A Musical Genius

from SaxonyThe Life and Times of Richard Wagner

An exceptionally gifted composer, a rebellious spirit, a ladies’ man, for many a

muddled mind. Richard Wagner is one of the most fascinating yet controversial

figures the art and cultural scene has ever produced. In 2013, Saxony celebrates

the 200th birthday of its prodigal son, who came from a poor family, taught

himself composition and finally realized his life’s dream of a festival theatre to

showcase his own work.

Interior view of the concert hall of the Wagner Museum in Pirna-Graupa

Scene from a performance of “Tannhäuser” at Chemnitz town theatre (2009)

19SIGHTGEIST

Every year in July, prominent politicians, business dignitaries and

celebrities gather on Green Hill in Bayreuth, accompanied by

considerable media interest, to attend the premiere of the Rich-

ard Wagner Festival. Less influential lovers of his music accept

having to wait five to six years to buy one of the coveted tickets

for a performance.

Wagner’s original wish that admission to the festival should be

free is fulfilled to a certain extent by Wagner Societies around

the world: Every year, they award 250 scholarships to music

students to spend eight days in Bayreuth, where they learn

about the composer’s ideas and get the chance to attend three

performances.

When, a year before his death, Richard Wagner outlined his idea

of setting up a scholarship foundation, he looked back on a life of

highs, but above all lows, with years of deprivation and debt that

forced him on several occasions to flee his creditors. His ideal of

a musician, who lives only for his art, regardless of his income, for

the purpose of reforming mankind through music, was based on

his life’s experience.

From early childhood, Wagner had known financial hardship.

His father died just a few months after Richard’s birth in Leip-

zig on 22 May 1813, and his step-father, who took care of Wag-

ner’s mother and her eight children, also passed away while

Wagner was still young. In Leipzig, home to many musicians

and publishers, young Wagner came into contact with art at

an early age. He listened to Beethoven’s music in the Gewand-

haus concert hall, saw his sisters perform at the town theatre

and visited artists. Wagner’s infatuation with the soprano Wil-

helmine Schröder-Devrient, who he saw in a performance of

the opera “Fidelio” when he was 15 years old, cemented his

resolve to become a musician. He neglected his schooling, in-

stead secretly taking lessons in harmony and borrowing books

to teach himself composition. The fees incurred for using this

literature threw the promising composer into the first debt cri-

sis of his life.

Fortunately for his many fans around the world and admirers

of his work from “The Flying Dutchman” to “The Ring of the

Nibelung,” young Richard Wagner did not let himself be de-

terred from pursuing his vocation. He wrote his first piano so-

natas, arias, songs and overtures and completed his tuition with

the cantor of St. Thomas, Christian Theodor Weinlig, who

announced after just six months that the young musician had

completed his education and was now fully qualified. “Richard

Wagner was a self-made musician,” says Thomas Krakow, chair-

man of the Richard Wagner Society in Leipzig. “Although he

only spent part of his childhood and youth in Leipzig, the town

had an unbelievable influence on him. He embraced the men-

tality of this bustling industrial town. He was exuberant, ebul-

lient, always on the move, always looking to achieve something.

There is a lovely Saxon word to describe just that: “fischelant,”

characterising someone who is smart, can stick things out, who

always gets back on his feet to reach his goals.”

Every year from the end of July to the end of August,

the Bayreuth Festival draws thousands of fans of Richard

Wagner’s music to the Festival Theater on the Green Hill in

the Bavarian town of Bayreuth (above left, a break during

the performance).

20 SIGHTGEIST

Aged 21 and now a fully trained composer, Richard Wagner left

his hometown to work as Musical Director in Magdeburg. Two

further character traits were to accompany him throughout his

life: Envy of those who had the fortune to be born rich, and the

ability to market himself. Whether it was the latter that made Ri-

chard Wagner so popular with women or whether his attraction

arose from something else, we will never know. What is certain,

though, is that Wagner, who was just 5 foot 5 tall and not blessed

with good looks, had not only two wives, but also countless af-

fairs, including with the wives of his patrons. Wagner was married

for the first time in 1836 to Minna Planer from the Ore Moun-

tains in Saxony. She took some of the burden off her husband,

running the house on a tight budget and accompanying Wagner

when he was forced to flee from his creditors, for example from

Riga via London to Paris. The at times stormy crossing at sea

found its artistic expression in “The Flying Dutchman.” Wagner’s

second wife Cosima was also better at managing money than her

husband. She lived for her husband’s work and continued run-

ning the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth after his death.

