Richard Wagner

German composer who created the music drama — the Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) combining music, poetry, and visual spectacle — in operas including Tristan und Isolde, the Ring cycle, Parsifal, and Die Meistersinger — and who was Nietzsche's model of genius before becoming his symbol of decadence.

Created the most ambitious synthesis of the arts in Western history — the Ring cycle's four operas dramatize the decline of gods through the corrupting power of gold — and Tristan's harmonic language transformed Western music, making Wagner the unavoidable center of German cultural life for half a century.