"marries Cosima and is ordered by Ludwig to stage his opera ""Das Rheingold"". When Wagner decides to postpone the opera, one day before the premiere, he and Ludwig have a falling-out. Wagner is denied access to the theatre and decides to build his own opera house in Bayreuth. Episode 10<br> Construction on the opera house in Bayreuth begins and his epic ""Der Ring des Nibelungen"" can finally be premiered. The performance is attended by Ludwig who is slowly losing his mind, while living in his gigantic new castle Neuschwanstein. Wagner and Nietzsche have a falling-out over Wagner's lifestyle and ideas"
"age of 79. Marie Haupt Marie Haupt (18 April 1849 – 1928) was a German operatic soprano who had an active career during the latter half of the 19th century. She is best remembered today for portraying several roles in the first complete presentation of Richard Wagner's ""The Ring Cycle"" at the very first Bayreuth Festival in 1876. Born in Danzig, Germany (now Gdańsk, Poland), Haupt studied in Berlin with the great prima donna Pauline Viardot and renowned pedagogue Eduard Mantius. She made her professional opera debut in 1870 at the Court Theater of Neustrelitz. Subsequent engagements took her to"
"Die Walküre ' (The Valkyrie""""'), WWV 86B is the second of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's ""Der Ring des Nibelungen,"" (English: ""The Ring of the Nibelung""). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National Theatre Munich on 26 June 1870, and received its first performance as part of the ""Ring"" cycle at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 14 August 1876. As the ""Ring"" cycle was conceived by Wagner in reverse order of performance, ""Die Walküre"" was the penultimate of the four texts to be written, although Wagner composed the music in the proper sequence. The text"
"concentrate on ""Tristan und Isolde"". Seven years would pass before he took it up again, during which time he completed ""Tristan"" and started ""Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg"". When Wagner began the composition of the ""Ring"" in November 1853 he was living with his first wife Minna Planer at 13 Zeltweg, Zürich, and it was there that ""Das Rheingold"", ""Die Walküre"" and the first act of ""Siegfried"" were for the most part composed. At this time Wagner's straitened circumstances compelled him to accept financial assistance from a wealthy silk merchant, Otto Wesendonck. On 28 April 1857 Wagner and Minna moved into"
"first to be issued commercially, was Georg Solti's 1958 Decca version, part of his complete ""Ring"" cycle, 1958–1966, which marked the beginning of a new era in recorded opera. Since then ""Das Rheingold"" has been recorded, as part of the cycle, on many occasions, with regular new issues. Das Rheingold Das Rheingold (; The Rhinegold), WWV 86A, is the first of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's ""Der Ring des Nibelungen,"" (English: ""The Ring of the Nibelung""). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National Theatre Munich on 22 September 1869, and received its first performance"
"legendary Nibelungs. This led him to consider Siegfried as a possible subject for a new opera, and by October 1848 the entire ""Ring"" cycle had been conceived. This rather straightforward account of the ""Ring's"" origins, however, has been disputed by a number of authorities, who accuse Wagner of deliberately distorting the facts so as to bring them into harmony with his own private version of history. The actual sequence of events, it seems, was not nearly as clear-cut as he would have us believe. It was in October 1846 – some sixteen months ""before"" the February Revolution – that he"
"Marie Haupt Marie Haupt (18 April 1849 – 1928) was a German operatic soprano who had an active career during the latter half of the 19th century. She is best remembered today for portraying several roles in the first complete presentation of Richard Wagner's ""The Ring Cycle"" at the very first Bayreuth Festival in 1876. Born in Danzig, Germany (now Gdańsk, Poland), Haupt studied in Berlin with the great prima donna Pauline Viardot and renowned pedagogue Eduard Mantius. She made her professional opera debut in 1870 at the Court Theater of Neustrelitz. Subsequent engagements took her to the Municipal Theater"
"""Ring"" music in its proper sequence. Having completed the music for ""Das Rheingold"" in May 1854, he began composing ""Die Walküre"" in June, and finished the full orchestral score nearly two years later, in March 1856. This extended period is explained by several concurrent events and distractions, including Wagner's burgeoning friendship with Mathilde Wesendonck, and a lengthy concert tour in London at the invitation of the Royal Philharmonic Society, when he conducted a full season amid some controversy, although his own ""Tannhäuser"" overture was well received. The system of leitmotifs, integral to the ""Opera and Drama"" principles, is used to"
