Person attributes
Who was Richard Wagner?
Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director and conductor best remembered for his operas and music dramas. Hebecame interested in musical compositions at a very young age as his ambition was acquired based on his family background. Throughout his career he was met with oodles of controversies. His unabashed love affairs and polemic compositions gathered both admiration and antagonism. He composed verses against popular beliefs and had them performed at popular theatres. It was owing to his novel ideas that he brought creative finesse to complex ‘music dramas’ such as the ‘Ring Cycle’. Unlike several other composers or theatrical directors of his time, Wagner not only wrote the libretto but also composed music for his shows. Towards the later part of his career he further refined his works by directing and composing difficult orchestration. Yet, despitehaving such a promising career,his life was a struggle with creditors at his heel and numerous scandals clouding his name.
Childhood & Early Life
Richard Wagner was born on 22 May 1813 in Leipzig, Germany, to a baker’s daughter, Johanna Rosine and her husband Carl Friedrich Wagner, a clerk in the police service who died of typhus six months after Richard’s birth.
He was the 9th child of his parents. After Carl’s death, his mother moved along with her children to live with a friend of her deceased husband, Ludwig Geyer in Dresden.
His mother had an affair with Geyer, and probably went on to marry him, but no church documents have been retrieved to document the same.
Until he was fourteen years old, Richard believed that Geyer was his biological father; he was named Wagner after he learned that he was originally the son of Carl Wagner and Geyer was his stepfather.
Ludwig Geyer had a mighty influence on his life. Geyer was a painter, actor and poet and it was through him that Wagner experienced theatre.
Not only his step-father but his biological sisters were also opera singers and thus, a new passion was born in him that led him to opera and dramatization.
In 1820, his stepfather put him into Pastor Wetzel’s school in Possendorf, here he received tutelage in piano by a Latin teacher, who described his talent as sheer torture for musical instruments.
The next year, ill fate befell his familyonce again when his stepfather passed away and he was enrolled into the Kreuzschule boarding school. Here, found his passion as a playwright and was inspired by Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.
As a Composer
Richard Wagner’s brother Albert helped him become a choir master in 1833. In the same year he composed his first piece of opera called ‘Die Feen’ which when translated means ‘The Fairies’.
However, he couldn’t stage his first opera. In order to attain professional growth, in 1834 he became a musical director at the opera house in Magdeburg.
It was during this time that he wrote ‘Das Liebesverbot’ or ‘The Ban on Love’, a piece similar to Shakespeare’s ‘Measure for Measure’, that was staged in 1836 at Magdeburg theatre itself.
Nonetheless, it was only performed once;curtains were drawn on the second show as the theatre shut down, which left him reeling from financial losses.
