Wagner traveled to the town in 1871, and liked it very much, but found that the opera house was not quite suitable for his needs. However, when the Mayor of Bayreuth offered him a piece of real estate on the “Grüner Hügel” and King Ludwig II pledged generous financial support, Wagner decided to relocate to Bayreuth and build an opera house of his own, to be called the Festspielhaus.
Wagner’s beloved Wahnfried Villa was partially destroyed by the impact of a firebomb. A large reception room and the stage above entirely exploded into flames. Fortunately, the library of Richard Wagner was removed two weeks beforehand, or it would have also been the victim of the flames as so many cultural treasures were. Only the front of the house is original, the side has been rebuilt.
The Ring of the Nibelungen was the first opera to be performed. The Festspielhaus remains to this day the site of the annual Wagner Festival. Haus Wahnfried was the composer’s former home and in its rebuilt form is now the Wagner Museum. In front of the house stands a statue of King Ludwig II and the in the rear lie the graves of Wagner, his wife Cosima, the daughter of Franz Liszt, Liszt himself and their dog.
There is also a Franz Liszt museum in Bayreuth devoted to the work of Wagner’s father-in-law. The pediment of Wagner’s residence is engraved with: “Here, where my illusions found peace thus,Wahnfried, I name this house.”
The greatest pianist of his time, Franz Liszt, 1811-1886, composed some of the most difficult piano music ever written. Liszt invented the term ‘Sinfonische Dichtung’ (‘symphonic poem’) for orchestral works. Liszt, spelled List originally, was born in the Austrian village of Raiding.
He had a loving Austrian mother and his father, a Hungarian of ethnic German descent working at the court of music patron Count Esterhazy, started his son on his first music lessons when he was six years old. Local aristocrats noticed his talent and paid a scholarship so that he was able to go to Vienna and then Paris. In Vienna he was educated in piano technique by Czerny and Salieri. He formed an early friendship with Chopin, but they later became rivals. After moving to Paris he moved in the intellectual circles of the day, and had 3 children with his live-in companion, writer Marie Catharine Sophie de Flavigny (pen name Daniel Stern). From 1840 to 1841, he gave concert tours in England which flopped and put his finances in disarray.
In 1847, Liszt met author Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein and he lived with her until his death, unable to marry her because her husband was alive and the Catholic church forbade a divorce. She wrote prolifically, and her work on gypsy music intrigued Liszt, who later composed the Hungarian Rhapsodies which appeared as a set of nineteen pieces based on a form of art music familiar in Hungary fostered by gypsy musicians. Liszt’s symphonic poems met strong criticism from champions of “pure” of music, and they ridiculed his attempts to translate the greatest works of literature into music. In 1848, Liszt gave up public performances on the piano and went to Weimar, where he stayed until 1861 as conductor at court concerts and on special occasions at the theater. He also gave piano lessons, one of his students being Hans von Bulow who married Liszt’s daughter Cosima. An intense Catholic, Liszt retired to Rome in 1861 and joined the Fransciscan order in 1865.
Lizst’s daughter Cosima left the abusive von Bulow for Richard Wagner in 1869, and although Wagner troubled him, Lizst still championed Wagner’s music. Liszt then taught in Budapest for a time. He died in Bayreuth four years after the death of his son-in-law Wagner at his daughter’s house on July 31, 1886.