Richard Wagner

Independent activity 1813–1883 ○ Natural causes

Saxon court conductor who joined the Dresden May Uprising of 1849 and fled into exile; composer of the Ring cycle

Born in Leipzig in 1813, he moved to Dresden in 1842 and became Royal Saxon Court Conductor, staging The Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser there. In Dresden he turned to left-wing politics, receiving August Röckel and Mikhail Bakunin, and when the May Uprising of 1849 failed, warrants were issued and he fled to Zürich. He spent the next twelve years in exile, writing essays such as The Artwork of the Future (1849) and, in 1850, the antisemitic pamphlet Judaism in Music. The political ban on him was lifted in 1862, and from 1864 King Ludwig II of Bavaria became his patron. The Bayreuth Festspielhaus opened in 1876 with the first complete Ring cycle. He died of a heart attack in Venice in 1883.

Also known as: Wilhelm Richard Wagner