Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (Leipzig, 22 May 1813 – Venice, 13 February 1883) was a German composer, poet and librettist.
Richard Wagner was an important innovator of the music of his time. He composed as his most important works a number of operas which he preferred to call music dramas and for which he also wrote the texts (libretti). He strived for a Gesamtkunstwerk, the ideal union of word, music and theatre. Over time this resulted in his grand music dramas which were eventually (and are) performed in a specially built theatre for this purpose in the Bavarian city of Bayreuth.
Wagner lived in political and financial difficulties for virtually his entire life; only in the later years of his life did he achieve prosperity and esteem. He was initially married (1836) to Minna Planer (1809-1866), later had a (platonic?) relationship with Mathilde Wesendonck and with Cosima (1837-1930), the daughter of Franz Liszt, much younger than him (he himself was of Liszt's generation), and finally Wagner married her in 1869. Together they had one son, Siegfried Wagner (1869). Wagner also had two illegitimate daughters with Cosima, Isolde (1864) and Eva (1867), who were both acknowledged by Cosima's first husband, Hans von Bülow.
Two of Siegfried's sons Wolfgang and Wieland Wagner managed affairs in Bayreuth for decades after their grandmother Cosima.