THE YOUNG RICHARD WAGNER 1813-1834 – LIEPZIG
Interactive Experience of Composer’s Early Days
Richard Wagner is Leipzig’s home town boy. He was born in the city on May 22 of 1813, the same year as the Battle of Leipzig (see Battle of Nations Monument) marking the decisive defeat of Napoleon. He attended the Old St Nicholas School and performed his first compositions in the city. The composer of the epic operatic Ring Cycle and the medieval legends of Parsifal was a favorite of both the Mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria who was his patron, and later Adolf Hitler who notoriously saw the eternal German character in his music and even more in the stories he chose to tell. Wagner has associations with many other places, Dresden where he went to live as a boy, before a return to Leipzig, Magdeburg where he found his first professional work as Kapelmeister at the City Theater, Bayreuth where he built his personal opera house, Lucerne Switzerland where he lived and wrote in retreat (see Wagner Museum Lucerne), and the fairy tale castle of “Mad” King Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein which was partly inspired by the romantic revival of the age of his music (see Schloss Neuschwanstein).
The Young Richard Wagner 1813-1834 exhibit in Leipzig opened in 2013 on the 200th Anniversary of his birth. The exhibition, located in a basement passageway of the historic Old St Nicolas School, in a rather hidden cave like feeling, reflects the early stages of the composer’s life, his time in Dresden when his love for literature and theater were fostered by his step-father, Ludwig Geyer, an actor, painter and poet who married his mother after his father died the same year he was born, his time in Leipzig, the city of trade which was especially influential in his artistic formation due to its welcoming atmosphere of intellectual and artistic freedom. It was here in 1828, he found a teacher who recognized his talents, the Thomaskantor Christian Theodor Weinlig, who channeled his ingenuity and vision into writing his early compositions. The first performances of Wagner’s works were performed at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Concert Overture No1 in D Minor, and the Symphony in C Major. Wagner finally left Leipzig for good at the age of 21 for his new position in Magdeburg and later glories.
From 1828 to 1830 Wagner attended the Old St Nicholas School, on the grounds of the St Nicholas Church where the city’s other great composer Johann Sebastien Bach saw his works performed (see Bach Museum Liepzig). In 1827 the school had acquired a new auditorium performance hall which today is the only location from Wagner's past to survive in its original form. His birthplace was long ago demolished and replaced by a department store. The hall with simple decoration was restored in 2012. The Old St Nicholas School and the Young Wagner Exhibit are sites on the Leipzig Music Trail (a themed walk through the city's musical past).
The exhibition is presented through an audio-visual experience. There are no historic Wagnerian museum artifacts but instead images displayed on illuminated panels (in German) and touch screens for exploring the composer’s story in pictures and text. Sixteen audio listening stations allow visitors to experience Wagner's less familiar early works, including excerpts from his Concert Overture from 1832 and his first complete opera "Die Feen" (the Fairies), which was composed in Würzburg from 1833 to January 1834, but not performed until after his death, when it was finally staged in Munich in 1888. Wagner was rather notorious for his ego, and his outsized statuary bust watches over his exhibit and quotations from his extensive autobiographical self-explanation can be found here, as well as comments about him from his contemporaries (see Franz Liszt Weimar).
Visiting Young Wagner 1813—1834
The Young Wagner exhibition space in the underground foundation passage of the Alte Nicholaisschule building is open daily Monday to Friday from 12pm to 5pm. It is free to enter. There is a coffee house restaurant above in the Old St Nicholas School now a gasthaus where students can still discover their talents and visions of grandeur over a beer. There are tour Walks of Richard Wagner in Leipzig to follow the trail of other sites and musical history of Leipzig. © Bargain
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See Also:
GRASSI MUSICAL INSTRUMENT MUSEUM
ST. THOMAS CHURCH - LEIPZIG
AUERBACHS KELLER - GOETHE INSPIRATION LEIPZIG
BATTLE OF NATIONS MONUMENT LEIPZIG
KRIEBSTEIN CASTLE - KNIGHTS CASTLE SAXONY
