Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wagner's artistic creativity was greatly influenced by Shakespeare and Beethoven. He admired Shakespeare's dramatic tragedies with their psychological orientation, and recognized Beethoven as both the master of the symphony and the founder of romantic music. Thus, by the age of 17, those elements that were to pervade his own works had already become established in his mind: music, poetry, drama, and romanticism with its emphasis on love and freedom.

While advocating political and social reforms to bring unity and freedom to the German people, Wagner himself lived in an elaborate manner that he seemed to require ...