"and a version in ink on up to three staves in which he worked out details of instrumentation and vocal line. The composition of Acts 1 and 2 was completed by August 1857. Wagner then left off work on ""Siegfried"" to write the operas ""Tristan und Isolde"" and ""Die Meistersinger."" He did not resume work on ""Siegfried"" until 1869, when he composed the third act. The final revision of the score was undertaken in February 1871. Performance was withheld until the first complete production of the Ring cycle, at Bayreuth in August 1876. Elements of the plot of ""Siegfried"" come"
"""Ring"" as a work reflecting Christian ideals. Many of these later articles, including ""What is German?"" (1878, but based on a draft written in the 1860s), repeated Wagner's antisemitic preoccupations. Wagner completed ""Parsifal"" in January 1882, and a second Bayreuth Festival was held for the new opera, which premiered on 26 May. Wagner was by this time extremely ill, having suffered a series of increasingly severe angina attacks. During the sixteenth and final performance of ""Parsifal"" on 29 August, he entered the pit unseen during act 3, took the baton from conductor Hermann Levi, and led the performance to its"
"synthesis of poetry and music is achieved without any notable sacrifice in musical expression"". The modern view is that, of the ""Ring"" operas, ""Die Walküre"" is both the most approachable and the one that can most successfully be performed in extracts. Die Walküre ' (The Valkyrie""""'), WWV 86B is the second of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's ""Der Ring des Nibelungen,"" (English: ""The Ring of the Nibelung""). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National Theatre Munich on 26 June 1870, and received its first performance as part of the ""Ring"" cycle at the Bayreuth"
"Siegfried (opera) Siegfried, WWV 86C, is the third of the four music dramas that constitute ""Der Ring des Nibelungen"" (""The Ring of the Nibelung""), by Richard Wagner. It premiered at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of ""The Ring"" cycle. The libretto of ""Siegfried"" was drafted by Wagner in November–December 1852, based on an earlier version he had prepared in May–June 1851 and originally entitled ""Jung-Siegfried"" (""Young Siegfried""), later changed to ""Der junge Siegfried"". The musical composition was commenced in 1856, but not finally completed until 1871. The libretto arose from Wagner's"
"Der Ring des Nibelungen ' (The Ring of the Nibelung), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the ""Nibelungenlied"". The composer termed the cycle a ""Bühnenfestspiel"" (stage festival play), structured in three days preceded by a (""preliminary evening""). It is often referred to as the Ring Cycle""""', ""Wagner's Ring"", or simply ""The Ring"". Wagner wrote the libretto and music over the course of about twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874. The four parts that constitute the ""Ring"" cycle are, in"
"this production I shall consider thoroughly attained, if I and my artistic comrades, the actual performers, shall within these four evenings succeed in ""artistically conveying my purpose to the true Emotional"" (not the Critical) ""Understanding"" of spectators who shall have gathered together expressly to learn it. This is his first public announcement of the form of what would become the ""Ring"" cycle. In accordance with the ideas expressed in his essays of the period 1849–51 (including the ""Communication"" but also ""Opera and Drama"" and ""The Artwork of the Future""), the four parts of the ""Ring"" were originally conceived by Wagner"
"of Shakespeare's ""A Midsummer Night's Dream"". Richard Wagner's ""Ring"" cycle premiered in London earlier in 1882. The music for the fairies reflects Wagner's style, and the score uses leitmotifs, including a distinctive four-note theme associated with the character of Iolanthe. The Fairy Queen's music parodies that of Wagnerian heroines such as Brünnhilde. The score is wider in range of emotion and style, with innovative use of pizzicato strings, clever and varied underscoring of patter, the tender, sentimental eleventh-hour number for the title character, apt matching of the music to the absurd comedy of the lyrics, and a sustained first act"
"Ring of the Nibelung"", or ""The Nibelung's Ring""). In November and December 1852, Wagner made extensive revisions to the libretti of ""Der junge Siegfried"" and ""Siegfried's Tod"". This was partly to accommodate the expansion of the cycle and the growing significance of Wotan, the protagonist of the first two parts of the tetralogy, and partly to reflect Wagner's reading of the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach (see below). The changes to ""Der junge Siegfried"" were entered into the first fair copy (""Reinschrift des Textbuches""), while those to ""Siegfried's Tod"" were entered into the third fair copy (""Viertschrift des Textbuches""). In each"
"the next two years attempting to raise capital for the construction, with scant success; King Ludwig finally rescued the project in 1874 by donating the needed funds. The Bayreuth Festspielhaus opened in 1876 with the first complete performance of the ""Ring"", which took place from 13 to 17 August. In 1882, London impresario Alfred Schulz-Curtius organized the first staging in the United Kingdom of the ""Ring"" cycle, conducted by Anton Seidl and directed by Angelo Neumann. The first production of the ""Ring"" in Italy was in Venice (the place where Wagner died), just two months after his 1883 death, at"
