1.
Germans
–
Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe, who share a common German ancestry, culture and history. German is the mother tongue of a substantial majority of ethnic Germans. The English term Germans has historically referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages, before the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany in 1990, Germans constituted the largest divided nation in Europe by far. Ever since the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, roughly 80 million consider themselves Germans. Thus, the number of Germans lies somewhere between 100 and more than 150 million, depending on the criteria applied. Today, people from countries with German-speaking majorities most often subscribe to their own national identities, the German term Deutsche originates from the Old High German word diutisc, referring to the Germanic language of the people. It is not clear how commonly, if at all, the word was used as an ethnonym in Old High German, used as a noun, ein diutscher in the sense of a German emerges in Middle High German, attested from the second half of the 12th century. The Old French term alemans is taken from the name of the Alamanni and it was loaned into Middle English as almains in the early 14th century. The word Dutch is attested in English from the 14th century, denoting continental West Germanic dialects, while in most Romance languages the Germans have been named from the Alamanni, the Old Norse, Finnish and Estonian names for the Germans were taken from that of the Saxons. In Slavic languages, the Germans were given the name of němьci, originally with a meaning foreigner, the English term Germans is only attested from the mid-16th century, based on the classical Latin term Germani used by Julius Caesar and later Tacitus. It gradually replaced Dutch and Almains, the latter becoming mostly obsolete by the early 18th century, the Germans are a Germanic people, who as an ethnicity emerged during the Middle Ages. Originally part of the Holy Roman Empire, around 300 independent German states emerged during its decline after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years War and these states eventually formed into modern Germany in the 19th century. The concept of a German ethnicity is linked to Germanic tribes of antiquity in central Europe, the early Germans originated on the North German Plain as well as southern Scandinavia. By the 2nd century BC, the number of Germans was significantly increasing and they began expanding into eastern Europe, during antiquity these Germanic tribes remained separate from each other and did not have writing systems at that time. In the European Iron Age the area that is now Germany was divided into the La Tène horizon in Southern Germany and the Jastorf culture in Northern Germany. By 55 BC, the Germans had reached the Danube river and had either assimilated or otherwise driven out the Celts who had lived there, and had spread west into what is now Belgium and France. Conflict between the Germanic tribes and the forces of Rome under Julius Caesar forced major Germanic tribes to retreat to the east bank of the Rhine, in Roman-held territories with Germanic populations, the Germanic and Roman peoples intermarried, and Roman, Germanic, and Christian traditions intermingled. The adoption of Christianity would later become an influence in the development of a common German identity
2.
Bayreuth Festival
–
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived and promoted the idea of a festival to showcase his own works, in particular his monumental cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. Performances take place in a specially designed theatre, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, the Festival has become a pilgrimage destination for Wagner enthusiasts, who often must wait years to obtain tickets. The origins of the Festival itself lie rooted in Richard Wagners interest in establishing his financial independence, a souring of the relationship with his patron, Ludwig II of Bavaria, led to his expulsion from Munich, where he had originally intended to launch the festival. Wagner next considered Nuremberg, which would have reinforced the significance of works such as Die Meistersinger. On the advice of Hans Richter, however, the focus fell upon Bayreuth which enjoyed three distinct advantages, first, the town boasted a splendid venue, the Markgräfliches Opernhaus built for Margrave Frederick and his wife, Friederike Sophie Wilhelmine in 1747. With its ample capacity and strong acoustics, the house was a good match for Wagners vision. Finally, the town had no cultural life that could offer competition to Wagners own artistic dominance, the Festival, once launched, would be the dominant feature of Bayreuths cultural landscape. In April 1870, Wagner and his wife Cosima visited Bayreuth, on inspection, the Opera House proved to be inadequate. It was built to accommodate the baroque orchestras of the 18th century and was unsuited for the complex stagings. Nonetheless, the Burgermeisters proved open to assisting Wagner with the construction of a new theatre. After a fruitless meeting in the spring of 1871 with the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to obtain funds, Wagner embarked on a tour across Germany, including Leipzig. Societies were established, among other places, in Leipzig, Berlin, despite making direct appeals based on Wagners role as a composer of the new German Reich, the Societies and other fundraising channels were well short of the needed sum by the end of 1872. Wagner made another appeal to Bismarck in August 1873 and was again denied, desperate, Wagner turned to his former patron, Ludwig II who reluctantly agreed to help. In January 1874, Ludwig granted 100,000 Thaler and construction on the theatre, designed by architect Gottfried Semper, a planned 1875 debut was postponed for a year due to construction and other delays. Since its opening in 1876, the Bayreuth Festival has been a socio-cultural phenomenon, the inauguration took place on 13 August 1876, with a performance of Das Rheingold. Artistically, the festival was a success, financially, however, the festival was a disaster and did not begin to make money until several years later. Wagner abandoned his plan to hold a second festival the following year
3.
Siegfried Wagner
–
Siegfried Wagner was a German composer and conductor, the son of Richard Wagner. He was a composer and the artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival from 1908 to 1930. Helferich Siegfried Richard Wagner, nicknamed Fidi, was born in 1869 to Richard Wagner and his future wife Cosima, through his mother, he was a grandson of Franz Liszt, from whom he received some instruction in harmony. Some youthful compositions date from about 1882, in 1892 he undertook a trip to Asia with a friend, the English composer Clement Harris. During the voyage he decided to abandon architecture and commit himself to music, reputedly, it was also Harris who first aroused his homoerotic impulses. While on board ship he sketched his first official work, the symphonic poem Sehnsucht and this piece was not completed until just before the concert in which Wagner conducted it in London on 6 June 1895. He composed more operas than his father, though his works are numerous, none entered the standard repertory. In 1908 he took over as Artistic Director of the Bayreuth Festival in succession to his mother, for years, his mother urged him to marry and provide the Wagner dynasty with heirs, but he fought off her increasingly desperate urgings. The two married on 22 September 1915, peter Pachl, one of Siegfrieds biographers, asserted that in 1901 Siegfried had sired an illegitimate son, Walter Aign. However, that remains controversial, as he supplied no evidence. Nonetheless, several recent authors, such as Frederic Spotts and Brigitte Hamann, have taken it up, Wagner died in Bayreuth in 1930, having outlived his mother by only four months. Since his two sons were still only adolescents, he was succeeded at the helm of the festival by his wife Winifred
4.
Richard Wagner
–
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works and 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 and his advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music. His Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music, Wagner had his own opera house built, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which embodied many novel design features. The Ring and Parsifal were premiered here and his most important stage works continue to be performed at the annual Bayreuth Festival, until his final years, Wagners life was characterised by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors. His controversial writings on music, drama and politics have attracted extensive comment, notably, since the late 20th century, where they express antisemitic sentiments. The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of the arts throughout the 20th century, his influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, Richard Wagner was born to an ethnic German family in Leipzig, where his family lived at No. 3, the Brühl in the Jewish quarter and he was baptized at St. Thomas Church. He was the child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife, Johanna Rosine. Wagners father Carl died of typhus six months after Richards birth, afterwards his mother Johanna lived with Carls friend, the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer. In August 1814 Johanna and Geyer probably married—although no documentation of this has found in the Leipzig church registers. She and her family moved to Geyers residence in Dresden, until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. He almost certainly thought that Geyer was his biological father, Geyers love of the theatre came to be shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in his performances. In his autobiography Mein Leben Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel, in late 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzels school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano instruction from his Latin teacher. He struggled to play a scale at the keyboard and preferred playing theatre overtures by ear. Following Geyers death in 1821, Richard was sent to the Kreuzschule, at the age of nine he was hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Carl Maria von Webers opera Der Freischütz, which he saw Weber conduct. At this period Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright and his first creative effort, listed in the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis as WWV1, was a tragedy called Leubald. Begun when he was in school in 1826, the play was influenced by Shakespeare
5.
