Composer Profile 8
Richard Wagner

They don’t come much bigger than Richard Wagner - He pushed all the dimensions of music, and especially opera, as far as they would go.

He even wrote the first “Lord of the Rings”, Der Ring des Nibelungen; over 15 hours of music spread across four separate operas! To many, this is the ultimate live musical experience.

Wagner led a life equally as colourful and dramatic as his own music. He went through several bouts of poverty and bankruptcy, had to escape into political exile twice and was welcomed back with open chequebooks and a purpose-built opera house, promoted anti-Semitism, bonked one mate’s wife, stole another’s and died happily ever after in Venice.

Here is but a glimpse of some of the landscapes of Wagner’s mind:

1. Rienzi – Overture
2. Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) – Overture
3. Tannhäuser – Overture
4. Tannhäuser – Pilgerchor (Pilgrim's Chorus)
   
5. Lohengrin – Prelude to Act 3
6. Das Rheingold – Einzug der Götter in Walhall (Entry of the Gods into Walhalla, Scene IV)
7. Götterdämmerung – Siegfrieds Trauermarsch (Siegfried’s Funeral March, Act III)
8. Tristan und Isolde – Isoldes Liebestod ‘Mild und liese wie er lächet’ (Act III)
9. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremburg) – Prelude to Act I
10. Parsifal – Karfreitagszauber (Good Friday Music)