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French composer, regarded today as the leading French musician of his era. The
misunderstanding and neglect Berlioz endured, not least in his dealings with the
Paris Opéra, helped him and Wagner to identify with each other as fellow-
sufferers, although they failed to sustain a close friendship. Berlioz' music
contains a number of interesting pre-echoes of Wagner. It is known that Wagner
studied Berlioz' treatise on orchestration, during the 1840s.
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Left: Paul von Joukowsky, Hermann Levi and Fritz Brandt
Fritz Brandt had worked closely with his father Karl on the
technical aspects of the first Ring and was invited to assume overall
responsibility for the technical arrangements for the 1882 Parsifal
following his father's sudden death in 1881; he returned to the Bayreuth festival
in 1883 and 1884.
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As technical director of the theatre in Darmstadt, Brandt had a high reputation for
his abilities, which Wagner drew on in the construction of the machinery for the
Ring and of the Festspielhaus itself. Although he was often difficult to
work with, Wagner and his production team recognised Brandt's exceptional talents
and he was invited back to Bayreuth to prepare for the first production of
Parsifal.
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The Brückner brothers were employed by the Coburg Court Theatre when Wagner
commissioned them to execute the sets for the first Bayreuth Ring from the
designs of Joseph Hoffmann. They similarly prepared the sets for the first
Parsifal from those of Joukowsky.
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Burnouf is regarded as the most competent and influential of the 19th century
western scholars of the Sanskrit and Pali literature of Buddhist India. When
manuscripts were sent from Nepal to Europe in 1837, Burnouf was the scholar best
equipped to translate and interpret them. Before publishing any of these
translations, however, Burnouf realised that they would mean little to a European
readership without a general introduction to Indian
Buddhism. Therefore he wrote his Introduction,
the first book to describe, with some degree of accuracy and insight, the ideas of
Indian Buddhism for a western readership. The book was read by -- and subsequently
recommended as an introduction to the religions of India by -- Arthur Schopenhauer. On his recommendation, Wagner obtained and read a
copy in 1855. On his return to Burnouf's book in the spring of the following year,
Wagner was inspired both to sketch a Buddhist drama (Die
Sieger) and to draft a Buddhistic ending to his existing poem for
Götterdämmerung.
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English pianist of German origin. In 1872 Dannreuther founded the Wagner Society in
London. He helped Wagner to obtain the dragon and other stage properties for the
1876 Ring. When Wagner visited England on a conducting tour in 1877,
Dannreuther fixed the orchestra and conducted some of the preliminary rehearsals;
the Wagners stayed with Dannreuther at 12 Orme Square in Bayswater, conveniently
across the Park from the Royal Albert Hall where Richard Wagner was to conduct.
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 French author and writer on music, daughter of the
writer Théophile Gautier. Judith was an enthusiast for Wagner's work from an
early age. She met the equally devoted Catulle Mendès in the early 1860s and
they were married in 1866. Together with the poet Villiers de l'Isle Adam they
visited Wagner at Tribschen in 1869 and again the following year. In 1874 the
Mendès couple decided to separate and by the time of the first Bayreuth
festival, Judith had embarked on an affair with an amateur composer called Louis
Benedictus. This did not discourage Wagner from pursuing her. Their relationship
may or may not have been consummated; what is certain is that they continued to
conduct a clandestine and intimate correspondence until 1878, when Cosima discovered some of the letters and put the affair to an end.
Wagner claimed that he needed the intoxication of at least her spiritual presence,
as well as the silks, satins and exotic perfumes she obtained for him in Paris, in
order to compose Parsifal. Her intellectual contribution to Wagner's work
consisted of a translation of Parsifal into French, various writings on
Wagnerian topics, and a three-volume memoir of the composer.
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The writer, diplomat, historian and racial theorist, Count Gobineau, first met
Wagner at Rome in 1876. He stayed with the Wagners in Bayreuth in May-June 1881 and
in May-June 1882. Wagner, who was in later life surrounded mainly by much younger
men, thought that he had found in Gobineau someone of his own age and a similar
outlook. He was interested in Gobineau's theories about miscegenation as expounded
in his Essai sur l'inegalité des races humaines (1853-5), although in
profound disagreement that this was the cause of the supposed degeneration of the
human species. Where Gobineau held that this had come about through interbreeding,
Wagner held the view that it was primarily due to meat-
eating and that redemption was to be found in the unity of mankind through the
pure blood of Christ.
