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Wagner began as a conventional opera composer in the 1830s before undergoing radical artistic transformation following his 1849 exile from Dresden, developing his revolutionary philosophy of music drama and the Gesamtkunstwerk. His monumental Ring cycle and works such as Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal pushed harmonic language toward modernism and fundamentally altered the course of Western music. Through the establishment of the Bayreuth Festival in 1876, he created an entirely new model for opera production and artistic pilgrimage that remains one of the world's most prestigious institutions.
Created and premiered the Ring cycle (Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung), the most ambitious operatic undertaking of the nineteenth century, and established the Bayreuth Festival (1876) as a revolutionary new model for opera production and presentation.
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