Wagner, R.: Overtures

Description

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)OverturesRichard Wagner inspired in his contemporaries extremes ofreaction. His career was in many ways thoroughly discreditable. He betrayedfriends and patrons, accumulated debts with abandon, and seemed, in pursuit ofhis aims, an unprincipled opportunist. Nevertheless, whatever his defects ofcharacter, he exercised a hypnotic influence over his immediate followers,while his creation of a new form of music-drama, in which the arts werecombined, and the magnitude of his ambitious conception continue to fascinate.As a boy in Leipzig Wagner was inspired by the example ofBeethoven's Ninth Symphony, while his literary ambitions drew strength from astudy of Shakespeare. Study of music in Leipzig was followed in 1833 byappointment as chorus-master at the opera in W??rzburg, through the agency of anelder brother, a principal tenor there. The next year he became music directorto Heinrich Bethmann's theatre company, moving with it to Magdeburg, largely atthe insistence of the actress Minna Planer, whom he followed to Konigsberg,marrying her there in November 1836. The following spring saw him as musicdirector to the Konigsberg theatre and in the summer he took up an appointmentas music director in Riga, where he was joined again by Minna, who had earlierdeserted him for other lovers. Employment in Riga ended in March 1839 and debtsnow forced Wagner to take flight, sailing to London, but finally finding refugeand a possible realisation of ambitions in Paris.While the French capital offered experience that provedfruitful, there were practical difficulties in earning a living. In 1842,however, Wagner succeeded, with the help of Meyerbeer, in securing a staging ofhis opera Rienzi in Dresden, followed by Die fliegende Hollander andappointment as music director at the court opera. He held this position untilinvolvement with revolutionaries in 1849 forced him to seek refuge inSwitzerland. Years spent there, interrupted by periods in Paris, Venice, andVienna, brought growing achievement as a composer and the patronage of KingLudwig II of Bavaria in Munich, where the great music dramas of his maturitywere staged. Rivalries forced his departure, again to Switzerland, where, onnews of the death of his wife, who had remained in Dresden, he was joined byLiszt's illegitimate daughter Cosima, the wife of the pianist and conductorHans von B??low. A year before her divorce from von B??low, she bore Wagner ason, Siegfried, and brought with her two daughters that Wagner had fathered.The couple married in 1870 and the following year Wagner turned his attentionto the building of his own opera house in Bayreuth, with further support fromKing Ludwig, from whom Wagner had been estranged for some years. It was in thenew theatre that the first complete performance of Der Ring des Nibelungen wasperformed in 1876, to be followed in 1882 by the first staging of Parsifal.Over the years Wagner had generally spent the winter in the warmer climate ofItaly. He di