Wagner: Lord of the Ring

To say that August 2026 marks 150 years of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung has … a ring of truth to it (I thank you). While the complete four-opera cycle had its premiere in August 1876, its writing actually dated as far back as 1848. Siegfried alone took him eighteen years to write. So, this was a labour of love: twenty-six years to pen fifteen hours of music, designed to be performed over a whopping four nights. 

This is opera at its most stereotypically grandiose: stories of German heroic legends and Norse sagas, epic sets and costumes, indulgent lengths, soaring melodies, roaring brass… and perhaps more than a whiff of egotism about it. As we shall see, this can only be described as: very Wagner.

Beginnings: puppets and tragedies

Born in 1813, Wagner may have had theatre in his blood. He long believed his birth father to be Ludwig Geyer, a family friend who worked as an actor, singer, dramatist and painter. It is even said that, as Geyer lay dying, an eight-year-old Wagner distracted him from the pain by picking out a melody on the piano next-door, and it was Geyer who then commented that he must pursue this talent for music. 

Like many masters of theatre, Wagner’s obsession showed early. As a child, he put on puppet shows, devising his own stories and clothing the puppets with fabric he stole from his sisters’ dresses (which puts my childhood performances of Me ‘Ol Bamboo with plastic bowler hat and stick to shame, though mine too formed a rare form of torture for all who stepped foot in the house). 

At school in Dresden, the death of a classmate led Wagner to write a poem which soon found its way to publication. Indeed, for a long time, words seemed to be Wagner’s calling. In his teens he locked himself in the attic and wrote a pseudo-Shakespearean tragedy, while living on “thin Saxon coffee” alone. Like all great writers. 

Proper musical study came relatively late: formal piano lessons began only at the age of twelve, and even then he was told by his teacher that he would never be a decent pianist. They were largely right. Much of his subsequent music learning was done by ear, copying out Beethoven symphonies and making transcriptions. Importantly for his vision of opera to come, Wagner’s interest in theatre seems to have stemmed chiefly from his love of drama, stories and words.

The revolutionary… and international fugitive

What drama there was in his own life! His parents once received a letter from his school reporting he hadn’t turned up for six months (how did nobody notice?!). He soon grew into a violent gambler, splashing cash on massive multi-day-and-night sprees; he once staked his mum’s pension (and won, thankfully). He always spent extravagant amounts of money – even when he didn’t have it – which led to extensive troubles with creditors and the looming shadow of debtors’ prison; indeed, some of his earliest efforts at writing opera were partly an attempt to pay them off!

His route into opera was chiefly as a conductor; he worked as a chorus master in Bavaria and then Chief Conductor at an opera house in Saxony-Anhalt. Soon, some of his own overtures were included in programmes (including a little-known Rule, Britannia overture). He was already a successful composer in many senses: aged just nineteen, he had had a symphony premiered by the Gewandhaus Orchestra; at twenty, he was confident enough to reject a libretto pitched to him by one of the day’s most respected writers, Henrich Laube (whose libretto had originally been destined for no less than Meyerbeer!). Wagner was a man of his own mind from the start, and was long convinced he was destined for greatness.

That said, he had to do much hackwork to make ends meet; he penned columns and light popular songs with French words, all while working on his first big operatic successes: Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman. The latter was partly inspired by a stormy sea crossing to Britain made in 1839; you can almost taste the spray and sea salt in its stormy overture.

There were storms aplenty in the decade ahead. For a man who wanted to shake up the world, the 1849 Dresden Uprising resonated deeply. In the 1840s he had been writing articles for revolutionary newspapers, addressing political unions and calling for a national theatre. When revolution broke out, Wagner joined the ranks and manned the barricades (if only he had written Les Mis – but then again, wrong revolution). Fellow revolutionaries were arrested in a hotel that Wagner fled; he still had the audacity to throw revolutionary pamphlets in the face of incoming soldiers. He provided reports on what he had observed in his travels and soon a warrant was out for his arrest. None other than Franz Liszt helped secure a new passport for him and so, for a time at least, Wagner became one “Dr Widmann”. With this, he fled to Switzerland and then to France. In all, he spent a decade as a political fugitive abroad. Sounds like an opera itself.

The Total Work of Art

Wagner made a musical revolution of his own with what he dubbed “The Art Work of the Future”: a vision for a “unified art”, a Gesamtkunstwerk.

