County f statue: Independent City of St. Louis
Location of statue: Grand Music Pavilion, Tower Grove Park, St. Louis
Artist: Unknown, sculptor
Ferdinan von Miller, II, 1842-1929, sculptor (copy after)
Architect: George Ingham Barnett, 1815-1898
Proper Description: Bust of Wagner featuring a gilded inscription on its plinth. Bust rests on a pedestal consisting of a limestone capital atop a polished Missouri red granite column on a limestone base. ~ Smithsonian American Art Museum
Remarks: "This bust is a replacement of the original marble bust that was commissioned by Henry Shaw and made in 1884 by Ferdinand von Miller (see IAS 76001106). Shaw funded the original at a cost of $725. This replacement bust sits on the original pedestal, which was designed by George Ingham Barnett." ~ Smithsonian American Aart Museum
"Richard Wagner, in full Wilhelm Richard Wagner (born May 22, 1813, Leipzig [Germany]—died February 13, 1883, Venice, Italy), German dramatic composer and theorist whose operas and music had a revolutionary influence on the course of Western music, either by extension of his discoveries or reaction against them. Among his major works are The Flying Dutchman (1843), Tannhäuser (1845), Lohengrin (1850), Tristan und Isolde (1865), Parsifal (1882), and his great tetralogy, The Ring of the Nibelung (1869–76).
"In 1839, fleeing from his creditors, he decided to put into operation his long-cherished plan to win renown in Paris, but his three years in Paris were calamitous. Despite a recommendation from the influential gallicized German composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner could not break into the closed circle at the Opéra. Living with a colony of poor German artists, he staved off starvation by means of musical journalism and hackwork. Nevertheless, in 1840 he completed Rienzi (after Bulwer-Lytton’s novel), and in 1841 he composed his first representative opera, Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), based on the legend about a ship’s captain condemned to sail forever.
"In 1859 Wagner went to Paris, where, the following year, productions of a revised version of Tannhäuser were fiascoes. But in 1861 an amnesty allowed him to return to Germany; from there he went to Vienna, where he heard Lohengrin for the first time. He remained in Vienna for about a year, then travelled widely as a conductor and awaited a projected production of Tristan. When this work was not produced because the artists were bewildered by its revolutionary stylistic innovations, Wagner began a second “normal” work, the comedy-opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Meistersingers of Nürnberg), for which he incorporated into his new conception of music drama certain of the old “operatic” elements. By 1864, however, his expenditure on a grand scale and inveterate habits of borrowing and living on others had brought him to financial disaster: he had to flee from Vienna to avoid imprisonment for debt. He arrived in Stuttgart without a penny, a man of 51 without a future, almost at the end of his tether.
"The result of these methods was a new art form, of which the distinguishing feature was a profound and complex symbolism working on three indivisible planes—dramatic, verbal, and musical. The vital significance of this symbolism has been increasingly realized. The common theme of all his mature works, except Die Meistersinger, is the romantic concept of “redemption through love,” but this element, used rather naively in the three early operas, became, in the later musical dramas, a mere catalyst for much deeper complexes of ideas. In The Ring there are at least five interwoven strands of overt meaning concerned with German nationalism, international socialism, the philosophy of Schopenhauer, Buddhism, and Christianity. On another level there is a prophetic treatment of some of the themes of psychoanalysis: power complex arising from sexual inhibition; incest; mother fixation; and Oedipus complex." ~ Complete Text at Encyclopedia Britannica