Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner was one of the most revolutionary figures in the history of music, a composer who made pivotal contributions to the development of harmony and musical drama that reverberate even today. Indeed, though Wagner occasionally produced successful music written on a relatively modest scale, opera -- the bigger, the better -- was clearly his milieu, and his aesthetic is perhaps the most grandiose that Western music has ever known.
Early in his career, Wagner learned both the elements and the practical, political realities of his craft by writing a handful of operas which were unenthusiastically, even angrily, received. Beginning with Rienzi (1838-40) and The Flying Dutchman (1841), however, he enjoyed a string of successes that propelled him to immortality and changed the face of music. His monumental Ring cycle of four operas -- Das Rheingold (1853-54), Die Walküre (1854-56), Siegfried (1856-71) and Götterdämmerung (1869-74) -- remains the most ambitious and influential contribution by any composer to the opera literature. Tristan and Isolde (1857-59) is perhaps the most representative example of Wagner's musical style, which is characterized by a high degree of chromaticism, a restless, searching tonal instability, lush harmonies, and the association of specific musical elements (known as leitmotifs, the flexible manipulation of which is one of the hallmarks of Wagner's music) with certain characters and plot points. Wagner wrote text as well as music for all his operas, which he preferred to call "music dramas."
Wagner's life matched his music for sheer drama. Born in Leipzig on May 22, 1813, he began in the early 1830s to write prolifically on music and the arts in general; over his whole career, his music would to some degree serve to demonstrate his aesthetic theories. He often worked as a conductor in his early years; a conducting engagement took him to Riga, Latvia, in 1837, but he fled the country in the middle of the night two years later to elude creditors. Wagner as a young man had some sympathy with the revolutionary movements of the middle 19th century (and even the Ring cycle contains a distinct anti-materialist and vaguely socialist drift); in the Dresden uprisings of 1849 he apparently took up arms, and he had to leave Germany when the police restored order. Settling in Zurich, Switzerland, he wrote little for some years, but evolved the intellectual framework for his towering, mature masterpieces. Wagner returned to Germany in 1864 under the protection and patronage of King Ludwig II of Bavaria; it was in Bayreuth, near Munich, that he undertook the construction of an opera house (completed in 1876) built to his personal specifications and suited to the massive fusion of music, staging, text, and scene design that his later operas entailed. Bayreuth became something of a shrine for the fanatical Wagnerites who carried the torch after his death; it remains the goal of many a pilgrimage today. His attitude toward Jews was deeply ambivalent (he believed, mistakenly, that his stepfather was Jewish), but some of his writings contain anti-Semitic elements that have aroused considerable controversy among opera lovers, especially in view of Adolf Hitler's apparent predilection for the composer's music.
© Rovi Staff /TiVo
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Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen
Asher Fisch, Seattle Opera Chorus
Opera - Lançado por Avie Records em 09/09/2014
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Richard Wagner : Siegfried
Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin
Opera - Lançado por PENTATONE em 01/09/2013
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner Siegfried
Opera - Lançado por Halle Concerts Society em 07/06/2019
Gramophone Editor's Choice24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Götterdammerung
Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin
Opera - Lançado por PENTATONE em 01/11/2013
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Die Walküre
Classical - Lançado por Halle Concerts Society em 14/05/2012
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Parsifal
Opera - Lançado por Halle Concerts Society em 02/06/2017
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Opera - Lançado por Urania em 11/08/2002
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Rienzi
Richard Wagner, Günther Treptow, Winfried Zillig
Classical - Lançado por Zyx - Classic em 17/10/2000
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
100% Wagner
Classical - Lançado por Armasi em 22/10/2018
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde
Opera - Lançado por Opera d'Oro em 01/01/1999
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Païta conducts Wagner
Classical - Lançado por Lodia Music International em 24/04/2013
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner: Symphony in C Major, Tristan und Isolde, Siegfried Idyll
Edo de Waart, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra
Classical - Lançado por Challenge Classics em 25/07/2014
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Lauritz Melchior Anthology Vol. 5
Classical - Lançado por Danacord Records em 25/04/2007
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Travel Classical Music
Classical - Lançado por Armasi em 15/06/2018
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Lauritz Melchior Anthology Vol. 4
Classical - Lançado por Danacord Records em 01/10/1999
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Lauritz Melchior Anthology Vol. 2
Classical - Lançado por Danacord Records em 01/01/1987
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Lauritz Melchior Anthology Vol. 6
Classical - Lançado por Danacord Records em 01/10/1999
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Lauritz Melchior Anthology Vol. 3
Classical - Lançado por Danacord Records em 01/01/1987
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Onkelzshirt
Germany - Lançado por Artistfy Music em 24/12/2021
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Haunted House Halloween
Giuseppe Verdi, Carl Orff, Richard Wagner
Classical - Lançado por UME - Global Clearing House em 15/10/2020
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Wagner - Great Recordings
Classical - Lançado por UME - Global Clearing House em 11/02/2021
Qualidade de CD de 16 bits 44.1 kHz - Stereo