Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer,theater director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas (or, as some of his later works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Weber and Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionized opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesize the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama, and which was announced in a series of essays between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realized these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).
== Tossup Questions ==
# One of this man's operas contains a Hymn for the Roman god Venus, and at the end of that opera, the Pope's staff grows leaves. Another one of this man's operas has a final aria called the "Liebestod," and that opera describes the affair of King Marke's wife with a knight. In addition to composing Tannhauser and Tristan und Isolde, he also wrote a series of operas, the first of which begins with three maidens next to a river, and another of the operas in that series contains "The Ride of the Valkyries". For 10 points, name this German composer whose Das Rheingold begins his Ring of Nibelung cycle.
# In one opera by this composer, Eva eventually goes to Walther, who becomes one of the title Mastersingers of Nuremberg. In another of his operas, the hero eventually saves Elsa. He composed Lohengrin and an opera that sees Sigfried rescue Brunnhilde from a ring of magic fire. That cycle contains Gotterdammerung and a opera containing the Ride of The Valkyries. For 10 points, name this composer of the Ring cycle.
# This composer's early opera The Ban on Love was based on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, and other early operas of his include one about "The Last of the Tribunes", Rienzi , and his The Faeries. King Amfortas is visited by a wounded [*] knight of the Grail in his Parsifal, and this designer of the Bayreuth festival theater included the Liebestod aria after one title character takes a love potion in his Tristan and Isolde. For 10 points, name this composer of Tannhauser, Lohengrin, and The Flying Dutchman, a German Romantic whose four opera "Ring of the Nibelung" cycle includes the "Ride of the Valkyries".
# He wrote an opera in which Ada is turned into stone before being saved when Arindal plays the lyre and sings the aria "O ihr, des Busens Hochgefuhle", and wrote another opera in which Isabella enters a convent before visiting her brother Claudio in prison and discussing a proposal by Friedrich. In addition to The Fairies and The Ban on Love, this composer wrote an opera in which Erik loves Senta, the daughter of Daland and wife of the title character, one in which Elsa sings "Alone in dark days" before the title character arrives in a boat pulled by a swan, and a cycle of operas that ends after Brunnhilde orders the building of a funeral pyre for Siegfried and the Rhine overflows its banks. For 10 points-name this composer of The Flying Dutchman, Lohengrin, and The Ring of the Nibelung.
# This composer wrote the "Liebestod" theme for an opera concerning the wife of King Mark. This composer depicted Hans Sachs in another opera. This composer also wrote about Daland, who is the father of the Norwegian girl Senta, in one opera. In addition to Tristan and Isolde, The Mastersingers of Nuremburg, and The Flying Dutchman, he implemented his idea of the leitmotif in an opera where the dwarf Alberich is the antagonist to the character who kills Fafner and loves Brunhild, who is one of the titular characters of The Valkyries. For 10 points, name this German composer of a cycle of operas concerning Siegfried entitled The Ring of the Nibelung.