One of his sisters, Rosalie, and his brother both followed the acting profession, and they gave him the benefit of their counsel, though no one knows how much of it he followed.
He wrote a symphony and then began work on an opera, Die Hochzeit, which he never completed. That was in 1832. In the same year he tried again, actually finishing a work entitled Die Feen. It was rejected, but Wagner, after one or two little pouts, regained his composure. He accepted an engagement as conductor at Magdeburg and in the course of his work he composed another opera, Das Liebesverbot, which, however, was given one performance.
At Magdeburg he met Minna Planer, a member of the operatic troupe, who later became his wife. When she left for Königsberg he followed her and obtained a conductor’s position at the theater in that city. Then came a succession of changes. The restless Wagner scurried about with the spontaneity of a gypsy. When things lagged in one place he quickly moved to another. So that we find him going to Riga, where he directed both opera and symphony, to London, to Paris. In the last named he thought he might finally awaken a musical public to his genius. But he suffered untold agonies. Poverty possessed him. He and his wife lived in constant economic turmoil. With all that he managed to compose two more operas, Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman. Both were produced at Dresden under the sponsorship of Meyerbeer, then a dominant figure in German music.
All this time, though, he wrote a host of compositions, besides penning many articles on music for various publications, and his fame spread. His rebellious temperament got him into difficulty often enough, but he managed, most of the time, to slip out of it. However, in Dresden, where he officiated as a conductor of the Royal Opera, he clashed with certain musical authorities who would not brook his bold opposition to standard ideas. Yet still another opera came to the light of performance when Tannhäuser was given its first hearing, again at Dresden, on October 19, 1845.
During the previous summer Wagner began work on the libretto of Die Meistersinger while vacationing at Marienbad. He soon abandoned it, taking on the libretto for Lohengrin instead. The following year saw the completion of the Lohengrin score. In 1848 he joined a revolutionary movement that spread through Europe, launched by the French Revolution. When the disturbance was quelled some months later, he fled to Switzerland, but remained there for a short time, heading soon for Paris.
His wife refused to join him there, remembering too well the poverty of the previous stay in the French capital. But he started on Siegfried’s Death, which was to grow into the gigantic Ring. He flitted about again, leaving Paris, returning a little later.
Wagner fell in love with Jessie Taylor Laussot, who proved a benefactress in a financial way. In the meantime, he decided to leave Minna forever. In Zurich, whither he repaired, he labored unceasingly on the libretto for The Young Siegfried. Then he created the subject of The Valkyrie and finally that of The Rheingold.
It is amusing to note that he wrote his Ring librettos in reverse order, that is, from what is now Götterdämmerung back to Das Rheingold. Having hit upon a huge theme, he found it increasingly necessary to broaden its scope, thus accounting for the four operas. Parenthetically, however, he wrote the music in the correct order.
The reaction of some of Wagner’s musically untutored contemporaries is amusingly depicted in this caricature from Figaro (1876).