# Was Wagner using performance-enhancing drugs?



## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

I wonder if the reason Wagner was able to write all those monumentally long operas...was that he was taking performance-enhancing drugs? Perhaps extracted hormones from male horses, mixed with opium...


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Blood is an ultimate energy booster


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Don't forget there are minors here...


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

I think Wagners performance enhancing drug was Wagner. His ego was out of control. He thrived on adulation and opposition. Both proved to him that he was right. He suplimented all that with hardy helpings of other mens wives. It's a good thing that Wagner was such a great composer, as a human being he was not so good.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

You mean the Lance Armstrong of classical music!!


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Topic is heating up!


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> I wonder if the reason Wagner was able to write all those monumentally long operas...was that he was taking performance-enhancing drugs? Perhaps extracted hormones from male horses, mixed with opium...


Jeez, I hope not. If he did they didn't help.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

I think I'd need performance enhancing drugs to sit through Wagner...


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## dionisio (Jul 30, 2012)

Heheheh, nahh, his ego gave him that energy (and what an energy!)

On the other side, i think it is common sense that how Berlioz composed his symphonie fantastique...


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/enterta...s-different-tune/story-e6frf9hf-1111116385829


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

When Wagner composed he liked to be bathed in perfumes and wear silk underwear , among other things !
From what I hear, he suffered from extremely sensitive skin caused by shingles, and had to wear soft underwear . Apparently, he could only compose when feeling luxurious .


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Drugs dissipate creativity. They don't enhance it. You can take a fistful of whites and stay up for three days straight, but all that will result in is a big crash. Drugs sedate. They don't create.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

bigshot said:


> Drugs dissipate creativity. They don't enhance it. You can take a fistful of whites and stay up for three days straight, but all that will result in is a big crash. Drugs sedate. They don't create.


Allen Ginsberg wrote his epic poem "Howl" for days running, on a long scroll of paper in a typewriter. I think I remember him saying that he was in amphetamine. Of course, he was a "beatnik" and that sort of thing is frowned upon nowadays.

What are your views on men's silk underwear?


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

The Beat Poets were entertaining, but ultimately, they were a dead end. I met William Burroughs and hearing him read his works was a lot of fun, but just reading them isn't nearly as good. I think they were better performers than writers. Either Ginsberg or Burroughs would have made a great center square on The Hollywood Squares.


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## Hesoos (Jun 9, 2012)

Did Wagner write so much? I don't think so. 
He was a lot of years without composing anything. For example, between Lohengrin 1848 and Tristan 1859, he composed some song only, he was poor and his wife desperate for having such a sloth for husband. His operas are long and full of work, but I don't think he needed much time of his life to compose.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Hesoos said:


> Did Wagner write so much? I don't think so.
> He was a lot of years without composing anything. For example, between Lohengrin 1848 and Tristan 1859, he composed some song only, he was poor and his wife desperate for having such a sloth for husband. His operas ar e long and full of work, but I don't think he needed much time of his life to compose.


 Wagner was also very busy as a conductor, often not of his own music , so that took up a great deal of his time .


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Hesoos said:


> Did Wagner write so much? I don't think so.
> He was a lot of years without composing anything. For example, between Lohengrin 1848 and Tristan 1859, he composed some song only, he was poor and his wife desperate for having such a sloth for husband. His operas are long and full of work, but I don't think he needed much time of his life to compose.


Actually, he wrote Das Rheingold, Die Walkurie, and part of Siegfried in that period. Them he famously laid Siegfried aside until after Tristan and Meistersinger, only then returning to finish the Ring Cycle.


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## Hesoos (Jun 9, 2012)

superhorn said:


> Wagner was also very busy as a conductor, often not of his own music , so that took up a great deal of his time .


Wagner worked as a conductor before going to live in Switzerland, then I think he gave up and conducted very little (some engagement in 1855 I think, because his economic situation was difficult).


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## Hesoos (Jun 9, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> Actually, he wrote Das Rheingold, Die Walkurie, and part of Siegfried in that period. Them he famously laid Siegfried aside until after Tristan and Meistersinger, only then returning to finish the Ring Cycle.


