmotiv in his operatic plot development, a recurring musical theme associated with a particular person, place, or idea.

Personally, Wagner was an arrogant, dishonest, jealous, hypocritical, racist, sexist, and passionately anti-Semitic man.  In fact, Hitler adopted him as a hero for his beliefs — and until very recently, Wagner's music has been banned is Israel.  And yet, his music is rather pleasant to listen to ... most of the time.  It seems incredible that such a odious man could have composed it.

Richard Wagner (May 22, 1813 - February 13, 1883) was born in Leipzig, Germany, and from the beginning, he loved the theater.  When he was 20, he got a job playing piano for rehearsals for an amateur opera company.  This first-hand look at opera-making inspired him to try his own hand at it. 

That hand was shaky at first.  Wagner couldn't persuade anyone to even put on his first opera, The Fairies.  And his second, The Ban on Love, was an utter disaster.  On opening night, the singers didn't know their parts; the orchestra was out of tune and out of sync; and the prima donna's husband got so upset with the tenor's loving behavior toward his wife in the opera that he jumped up on the stage to punch him in the face.

But Wagner was too persistent to give up.  If Germany wasn't going to appreciate him, maybe another country would — like maybe Latvia.  He also stopped in Paris, then back to Germany.  After all this traipsing about, he felt confident that his next operatic effort would finally be a success.  Unfortunately for him, he'd also been active in political protests — enough to get him fired from his job, get a warrant out for his arrest, and force him to leave the country.  This time he wouldn't return (he wasn't allowed to) for 13 years.

Next he hung out in Switzerland for a while and then returned to Paris to oversee a production of Tannhauser, but the French audiences turned the premiere into a fiasco.  The second and third performances were not much better received either, so Wagner ordered it withdrawn.  It wasn't seen again in Paris for 35 years.

But Wagner's persistence at opera-writing finally paid off when he met King Ludwig II of Bavaria.  He was a huge fan of Wagner's and sent a messenger to bring the composer to his castle, promising to satisfy his every need and publicize his operas throughout the land.  By most accounts, Ludwig, whose outlandish castles you can still visit, was a certifiable nut case.  He eventually went completely berserk and drowned himself in a lake.  So in other words, he was the perfect patron for Richard Wagner.

Flush with funding from Ludwig, Wagner's opera career finally exploded.  In 1865, Munich heard the premiere of Tristan and Isolde, a story of two lovers as tragic as Romeo and Juliet.  Four years later came the premiere of Wagner's hugest creation: the Ring cycle  (or The Ring of the Nibelungs).  This cycle of four gigantic operas, based on medieval folk tales, ultimately made Wagner world-famous.

For your listening pleasure, here's an excerpt from Wagner's opera, The Valkyries (part of the Ring cycle): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V92OBNsQgxU  It will forever and always remind me of the song (Kill the Wabbit) Elmer Fudd sings in the Bugs Bunny cartoon, What's Opera, Doc? — which you can view here. :)