华格纳(1813～1883年)
Wagner, (Wilhelm) Richard
德国作曲家。童年分别在德勒斯登和莱比锡度过，并接受作曲课程。由於他的才华，他的老师拒绝收费。他的第一部歌剧《妖魔》（1834）。接着的《爱情的禁令》（1836）演出彻底的失败。《黎恩济》（1840）的一举成功，使他在《漂泊的荷兰人》（1843）和《唐怀瑟》（1845）中有着更开拓的精神。1848年的政治动乱被捕，他被迫逃亡至苏黎世。这期间他写出具有影响的散文。宣称贝多芬以後音乐达到极限。《未来的艺术作品》将音乐和戏剧融为一体（即总体艺术作品）。1850年《洛亨格林》首演。他开始创作他的杰出的四部曲《尼贝龙的指环》，《指环》需要大规模的布局，於是提出「主导动机」的概念。与韦森东克的不伦之恋，使他放下《指环》。的第三部《齐格飞》的创作工作，写出严肃的作品《崔斯坦与伊索德》（1859），该剧打破了调性的连结。1863年他出版了《指环》的脚本，并寻求德国国王支持他的艺术家的梦，後来获得巴伐利亚国王路德维希二世的资助。不久，科西玛.李斯特.比洛为他生了第一个小孩，他们在华格纳的妻子去世後，於1870年结婚。1860年代晚期至1880年代初期，华格纳完成了《纽伦堡的名歌手》、《齐格飞》、《众神的黄昏》和《帕西法尔》等。他也监督在拜罗伊特（1872～1876）兴建的节日剧院，以便能演出他的歌剧。他的惊人的作品使华格纳成为西方音乐和西方文化史上最具影响和重要的人物之一。
English version：
1813～1883年
Wagner, (Wilhelm) Richard
German composer. His childhood was divided between Dresden and Leipzig, where he had first composition lessons; his teacher refused payment because of his talent. His first opera, Die Feen (1834), was followed by Der Liebesverbot (1836); the premiere performance was so unprepared that the event was a fiasco, and he henceforth determined not to settle for modest productions. The success of Rienzi (1840) led him to be more adventurous in The Flying Dutchman (1843), and even more so in Tannh?user (1845). Caught up in the political turmoil of 1848, he was forced to flee Dresden for Zurich. During this enforced vacation, he wrote influential essays, asserting (following G. W. F. Hegel) that music had reached a limit after Ludwig van Beethoven, and that the “artwork of the future” would unite music and theater in a Gesamtkunstwerk (“total artwork”). In 1850 he saw Lohengrin produced. He had begun his most ambitious work, The Ring of the Nibelung, a four-opera cycle. The need for large-scale unity brought him to the concept of the leitmotiv. He ceased work on the Ring's third opera, Siegfried, in the throes of an adulterous love with Mathilde Wesendonk, and wrote an opera of forbidden love, Tristan und Isolde (1859), which also seemed to break the bonds of tonality. He published the Ring librettos in 1863, asking if some German prince would support his artistic dreams, and Ludwig II of Bavaria responded. Shortly thereafter, Cosima Liszt von Bülow became the mother of the first of his children; they married in 1870, after his own wife's death. From the late 1860s to the early 1880s, Wagner completed work on Die Meistersinger, Siegfried, G?tterd?mmerung, and the long-deferred Parsifal, as he also oversaw the building of the great festival theater at Bayreuth (1872-76) that would be dedicated to his operas. His astonishing works made Wagner one of the most influential and consequential figures in the history of Western music, and indeed of Western culture.