Wilhelm Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner 22 May 1813, Leipzig, Germany – 13 February 1883, Venice, Italy)
• German Composer
• Conductor
• Theatre Director
• Essayist
• primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas", as they were later called).
Wagner wrote both the scenario and libretto for his works.
Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for contrapuntal texture, rich chromatics, harmonies and orchestration, and elaborate use of leitmotifs.
Richard Wagner was born at no. 3 ('The House of the Red and White Lions'), the Brühl, in Leipzig on 22 May 1813. The ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service. Wagner's father died of typhus six months after Richard's birth, following which Wagner's mother, Johanna Rosine Wagner, began living with the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer, who had been a friend of Richard's father. In August 1814 Johanna Rosine married Geyer, and moved with her family to his residence in Dresden. For the first 14 years of his life, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. Wagner may later have suspected that Geyer was in fact his biological father, and furthermore speculated incorrectly that Geyer was Jewish.In 1833, Wagner's older brother Karl Albert managed to obtain Richard a position as choir master in Würzburg.

His contribution
At the age of 20, he composed his first complete opera, Die Feen (The Fairies). This opera, which clearly imitated the style of Carl Maria von Weber, would go unproduced until half a century later, when it was premiered in Munich shortly after the composer's death in 1883. The Wagners’ spent 1840 and 1841 in Paris, where Richard made a scant living writing articles and arranging operas by other composers.
Wagner's early stage began at age 19 with his first attempt at an opera, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), which Wagner abandoned at an early stage of composition in 1832. Wagner's three completed early-stage operas are Die Feen (The Fairies), Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), and Rienzi. Wagner made a major contribution to the principles and practice of conducting. His essay On conducting (1869) advanced the earlier work of Hector Berlioz and proposed that conducting was a means by which a musical work could be re-interpreted, rather than simply a mechanism for achieving orchestral unison.Wagner's late stage operas are his masterpieces that advanced the art of opera. Some are of the opinion that Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Iseult) is Wagner's greatest single opera. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) is Wagner's only comedy still in the repertoire (his early Das Liebesverbot is forgotten) and one of the lengthiest operas still performed. Der Ring des Nibelungen, commonly referred to as the Ring cycle, is a set of four operas based loosely on figures and elements of Teutonic myth, particularly from later period Norse mythology. Wagner's musical style is often considered the epitome of classical music's Romantic period. He introduced new ideas in harmony and musical form, including extreme chromaticism. In Tristan und Isolde, he explored the limits of the traditional tonal system that gave keys and chords their identipointing the way to atonality in the 20th century. Some music historians date the beginning of modern classical music to the first notes of Tristan, the so-called Tristan chord.

His musical output
One of the music he composed was Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), with the libretto written by the composer after Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Described as a grosse komische Oper, it was composed in 1834, and Wagner conducted the premiere in 1836 at Magdeburg. Poorly attended and with a lead singer who forgot the words and had to improvise, it was a resounding flop and its second performance had to be cancelled after a fist-fight between the prima donna's husband and a leading tenor broke out backstage before the curtain had even risen. It was never performed again in Wagner's lifetime although it has occasionally been revived, most successfully in 1983 conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch. Its North American fully-staged premiere took place on July 19, 2008 at the Glimmerglass Opera in a production by Nicholas Muni. The cast was led by Mark Schnaible as Friedrich and Claudia Waite as Isabella; Corrado Rovaris conducted.A central theme in the work is a longing for unrestrained sexuality; this shows up again in Tannhäuser, Die Walküre, and Tristan und Isolde. In each opera, the self-abandonment to love brings the lovers into mortal combat with the surrounding social order. In Das Liebesverbot, because it is a comedy, the outcome is a happy one: unrestrained sexuality wins as the orgiastic carnival of the entire population goes rioting on after curtain-fall.Wagner's second opera, and his first to be performed, has many signs of an early work: it is very long and straightforwardly which is inspired by Beethoven and especially Weber..