Franz Liszt
–
Franz Liszt was a prolific 19th-century Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, organist, philanthropist, author, nationalist and a Franciscan tertiary. Liszt gained renown in Europe during the nineteenth century for his prodigious virtuosic skill as a pianist. As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the New German School and he left behind an extensive and diverse body of work in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated many 20th-century ideas and trends. Franz Liszt was born to Anna Liszt and Adam Liszt on October 22,1811, in the village of Doborján in Sopron County, in the Kingdom of Hungary, Liszts father played the piano, violin, cello and guitar. He had been in the service of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy and knew Haydn, Hummel, at age six, Franz began listening attentively to his fathers piano playing and showed an interest in both sacred and Romani music. Adam began teaching him the piano at age seven, and Franz began composing in an elementary manner when he was eight and he appeared in concerts at Sopron and Pressburg in October and November 1820 at age 9. After the concerts, a group of wealthy sponsors offered to finance Franzs musical education in Vienna, There Liszt received piano lessons from Carl Czerny, who in his own youth had been a student of Beethoven and Hummel. He also received lessons in composition from Antonio Salieri, then director of the Viennese court. Liszts public debut in Vienna on December 1,1822, at a concert at the Landständischer Saal, was a great success and he was greeted in Austrian and Hungarian aristocratic circles and also met Beethoven and Schubert. In spring 1823, when his one-year leave of absence came to an end, Adam Liszt therefore took his leave of the Princes services. At the end of April 1823, the returned to Hungary for the last time. At the end of May 1823, the family went to Vienna again, towards the end of 1823 or early 1824, Liszts first composition to be published, his Variation on a Waltz by Diabelli, appeared as Variation 24 in Part II of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. Liszts inclusion in the Diabelli project—he was described in it as an 11 year old boy, born in Hungary—was almost certainly at the instigation of Czerny, his teacher, Liszt was the only child composer in the anthology. After his fathers death in 1827, Liszt moved to Paris, to earn money, Liszt gave lessons in piano playing and composition, often from early morning until late at night. His students were scattered across the city and he often had to long distances. Because of this, he kept uncertain hours and also took up smoking, the following year he fell in love with one of his pupils, Caroline de Saint-Cricq, the daughter of Charles Xs minister of commerce, Pierre de Saint-Cricq. Her father, however, insisted that the affair be broken off, Liszt fell very ill, to the extent that an obituary notice was printed in a Paris newspaper, and he underwent a long period of religious doubts and pessimism. He again stated a wish to join the Church but was dissuaded this time by his mother and he had many discussions with the Abbé de Lamennais, who acted as his spiritual father, and also with Chrétien Urhan, a German-born violinist who introduced him to the Saint-Simonists
6.
Winifred Wagner
–
Winifred Wagner was the English-born wife of Siegfried Wagner, the son of Richard Wagner, and ran the Bayreuth Festival after her husbands death in 1930 until the end of World War II in 1945. She was a friend and supporter of Adolf Hitler, and she, Winifred Williams was born in Hastings, England, to John Williams, a writer, and his wife, the former Emily Florence Karop. Winifred lost both her parents before the age of two and was raised in a number of homes. Eight years later she was adopted by a distant German relative of her mother, Henrietta Karop, and her husband Karl Klindworth, a musician and a friend of Richard Wagner. It was arranged that Winifred Klindworth, as she was called at the time, aged 17, would meet Siegfried Wagner, aged 45, a year later they were married. It was hoped that the marriage would end Siegfrieds homosexual encounters and the associated costly scandals, in 1923, Winifred met Adolf Hitler, who greatly admired Wagners music. When Hitler was jailed for his part in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, Winifred sent him food parcels, in the late 1930s, she served as Hitlers personal translator during treaty negotiations with Britain. Although Winifred remained personally faithful to Hitler, she denied that she had supported the Nazi party. Her relationship with Hitler grew so close that by 1933 there were rumors of impending marriage, haus Wahnfried, the Wagner home in Bayreuth, became Hitlers favorite retreat. Hitler gave the government assistance and tax exempt status. According to biographer Brigitte Hamann, Winifred Wagner was reported to be disgusted by Hitlers persecution of the Jews, in one notable incident, in the late 1930s, a letter from her to Hitler prevented Hedwig and Alfred Pringsheim from being arrested by the Gestapo. According to Gottfried Wagner, Winifreds grandson, she never admitted the error of her ways, after the war, her posthumous devotion to the man she cryptically referred to as USA – for Unser Seliger Adolf – remained undimmed. She corresponded with Hitler for nearly two decades, like Hitler, Winifred Wagner believed profoundly in the rite of a secular cult of German nationalism, of Nordic self-realization, and völkischer aspiration. After the collapse of the Third Reich, a court banned her from the Bayreuth Festival. In the 1950s she again became a political hostess, in 1975, Winifred Wagner gave a filmed interview to Hans-Jürgen Syberberg in which she appeared unrepentant concerning her past. To have met him, she declared, is an experience I would not have missed. She died in Überlingen, one of the best preserved sites, on the shore of Lake Constance, on 5 March 1980 at the age of 82. The friendship of Winifred and Hitler is treated fancifully in A. N. Wilsons novel, Winnie, Winifred Wagner, A Life at the Heart of Hitlers Bayreuth
7.
Wahnfried
–
Wahnfried was the name given by Richard Wagner to his villa in Bayreuth. The name is a German compound of Wahn and Fried, the house was constructed from 1872 to 1874 under Carl Wölfels supervision after plans from Berlin architect Wilhelm Neumann, the plans being altered according to some ideas of Wagner. The front of the house shows Wagners motto Hier wo mein Wähnen Frieden fand – Wahnfried – sei dieses Haus von mir benannt, the grave of Richard Wagner and his wife Cosima lies on the grounds of Wahnfried. The house has been a museum since 1976, visitors can take a walk in the remote Hofgarten, the baroque park of Bayreuths New Castle, to where a path directly leads. A stylized version of Villa Wahnfried was used for the sets of Stefan Herheims new production of Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival in 2008, Richard Wagner Museum Bayreuth Richard Wagners Grave Wahnfried
8.
Bayreuth
–
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 towns roots date back to 1194, in the early 21st century, it is the capital of Upper Franconia and has a population of 72,576. It is world-famous for its annual Bayreuth Festival, at performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. The town is believed to have founded by the counts of Andechs probably around the mid-12th century. The syllable -rute may mean Rodung or clearing, whilst Baier- indicates immigrants from the Bavarian region, already documented earlier, were villages later merged into Bayreuth, Seulbitz and St. Johannis. Even the district of Altstadt west of the centre must be older than the town of Bayreuth itself. Even older traces of human presence were found in the hamlets of Meyernberg, pieces of pottery, while Bayreuth was previously referred to as a villa, the term civitas appeared for the first time in a document published in 1231. One can therefore assume that Bayreuth was awarded its town charter between 1200 and 1230, the town was ruled until 1248 by the counts of Andechs-Merania. After they died out in 1260 the burgraves of Nuremberg from the House of Hohenzollern took over the inheritance, initially, however, their residence and the centre of the territory was the castle of Plassenburg in Kulmbach. The town of Bayreuth developed slowly and was affected time and again by disasters, as early as 1361 Emperor Charles IV had conferred on Burgrave Frederick V the right to mint coins for the towns of Bayreuth and Kulmbach. Bayreuth was first published on a map in 1421, in February 1430, the Hussites devastated Bayreuth and the town hall and churches were razed. In 1605 a great fire, caused by negligence, destroyed 137 of the towns 251 houses, in 1620 plague broke out and, in 1621, there was another big fire in the town. The town also suffered during the Thirty Years War, the first Hohenzollern palace was built in 1440-1457 under Margrave John the Alchemist. It was the forerunner of todays Old Palace and was expanded and renovated many times, the development of the new capital stagnated due to the Thirty Years War, but afterwards many famous baroque buildings were added to the town. After Christians death in 1655 his grandson, Christian Ernest, followed him and he was an educated and well-travelled man, whose tutor had been the statesman Joachim Friedrich von Blumenthal. He founded the Christian-Ernestinum Grammar School and, in 1683, participated in the liberation of Vienna which had been besieged by the Turks. To commemorate this feat, he had the Margrave Fountain built as a monument on which he is depicted as the victor of the Turks, during this time, the outer ring of the town wall and the castle chapel were built. In 1705 he founded the Order of Sincerity, which was renamed in 1734 to the Order of the Red Eagle and had the church built
9.
Bavaria
–
Bavaria is a free state and one of 16 federal states of Germany. Located in the German southeast with an area of 70,548 square kilometres and its territory comprises roughly a fifth of the total land area of Germany, and, with 12.9 million inhabitants, it is Germanys second most populous state. Munich, Bavarias capital and largest city, is the third largest city in Germany, the Duchy of Bavaria dates back to the year 555. In the 17th century CE, the Duke of Bavaria became a Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Bavaria existed from 1806 to 1918, when Bavaria became a republic. In 1946, the Free State of Bavaria re-organised itself on democratic lines after the Second World War, Bavaria has a unique culture, largely because of the states Catholic majority and conservative traditions. Bavarians have traditionally been proud of their culture, which includes such as Oktoberfest. The state also has the second largest economy among the German states by GDP figures, modern Bavaria also includes parts of the historical regions of Franconia, Upper Palatinate and Swabia. The Bavarians emerged in a north of the Alps, previously inhabited by Celts. The Bavarians spoke Old High German but, unlike other Germanic groups, rather, they seem to have coalesced out of other groups left behind by Roman withdrawal late in the 5th century. These peoples may have included the Celtic Boii, some remaining Romans, Marcomanni, Allemanni, Quadi, Thuringians, Goths, Scirians, Rugians, the name Bavarian means Men of Baia which may indicate Bohemia, the homeland of the Celtic Boii and later of the Marcomanni. They first appear in written sources circa 520, a 17th century Jewish chronicler David Solomon Ganz, citing Cyriacus Spangenberg, claimed that the diocese was named after an ancient Bohemian king, Boiia, in the 14th century BCE. From about 554 to 788, the house of Agilolfing ruled the Duchy of Bavaria and their daughter, Theodelinde, became Queen of the Lombards in northern Italy and Garibald was forced to flee to her when he fell out with his Frankish overlords. Garibalds successor, Tassilo I, tried unsuccessfully to hold the frontier against the expansion of Slavs. Tassilos son Garibald II seems to have achieved a balance of power between 610 and 616, after Garibald II little is known of the Bavarians until Duke Theodo I, whose reign may have begun as early as 680. From 696 onwards he invited churchmen from the west to organize churches and his son, Theudebert, led a decisive Bavarian campaign to intervene in a succession dispute in the Lombard Kingdom in 714, and married his sister Guntrud to the Lombard King Liutprand. At Theodos death the duchy was divided among his sons, at Hugberts death the duchy passed to a distant relative named Odilo, from neighbouring Alemannia. He was defeated near Augsburg in 743 but continued to rule until his death in 748, saint Boniface completed the peoples conversion to Christianity in the early 8th century. Bavaria was in ways affected by the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century
10.
