My Life (Summarized Edition)

My Life is Wagner's expansive autobiography, tracing precarious youth, Parisian failures, the 1849 upheaval and exile, and the genesis of Rienzi, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, and the Ring. Dictated in a theatrical cadence, it blends confession and apologia with deliberate myth‑making: debts, flights, and sudden patronage are staged like scenes. He notes working methods, leitmotivic e...