Biography
Richard Wagner (1813-1883), born in Leipzig, transformed nineteenth-century music theatre more radically than any other single figure. His concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk—the total work of art unifying music, drama, poetry, and staging—culminated in the four-opera Ring cycle, composed over twenty-six years. Wagner wrote all his own libretti and revolutionised operatic harmony; the Tristan chord from Tristan und Isolde (1865) opened harmonic territories that defined modernism. His other major works include Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal. Wagner founded the Bayreuth Festival in 1876, creating a dedicated stage for his works that continues under his family's direction. His cultural legacy is inseparable from the antisemitism of his writings and the later Nazi appropriation of his works—a contested inheritance that still shapes every Wagner production.
On Stagelog
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