Friedelind Wagner
–
Friedelind Wagner was the daughter of German opera composer Siegfried Wagner and his English wife, Winifred Williams and the granddaughter of the composer Richard Wagner. Born in Bayreuth, she was known by the nickname Die Maus or Mausi, along with other members of her family, from early in life Friedelind Wagner was involved with the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. In 1936, she work as an assistant to Heinz Tietjen but her outspoken criticism of close family friend Adolf Hitler. She lived for a time in Switzerland before emigrating first to England where she began writing anti-Nazi columns for the Daily Sketch newspaper. With the help of Arturo Toscanini, in 1941 Wagner moved to the United States where she became involved with radio broadcasts of anti-Nazi propaganda and she also helped Professor Henry A. Murray, Director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic plus psychoanalyst Walter C. Langer and other experts to create a 1943 report for the OSS designated as the Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler, with writer Page Cooper, in 1945 Friedelind Wagner wrote her memoirs Heritage of Fire. Published in English in New York City by Harper & brothers, the Times wrote, This Ring is the most important single event in the democratization of opera and will put opera back at the center of all the arts, where it belongs. As a student of Friedelind Wagner, American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas was a Musical Assistant and Assistant Conductor at the Bayreuth Festival, in her latter years Friedelind Wagner made her home in Lucerne, Switzerland. Never married, she died in a hospital in Herdecke, Germany, Wagner family tree Jean Stein files on Rudolf Von Oertzen and Friedelind Wagner, 1951-1959 Music Division, The New York Public Library
11.
Verena Wagner Lafferentz
–
Verena Wagner Lafferentz is the fourth child and youngest daughter of Winifred and Siegfried Wagner and the granddaughter of German composer Richard Wagner. Verena Wagner grew up in the Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth and attended the Obernkirchener rural school, adolf Hitler was a great fan of Wagners music and became very close to Verenas mother, Winifred Wagner. Hitler also befriended her children and treated them as his own and she has the reputation of being his most outspoken critic, telling him in unflattering words simple truths that no Cabinet member would dare utter. In 1943 Verena Wagner married Bodo Lafferentz, a member of the Nazi Party from 1933 and they had five children, Amélie, Manfred, Winifred, Wieland and Verena. In February 2007 she opened, as guest of honour, a concert of her grandfathers works at Sofia in Bulgaria
12.
Nazi Party
–
Its precursor, the German Workers Party, existed from 1919 to 1920. The party emerged from the German nationalist, racist, and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, the party was created as a means to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Pseudo-scientific racism theories were central to Nazism, the Nazis propagated the idea of a peoples community. Their aim was to unite racially desirable Germans as national comrades, while excluding those deemed either to be political dissidents, to maintain the supposed purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, Romani, and the physically and mentally handicapped. They imposed exclusionary segregation on homosexuals, Africans, Jehovahs Witnesses, the partys leader since 1921, Adolf Hitler, was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933. Hitler rapidly established a regime known as the Third Reich. The term Nazi derives from the name given in German to a party member Nationalsozialist and was coined in response to the German term Sozi, members of the party referred to themselves as Nationalsozialisten, rarely as Nazis. The term Parteigenosse was commonly used among Nazis, with the feminine form Parteigenossin used when it was appropriate, the term was in use before the rise of the party as a colloquial and derogatory word for a backward peasant, characterising an awkward and clumsy person. It derived from Ignaz, being a version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria. Opponents seized on this and shortened the name in intentional association to the long-time existing Sozi to the dismissive Nazi. In 1933, when Adolf Hitler assumed power of the German government, usage of the designation Nazi diminished in Germany, the use of Nazi Germany, and Nazi regime, was popularised by anti-Nazis and German exiles abroad. Thereafter, the spread into other languages and eventually was brought back to Germany after the Second World War. The party grew out of political groups with a nationalist orientation that formed in the last years of World War I. In 1918, a called the Freien Arbeiterausschuss für einen guten Frieden was created in Bremen. On 7 March 1918, Anton Drexler, an avid German nationalist, Drexler saw the situation of political violence and instability in Germany as the result of the new Weimar Republic being out-of-touch with the masses, especially the lower classes. These were all well-known themes popular with various Weimar paramilitary groups such as the Freikorps, though very small, Drexlers movement did receive attention and support from some influential figures. Supporter Dietrich Eckhart brought military figure Count Felix Graf von Bothmer, later in 1918, Karl Harrer, convinced Drexler and several others to form the Politischer Arbeiterzirkel. The members met periodically for discussions with themes of nationalism and racism directed against the Jews and they became one of many völkisch movements that existed in Germany at the time
13.
Adolf Hitler
–
Adolf Hitler was a German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party, Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and Führer of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. As dictator of the German Reich, he initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and was central to the Holocaust, Hitler was born in Austria, then part of Austria-Hungary, and raised near Linz. He moved to Germany in 1913 and was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I and he joined the German Workers Party, the precursor of the NSDAP, in 1919 and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923 he attempted a coup in Munich to seize power, the failed coup resulted in Hitlers imprisonment, during which he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf. Hitler frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as being part of a Jewish conspiracy, by 1933, the Nazi Party was the largest elected party in the German Reichstag, which led to Hitlers appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933. Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain, Hitler sought Lebensraum for the German people in Eastern Europe. His aggressive foreign policy is considered to be the cause of the outbreak of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and on 1 September 1939 invaded Poland, resulting in British, in June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941 German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe, failure to defeat the Soviets and the entry of the United States into the war forced Germany onto the defensive and it suffered a series of escalating defeats. In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time lover, on 30 April 1945, less than two days later, the two killed themselves to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses were burned. Hitler and the Nazi regime were also responsible for the killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians, in addition,29 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European Theatre of World War II. The number of civilians killed during the Second World War was unprecedented in warfare, Hitlers father Alois Hitler Sr. was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. The baptismal register did not show the name of his father, in 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Aloiss mother Maria Anna. Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedlers brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, in 1876, Alois was legitimated and the baptismal register changed by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Aloiss father. Alois then assumed the surname Hitler, also spelled Hiedler, Hüttler, the Hitler surname is probably based on one who lives in a hut. Nazi official Hans Frank suggested that Aloiss mother had been employed as a housekeeper by a Jewish family in Graz, and that the familys 19-year-old son Leopold Frankenberger had fathered Alois. No Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, and no record has been produced of Leopold Frankenbergers existence, Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary, close to the border with the German Empire. He was one of six born to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl
14.
Hitler Youth
–
The Hitler Youth was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins dated back to 1922, with the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, the organisation de facto ceased to exist. On 10 October 1945, it was outlawed by the Allied Control Council along with other Nazi Party organisations, in 1922 the Munich-based Nazi Party established its official youth organisation called Jugendbund der NSDAP. It was announced on 8 March 1922 in the Völkischer Beobachter, another youth group was established in 1922 as the Jungsturm Adolf Hitler. Based in Munich, Bavaria, it served to train and recruit members of the Sturmabteilung. Following the abortive Beer Hall Putsch the Nazi youth groups ostensibly disbanded, in April 1924 the Jugendbund der NSDAP was renamed Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung. On 4 July 1926 the Grossdeutsche Jugendbewegung was officially renamed Hitler Jugend Bund der deutschen Arbeiterjugend and this event took place a year after the Nazi Party itself had been reorganised. The architect of the re-organisation was Kurt Gruber, a law student from Plauen in Saxony, after a short power-struggle with a rival organisation—Gerhard Roßbachs Schilljugend—Gruber prevailed and his Greater German Youth Movement became the Nazi Partys official youth organisation. In July 1926 it was renamed Hitler-Jugend, Bund deutscher Arbeiterjugend and, for the first time, the name Hitler-Jugend was taken up on the suggestion of Hans Severus Ziegler. By 1930 the Hitlerjugend had enlisted over 25,000 boys aged 14 and it also set up a junior branch, the Deutsches Jungvolk, for boys aged 10 to 14. Girls from 10 to 18 were given their own parallel organisation, in April 1932 Chancellor Heinrich Brüning banned the Hitler Youth movement in an attempt to stop widespread political violence. But in June Brünings successor as Chancellor, Franz von Papen, lifted the ban as a way of appeasing Hitler, a further significant expansion drive started in 1933, after Baldur von Schirach was appointed by Hitler as the first Reichsjugendführer. All youth organizations were brought under Schirachs control, the members of the Hitler Youth were viewed as insuring the future of Nazi Germany and were indoctrinated in Nazi ideology, including racism. The Hitler Youth appropriated many of its activities of the Boy Scout movement, although over time it changed in content and intention. For example, many activities closely resembled military training, with training, assault course circuits. The aim was to instill the motivation that would enable its members as soldiers, there was great emphasis on physical fitness and hardness and military training than on academic study. The Hitler Youth were used to break up Church youth groups, and in anti-Church indoctrination, used to spy on religious classes and Bible studies, and interfere with church attendance. Members summer uniform consisted of a black shorts and tan shirt with pockets, worn with a black neckerchief secured with a woggle
15.
