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The Epic Interactive Encyclopedia 1998
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Epic Interactive Encyclopedia, The - 1998 Edition (1998)(Epic Marketing).iso
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Wagner,_Richard
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1992-09-01
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1813-1883. German opera composer. He
revolutionized the 19th-century conception of
opera, envisaging it as a wholly new art form
in which musical, poetic, and scenic elements
should be unified through such devices as the
leitmotif. His operas include Tannhauser
1845, Lohengrin 1850, and Tristan und Isolde
1865. In 1872 he founded the Festival Theatre
in Bayreuth; his masterpiece Der Ring des
Nibelungen/The Ring of the Nibelung, a
sequence of four operas, was first performed
there in 1876. His last work, Parsifal, was
produced in 1882. Wagner's early career was
as director of the Magdeburg Theatre, where
he unsuccessfully produced his first opera
Das Liebesverbot/Forbidden Love in 1836. He
lived in Paris 1839-42 and conducted the
Dresden Opera House 1842-48. He fled Germany
to escape arrest for his part in the 1848
revolution, but in 1861 he was allowed to
return. He won the favour of Ludwig II of
Bavaria in 1864 and was thus able to set up
the Festival Theatre in Bayreuth. The
Bayreuth tradition was continued by his wife
Cosima (Liszt's daughter, whom he married
after her divorce from Hans von Bulow), by
his son Siegfried Wagner (1869-1930), a
composer of operas such as Der Barenhauter;
and by later descendants.