Classical
Germany
Richard Wagner
Most Streamed Songs by Richard Wagner
About Richard Wagner
One of the most influential of all classical composers, Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig in 1813, and grew up enthralled by the theater (his stepfather was an actor). Wagnerâs formidable ambition secured him conducting positions in opera houses first in Magdeburg and Riga, then in Dresden, where the powerful, dark-toned Romanticism of Der fliegende HollĂ€nder (The Flying Dutchman, 1841) and TannhĂ€user (1845) began to spread his name. After composing Lohengrin (1848), he was involved in the failed Dresden revolution in 1849 and fled to Switzerland. There he worked on the text and music of four âmusic dramasâ comprising an epic cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Nibelungâs Ring). With the first two operas, Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold, 1854) and Die WalkĂŒre (The Valkyrie, 1856), finished, Wagner paused work on the third, Siegfried (completed 1871), to compose instead Tristan und Isolde (1859), based on Arthurian legend, but the musicâs chromatic intensity and technical difficulty at first prevented performances. King Ludwig II of Bavaria had Tristan und Isolde (1865) and the comedy Die Meistersinger von NĂŒrnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, 1868) staged in Munich. Moving to Bayreuth in northern Bavaria, Wagner oversaw the construction (underwritten by Ludwig) of a purpose-built festival theater for the Ring; with the cycleâs fourth opera, GötterdĂ€mmerung (Twilight of the Gods, 1874) completed, the entire work was performed in 1876. In 1882 Parsifal, inspired by the medieval Grail legend, was premiered at Bayreuth, before Wagnerâs death in Venice the following year.
Influenced by Richard WagnerRichard Wagner has influenced the music of John Williams, Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss and more.
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