Eva Wagner-Pasquier
–
Eva Wagner-Pasquier is a German opera manager. She is the daughter of Wolfgang Wagner and Ellen Drexel, following the death of her uncle Wieland Wagner, Wagner-Pasquier acted as her fathers assistant at Bayreuth from 1967 to 1975. She was an assistant at the Vienna State Opera, and a director at the Royal Opera House. Wagner-Pasquier oversaw opera and concert productions for the Munich-based classical music company Unitel Films until 1984 and she was Director of Programming at the Opéra Bastille from 1987–93. She has also worked for Houston Grand Opera, the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Teatro Real, the Festival dAix-en-Provence, the eventual compromise with both Wolfgang and the foundation supporting the sisters followed Gudruns death in 2007. Eva Wagner-Pasquier is married to the French film producer Yves Pasquier and they have a son Antoine Amadeus Wagner-Pasquier
16.
Gottfried Wagner
–
Gottfried Wagner is a multimedia director and publicist. Gottfried Wagner is the son of Wolfgang Wagner and a great-grandchild of Richard Wagner and his PhD is about Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. He has concentrated on German culture and politics, as well as Jewish history of the 19th and 20th centuries in numerous publications and he is a member of the PEN-Club Liechtenstein and in 1992 was a co-founder of the Post-Holocaust Discussion Group. He has been living in Italy since 1983, and has estranged himself from his fathers family, openly criticising their involvement with the Nazi regime, the British film director Tony Palmer has made a two-hour documentary film about the Wagner family in which Gottfried plays a key role. Gottfried Wagner, Wer nicht mit dem Wolf heult, verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1997. ISBN 3-462-02622-4 Gottfried Wagner, Twilight of the Wagners, The Unveiling of a Familys Legacy, ISBN 0-312-26404-6 Gottfried Wagner Du sollst keine anderen Götter haben neben mir. Richard Wagner - Ein Minenfeld, Propyläen,2013, ISBN 978-3-549-07441-1 Carr, Jonathan, The Wagner Clan, The Saga of Germanys Most Illustrious and Infamous Family. ISBN 0-87113-975-8 Wagner family tree Much of the information in this article comes from the German-language Wikipedia article, Gottfried Wagners homepage Interview with Gottfried Wagner on the European Commission web site Stanley, Alessandra. The Wagner Story Isnt Music to This Wagners Ears
17.
Katharina Wagner
–
Katharina Wagner is a German opera stage-director and co-director of the Bayreuth Festival. She is the daughter of Wolfgang Wagner, great-granddaughter of Richard Wagner, Wagner has staged Der fliegende Holländer in Würzburg and Lohengrin in Budapest. Wagner also took a bow after every performance, with audiences split between bravas and boos and this followed an extended family dispute. They were chosen in preference to their cousin Nike Wagner and the Belgian opera director and administrator Gérard Mortier and her visit was canceled after hostility from Holocaust survivors. Der fliegende Holländer Lohengrin Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg Rienzi Tristan und Isolde Carr, Jonathan, The Wagner Clan, The Saga of Germanys Most Illustrious and Infamous Family
18.
Germany
–
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
19.
World War II
–
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
20.
Bayreuth Festspielhaus
–
The Bayreuth Festspielhaus or Bayreuth Festival Theatre is an opera house north of Bayreuth, Germany, dedicated solely to the performance of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner. It is the venue for the annual Bayreuth Festival, for which it was specifically conceived, Wagner adapted the design of the Festspielhaus from an unrealised project by Gottfried Semper for an opera house in Munich, without the architects permission, and supervised its construction. Ludwig II of Bavaria provided the funding for the construction. The foundation stone was laid on 22 May 1872, Wagners 59th birthday, the building was first opened for the premiere of the complete four-opera cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen, from 13 to 17 August 1876. Only the entry façade exhibits the typical late-19th-century ornamentation, while the remainder of the exterior is modest, the interior is mainly wood and has a reverberation time of 1.55 seconds. The Festspielhaus is a building, in fact, it is the largest free standing timber structure ever erected. This is also known as continental seating, many contemporary movie theaters have adopted this style of seating, which gives every seat an equal and uninterrupted view of the stage. The capacity of the Festspielhaus is 1,925 and has a volume of 10,000 cubic metres, the Festspielhaus features a double proscenium, which gives the audience the illusion that the stage is further away than it actually is. The double proscenium and the orchestra pit create – in Wagners term – a mystic gulf between the audience and the stage. This gives a character to performances, and provides a physical reinforcement of the mythic content of most of Wagners operas. The architecture of Festpielhaus accomplished many of Wagners goals and ideals for the performances of his operas including an improvement on the sound, feel, and overall look of the production. The Festpielhaus was originally planned to open in 1873, but by that time Wagner had barely raised enough money to put up the walls of his theatre and he began to raise money by traveling and putting on concerts in various cities and countries throughout Europe. There are, however, some documents concerning the donation and aid to Wagner for that matter by the Sultan Abdülaziz of the Ottoman Empire, even after Ludwig began funding the project, Wagner had to continue putting on concerts to keep the building project financially afloat. The tours were very taxing on Wagners health and would eventually be a key element to his death later on in 1883, a significant feature of the Festspielhaus is its unusual orchestra pit. It is recessed under the stage and covered by a hood and this feature was a central preoccupation for Wagner, since it made the audience concentrate on the drama onstage, rather than the distracting motion of the conductor and musicians. The design also corrected the balance of volume between singers and orchestra, creating ideal acoustics for Wagners operas, which are the operas performed at the Festspielhaus. However, this arrangement has made it the most challenging to conduct in. Not only is the crowded pit enveloped in darkness, but the acoustic reverberation makes it difficult to synchronise the orchestra with the singers, conductors must therefore retrain themselves to ignore cues from singers
21.
Ring Cycle
–
Der Ring des Nibelungen, WWV86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas, the composer termed the cycle a Bühnenfestspiel, structured in three days preceded by a Vorabend. It is often referred to as the Ring Cycle, Wagners Ring, Wagner wrote the libretto and music over the course of about twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874. The first performance as an opened the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, beginning with Das Rheingold on 13 August. Wagners title is most literally rendered in English as The Ring of the Nibelung, the Nibelung of the title is the dwarf Alberich, and the ring in question is the one he fashions from the Rhine Gold. The title therefore denotes Alberichs Ring, Nibelungen is occasionally mistaken as a plural, but the Ring of the Nibelungs is incorrect. The cycle is a work of extraordinary scale, the first and shortest work, Das Rheingold, typically lasts two and a half hours, while the final and longest, Götterdämmerung, takes up to five hours, excluding intervals. The cycle is modelled after ancient Greek dramas that were presented as three tragedies and one satyr play, the Ring proper begins with Die Walküre and ends with Götterdämmerung, with Rheingold as a prelude. Wagner called Das Rheingold a Vorabend or Preliminary Evening, and Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung were subtitled First Day, Second Day and Third Day, respectively, the scale and scope of the story is epic. It follows the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over the magic ring that grants domination over the entire world. The drama and intrigue continue through three generations of protagonists, until the final cataclysm at the end of Götterdämmerung, the music of the cycle is thick and richly textured, and grows in complexity as the cycle proceeds. Wagner wrote for an orchestra of gargantuan proportions, including a greatly enlarged brass section with new instruments such as the Wagner tuba, bass trumpet and contrabass trombone. Remarkably, he uses a chorus only relatively briefly, in acts 2 and 3 of Götterdämmerung and he eventually had a purpose-built theatre constructed, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, in which to perform this work. The theatre has a stage that blends the huge orchestra with the singers voices. The result was that the singers did not have to strain themselves vocally during the long performances. The plot revolves around a ring that grants the power to rule the world. Wotans schemes to regain the ring, spanning generations, drive much of the action in the story, Hagen is drowned as he attempts to recover the ring. In the process, the gods and Valhalla are destroyed, details of the storylines can be found in the articles on each music drama
22.
