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Updated: May 21, 2025
If the Dresden schoolboys who attended the Kreuzschule in the years 1823-1827 could have been told that one of them was destined to be the greatest opera composer of all times, and to influence the musicians of all countries throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, they would, no doubt, have been very much surprised.
At the Kreuzschule, where his education began, he developed an ardent love for the Greek classics, and translated the first twelve books of the Odyssey, outside of school hours. He devoured all stories of mythology he could lay hands on, and soon began to create vast tragedies.
There was endless trouble in discovering what to do with him and what to make of him. At last a time came when Uncle Geyer could no longer keep him; and in response to inquiries Uncle Adolph answered virtually that he could and would do nothing. So towards the end of 1822 Richard was sent home to Dresden, and there on December 2 he was entered at the Kreuzschule as Richard Geyer.
When admitted to the Kreuzschule of Dresden, the young student, however, distinguished himself by his very great talent for literary composition and the classical languages. To this early culture, perhaps, we are indebted for the great poetic power which has enabled him to compose the remarkable libretti which have furnished the basis of his music.
It was above all necessary, then, to secure a very good and large choir; so, besides adding the somewhat feeble Dreissig 'Academy of Singing' to our usual number of members in the theatre chorus, in spite of great difficulties I also enlisted the help of the choir from the Kreuzschule, with its fine boys' voices, and the choir of the Dresden seminary, which had had much practice in church singing.
Out of the strangely tangled skein of truth and obvious fiction which is called his "life" for this period I shall endeavour only to pick out such threads of fact as seem to me helpful. Richard remained five years at the Kreuzschule and took to the classics with avidity. The best part of his education was classical.
Born in Leipsic, on May 22, 1813, the youngest of nine children, Wilhelm Richard was only five months old when his father died. His mother's second marriage entailed a removal to Dresden, where, at the Kreuzschule, young Wagner received an excellent liberal education. In the following year his passion for poetry found expression in a grand tragedy. "It was a mixture," he says, "of Hamlet and Lear.
At first Richard was sent to his step-uncle Geyer at Eisleben, where, he himself says, he did little in the way of learning. Geyer tried to persuade him to work at his books and sent him to a school kept by one Alt, promising him he should go to the Kreuzschule at Dresden; but he had grown too fond of doing his reading on out-of-the-way lines; he was fond also of roaming the countryside.
There were rebels, and Wagner makes it clear that he was amongst them. To begin with, he had been in the second class at the Kreuzschule. The more effectually to imbue him with the Nicolai ambition of becoming a scholar, i.e. a pedant, and a complete, if sausage-munching, German gentleman of the period, they degraded him to the third.
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