Wagner, R.: Scenes From Tristan Und Isolde And Gotterdammerung

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Cat No: 8555789

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Release Date: 06 January 2004

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 747313578924

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: WAGNER, R.

Description
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)Scenes from Tristan und Isolde and GotterdammerungRichard Wagner inspired in his contemporariesextremes of reaction. His career was in many waysthoroughly discreditable. He betrayed friends andpatrons, accumulated debts with abandon, and seemed,in pursuit of his aims, an unprincipled opportunist.Nevertheless, whatever his defects of character, heexercised a hypnotic influence over his immediatefollowers, while his creation of a new form of musicdrama,in which the arts were combined, and themagnitude of his ambitious conception continue tofascinate.As a boy in Leipzig Wagner was inspired by theexample of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, while hisliterary ambitions drew strength from a study ofShakespeare. Study of music in Leipzig was followed in1833 by appointment as chorus-master at the opera inWurzburg, through the agency of an elder brother, aprincipal tenor there. The next year he became musicdirector to Heinrich Bethmann's theatre company,moving with it to Magdeburg, largely at the insistenceof the actress Minna Planer, whom he followed toKonigsberg, marrying her there in November 1836. Thefollowing spring saw him as music director to theKonigsberg theatre and in the summer he took up anappointment as music director in Riga, where he wasjoined again by Minna, who had earlier deserted him forother lovers. Employment in Riga ended in March 1839and debts now forced Wagner to take flight, sailing toLondon, but finally finding refuge and a possiblerealisation of ambitions in Paris.While the French capital offered experience thatproved fruitful, there were practical difficulties inearning a living. In 1842, however, Wagner succeeded,with the help of Meyerbeer, in securing a staging of hisopera Rienzi in Dresden, followed by Die fliegendeHollander and appointment as music director at thecourt opera. He held this position until involvementwith revolutionaries in 1849 forced him to seek refugein Switzerland. Years spent there, interrupted byperiods in Paris, Venice, and Vienna, brought growingachievement as a composer and the patronage of KingLudwig II of Bavaria in Munich, where the great musicdramas of his maturity were staged. Rivalries forced hisdeparture, again to Switzerland, where, on news of thedeath of his wife, who had remained in Dresden, he wasjoined by Liszt's illegitimate daughter Cosima, the wifeof the pianist and conductor Hans von Bulow. A yearbefore her divorce from von Bulow, she bore Wagner ason, Siegfried, and brought with her two daughters thatWagner had fathered. The couple married in 1870 andthe following year Wagner turned his attention to thebuilding of his own opera house in Bayreuth, withfurther support from King Ludwig, from whom Wagnerhad been estranged for some years. It was in the newtheatre that the first complete performance of Der Ringdes Nibelungen was performed in 1876, to be followedin 1882 by the first staging of Parsifal. Over the yearsWagner had generally spent the winter in the warmerclim
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