"gradual reconception of the project he had initiated with his libretto ""Siegfrieds Tod"" (""Siegfried's Death"") which was eventually to be incarnated as ""Götterdämmerung"", the final section of the Ring cycle. Having grappled with his text for ""Siegfrieds Tod"", and indeed having undertaken some musical sketches for it during 1851, he realized that it would need a 'preface'. At this point he conceived that the prefatory opera, ""Der junge Siegfried"", could act as a comic foil to the tragedy of ""Siegfrieds Tod"". Preliminary musical sketches for ""Der junge Siegfried"" in 1851 were however quickly abandoned, although Wagner had written to his"
"on 18 May 1826 for the ""Stadt-Theater"" on the present-day site of the Hamburg State Opera. The new theater, with seating for 2,800 guest, was inaugurated less than a year later with Beethoven's incidental music to ""Egmont"". In 1873, both the exterior and interior of the structure were renovated in the reigning ""Gründerzeit"" style of the time, and again in 1891, when electric lighting was introduced. Under the direction of Bernhard Pollini, the house mounted its first complete ""Ring Cycle"" in 1879. In 1883, the year of Wagner's death, a cycle comprising nine of his operas commenced. The musical directors"
"for ""Siegfrieds Tod"". He now felt that he needed a preliminary opera, ""Der junge Siegfried"" (""The Young Siegfried"", later renamed to ""Siegfried""), to explain the events in ""Siegfrieds Tod"", and his verse draft of this was completed in May 1851. By October, he had made the momentous decision to embark on a cycle of four operas, to be played over four nights: ""Das Rheingold"", ""Die Walküre"", ""Der Junge Siegfried"" and ""Siegfrieds Tod""; the text for all four parts was completed in December 1852, and privately published in February 1853. In November 1853, Wagner began the composition draft of ""Das Rheingold""."
"the ""Ring"", and the other operas Wagner planned. Wagner also began to dictate his autobiography, ""Mein Leben"", at the King's request. Wagner noted that his rescue by Ludwig coincided with news of the death of his earlier mentor (but later supposed enemy) Giacomo Meyerbeer, and regretted that ""this operatic master, who had done me so much harm, should not have lived to see this day."" After grave difficulties in rehearsal, ""Tristan und Isolde"" premiered at the National Theatre Munich on 10 June 1865, the first Wagner opera premiere in almost 15 years. (The premiere had been scheduled for 15 May,"
"the full in ""Die Walküre""; Holman numbers 36 such motifs that are introduced in the work. The well-known ""Valkyrie"" motif, used to introduce Brünnhilde in Act 2, forms the basis of the famous Ride of the Valkyries that opens Act 3. Wagner wrote the concert version of the Ride in 1862, for performance in concerts at Vienna and Leipzig. As with ""Das Rheingold"", many years elapsed between the completion of the ""Die Walküre"" score and its first performance. Seeing little chance of the ""Ring"" project coming to any immediate fruition, and in need of money, in August 1857 Wagner abandoned"
"developmental in its treatment of leitmotifs. Wagner took 26 years from writing the first draft of a libretto in 1848 until he completed ""Götterdämmerung"" in 1874. The ""Ring"" takes about 15 hours to perform and is the only undertaking of such size to be regularly presented on the world's stages. Wagner's final opera, ""Parsifal"" (1882), which was his only work written especially for his Bayreuth Festspielhaus and which is described in the score as a """"Bühnenweihfestspiel"""" (""festival play for the consecration of the stage""), has a storyline suggested by elements of the legend of the Holy Grail. It also carries"
"of Wagner's ""Ring"". After concert performances over the previous three seasons, the four operas of the cycle were staged at the Coliseum in 2004 and 2005 in productions by Phyllida Lloyd, with designs by Richard Hudson, in a new translation by Jeremy Sams. The first instalments of the cycle were criticised as poorly sung and conducted, but by the time ""Twilight of the Gods"" was staged in 2005, matters were thought to have improved: ""Paul Daniel's command of the score is more authoritative than could have been predicted from his uneven accounts of the previous operas."" The production attracted generally"
"of the ""Rheingold"" score, Wagner wrote the music for ""Die Walküre"", and for the first two acts of ""Siegfried"". At that point, in 1857, he set ""Siegfried"" aside in order to work on ""Tristan und Isolde"", and did not return to the ""Ring"" project for 12 years. Long before ""Das Rheingold"" was ready for performance, Wagner conducted excerpts of the music from Scenes 1, 2 and 4, at a concert in Vienna on 26 December 1862. The work remained unstaged, but by 1869 Wagner's principal financial sponsor, King Ludwig of Bavaria, was pressing for an early performance in Munich. Wagner"
"possible stages in all: It took Wagner just over four years to complete the of his ""Ring"" cycle (1848–1852). The composition of the music, however, would occupy him, on and off, for almost a quarter of a century. In the summer of 1850 he actually began to compose music for the prologue of ""Siegfried's Tod"" (""Siegfried's Death"", as ""Götterdämmerung"" was originally called) before he had even conceived of the ""Ring"" cycle itself. This effort, however, was premature and Wagner abandoned the work near the beginning of the second scene, in which Siegfried takes his leave of Brünnhilde. The following summer"
"Pappano's Essential Ring Cycle Pappano's Essential Ring Cycle is a British television documentary first aired on BBC Four in 2013 presented by the Italian conductor Antonio Pappano about the German composer Richard Wagner and his tetralogical opera The Ring Cycle, also called by the formal title of ""Ring of the Niebelung"". In 90 minutes he covers all 4 operas consisting of Wagner's Ring Cycle with scenes taken from his productions of the operas. Included in the programme are interviews with opera singers, notably John Tomlinson who has sung the principal character Wotan numerous times. Under Pappano he has sung the"
"recording of Wagner's Ring Cycle in 1955, as well as a so-called ""second cycle"" with Mödl, rather than Astrid Varnay, as Brünnhilde. Mödl's accounts of Brünnhilde, from the 1953 ""Ring"" as well as the 1955 ""second cycle,"" are her only recordings of the role other than Wilhelm Furtwängler's 1953 Rome ""Ring"" and commercial Walkuere in 1954. Among his other recordings, his outstanding interpretations of Wagner's ""Lohengrin"" at the 1953 Bayreuth Festival released on Decca-London and Weber's ""Der Freischütz"" made in 1958 for EMI, as well as a 'live' set of Richard Strauss's ""Arabella"" (featuring Lisa della Casa and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau)"
"was very impressed by her vocal and dramatic abilities. He invited her to take part in the first presentation of the complete Ring Cycle at the Bayreuth Festival in 1876. This was the first time that the third and fourth operas in the Ring cycle, ""Siegfried"" and ""Götterdämmerung"", were heard. Jaide played Erda in ""Siegfried"" at its première on August 16, 1876, and she played Waltraute in ""Götterdämmerung"" at its première on August 17, 1876. She also sang the role of Waltraute in Wagner's ""Die Walküre"" as part of the first complete Ring cycle on August 14, 1876. As a"
"more!! RW"") After more than a quarter of a century, ""Der Ring des Nibelungen"" was finally completed. Der Ring des Nibelungen: Composition of the music The composition of the operatic tetralogy ""The Ring of the Nibelung"" occupied Richard Wagner for more than a quarter of a century. Conceived around 1848, the work was not finished until 1874, less than two years before the entire cycle was given its premiere at Bayreuth. Most of this time was devoted to the composition of the music, the text having been largely completed in about four years. Like his libretti, Wagner's operatic scores generally"
"of the Rhine gold after his renunciation of love; his fashioning of the all-powerful ring from the gold and his enslavement of the Nibelungs; Wotan's seizure of the gold and the ring, to pay his debt to the giants who have built his fortress Valhalla; Alberich's curse on the ring and its possessors; Erda's warning to Wotan to forsake the ring; the early manifestation of the curse's power after Wotan yields the ring to the giants; and the gods' uneasy entry into Valhalla, under the shadow of their impending doom. Having completed his opera ""Lohengrin"" in April 1848, Richard Wagner"
"""Die Feen"" (""The Fairies"", 1833) was unperformed in the composer's lifetime and ""Das Liebesverbot"" (""The Ban on Love"", 1836) was withdrawn after its first performance. ""Rienzi"" (1842) was Wagner's first opera to be successfully staged. The compositional style of these early works was conventional—the relatively more sophisticated ""Rienzi"" showing the clear influence of Grand Opera ""à la"" Spontini and Meyerbeer—and did not exhibit the innovations that would mark Wagner's place in musical history. Later in life, Wagner said that he did not consider these works to be part of his ""oeuvre""; and they have been performed only rarely in the"
"composed music to achieve popularity and, thereby, financial success, as opposed to creating genuine works of art. In ""Opera and Drama"" (1851), Wagner described the aesthetics of drama that he was using to create the ""Ring"" operas. Before leaving Dresden, Wagner had drafted a scenario that eventually became the four-opera cycle ""Der Ring des Nibelungen"". He initially for a single opera, ""Siegfrieds Tod"" (""Siegfried's Death""), in 1848. After arriving in Zürich, he expanded the story with the opera ""Der junge Siegfried"" (""Young Siegfried""), which explored the hero's background. He completed the text of the cycle by writing the libretti for"