It was not self-promotion, but appreciation of his talent that

brought Richard Wagner back to Saxony, where he spent a

further significant chapter of his life. As Royal Saxon Court

Conductor in Dresden from 1843 to 1849, he directed the

orchestra of the court opera, which he called his “magic

harp.” Wagner was one of the first conductors to work with

body language and facial expression as a way of helping the

orchestra understand his enthusiasm for music. Some of his

most significant pieces are linked to his time spent in the

town on the river Elbe: Both “The Flying Dutchman” and

“Tannhäuser” were performed here for the first time. Wag-

ner composed “Das Liebesmahl der Apostel” (The Feast of

Pentecost) for an orchestra of 100 instruments and a choir of

1,200 in Dresden’s Frauenkirche and wrote the first drafts of

his “Ring” tetralogy.

While spending a summer in Graupa, a suburb of Dresden,

with the intention of taking a break from the cultural scene

and composing, the idyllic rural landscape inspired Wagner to

write “Lohengrin.”

Performances of Wagner’s operas feature ostentatious and dramatic stage sets.

At first glance, Wagner’s operas seem to speak of a faraway world

of legends, sagas and myths. But those who delve deeper might dis-

cover one of the secrets of Wagner’s appeal. “He tells stories with

his music that everyone can relate to. What father has not had to

deal with a pubescent teenager like young Siegfried at some time

or other? Who has not been confronted with the blessing and the

curse of gold?” says Professor Ulf Schirmer, General Music Direc-

tor of Leipzig Opera. “These questions still have a hold on us today.

Wagner brings us a step closer to finding the answers through his

music.” Richard Wagner not only composed the music to his oper-

as, but created a “Gesamtkunstwerk”, a total work of art, including

the libretto and stage directions. He is considered by scholars to

be one of the most significant reformers of European music in the

19th century. He changed the expressiveness of music and gave a

new meaning to tonal harmony with his brilliant acoustic skills.

“Every note he writes makes me want to hear more. Wagner’s mu-

sic is still fresh, expressive and fascinating today, the ink is not yet

dry, the music still sounds as if it were written yesterday.” These

lines, written by Eytan Pessen, Director of the Semper Opera, il-

lustrate the attraction that Wagner’s work exerts on its audience.

23SIGHTGEIST

The composer’s significance in the history of music is immense.

According to many scholars, Wagner’s ideas even influenced

modern film music.

Richard Wagner also affected the course of history and was back

on the run in 1849, this time not for financial, but political rea-

sons. Together with the Russian revolutionary Michail Bakunin,

the conductor August Röckel and Gottfried Semper, he was in-

volved in the May Uprising in Dresden, which aimed to topple

the Saxon king and proclaim a republic. Wagner and his fellow

conspirators were sought by warrant; Bakunin and Röckel were

caught and imprisoned.

Wagner subsequently experienced good and bad times as he

travelled through Switzerland, Austria, Italy and France.

He composed “Tristan und Isolde,” set the poems of Mathilde

Wesendonck to music, performed concerts of his works that were

celebrated but did not bring him income, separated from Minna

and confessed his love to Cosima.

His fortunes only started to change for the better as he neared

his 53rd birthday: Shortly after his accession to the throne, King

Ludwig II, the Bavarian “fairy-tale king,” who was a fan of Wag-

ner’s work, summoned the impoverished and itinerant composer

to his court. The effusive young regent saw in Wagner the embodi-

ment of a brilliant artist and, following their first meeting in the

king’s Munich residence, Ludwig II became a kind of substitute

father. The king settled the bankrupt composer’s debts, became

his greatest patron and – against the will of many of his advis-

ers – paid Wagner huge amounts of money in his eagerness to

see still-unfinished works performed, like the “Ring” cycle or the

“Meistersinger” (Master Singers). Ludwig II also helped Richard

Wagner to make his final dream come true: He financed the con-

struction of the Festival Theatre in Bayreuth, where the great

musician died and was buried in 1883.

