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(1813-1883) German composer.

His childhood was divided between Dresden and Leipzig, where he had first composition lessons; his teacher refused payment because of his talent. His first opera, Die Feen (1834), was followed by Der Liebesverbot (1836); the premiere performance was so unprepared that the event was a fiasco, and he henceforth determined not to settle for modest productions. The success of Rienzi (1840) led him to be more adventurous in The Flying Dutchman (1843), and even more so in Tannhäuser (1845). Caught up in the political turmoil of 1848, he was forced to flee Dresden for Zurich. During this enforced vacation, he wrote influential essays, asserting (following G. W. F. Hegel) that music had reached a limit after Ludwig van Beethoven, and that the "artwork of the future" would unite music and theater in a Gesamtkunstwerk ("total artwork"). In 1850 he saw Lohengrin produced. He had begun his most ambitious work, The Ring of the Nibelung, a four-opera cycle. The......

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Approximate Pages: 2 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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