Bayreuth canon
–
The Bayreuth canon consists of those operas by the German composer Richard Wagner that have been performed at the Bayreuth Festival. The festival, which is dedicated to the staging of these works, was founded by Wagner in 1876 in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth, although it was not originally held annually, it has taken place in July and August every year since the 75th anniversary season in 1951. Its venue is the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which was built for the first festival, attendance at the festival is often thought of as a pilgrimage made by Wagner aficionados. The operas in the Bayreuth canon are the last ten of the thirteen that Wagner completed and he rejected the first three – Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi – as apprentice works. The term Bayreuth canon is therefore taken to mean the composers mature operas. Georg Solti was the first conductor to complete studio recordings of all the works in the canon, starting in 1958 with Das Rheingold and finishing in 1986 with Lohengrin. The components of the canon are as follows, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, the Bayreuth Festival was created for the first complete staging of the Ring in 1876. The Ring was next staged in Bayreuth in 1896, the other season when the cycle has been performed there unaccompanied by other operas. Since then, it has appeared during most seasons, Parsifal This work was first performed at the second Bayreuth Festival in 1882. The degree to which Parsifal is associated with one venue, the Festspielhaus, Wagner dubbed the opera a Bühnenweihfestspiel, which opera director Mike Ashman translates as a festival work to consecrate a stage. Ashman explains this as meaning that it was intended to secure the future of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Parsifal was staged nowhere else until 1903 when the Metropolitan Opera in New York broke the embargo placed on theatrical performances outside Bayreuth by Wagner, Parsifal far exceeds the other members of the canon in the number of performances it has received at Bayreuth. Most of these performances were of the production, which received 205 performances before a new staging was introduced in 1934. Another production – the influential one by the composers grandson Wieland – was staged every year from 1951, in introducing these, she fulfilled her dead husbands wishes but over an extended timescale. Meistersinger is the work in the canon, apart from Parsifal and the Ring cycle, to have had whole festival seasons. As of the completion of the 2015 festival,2622 performances have been given at the Bayreuth Festival of the operas in the canon, list of works for the stage by Wagner Ashman, Mike A Very Human Epic in John pp. 7–14. Ashman, Mike Tannhäuser – an obsession in John pp. 7–15, Bayreuther Festspiele Die Aufführungen sortiert nach Festspielleitung. Statistics of performances at Bayreuth Festival sorted by festival director at official festival site, in German, accessed 24 May 2012
23.
Cosima Wagner
–
Cosima Wagner was the illegitimate daughter of the Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt and Marie dAgoult. Commentators have recognised Cosima as the inspiration for Wagners later works. In 1857, after a childhood largely spent under the care of her grandmother and with governesses, although the marriage produced two children, it was largely a loveless union, and in 1863 Cosima began a relationship with Wagner, who was 24 years her senior. She shared Wagners convictions of German cultural and racial superiority, and under her influence and this was a defining feature of Bayreuth for decades, into the Nazi era which closely followed her death in 1930. Thus, although she is perceived as the saviour of the festival. In January 1833 the 21-year-old Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt met Marie dAgoult, maries antecedents were mixed, her German mother, from a prominent Frankfurt banking family, had married a French nobleman, the Comte de Flavigny. Marie had been married since 1827 to Charles, Comte dAgoult, drawn together by their mutual intellectual interests, Marie and Liszt embarked on a passionate relationship. In March 1835 the couple fled Paris for Switzerland, ignoring the scandal they left in their wake, they settled in Geneva where, on 18 December, Marie gave birth to a daughter, Blandine-Rachel. In the following two years Liszt and Marie travelled widely in pursuit of his career as a concert pianist, late in 1837, when Marie was heavily pregnant with their second child, the couple were at Como in Italy. Here, on 24 December in a hotel in Bellagio. They named her Francesca Gaetana Cosima, the third name being derived from St Cosmas. With her sister she was left in the care of wet nurses, while Liszt and their third child and only son, Daniel, was born on 9 May 1839 in Venice. In 1839, while Liszt continued his travels, Marie took the risk of returning to Paris with her daughters. Liszts solution was to remove the girls from Marie and place them with his mother, Anna Liszt, by this means, both Marie and Liszt could continue their independent lives. Relations between the couple cooled, and by 1841 they were seeing little of other, it is likely that both engaged in other affairs. By 1845 the breach between them was such that they were communicating only through third parties, Liszt forbade contact between mother and daughters, Marie accused him of attempting to steal the fruits of a mothers womb, while Liszt insisted on his sole right to decide the childrens future. Marie threatened to fight him like a lioness, but soon gave up the struggle, though they were living in the same city, she did not see either of her daughters for five years, until 1850. Cosima and Blandine remained with Anna Liszt until 1850, joined eventually by Daniel, Cosimas biographer George Marek describes Anna as a simple, uneducated, unworldly but warmhearted woman
24.
Opera
–
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. In traditional opera, singers do two types of singing, recitative, a style and arias, a more melodic style. Opera incorporates many of the elements of theatre, such as acting, scenery. The performance is given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition, in the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, attracting foreign composers such as George Frideric Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Christoph Willibald Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his operas in the 1760s. The first third of the 19th century saw the point of the bel canto style, with Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti. It also saw the advent of Grand Opera typified by the works of Auber and Meyerbeer, the mid-to-late 19th century was a golden age of opera, led and dominated by Richard Wagner in Germany and Giuseppe Verdi in Italy. The popularity of opera continued through the era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Giacomo Puccini. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe, the 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism, Neoclassicism, and Minimalism. With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso, since the invention of radio and television, operas were also performed on these mediums. Beginning in 2006, a number of opera houses began to present live high-definition video transmissions of their performances in cinemas all over the world. In 2009, an opera company offered a download of a complete performance. The words of an opera are known as the libretto, some composers, notably Wagner, have written their own libretti, others have worked in close collaboration with their librettists, e. g. Mozart with Lorenzo Da Ponte. Vocal duets, trios and other ensembles often occur, and choruses are used to comment on the action, in some forms of opera, such as singspiel, opéra comique, operetta, and semi-opera, the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, the terminology of the various kinds of operatic voices is described in detail below. Over the 18th century, arias were accompanied by the orchestra. Subsequent composers have tended to follow Wagners example, though some, the changing role of the orchestra in opera is described in more detail below
25.
Werner Herzog
–
Werner Herzog is a German screenwriter, film director, author, actor, and opera director. Herzog is considered one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Schröter, and Wim Wenders. Herzogs films often feature heroes with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields, French filmmaker François Truffaut once called Herzog the most important film director alive. American film critic Roger Ebert said that Herzog has never created a film that is compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons. He was named one of the 100 most influential people on the planet by Time magazine in 2009, Herzog was born Werner Stipetić in Munich, to Elizabeth Stipetić, an Austrian of Croatian descent, and Dietrich Herzog, who was German. When Werner was two old, his mother took refuge in the remote Bavarian village of Sachrang, after the house next to theirs was destroyed during a bombing raid in World War II. In Sachrang, Herzog grew up without running water, a flushing toilet and he never saw films, and did not even know of the existence of cinema until a traveling projectionist came by the one-room schoolhouse in Sachrang. When Herzog was 12, he and his moved back to Munich. His father had abandoned the early in his youth. Werner later adopted his fathers surname Herzog, which he thought sounded more impressive for a filmmaker, the same year, Herzog was told to sing in front of his class at school, and he adamantly refused, and was almost expelled. Until he was age eighteen, Herzog listened to no music, sang no songs and he later said that he would easily give ten years from his life to be able to play the cello. At an early age, he experienced a phase in which he converted to Catholicism. He started to embark on long journeys, some of them on foot, in the commentary for Aguirre, the Wrath of God, he says, I dont consider it theft. I had some sort of right for a camera, a tool to work with. He won a scholarship to Duquesne University and lasted only a few days, after graduating from high school, he was intrigued by the Congo after its independence, but only reached the south of the Sudan where he fell seriously ill. While already making films, he had a stint at Munich University. He earned money by participating in preproduction of a documentary for NASA with KQED, summoned to the immigration office because of a violation of his visa status, he chose to flee to Mexico. Before leaving school, he bought a house in the UK, there he learned to speak English
26.
