Concert Programs

Composer

Richard Wagner

1813–1883

Richard Wagner transformed opera more radically than any composer before or since. Born in Leipzig in 1813, he grew up in a family steeped in theater and from an early age was drawn to the dramatic rather than the purely musical. Apart from a spell of lessons with the Leipzig cantor Theodor Weinlig, he was largely self-directed as a composer, absorbing Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schiller alongside Beethoven, developing a vision of opera as Gesamtkunstwerk: a “total work of art” synthesizing poetry, drama, music, and visual spectacle.

Wagner’s path was turbulent. An active participant in the 1849 Dresden uprising, he spent years in political exile, fleeing creditors and nursing turbulent love affairs. Yet his genius attracted patrons, most notably the eccentric King Ludwig II of Bavaria, whose financial support made possible Wagner’s ultimate achievement: the construction of the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth, a theater designed specifically for his works. There, in 1876, his monumental four-opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung received its first complete performance.

Wagner’s musical innovations (the seamless orchestral flow, the system of leitmotifs or recurring themes associated with characters, objects, or ideas, and the extreme chromaticism that strained the boundaries of tonality) influenced virtually every composer who followed, from Strauss and Mahler to Schoenberg and beyond.

Played by

London Symphony OrchestraBerliner PhilharmonikerRoyal Concertgebouw OrchestraWiener Philharmoniker

Works

Performed at

Upcoming

Past guides

Sources 2

  1. Richard Wagner, Wikipedia Cited in Knights Errant: From Wagner’s Pilgrims to Strauss’s Windmills. Accessed 30 September 2026.
  2. Das Rheingold, Wikipedia Cited in Das Rheingold: The Beginning of the End. Accessed 30 September 2026.