Loved, Ridiculed, Worshipped. Richard Wagner and the Viennese

To mark the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth  on 22 May 1813, the Austrian National Library is holding an exhibition, "Loved, Ridiculed, Worshipped. Richard Wagner and  the Viennese". The aim is to explore the reception of Wagner’s revolutionary oeuvre in Vienna – the unfailing support, rejection, jubilation, but also the mockery with which it met.

Richard Wagner (1813–83) first came to Vienna in 1832 and 1848, although neither visit involved a performance of his work. It was only with "Tannhäuser" in 1857 that a Wagner opera was finally presented in Vienna; the autograph of its overture is among the highlights of the exhibition.