In Lohengrin, premiered in 1850, he had broken new ground for opera. Reaching back to medieval history and myths, he wanted to create a seamless stretch of sound; not individual set numbers, little ditties and dum-di-dahs (technical term), but a seamless stretch of music, an epic unfolding of sound. He aimed to reach the universal essence of being human; poetry alone he felt to be a ‘mere organ of the intellect’, where music could distil the core of an emotion. Painting would no longer be limited by panels and borders but provide the “ample framework of the tragic stage”, while words would cease to be “a mere phantom of reality”. This would not be spoken drama with music, but music drama.

To his eyes, Beethoven had sown the seeds. As early as 1840, Wagner penned an article called “A Pilgrimage to Beethoven” in which he pointed to the use of choir and words in the finale to the Ninth as evidence that music alone was not enough: Wagner felt that this finale had suggested a new art form where music is “fertilised by poetry”, a music-drama where every constituent part is an equal.

As such, Wagner’s mature style is characterised by a constant stream of melody; the orchestra is as much a character as those on stage; the leitmotif would provide sonic cues for specific characters, each person linked with a short musical fragment that became their “theme”; the material would develop symphonically, Beethoven-like; and crucially, there would not be the usual divisions of numbers and scenes, but a continuous stretch, a river of sound flowing entirely from the emotion of the moment.

Wagner Tubas… and your own theatre

This grand vision led to a famed high point: The Ring, modelled after Greek dramas with gods and mythical heroes striving for a magical ring that would give them power over the whole world. The cycle features 34 named characters and an orchestra of over 100 (including SIX harps… and eighteen tuned anvils. Of course). Indeed, new instruments were invented specifically for this work. The Wagner Tuba was designed to bridge the gap between the French horn and the trombone; it was Wagner’s attempt to make an instrument that could mimic the sound of an ancient Nordic natural horn, the lur. The Wagner Tuba was later used by Bruckner, Richard Strauss, Bartók, Stravinsky, Michael Nyman and John Williams (for the darker hues in Star Wars). 

If new instruments weren’t grand enough, how about a new theatre built expressly for your new operas? “I never thought you would bring it off” is what Emperor Wilhelm is said to have commented on the opening night of The Ring at Bayreuth, and to be frank… did Wagner?! The theatre had taken four years to build and a ton of cash. Wagner had tried to raise funds for the venue through the 19th-century equivalent of crowdfunding, but the public would not buy it (just 450 of the 1300 shares needed had been sold): the press popularly characterised Wagner as a madman, so people steered clear. Enter, his old patron Ludwig II – King of Bavaria – who bailed him out (with 100k) as Wagner faced bankruptcy (again). However, the project continued with some notable hitches, including the neck of a dragon being sent to Beirut rather than Bayreuth…

Being Mr Total Work of Art, Wagner not only conducted the orchestra and coached singers at the piano but helped design the theatre itself: the orchestra pit was hidden so as not to distract from the drama, while the traditional horseshoe-shaped seating with boxes above were replaced by a single, steeply raked wedge that would offer everyone an unobstructed view of the stage. Plus, Musical Theatre fans take note: it was Wagner who was one of the first to insist on the auditorium lights being dimmed fully for a show. For him, everything had to serve the drama.

Perfumes and dressing gowns

Wagner had plenty of real-life drama to draw upon. However, another aspect of the real world that surely influenced him was his own extravagance: he was known to compose in rooms filled with thick perfume, while wearing silk dressing gowns and underwear. To my ear, his music sounds a little the way this feels: the richness and abundance, an aural equivalent to an expensive perfume shop! 

For this reason, for a long time I have found Wagner quite difficult to access. To me, his operas can feel overwhelming to the point of hedonistic, grand to the point of indulgent; and, watching Gods and dwarves (who are often not especially likeable) doesn’t strike me as reaching the essence of universal humanity. Then from a dramatist’s perspective, there are longueurs where nothing actually happens, entire scenes of little dramatic value that would be ripe for the chopping board to many a theatre writer. Dramatic pacing is not perhaps the strong point. It could be said that Wagner is totally sensational when he’s at his best; but when he’s boring, he’s really sensationally so. It was Rossini who said: “Wagner has beautiful moments, but bad quarters of an hour”. Controversial?…

Whatever your opinion… his influence is undeniable. The integration of words and music, the importance of the leitmotif, the prioritisation of storytelling: this would all have far-reaching influences, going as far as Broadway and Hollywood over the century and a half to come. For sheer vision, determination and influence alone, Wagner really was The Lord of the Ring(s).