You are rignt! But I have the impression that he was not so hardworker.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Any theories as to which drugs he may have used? Snuff?, popping poppies or E's......


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Hesoos said:


> You are rignt! But I have the impression that he was not so hardworker.


How do you create all that without being a hard worker?!


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

Wagner spent a good deal of time writing books on his musical philosophy. Some of it is rather disturbing to modern sensabilities. Others are very interesting especially the Art Work of the Future and the Total Artwork ideas. One the whole, however, I would have prefered a bit more music and a bunch less prose.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

drpraetorus said:


> One the whole, however, I would have prefered a bit more music and a bunch less prose.


On the whole, I would have preferred more music and less singing.


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## Hesoos (Jun 9, 2012)

Wagner like Beethoven was very slow. 13 operas in 38 years... I don't think that he worked 8 hours a day. Surely the Wagner style is different from others, but if you think of Rossini... Rossini wrote 38 operas in 19 years...and he also wrote a book (a cook book, hehe) Sorry, but if you compare with other composers, Wagner is not a prolific one.

My impression about Wagner is a little from this movie: Wagner with Richard Burton
I'm not sure if there is anything invented in the movie. If anyone can tell me about it?
You can see all the parts of the movie in you tube, this is the first part.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Wagner also had to write all his librettos himself (and do all the reading he needed for each one: history books, medieval romances, interpretations of Germanic mythology, Schopenhauer and stuff). I am sure that took a lot of his working time. I read somewhere that he even taught himself Old Norse, in order to read the Eddas in the original. Can anyone verify this information? And besides, he was not subjected to some opera director's deadline requirements, he worked on his own schedule. 

As for the film, as far as I remember, it it pretty true to his real biography. Richard Burton looks a bit too old in Wagner's role though, in the first episode during the 1848 uprising Wagner was only 35.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Hesoos said:


> Wagner like Beethoven was very slow. 13 operas in 38 years... I don't think that he worked 8 hours a day. Surely the Wagner style is different from others, but if you think of Rossini... Rossini wrote 38 operas in 19 years...and he also wrote a book (a cook book, hehe) Sorry, but if you compare with other composers, Wagner is not a prolific one.


Rossini's operas were also more interchangeable and (in the strict, rather than the pejorative, sense) generic. Aside from his early works, Wagner had to develop the shape of each opera on its own terms. When one does not have a strict form to fill in (aria, recitative, chorus, recitative, duet, recitative, repeat as needed), one has to think more about the pacing of a given work.


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## Alydon (May 16, 2012)

From what I have read on Wagner he seems to have lead a fairly clean lifestlye and was a vegetarian - I'm glad he didn't take any performance - enhancing drugs, as The Ring Cycle might have ended up twice as long.


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## drpraetorus (Aug 9, 2012)

Herrs Wessendonk and von Bulow might have a different take on Herr Wagners lifestyle


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## Hesoos (Jun 9, 2012)

Sure Rossini style didn't need so much work like the operas by Wagner... It was a silly comparation. Librettos and background requires a lot of work. Now, I have the impression that I had a wrong impression. 
In the Burton's film Wagner doesn't work a lot... but from the film I thought that Wagner worked a bit from time to time and his wife wasn't so happy. Sometime I'll try some serious book


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## Alydon (May 16, 2012)

drpraetorus said:


> Herrs Wessendonk and von Bulow might have a different take on Herr Wagners lifestyle


I think I meant he didn't use drugs or a heavy drinker - but yes, he certainly liked his women.


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## sharik (Jan 23, 2013)

millionrainbows said:


> Was Wagner using performance-enhancing drugs?


no he was not.


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## oogabooha (Nov 22, 2011)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Don't forget there are minors here...


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Flamme said:


> Blood is an ultimate energy booster


Yea, just ask a vampire!


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

We conclude that Wagner was not using performance-enhancing drugs, but all performance-enhancing drugs are made of finely ground Wagner.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

^ I still have a suspicion he was using 'W' E's


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