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 Humperdinck (right) began his musical
studies at the Cologne Conservatory under Hiller, a one-time friend of Wagner who
had drifted into the anti-Wagner camp. Humperdinck had cast off the yoke of
Hiller's Schumannesque style when he moved to Munich in 1877 and enrolled in the
Königliches Musikschule. He heard the Ring in 1878 and soon
afterwards joined a band of local Wagnerians calling themselves the Order of
the Grail. He won the Mendelssohn prize in 1879, which funded a scholarship
tour of Italy and, to Wagner's amusement, the Meyerbeer prize in 1881. Humperdinck
worked as a repetiteur at every subsequent Bayreuth festival until 1894.
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Paul Joukowsky was the son of the Russian poet Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky. He was
introduced to the Wagners at the Villa d'Angri on 18 January 1880 and, after
accompanying them on their visits to Rufello and Siena, designed the costumes and
four of the five sets for Parsifal.
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Hermann Levi held appointments in Saarbrücken, Mannheim, Rotterdam and
Karlsruhe before becoming court conductor in Munich in 1872, a post he retained
until 1896. At the insistence of King Ludwig, Levi was the
conductor at the first performances of Parsifal. Richard and Cosima were sufficiently impressed by Levi that he was invited back to
conduct at every festival, except that of 1888, until 1894.
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 Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist. He first met
Wagner in Paris, in March 1841, when Liszt was already at the height of his fame.
But it was not until Liszt had retired from the concert platform, that their
friendship blossomed. It was to survive several periods of coolness, the most
serious estrangement being the result of Wagner's involvement with Liszt's
daughter, Cosima. The two composers were seen as the leaders of
the New German School. They were each fascinated by the progressive musical ideas
and innovations of the other: the influence of Liszt on Wagner can be seen most
strongly in Tristan, but there are also some references to Liszt's music
in Parsifal.
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The son of Maximilian II, Ludwig ascended the throne of Bavaria in 1864 at the age
of 18. His passion for Wagner's music resulted in generous subsidies that
transformed the composer's fortunes overnight. Free to realise his romantic dreams,
the young king immediately summoned to Munich his idol, the composer Richard
Wagner. Without Ludwig's patronage, Wagner might never have been able to produce
Tristan und Isolde, complete Der Ring des Nibelungen or compose
Parsifal. He would certainly not have been able to embark upon the
Bayreuth project. The extent to which Ludwig supported Wagner, however, is often
overestimated. The total amount received by the composer over the last 19 years of
Wagner's life, including all presents, was 562,914 marks. This should be compared
with, for example, the 1.7 million marks spent on a carriage for the royal wedding
that never took place.
Right: Ludwig II in General's uniform, by F. Piloty. © W. Neumeister.
Public opinion in Munich was scandalised by revelations about the composer's
relationship with Cosima, at that time still married to the
conductor Hans von Bülow, and by Wagner's supposed exploitation of the King's
munificence; as a result of which, in December 1865, the King was forced to ask the
composer to leave Munich. His support continued, however, and even though the
relationship became strained, Ludwig made a timely contribution to the Bayreuth
enterprise and remained fanatically devoted to Wagner's art. Ludwig withdrew
progressively into his fantasy world of midnight sleigh rides, fantastic castles
and Wagnerian extravagances such as his hunting lodge, based upon Hunding's hut.
According to the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, he was just an eccentric
living in a world of dreams.
His penchant for building fantastic castles of monumental extravagance, combined
with his erratic behaviour and progressive lack of interest in affairs of state,
eventually led to a declaration of insanity and to Ludwig's deposition on 10 June
1886. The King and his attendant psychiatrist were found drowned in Lake Starnberg
three days later. Ludwig identified intensely with several of Wagner's heros, not
least Parsifal. He would sometimes sign his
letters to Wagner with Parsifal. Ludwig provided much of the financing for
the first performances of Parsifal, allowing Wagner the use of the Munich
orchestra and chorus but insisting that the orchestra's conductor, Hermann Levi, should conduct the performances.
