Wagner, R.: Orchestral Highlights From Operas

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Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Richard Wagner inspired in his contemporaries extremes of reaction. Forsome his music seemed as misguided and repulsive as his anti-Semitism, whileothers were overwhelmed by the size of his ambition and achievement, to which everythinghad to be sacrificed. Wagner's career was in many ways thoroughlydiscreditable. He betrayed friends and patrons, accumulated debts with abandon,and seemed, in pursuit of his aims, an unprincipled opportunist. Nevertheless,whatever his defects of character, he exercised a hypnotic influence over hisimmediate followers, while his creation of a new form of music-drama, in whichthe arts were combined, and the magnitude of his conception continue tofascinate.The tetralogy of The Ring,based on a conflation of Teutonic and Scandinavian legends, was originallyconceived while Wagner was enjoying his first real success as conductor at theopera in Dresden, where Rienzi, The Flying Dutchman and Tannhauser were first performed. In 1848,with revolution in the air, Wagner began work on the poem concerning the deathof the hero Siegfried, a text that was to serve as the basis for the fourthopera in the cycle, Gotterdammerung.In 1849 Wagner was forced to leave Dresden in haste. His creditors had,in any case, made his stay there uneasy, but in 1849 he was implicated in therising against the monarchy, and escaped to Switzerland, leaving his wifebehind. The first years of exile brought the completion of the text of The Ring and its publication in 1853,followed by the composition of the music of the first opera, Das Rheingold by 1854 and the second, Die Walk??re two years later. The completecycle, however, was performed for the first time at the new Festspielhaus inBayreuth in 1876. There, with the help of his young patron King Ludwig II ofBavaria, he had been able to establish his own operatic kingdom, realising hisrevolutionary ideas of music-drama and investing the art of opera with asignificance and weight that it had not generally possessed before.In July, 1882, the last of Wagner's operas, Parsifal, was staged at Bayreuth at the end of July, runningfor sixteen performances under the direction of Hermann Levi. In September thecomposer travelled again to Italy, where an easier way of life seemed likely tobe of benefit to his health. He died in Venice in February, 1883, after asevere heart attack and was later buried in the garden of his house inBayreuth. His legacy to the world was an enduring body of stage works and afestival centred on them, as well as continued conflict between thosefascinated by his achievement and those appalled by aspects of his characterand his writing.The Flying Dutchmanhas its literary source in the seventh chapter of Heine's Aus den Memoiren des Herren von Schnabelewopski,used by at least one earlier composer to provide the libretto of an opera. Thestory of the phantom ship and its haunted master appealed even more to Wagnerafter his own experiences at sea, when he was caught in a