The artistic and theatrical background of Wagner’s early years was a main formative influence. Impulsive and self-willed, he was a negligent scholar at the Kreuzschule, Dresden, and the Nicholaischule, Leipzig. He frequented concerts, however, taught himself the piano and composition, and read the plays of Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schiller.
Wagner (b. May 22, 1813, Leipzig [Germany]—d. Feb. 13, 1883, Venice, Italy) enrolled at Leipzig University, where he applied himself earnestly to composition. His Symphony in C Major was performed at the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts in 1833. On leaving the university that year, he spent the summer as operatic coach at Würzburg, where he composed his first opera, Die Feen (The Fairies), based on a fantastic tale by Carlo Gozzi. He failed to get the opera produced at Leipzig and became conductor to a provincial theatrical troupe from Magdeburg, having fallen in love with one of the actresses of the troupe, Wilhelmine (Minna) Planer, whom he married in 1836. The single performance of his second opera, Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), after Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, was a disaster.
In 1839, fleeing from his creditors, he decided to put into operation his long-cherished plan to win renown in Paris, but his three years in Paris were calamitous. Living with a colony of poor German artists, he staved off starvation by means of musical journalism and hackwork. Nevertheless, in 1840 he completed Rienzi (after Bulwer-Lytton’s novel), and in 1841 he composed his first representative opera, Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), based on the legend about a ship’s captain condemned to sail forever.
In 1842, aged 29, he gladly returned to Dresden, where Rienzi was triumphantly performed on October 20. The next year The Flying Dutchman (produced at Dresden, Jan. 2, 1843) was less successful, since the audience was puzzled by the innovative way the new opera integrated the music with the dramatic content. But Wagner was appointed conductor of the court opera, a post that he held until 1849. On Oct. 19, 1845, Tannhäuser (based, like all his future works, on Germanic legends) was coolly received but soon proved a steady attraction.
The refusal of the court opera authorities in Dresden to stage his next opera, Lohengrin, was not based on artistic reasons; rather, they were alienated by Wagner’s projected administrative and artistic reforms. His proposals would have taken control of the opera away from the court and created a national theatre whose productions would be chosen by a union of dramatists and composers. Preoccupied with ideas of social regeneration, he then became embroiled in the German revolution of 1848–49. He ultimately fled from Germany, unable to attend the first performance of Lohengrin at Weimar, given on Aug. 28, 1850.
Music in Common Life: Volk, Melody and Beautification of the Ordinary