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German composer, who dominated French opera for many years. His works are
irrevocably associated with triumphal processions and Grand Guignol,
aspects which made them hugely successful in the Paris of his day, but which appeal
less to modern audiences. Hence his works are little performed today. Wagner's
hostility towards Meyerbeer, who seems to have behaved irreproachably towards the
younger composer, has been related to his anti-semitism, although biographers
disagree on what is cause and what is effect.
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German writer and political activist; a prominent democrat and campaigner for
womens' rights. Following the 1848/9 uprisings, she was banned from Berlin on
account of her connections with revolutionaries. As a result she moved first to
London, where she became a governess and a newspaper correspondent, and in 1862 to
Italy. She was an admirer and friend of Wagner, as well as of Nietzsche and Liszt.
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 German philosopher, who at the
unprecedented age of 24 was appointed Professor of Classical Philology at Basle
University. From the time of his visit to Tribschen the following year, he was a
frequent and welcome guest at Wagner's house. His literary works were greatly
admired by Wagner and Cosima, especially The Birth of
Tragedy, which placed Wagner's art at the centre of Western culture. Nietzsche
was fascinated and overwhelmed by the power of Wagner's music. The ambivalence of
his attitude to Wagner began to appear in his essay, Richard Wagner in
Bayreuth (1875-6). In subsequent years, he move into the anti-Wagner camp, and
as his mental and physical health deteriorated (something which Wagner supposedly
attributed to self- abuse), Nietzsche took up a bitterly hostile stance towards
Wagner's decadent art.
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 German philosopher, the author of
The World as Will and Representation, one of the great philosophical texts
of the nineteenth century. Although he had no genuine successors and founded no
school, his influence was very widespread from about the middle of the century
onwards, his most famous disciple being Richard Wagner, who believed that
Schopenhauer had revealed to him the meaning of his own works and who then
consciously pursued a Schopenhauerean line. In the present century, Schopenhauer's
philosophy of will has been one of the influences behind the development of
existentialism and Freudian psychology.
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French poet, initially of the Parnassian school.
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Left: A portrait of Cosima Wagner, about 1879.
Daughter of Franz Liszt and the Countess d'Agoult, mistress and
later the second wife of Richard Wagner. Cosima supported Wagner both emotionally
and practically in the Bayreuth enterprise; on his death, she took immediate and
effective control of the festival.
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Right: A memorial bust of Richard Wagner, in Venice.
German composer and writer on an enormous range of subjects, with an opinion about
everything. Wagner revolutionised the art of theatre and made a significant and
lasting impression on orchestral music. In 1876 he inaugurated the Bayreuth
Festival, which has now become an annual celebration of Wagner's art.
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Right: Mathilde Wesendonck.
German poet and writer. The friendship of Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonck that
began in 1852 developed subsequently into an intense relationship that may or may
not have been consummated. The impossible passion of Tristan and Isolde was
mirrored in the relationship between the composer and Mathilde, eventually
resulting in a marital crisis in August 1858. Five of her poems were set by Wagner
and are usually known as the Wesendonck Lieder. Wagner confided in her by
letter his thoughts about his planned work, Parsifal, and eventually
shared in her concern for antivivisection, as reflected
in his treatment of the incident of the swan in the first act of the work.
Otto and Mathilde used the spelling 'Wesendonck'. Their son called himself Franz
von Wesendonk. The spellings 'Wesendonck' and 'Wesendonk' are found in roughly
equal proportion in Wagner literature.
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German writer on music and literature. In 1877 he was invited to Bayreuth by
Richard Wagner to edit the Bayreuther Blätter. Wolzogen remained
editor of the journal until his death sixty years later. Under his editorship the
Blätter became a reactionary and extremely nationalistic publication,
reflecting the views of Chamberlain and the Bayreuth Circle. Wolzogen produced a
series of thematic guides to Wagner's later works, which identified many
leading motives and gave them names that are still in use today, and he
edited three volumes of Wagner's letters.
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