The Genius of the Place: Nicholas Baragwanath traces the sources of the exiled Wagner’s inspiration

Wagnerian historiography has always exploited the aura of place. An account of Wagner’s fledgling operatic career, for instance, seems inconceivable without the backdrop of the bustling theatrical world of Paris (despite the fact that the composer later claimed – falsely, of course – to have attended only four performances in that city). Likewise, the revolutionary ferment of Dresden during the 1840s looms large in surveys of Wagner’s assembling of material for the Ring, and the great love scene of Tristan is indissolubly bound up with the ebb and flow of the Venetian canals. Yet Zurich, the town in which he wrote the bulk of his major theoretical works and composed over half of the Ring and Tristan, is seldom granted similar prominence.