Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German Music Composer Musician Theatre Director Profile History Family Tree and Records

Richard Wanger was born in Germany on May 22, 1813, He is famous for both his epic operas, including the four-part, 18-hour Ring Cycle, as well as for his anti-semitic writings. He was favorite of Adolf Hitler. There is evidence that Wagner’s music was played at the Dachau concentration camp to “re-educate” the prisoners. Wagner attended Leipzig University in 1831, and his first symphony was performed in 1833. In 1836, Wagner married the singer and actress Minna Planer. The couple soon moved to Königsberg,in 1837, Wagner became the first musical director of the theater and began work on his next opera,in 1839. They hopped on a ship to London and then made their way to Paris, where Wagner was forced to take whatever work he could find, including writing vaudeville music for small theaters. 1842, Wagner’s Rienzi, a political opera set in imperial Rome, premiered in Dresden to great acclaim.n In 1845, Wagner completed Tannhäuser and began working on Lohengrin. In 1848, while preparing for a production of Lohengrin in Dresden, the revolutionary outbreak in Saxony occurred and Wagner, who had always been politically vocal, fled to Zurich.n 1862, Wagner was finally able to return to Germany. King Ludwig II, a fan of Wagner’s work, invited Wagner to settle in Bavaria, near Munich, and supported him financially. Wagner died at age 69 on February 13, 1883, due to heart attack  while vacationing in Venice, Italy for the winter. His body was shipped by gondola and train back to Bayreuth, where he was buried.

Relationships

• Cosima Wagner (m. 1870–1883)
• Minna Planer

“We find personal success and great, if not enduring, influence on the outer fashioning of the world allotted to the violent, the passionate individual who, unchaining the elemental principles of human impulse under favoring circumstances, points out to greed and self-indulgence the speedy pathways to their satisfaction”