Richard Wagner, one of the most important figures in 19th-century culture and among the most influential composers of all time, was educated in his native city. From adolescence, his interests were music and the theatre. He led an extraordinarily turbulent life, moving from Leipzig to Riga to Paris to Dresden to Zurich to Bieberich (near Mainz) to Vienna to Lake Starnberg to Munich to Lucerne to Bayreuth - not to mention long and frequent stays elsewhere - often pursued by angry creditors or, on several occasions, angry governments. And he appropriated friends' money and wives as the tribute due a man of genius. Wagner was twice married: the first time to Minna Planer, an actress, and the second to Liszt's daughter, Cosima, who had abandoned her first husband, the celebrated pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow - one of Wagner's most devoted disciples - in order to live with the composer. Wagner was an anti-semitic, xenophobic bigot whose muddle-headed pamphlets on a variety of non-musical subjects were much admired, in this century, by Adolf Hitler. And yet the last ten of his thirteen operas have remained staples of the international repertoire. They are prodigious masterpieces, and they have altered the history of music.

Wagner transformed opera into "music-drama" - ideally, a perfect mixture of music, poetry, dance, drama and the visual arts. In reconceiving the relationship between music and drama he made systematic use, especially in his vast Ring cycle, of the so-called Leitmotiv (leading motif, or motif of reminiscence) - an identifying musical figure or theme for each character, important object or concept in an opera (or several operas, in the case of the Ring), capable of elaboration, combination or transformation according to the dramatic circumstances. He extended the boundaries of the harmonic universe of his day, and in his later works he created music of unprecedented richness and complexity and paved the way for many of the developments that were to take place during the following century. He also planned and raised money for an extraordinary theatre, the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth (Bavaria), in which to have his own works performed under ideal conditions. By the time of his death he had become a European cultural icon.

Harvey Sachs

Biographical notes (c) 1996, reprinted by permission of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg

A selection of major works:

Orchestral: A Faust Overture, Siegfried-Idyll, Symphony in C, Symphony in E.

Vocal: Lieder, Mélodies, Wesendonk-Lieder (cycle).

Stage works: Operas: Die Feen, Der fliegende Holländer, Das Liebesverbot, Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Parsifal, Rienzi, Der Ring des Nibelungen: Das Rheingold/Die Walküre/Siegfried/ Götterdämmerung, Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde.