Wagner at The Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris

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Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who primarily composed operas known as "music dramas." Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and music for each of his stage works. Initially, he established his reputation as a composer of romantic works like Weber and Meyerbeer, but Wagner revolutionised opera with his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), which synthesises poetic, visual, musical, and dramatic arts, with music secondary to drama. He announced these ideas in essays between 1849 and 1852. Wagner fully realised these ideas in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). His compositions, especially those from his later period, are notable for their complex textures, rich harmonies, and orchestration, as well as the elaborate use of leitmotifs—musical phrases associated with individual characters, places, ideas, or plot elements. Wagner's advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced classical music development. His Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking modern music's beginning. Wagner had his own opera house built, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which featured many innovative design elements. It was here that the Ring and Parsifal received their premieres and where his most important stage works continue to be performed in an annual festival run by his descendants. His thoughts on music and drama's relative contributions in opera changed again, and he reintroduced traditional forms into his last few stage works, including Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg). Until his final years, Wagner's life was marked by political exile, tumultuous love affairs, poverty, and repeated flight from creditors. His writings on music, drama, and politics have attracted extensive comment in recent decades, especially where they express antisemitic sentiments. The effect of his ideas can be seen in many arts throughout the 20th century; their influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, visual arts, and theatre.