Lohengrin (opera)
–
Lohengrin, WWV75, is a Romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. It is part of the Knight of the Swan tradition, the opera has inspired other works of art. King Ludwig II of Bavaria named his fairy-tale castle New Swan Castle, or Neuschwanstein and it was King Ludwigs patronage that later gave Wagner the means and opportunity to compose, build a theatre for, and stage his epic cycle The Ring of the Nibelung. The most popular and recognizable part of the opera is the Bridal Chorus, better known as Here Comes the Bride, the literary figure of Lohengrin first appeared as a supporting character in the final chapter of the middle-age epic poem Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach. The Grail Knight Lohengrin, son of the Grail King Parzival, is sent to the duchess of Brabant to defend her and his protection comes under the condition that she must never ask his name. If she violates this requirement, he will be forced to leave her, Wagner attempted at the same time to weave elements of Greek tragedy into the plot. He wrote the following in Mitteilungen an meine Freunde about his Lohengrin plans, Who doesnt know Zeus, the god is in love with a human woman and approaches her in human form. The lover finds that she cannot recognize the god in this form, Zeus knows that she would be destroyed by the sight of his real self. He suffers in this awareness, suffers knowing that he must fulfill this demand and he will seal his own doom when the gleam of his godly form destroys his lover. Is the man who craves for God not destroyed, in composing Lohengrin Wagner created a new form of opera, the through-composed music drama. The composition is not divided into numbers, but is played from act to act without any interruption. This style of composition contrasts with that of the conventional number opera, which is divided into arias, recitatives, Lohengrin still contains lengthy performances—for example, Elsas Alone in dark days and Lohengrins Grail aria—which harken back to the classical solo aria form. Wagner made extensive use of leitmotives in his composition and these motives allowed Wagner to precisely narrate the inner thoughts of the characters on stage, even without speech. The first production of Lohengrin was in Weimar, Germany, on 28 August 1850 at the Staatskapelle Weimar under the direction of Franz Liszt, Liszt chose the date in honour of Weimars most famous citizen, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was born on 28 August 1749. Despite the inadequacies of the lead tenor Karl Beck, it was a popular success. Wagner himself was unable to attend the first performance, having been exiled because of his part in the 1849 May Uprising in Dresden. Although he conducted various extracts in concert in Zurich, London, Paris and Brussels, the operas first performance outside German-speaking lands was in Riga on 5 February 1855. The Austrian premiere took place in Vienna at the Theater am Kärntnertor on 19 August 1858, the work was produced in Munich for the first time at the National Theatre on 16 June 1867, with Heinrich Vogl in the title role and Mathilde Mallinger as Elsa
27.
Wagner family tree
–
The family of the composer Richard Wagner, Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner, a police actuary, ∞1798 Johanna Rosine Pätz, daughter of a baker. 1836 Minna Planer, *1809 †1866, actress ∞2, eleonore Gräfin Lehndorff Joy Olivia Wagner Nike Wagner, *1945, dramaturg and publicist, ∞1. Jürg Stenzl, *1942, musicologist Louise Launay Daphne Wagner, *1946, udo Proksch, *1934 †2001 businessman and industrialist ∞2. Carr, Jonathan, The Wagner Clan, The Saga of Germanys Most Illustrious and Infamous Family, ISBN 0-87113-975-8 Wagner Family Tree Wagner Family Tree
28.
International Standard Book Number
–
The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
29.
Wayback Machine
–
The Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine in October 2001. It was set up by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, and is maintained with content from Alexa Internet, the service enables users to see archived versions of web pages across time, which the archive calls a three dimensional index. Since 1996, the Wayback Machine has been archiving cached pages of websites onto its large cluster of Linux nodes and it revisits sites every few weeks or months and archives a new version. Sites can also be captured on the fly by visitors who enter the sites URL into a search box, the intent is to capture and archive content that otherwise would be lost whenever a site is changed or closed down. The overall vision of the machines creators is to archive the entire Internet, the name Wayback Machine was chosen as a reference to the WABAC machine, a time-traveling device used by the characters Mr. Peabody and Sherman in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, an animated cartoon. These crawlers also respect the robots exclusion standard for websites whose owners opt for them not to appear in search results or be cached, to overcome inconsistencies in partially cached websites, Archive-It. Information had been kept on digital tape for five years, with Kahle occasionally allowing researchers, when the archive reached its fifth anniversary, it was unveiled and opened to the public in a ceremony at the University of California, Berkeley. Snapshots usually become more than six months after they are archived or, in some cases, even later. The frequency of snapshots is variable, so not all tracked website updates are recorded, Sometimes there are intervals of several weeks or years between snapshots. After August 2008 sites had to be listed on the Open Directory in order to be included. As of 2009, the Wayback Machine contained approximately three petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of 100 terabytes each month, the growth rate reported in 2003 was 12 terabytes/month, the data is stored on PetaBox rack systems manufactured by Capricorn Technologies. In 2009, the Internet Archive migrated its customized storage architecture to Sun Open Storage, in 2011 a new, improved version of the Wayback Machine, with an updated interface and fresher index of archived content, was made available for public testing. The index driving the classic Wayback Machine only has a bit of material past 2008. In January 2013, the company announced a ground-breaking milestone of 240 billion URLs, in October 2013, the company announced the Save a Page feature which allows any Internet user to archive the contents of a URL. This became a threat of abuse by the service for hosting malicious binaries, as of December 2014, the Wayback Machine contained almost nine petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of about 20 terabytes each week. Between October 2013 and March 2015 the websites global Alexa rank changed from 162 to 208, in a 2009 case, Netbula, LLC v. Chordiant Software Inc. defendant Chordiant filed a motion to compel Netbula to disable the robots. Netbula objected to the motion on the ground that defendants were asking to alter Netbulas website, in an October 2004 case, Telewizja Polska USA, Inc. v. Echostar Satellite, No.02 C3293,65 Fed. 673, a litigant attempted to use the Wayback Machine archives as a source of admissible evidence, Telewizja Polska is the provider of TVP Polonia and EchoStar operates the Dish Network
30.
London Evening Standard
–
The London Evening Standard is a local, free daily newspaper, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant local/regional evening paper for London and the area, with coverage of national and international news. In October 2009, the paper ended a 180-year history of paid circulation and became a free newspaper, the newspaper was founded by barrister Stanley Lees Giffard on 21 May 1827, as the Standard. The early owner of the paper was Charles Baldwin, under the ownership of James Johnstone, The Standard became a morning paper from 29 June 1857. The Evening Standard was published from 11 June 1859, by the end of the 19th century, the evening edition eclipsed its morning counterpart. Both The Standard and the Evening Standard were acquired by C. Arthur Pearson in 1904, in May 1915, Edward Hulton purchased the Evening Standard from Davison Dalziel. Dalziel had purchased both papers in 1910, and closed The Standard, the paper, in 1916. Hulton introduced the gossip column Londoners Diary, originally billed as a written by gentlemen for gentlemen. It became a staunchly Conservative paper, harshly attacking Labour in 1945 in a campaign that backfired. In the 1960s, the paper was now upstaged by The Evening News, during the decade, the paper also began to publish the comic strip Modesty Blaise that bolstered the papers sales throughout the 1970s. In 1987 the Evening News was briefly revived to compete with Robert Maxwells London Daily News, in 1988 it incorporated the byline Incorporating the Evening News, which remained until the papers sale in 2009. A few years earlier,12 percent of the paper was sold to Justin Shaw, Associated News keeps the remaining 24 percent. In November 2009, it was announced that the London Evening Standard would drop its midday News Extra edition from 4 January 2010 with the first edition being the West End Final, previously there were three editions each weekday, excluding Bank holidays. The first, News Extra, went to print at 10,00 am and was available around 11 am in central London, slightly later in more outlying areas. The page changes were indicated by stars in the bottom corner of each page. In January 2010, circulation was increased to 900,000, in May 2009, the newspaper launched a series of poster ads, each of which prominently featured the word Sorry in the papers then-masthead font. These ads offered various apologies for past editorial approaches, such as Sorry for losing touch, none of the posters mentioned the Evening Standard by name, although they featured the papers Eros logo. Ex-editor Veronica Wadley criticised the Pravda-style campaign saying it humiliated the papers staff, the campaign was designed by McCann Erickson
31.
Die Feen
–
Die Feen is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. The German libretto was written by the composer after Carlo Gozzis La donna serpente, Die Feen was Wagners first completed opera, but remained unperformed in his lifetime. It has never established itself firmly in the operatic repertory although it receives occasional performances, on stage or in concert, the opera is available on CD and in a DVD. The overture has been separately recorded, although the music of Die Feen shows the influences of Carl Maria von Weber and other composers of the time, commentators have recognised embryonic features of the mature Wagnerian opera. The fantasy plot also anticipates themes such as redemption that were to reappear in his later works, Die Feen was Wagners first completed opera, composed in 1833, when he was 20 years old and working as a part-time chorus master in Würzburg. He gave it the description of Grosse romantische Oper, the year before he started composition, Wagner had abandoned his first attempt at writing an opera, Die Hochzeit. There were a number of facing new German-language opera in the 1830s. First there was deemed to be a lack of good quality libretti to set and this may have influenced Wagners decision to write the libretto for Die Feen himself. Second, there was a fear among the authorities in Germany and Austria that the performance of operas in German would attract nationalist and this would have added to the difficulties faced by a novice composer seeking an opportunity for his new opera to be performed. Although Gozzis La donna serpente was the source for Wagners plot, the libretto also introduced a fantastic theme that was not in the original play. The libretto displays themes and patterns that were to recur in Wagners more mature works and these include redemption, a mysterious stranger demanding that their lover not ask their name, and long expository narratives. Wagner revised the score of Die Feen in 1834, when he hoped for a production, among the changes in the 1834 version was the rewriting from scratch of Adas grand scene Weh mir, so nah die fürchterliche Stunde. However, it remained unperformed during his lifetime, Wagner personally gave the original manuscript of Die Feen to King Ludwig II of Bavaria. The manuscript was given as a gift to Adolf Hitler. A draft, in Wagners hand, of dialogue he wrote to substitute for some of the recitatives, is in the Stefan Zweig Collection at the British Library. Die Feen was premiered in Munich on 29 June 1888 with a cast including several singers who had created roles in Wagners later operas and it is the only Wagner opera that has not been recorded for broadcast television or video. There are some recordings, the one with the best known performers being a live performance conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch as part of the celebrations of the centenary of the composers death. The English premiere was in Birmingham on 17 May 1969 and the American concert premiere was at the New York City Opera on 24 February 1982, in 1981 Friedrich Meyer-Oertel staged Die Feen at the Opernhaus Wuppertal
32.