Richard Wagner Monument in Pirna-Graupa: The largest Wagner monument in the world shows the composer as a knight of the Holy Grail surrounded by five allegorical female figures embodying the elements of his music. (left)

Wagner museums in Saxony (from top to bottom): Old St. Nicholas School in Leipzig, Lohengrin House and the hunting lodge in Pirna-Graupa

24 SIGHTGEIST

TRAvELINfO

HOW TO GET THEREGetting to Leipzig By air: Leipzig-Halle AirportNon-stop flights five days a week from Lon-don Stansted and three days a week from Rome Ciampino, as well as a wide choice of international flights via Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and MunichBy rail: direct ICE connections from almost all German citiesBy car and coach: via motorways A9, A14

Getting to DresdenBy air: Dresden airportNon-stop flights from London, Moscow, Bar-celona, Basel, as well as a wide choice of international flights via Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Munich.By rail: direct ICE connections to Dresden from almost all German cities; CityNightLine from Zurich and AmsterdamBy car and coach: via motorways A4, A13 and A14

Getting to PirnaThe Richard Wagner Sites can be found in the suburb of Graupa in the town of Pirna approx. 5 km from Pillnitz Castle heading to-wards Saxon Switzerland.

WHERE TO STAY AND EATSchlosshotel Dresden-PillnitzFamily-owned four-star hotel situated in the grounds of Pillnitz castle. It is just a few kilo-metres away from the Richard Wagner Sites in Pirna-Graupa.www.schlosshotel-pillnitz.de

Brauhaus Pirna “Zum Gießer”This pub has been well established in the re-gion for many years. Guests can sit next to the large brewing vat and enjoy good food and delicious home-brewed beer in a cosy atmosphere.www.brauhaus-pirna.de (in German only)

For hotels and restaurants in Leipzig, please see the travel info on page 41.

WHAT TO DORichard Wagner Sites in Pirna-GraupaIn the summer of 1846, Richard Wagner spent 10 weeks recuperating in Graupa near Pirna. The village and the idyllic landscape at the gateway to Saxon Switzerland offered Wagner the peace and inspiration he needed to compose his opera “Lohengrin”.With a view to Richard Wagner’s 200th birth-day, Lohengrin House has been extensively renovated and largely returned to its original state around 1840. In addition to the exhibi-tion on the ground floor on Wagner’s opera “Lohengrin”, visitors can visit the authenti-cally redesigned rooms in which the compo-ser lived with listening points providing infor-mation on his stay in Graupa. In January 2013, a new permanent exhibi- tion was inaugurated in the hunting lodge with more exhibits and information. In six rooms, it presents Wagner’s life and work in Saxony during the period up to 1850. Audiovisual and multimedia displays show how Wagner cre-ated his operas from the lyrics to the compo-sition itself, right up to their production. In addition to Lohengrin House and the hun-ting lodge, Pirna also offers a cultural trail through the castle grounds with information panels on the different stages in Wagner’s life.www.wagnerstaetten.de

Old St. Nicholas School LeipzigFormer St. Nicholas schoolhouse was re-stored at the beginning of the 1990s to cre-ate a new cultural and historical attraction in Leipzig’s city centre. From 21 May 2013, it pre-sents a new permanent exhibition on “Rich- ard Wagner as a Young Man, 1813 – 1834” dedicated to Wagner’s childhood and youth. Also the “Gasthaus Alte Nikolaischule” in the historic schoolroom is one of the best known restaurants in town.www.alte-nikolaischule.de (restaurant),www.kulturstiftung-leipzig.de (in German only)

Agenda for the anniversary year (excerpt)16 – 23 May 2013Richard Wagner Festival in Leipzig with con-certs, performances and exhibitionswww.richard-wagner-leipzig.de

17 May 2013 – 31 January 2014 Temporary exhibition in GRASSI Museum for Musical Instruments “Golden Sounds from the Mystical Abyss – Musical Instruments for Richard Wagner“www.richard-wagner-leipzig.de

27 April – 25 August 2013Special exhibition in Dresden's local histo-ry museum “Richard Wagner in Dresden – Myths and Legends”www.stadtmuseum-dresden.de

The whole of 2013The Semper Opera in Dresden offers a guided tour on Wagner (by request only). It also pre-sents an exhibition to accompany Wagner’s anniversary year with new exhibits every month: Two walk-through pavilions in the upper vestibules allow visitors to admire the historic interiors of the “First Royal Court The-atre” before it was destroyed by fire in 1869.www.semperoper.de

Richard Wagner200. Geburtstag 2013

Leipzig