Portrait: Richard Wagner, composer, theatre director, polemicist, conductor

23 March 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Portrait Reading Time:  6 minutes

Wagner bust in Bayreuth © Schubbay/cc-by-sa-3.0

Wagner bust in Bayreuth © Schubbay/cc-by-sa-3.0

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, “music dramas”). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).   read more…

Margravial Opera House Bayreuth

25 November 2021 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Opera Houses, Theaters, Libraries, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  9 minutes

Stage © Pierre Schoberth/cc-by-sa-3.0

Stage © Pierre Schoberth/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Margravial Opera House (German: Markgräfliches Opernhaus) is a Baroque opera house in the town of Bayreuth, Germany, built between 1745 and 1750. It is one of Europe’s few surviving theatres of the period and has been extensively restored. On 30 June 2012, the opera house was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List. It was built according to plans designed by the French architect Joseph Saint-Pierre (ca. 1709 – 1754), court builder of the Hohenzollern margrave Frederick of Brandenburg-Bayreuth and his wife Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia. It was inaugurated on the occasion of the marriage of their daughter Elisabeth Fredericka Sophie with Duke Charles Eugene of Württemberg.   read more…

The Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth

28 November 2015 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions, Palaces, Castles, Manors, Parks Reading Time:  7 minutes

© Dickbauch~commonswiki/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Dickbauch~commonswiki/cc-by-sa-3.0

Wahnfried was the name given by Richard Wagner to his villa in Bayreuth. The name is a German compound of Wahn (delusion, madness) and Fried(e), (peace, freedom). According to Richard Wagner’s wife Cosima the name came to mind after visiting the picturesque town of Wahnfried in Hesse.   read more…

The Trade Fair City of Leipzig

20 November 2012 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  8 minutes

New Town Hall © Appaloosa

New Town Hall © Appaloosa

Leipzig with more than 530,000 inhabitants, is one of the two largest cities (along with Dresden) in the federal state of Saxony. Leipzig is situated about 150 km south of Berlin at the confluence of the Weisse Elster, Pleiße and Parthe rivers at the southerly end of the North German Plain.   read more…

The Wagner city of Bayreuth

29 March 2012 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  7 minutes

Richard Wagner Festival Hall on the Green Hill © rizi-online.de - Rico Neitzel

Richard Wagner Festival Hall on the Green Hill © rizi-online.de – Rico Neitzel

Bayreuth is a sizeable town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtelgebirge Mountains. The town’s roots date back to 1194 and it is nowadays the capital of Upper Franconia with a population of 73,000. It is world-famous for its annual Bayreuth Festival at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented.   read more…

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