Das Liebesverbot
–
Das Liebesverbot, is an early opera in two acts by Richard Wagner, with the libretto written by the composer after Shakespeares Measure for Measure. Described as a Große komische Oper, it was composed in 1834 and it was never performed again in Wagners lifetime. Restrained sexuality versus eroticism plays an important role in Das Liebesverbot, themes recur throughout much of Wagners output, most notably in Tannhäuser, Die Walküre. In each opera, the self-abandonment to love brings the lovers into mortal combat with the social order. In Das Liebesverbot, because it is a comedy, the outcome is a happy one, Wagners second opera, and his first to be performed, has many signs of an early work, the style is modelled closely on contemporary French and Italian comic opera. It is also referred to as the comedy, in that only two of Wagners works are comedies, the other being Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The opera was performed in the following hundred years. In the United Kingdom, the first performance was given on 16 February 1965 at the Collegiate Theatre of the University of London, the cast was led by Mark Schnaible as Friedrich and Claudia Waite as Isabella, Corrado Rovaris conducted. In 1994 Das Liebesverbot was performed at the Wexford Opera Festival, the first fully staged performance in the United States was at Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, NY, in the summer of 2008. In 2009, a production was presented at the International Festival of Young Singers at the Kammeroper Schloss Rheinsberg plus a staged production at the Staatstheater Braunschweig in October. In 2013,200 years after the birth, it was performed in Bayreuth for the first time. A production of the Oper Leipzig was shown in the Oberfrankenhalle and it was staged by Aron Stiehl with elements of operetta and revue, Constantin Trinks conducted the Gewandhausorchester. Since 2011 a production of work has formed part of the repertoire of Helikon Opera Moscow. In Romania it was staged at the Cluj-Napoca Hungarian Opera, in 2016 it was staged by the Teatro Real, Madrid. The synopsis is Wagners own description of his scenario, in a translation by William Ashton Ellis published in 1898, Luzio promises to go at once to Isabella in the cloister of the Elisabethans, where she has lately entered her novitiate. A convent Within the quiet cloister walls we make the acquaintance of this sister, in confidential converse with her friend Marianne, Marianne discloses to her friend, from whom she has long been parted, the sad fate that has brought her hither. Isabellas horror finds vent in a tempest of wrath, only to be allayed by the resolve to leave a world where such monstrosities can go unpunished. Her violence unwittingly exhibits her to Luzio in the most seductive light, fired by sudden love, he implores her to leave the nunnery for ever and take his hand
33.
Rienzi
–
Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen is an early opera by Richard Wagner in five acts, with the libretto written by the composer after Edward Bulwer-Lyttons novel of the same name. The title is shortened to Rienzi. Written between July 1838 and November 1840, it was first performed at the Hofoper, Dresden, on 20 October 1842, in the end the populace burns the Capitol, in which Rienzi and a few adherents have made a last stand. Each act ends with an extended finale ensemble and is replete with solos, duets, trios, there is also an extended ballet in act 2 according to the accepted Grand Opera format. Hans von Bülow was later to joke that Rienzi is Meyerbeers best opera, Wagner began to draft the opera in Riga in 1837, after reading Lyttons novel. In 1839, meeting Meyerbeer by chance in Boulogne, he was able to read the latter the first three acts of the libretto, and to gain his interest. Meyerbeer also introduced Wagner to Ignaz Moscheles, who was staying at Boulogne, as Ernest Newman comments. When the opera was completed in 1840, Wagner had hoped for it to be premiered at the Paris Opéra, several circumstances, including his lack of influence, prevented this. The full score of Rienzi was completed on 19 November 1840 and this, with the proposed staging of The Flying Dutchman in Berlin, also supported by Meyerbeer, persuaded Wagner to return to Germany in April 1842. No one suspected that what was a joke for them was the means of buying an extra morsel of sorely-needed food. The premiere of Rienzi took place on 20 October in the new Dresden Opera House, designed by the architect Gottfried Semper and opened on 14 April 1841. Semper and Wagner were later to friends in Dresden, a connection which eventually led to Semper providing designs which became a basis of Wagners Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. The first performance of Rienzi was well received in Dresden despite running over six hours, one legend is that, fearful of the audience departing, Wagner stopped the clock above the stage. In his later memoirs, Mein Leben, Wagner recalled, No subsequent experience has given me feelings even remotely similar to those I had on this day of the first performance of Rienzi, the initial success of Rienzi was no doubt assured beforehand. But the uproarious way in which the public declared its partiality for me was extraordinary, the public had been forcibly predisposed to accept it, because everyone connected with the theatre had been spreading such favourable reports. That the entire population was looking forward to what was heralded as a miracle, in trying to recall my condition that evening, I can remember it only as possessing all the features of a dream. Subsequently, Wagner experimented with giving the opera over two evenings, and making cuts to enable a more reasonable performance in a single evening, despite Wagners reservations, Rienzi remained one of his most successful operas until the early 20th century. The Paris premiere of Rienzi finally took place on 6 April 1869 at the Théâtre Lyrique under the baton of Jules Pasdeloup
34.
The Flying Dutchman (opera)
–
The Flying Dutchman, WWV63, is a German-language opera, with libretto and music by Richard Wagner. Wagner claimed in his 1870 autobiography Mein Leben that he had been inspired to write the following a stormy sea crossing he made from Riga to London in July. In his 1843 Autobiographic Sketch, Wagner acknowledged he had taken the story from Heinrich Heines retelling of the legend in his 1833 satirical novel The Memoirs of Mister von Schnabelewopski, the central theme is redemption through love. Wagner conducted the premiere at the Semper Oper in Dresden in 1843 and this work shows early attempts at operatic styles that would characterise his later music dramas. In Der fliegende Holländer Wagner uses a number of associated with the characters. The leitmotifs are all introduced in the overture, which begins with an ocean or storm motif before moving into the Dutchman. By the beginning of 1839, the now 26-year-old Richard Wagner was employed as a conductor at the Court Theatre in Riga. His extravagant lifestyle plus the retirement from the stage of his actress wife, Minna, Wagner was writing Rienzi and hatched a plan to flee his creditors in Riga, escape to Paris via London and make his fortune by putting Rienzi on to the stage of the Paris Opéra. Boarding the ship Thetis, whose captain had agreed to them without passports, their sea journey was hindered by storms. The ship at one point took refuge in the Norwegian fjords at Tvedestrand, Wagners experience of Paris was also disastrous. He was unable to get work as a conductor, and the Opéra did not want to produce Rienzi, the Wagners were reduced to poverty, relying on handouts from friends and from the little income that Wagner could make writing articles on music and copying scores. Wagner hit on the idea of an opera on the theme of the Flying Dutchman. Wagner wrote the first prose draft of the story in Paris early in May 1840, in Heines tale, the narrator watches a performance of a fictitious stage play on the theme of the sea captain cursed to sail forever for blasphemy. In Heines version, this is presented as a means for ironic humour, however, Wagner took this literally and in his draft. By the end of May 1841 Wagner had completed the libretto or poem as he preferred to call it and these were composed for an audition at the Paris Opéra, along with the sketch of the plot. Wagner actually sold the sketch to the Director of the Opéra, Léon Pillet, for 500 francs, but was unable to convince him that the music was worth anything. Wagner composed the rest of the Der Fliegende Holländer during the summer of 1841, with the Overture being written last, while this score was designed to be played continuously in a single act, Wagner later divided the piece into a three-act work. In doing so, however, he did not alter the music significantly, in his original draft Wagner set the action in Scotland, but he changed the location to Norway shortly before the first production staged in Dresden and conducted by himself in January 1843
35.
