Richard Wagner in Liguria

Richard Wagner was a frequent traveler in Italy, starting with his first visit in July 1852 to Lago Maggiore in Piedmont. He traveled down from Zurich, the place he had been living in exile from Germany, where there was a warrant for his arrest for radical political activities. The first Italian town he stayed in was Formazza, which that coincidentally was near the birthplace of the mother of Giuseppe Verdi. Wagner had been working on the text for the Ring Cycle, and was suffering from writer’s block. At the time, Wagner was writing the libretto for Das Rheingold. Although this is the first of the four operas in the cycle, he wrote the libretti in reverse order, beginning with Götterdämmerung, then Siegfried, and then Die Walküre. Italy inspired him and he managed to finish the libretto of Das Rheingold by the shores of Lago Maggiore.