It was Gioachino Rossini, who said "Wagner has wonderful moments, and dreadful quarters of an hour."
There is no doubt that Richard Wagner is one of the most controversial figures to have lived. His anti-semitic views were and are notorious. His fervent nationalism, disturbing. And yet his influence on music and opera are manifest, his legacy extending fully into the present.
It is difficult to write a diary about Wagner, the mere mention of his name raises awe and bile in equal measure. To many his anti-semitic views cast him as a person to be reviled. His music was used as propaganda in one of the most hated regimes in history. Yet, Wagner contributed much to music and the arts, shaping the direction of classical music into the modern era. He changed the role of conductor of the orchestra from time-keeper to interpreter. And had much to say about the nature of dreams long before Freud was born.
Born in the Jewish quarter of Leipzig, in 1813. Richard Wagner's father died six months after his birth. He was raised by Ludwig Geyer, actor and playwright, who married his mother in 1814. Even at a young age Wagner showed a passion for opera, disdaining scales, for the performance of operatic pieces which he played by ear.
Wagner during a short employment as musical director at Magdeburg, wrote his first opera, to be performed. Leibesverbot (Forbidden love) based upon Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. The opera closed after the first performance, and along with the financial collapse of the theatre company employing him meant that he and his wife had to flee his debts. After a period in Riga he returned to Germany following the performance of Rienzi, supported by Giacomo Meyerbeer. He lived there for seven years, as Royal Saxon Court Conductor. He fled after the Dresden uprising, as a left-wing nationalist he played a minor role in the revolution and was banished from Germany.
Wagner returned from exile to Germany, in 1862 where he continued to compose operas. His fortunes were positively reversed when King Ludwig III ascended the throne. Interestingly Ludwig, an ardent admirer of Wagner, was a homosexual, Wagner, the partner in a number of extra-marital affairs, was in no such manner, the same. Yet it troubled Wagner not, to reciprocate this adulation, to his benefit. After leaving Munich at the request of Ludwig, in December 1865. Wagner moved to Bayreuth, which was to become his final resting place, in 1871. The Operatic theatre, built by him houses a Wagner festival every year. Innovations of significance introduced in the construction of this opera house were the dimming of the lights for the performance and the placing of the orchestra in a pit, hidden from view.
Richard Wagner died from a heart attack aged 69, whilst on a winter tour in Venice. He is interred in Bayreuth, along with the ashes of his second wife Cosima.
What was to become Wagner's most notable work, "The Ring of the Nibelungen" took 26 years from writing the first draft of a libretto in 1848 until he completed Götterdämmerung in 1874. In four parts, Das Reingelt, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. It is 15 hours long and is the longest opera performed regularly.
I present here a piece of Wagner's Ring. Siegfrieds Funeral march from Götterdämmerung. This piece has a special meaning to me. When I first truly 'heard' this piece I was very depressed. Work and life were beginning to feel intolerable. One day I was travelling back from a call on the Welsh border, and my route took me over a range of hills called the Long Mynd. It was Autumn, but the day was sunny as I pulled into a parking area on the top of the Mynd. Looking westwards back towards Wales. On the hill were some para-gliders taking advantage of the last of the warm days to slope soar. Small clouds drifted across the sky creating a patchwork of shadow and light over the landscape below. It was then that this music started playing. The mournful opening bars as the hunting party gathers around the body of the murdered Siegfried rising to a crescendo almost triumphant as the body is carried away. To me this music is not about death, but rather change. Siegfried's death symbolised the end of "The Gods", and the rise of humanity. For me that moment on the Mynd remains as a point in time when I changed a little. I still despair from time to time, but it passes. The music lives on.