Tristan und Isolde
–
Tristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting. Wagner referred to the not as an opera, but called it eine Handlung. Wagners composition of Tristan und Isolde was inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, widely acknowledged as one of the peaks of the operatic repertoire, Tristan was notable for Wagners unprecedented use of chromaticism, tonality, orchestral colour and harmonic suspension. Other composers like Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky formulated their styles in contrast to Wagners musical legacy. Many see Tristan as the beginning of the move away from common practice harmony and tonality, both Wagners libretto style and music were also profoundly influential on the Symbolist poets of the late 19th century and early 20th century. Wagner was forced to abandon his position as conductor of the Dresden Opera in 1849 and he left his wife, Minna, in Dresden, and fled to Zürich. There, in 1852, he met the wealthy silk trader Otto Wesendonck, Wesendonck became a supporter of Wagner and bankrolled the composer for several years. Wesendoncks wife, Mathilde, became enamoured of the composer, though Wagner was working on his epic Der Ring des Nibelungen, he found himself intrigued by the legend of Tristan and Iseult. The story of Tristan and Isolde is a romance of the Middle Ages. Several versions of the story exist, the earliest dating to the middle of the 12th century, gottfrieds version, part of the courtly branch of the legend, had a huge influence on later German literature. It was some such mood that inspired the conception of a Tristan und Isolde. I have devised in my mind a Tristan und Isolde, the simplest, yet most full-blooded musical conception imaginable, by the end of 1854, Wagner had sketched out all three acts of an opera on the Tristan theme, based on Gottfried von Strassburgs telling of the story. On 20 August he began the prose sketch for the opera, Wagner, at this time, had moved into a cottage built in the grounds of Wesendoncks villa, where, during his work on Tristan und Isolde, he became passionately involved with Mathilde Wesendonck. Whether or not this relationship was platonic remains uncertain, one evening in September of that year, Wagner read the finished poem of Tristan to an audience including his wife, Minna, his current muse, Mathilde, and his future mistress, Cosima von Bülow. By October 1857, Wagner had begun the composition sketch of the first Act, during November, however, he set five of Mathildes poems to music known today as the Wesendonck Lieder. This was a move by Wagner, who almost never set to music poetic texts other than his own. But Wagner resolved to write Tristan only after he had secured a deal with the Leipzig-based firm Breitkopf & Härtel
36.
Der Ring des Nibelungen
–
Der Ring des Nibelungen, WWV86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas, the composer termed the cycle a Bühnenfestspiel, structured in three days preceded by a Vorabend. It is often referred to as the Ring Cycle, Wagners Ring, Wagner wrote the libretto and music over the course of about twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874. The first performance as an opened the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, beginning with Das Rheingold on 13 August. Wagners title is most literally rendered in English as The Ring of the Nibelung, the Nibelung of the title is the dwarf Alberich, and the ring in question is the one he fashions from the Rhine Gold. The title therefore denotes Alberichs Ring, Nibelungen is occasionally mistaken as a plural, but the Ring of the Nibelungs is incorrect. The cycle is a work of extraordinary scale, the first and shortest work, Das Rheingold, typically lasts two and a half hours, while the final and longest, Götterdämmerung, takes up to five hours, excluding intervals. The cycle is modelled after ancient Greek dramas that were presented as three tragedies and one satyr play, the Ring proper begins with Die Walküre and ends with Götterdämmerung, with Rheingold as a prelude. Wagner called Das Rheingold a Vorabend or Preliminary Evening, and Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung were subtitled First Day, Second Day and Third Day, respectively, the scale and scope of the story is epic. It follows the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over the magic ring that grants domination over the entire world. The drama and intrigue continue through three generations of protagonists, until the final cataclysm at the end of Götterdämmerung, the music of the cycle is thick and richly textured, and grows in complexity as the cycle proceeds. Wagner wrote for an orchestra of gargantuan proportions, including a greatly enlarged brass section with new instruments such as the Wagner tuba, bass trumpet and contrabass trombone. Remarkably, he uses a chorus only relatively briefly, in acts 2 and 3 of Götterdämmerung and he eventually had a purpose-built theatre constructed, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, in which to perform this work. The theatre has a stage that blends the huge orchestra with the singers voices. The result was that the singers did not have to strain themselves vocally during the long performances. The plot revolves around a ring that grants the power to rule the world. Wotans schemes to regain the ring, spanning generations, drive much of the action in the story, Hagen is drowned as he attempts to recover the ring. In the process, the gods and Valhalla are destroyed, details of the storylines can be found in the articles on each music drama
37.
Das Rheingold
–
Das Rheingold, WWV 86A, is the first of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagners Der Ring des Nibelungen, or in English, The Ring of the Nibelung. Das Rheingold premiered at the National Theatre Munich on 22 September 1869, with August Kindermann in the role of Wotan, Heinrich Vogl as Loge, and Karl Fischer as Alberich. Wagner wanted this work to premiere as part of the entire cycle, the work was first performed as part of the complete cycle on 13 August 1876, in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Although Das Rheingold comes first in the sequence of Ring operas, so in August 1851, Wagner wrote in Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde, I propose to produce my myth in three complete dramas. However, by October, he had decided that this required a prelude. To the sentence quoted above he added the words, which will be preceded by a great prelude, a letter Wagner wrote to Theodor Uhlig confirms that at this time the opera was intended to have three acts. Wagner continued to develop the text and storyline of the prelude in parallel with those of Die Walküre, the prose draft of Das Rheingold was completed between 21 March and 23 March 1852 and its verse draft between 15 September and 3 November. A fair copy of the text was finished by 15 December, during the early years of the 1850s Wagner produced some musical sketches for parts of the Ring and noted down various motifs that were to be used in the work. There also exist three sets of isolated musical sketches for Das Rheingold which were composed between 15 September 1852 and November 1853. The first of these was entered into the draft of the text, the second into Wagners copy of the 1853 printing of the text. All three were used by Wagner. Proper sequential development of the score started on 1 November 1853, by 14 January, Wagner had completed the first draft of the opera on between two and three staves. The next stage involved the development of a detailed draft that indicated most of the vocal and instrumental details. This was completed by 28 May, in parallel with this, Wagner started work on a fair copy of the score on 15 February, a task he completed on 26 September 1854, by which time he had also started work on the sketches of Die Walküre. Das Rheingold was first performed at Munich on 22 September 1869 and its first performance as part of the complete Ring cycle took place at Bayreuth on 13 August 1876. It continues to be performed on a regular basis both in Bayreuth and elsewhere, Das Rheingold, considerably shorter than its three successors, consists of four scenes performed without a break. It has been noted as one of the best-known drone examples in the concert repertory, the curtain rises to show, at the bottom of the Rhine, the three Rhine maidens, Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde, playing together. The key shifts to A flat as Woglinde begins an innocent song whose melody is used to characterise the Rhine maidens later in the cycle
38.
Siegfried (opera)
–
Siegfried, WWV 86C, is the third of the four music dramas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen, by Richard Wagner. It premiered at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of The Ring cycle, the musical composition was commenced in 1856, but not finally completed until 1871. Having grappled with his text for Siegfrieds Tod, and indeed having undertaken some musical sketches for it during 1851, at this point he conceived that the prefatory opera, Der junge Siegfried, could act as a comic foil to the tragedy of Siegfrieds Tod. Its all growing out of the ground as if it were wild, shortly afterwards he wrote to Uhlig that he was now planning to tell the Siegfried story in the form of three dramas, plus a prologue in three acts—a clear prefiguring of the Ring cycle. The composition of Acts 1 and 2 was completed by August 1857, Wagner then left off work on Siegfried to write the operas Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger. He did not resume work on Siegfried until 1869, when he composed the third act, the final revision of the score was undertaken in February 1871. Performance was withheld until the first complete production of the Ring cycle, elements of the plot of Siegfried come from a variety of sources. In a letter to Uhlig, Wagner recounted The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was and it concerns a boy so stupid he had never learned to be afraid. Wagner wrote that the boy and Siegfried are the same character, the boy is taught to fear by his wife, and Siegfried learns it when he discovers the sleeping Brünnhilde. Siegfrieds ability in Act Two to see through Mimes deceitful words seems to have derived from a 19th-century street theatre version of the story of Faust. Some elements of the story are derived from legends of Sigurd, notably the Völsunga saga, scene 1 of Act 3 has a parallel in the Eddic poem Baldrs draumar, in which Odin questions a völva about the future of the gods. A cave in rocks in the forest, as the curtain rises, Alberichs brother, the dwarf Mime, is forging a sword. Mime is plotting to obtain the ring of power created by his brother Alberich. Mime needs a sword for Siegfried to use, but the youth has contemptuously broken every sword Mime has made, Siegfried returns from his wanderings in the forest with a wild bear in tow, and immediately breaks the new sword. Mime is forced to explain how he took in Siegfrieds mother, Sieglinde and he shows Siegfried the broken pieces of the sword Nothung, which Mime had obtained from her. Siegfried orders him to reforge the sword, Mime, however, is unable to accomplish this, Siegfried departs, leaving Mime in despair. An old man arrives at the door and introduces himself as the Wanderer, in return for the hospitality due a guest, he wagers his head on answering any three questions of Mime. The dwarf asks the Wanderer to name the races that live beneath the ground, on the earth and these are the Nibelung, the Giants, and the Gods, as the Wanderer answers correctly
