WAGNER, RICHARD, a contemporary German operatic composer. He was born at Leipsic in 1813, and was educated at Dresden and Leipsic. In 1836, he was Kapell meister at Magdeburg, and after spending some time in Ki5nigsberg, Dresden, and Riga successively, he came to Paris in 1841, where he composed his two earliest operas, Rienzi and Der iliegende Hollander. Rienzi obtained for him the post of Kapellmeister at Dres den. His next opera, 7'annhauser, appeared in 1845. Being involved in the political schemes of 1848, had to quit Saxony, and resided for a time in Switzerland, where he composed He spent the season of 1855 in London, where he under took the direction of the philharmonic society's concerts. In 1865, he was invited to Munich, and greatly befriended by the king of Bavaria, who appointed him. director of the opera house; and he there produced his opera of Tristan and Isolde the same year; and, in 1868, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, at the first performance of whieli Wagner sat beside the king in the royal box. Since that time, his energies have been mainly devoted to the securing of such representations' of his works as lie and his admirers regard as proportionate to their merits. 'Wagner has kept himself constantly
before the public by pamphlets and the republication of favorable newspaper articles. Wagner unions have been formed in all the principal towns of Germany; and Baireuth, in the n. of Bavaria, has been selected as the most suitable center for a grand Wagner theater, of which the foundation stone was laid with great ceremony, in May 1872, by the great composer himself, in the presence of a host of his admirers, and for the open ing of which (1876) he prepared a great operatic tetralogy, Der Ring des Nibelungen. In all his operas, the words of the libretto, Wagner's own composition, are adapted to a declamatory style of recitative, relieved by harmonies and instrumentation in accordance with the spirit of the situation. They are often magnificent in spectacle, but are pur posely deficient in what is commonly understood as melody. Wagner's position amounts to this, that the highest mission and true end and object of music is only realized when it is the exponent of poetry; and that instrumental music is practically dead.