Richard Wagner

Wagner, Richard (1813–83), German composer. His adventurous and influential music marks the high point of German romanticism. A conductor in provincial opera houses, he achieved his first successes as a composer with the operas Rienzi (1838–40), Der Fliegende Holländer (1841), Tannhäuser (1844), and Lohengrin (1846–48), in which he pioneered his new ideas in fusing music and drama. The culmination of his creative principles is found in the myth cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, comprising Das Rheingold (1853–54), Die Walküre (1854–56), Siegfried (1856–69), and Götterdämmerung (1874). Involved in the 1848 Dresden revolution, Wagner fled (with the help of Franz Liszt) to Switzerland, where he wrote Tristan und Isolde (1857–59) and the comic opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1862–67), in addition to part of the Ring cycle. He next moved to Bavaria (1872), where Ludwig II helped him found the Bayreuth Festival. Parsifal (1877–82) was his last opera. His second wife, Cosima (1837–1930), the daughter of Liszt, was largely responsible for the continuing success of the Bayreuth Festival.