Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. 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.

22 May 1813

Born on the same birth day (22 May): Apolo Ohno • Bernard Shaw (journalist) • Femke Huijzer • Florian Luger • Fritz von Uhde • Félix Bracquemond • George Andrew Olah • George H. Heilmeier • Ginnifer Goodwin • Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla • Margaret Mee • Maurice J. Tobin • Max Brooks • Mehbooba Mufti • Rafael Gil • Raja Ram Mohan Roy • Tao Okamoto • Tarin Bradford • Tatiana Volosozhar • Thomas Gold • Warwick Armstrong • Wilhelmina Hay Abbott • Worthington Whittredge

Born in the same month (May 1813): Caroline Leigh Gascoigne • Montgomery Blair • Søren Kierkegaard