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Today's Featured Biography
Richard Wagner
 Richard Wagner's personality has been so overshadowed by and almost merged in the great controversy which his schemes of reform in opera raised, that his life and character are often now sorely misjudged--just as his music long was--by those who have not the time, the inclination, or the ability to understand the facts and the issues. Before briefly stating then the theories he propounded and their development, as shown in successive music dramas, it will be well to summarize the story of a life (1813-83) during which he was called to endure so much vicissitude, trial and temptation, suffering and defeat.
Born in Leipsic, on May 22, 1813, the youngest of nine children, Wilhelm Richard was only five months old when his father died. His mother's second marriage entailed a removal to Dresden, where, at the Kreuzschule, young Wagner received an excellent liberal education. At the age of thirteen the bent of his taste, as well as his diligence, was shown by his translation (out of school hours) of the first twelve books of the "Odyssey." In the following year his passion for poetry found expression in a grand tragedy. "It was a mixture," he says, "of Hamlet and Lear. Forty-two persons died in the course of the play, and, for want of more characters, I had to make some of them reappear as ghosts in the last act." Weber, who was then conductor of the Dresden opera, seems to have attracted the boy both by his personality and by his music; but it was B...
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