2-991-297 - Heritage Imagined/Heritage Images

AI IMAGE - Portrait of Richard Wagner standing in a concert hall, late 19th century, (2023). Wagner (1813-1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor. He is best known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, 'music dramas'). Unusually, he wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works, and revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ('total work of art'), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. The "Ring" cycle and "Parsifal" were premiered at Bayreuth in Germany, and his most important stage works continue to be performed at the annual Bayreuth Festival.