WAGNER - Richard Burton - Vanessa Redgrave - Film - TV Series - 1983 - Part I - 4K - HD REMASTERED

Part I - Wagner is a 1983 television miniseries (10 episodes / 4 remastered parts) on the life of Richard Wagner with Richard Burton in the title role. It was directed by Tony Palmer and written by Charles Wood. [ TEMPUS Collection Remastering - Maximianno Cobra's Selection ]

Other main roles were played by Vanessa Redgrave, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, and Ralph Richardson .

The cast also includes the composer William Walton, and his wife Susan Walton, in the roles of the royal couple Frederick Augustus II of Saxony and Maria Anna of Bavaria.

Watch Part I:    • WAGNER - Richard Burton - Vanessa Red...  
Watch Part II:    • WAGNER - Richard Burton - Vanessa Red...  
Watch Part III:    • WAGNER - Richard Burton - Vanessa Red...  
Watch Part IV:    • WAGNER - Richard Burton - Vanessa Red...  

PART I - IV - from 1849 to 1850s - The Full Series

Opening in 1849, Richard Wagner is a respected composer living in Dresden, where he works as royal court conductor for the King of Saxony, Friedrich August II, and he is trying to arrange the first performance of his recently composed opera Lohengrin. Although his wife, Minna, enjoys their life and status, Wagner is bored with his work for the ageing king and spends most of his time writing revolutionary pamphlets against the establishment and aristocracy. Eventually, the May Uprising breaks out and Wagner becomes an important figure behind it. When Saxon and Prussian troops crush the uprising, Wagner becomes a wanted man and is forced to flee to Zürich.

In the 1850s, Wagner's health deteriorates and he has to be cured in a sanatorium, where he reads Arthur Schopenhauer's work Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. At his return, Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of wealthy silk merchant Otto Wesendonck, becomes yet another one of his patrons and offers him the cottage on her estate as his residence. Once installed in the cottage, Wagner begins a passionate correspondence with Mathilde, which upsets both Mathilde's husband, Otto, and Wagner's wife, Minna, who seeks solace in increasing amounts of laudanum. Wagner, who starts composing Tristan und Isolde for Mathilde, is also visited by his good friend Hans von Bülow, and his new bride Cosima, Liszt's daughter. After a while, Minna works up the courage to confront Wagner and Mathilde about their correspondence.

In the 1870s, construction on the opera house in Bayreuth begins and the epic Der Ring des Nibelungen can finally be premiered. The opening August 1876 performance is attended by Ludwig who is slowly losing his mind, while living in his gigantic new castle Neuschwanstein. Wagner and Nietzsche have a falling-out over Wagner's lifestyle and ideas (including his rampant anti-semitism). Later in 1882, Wagner stages his last opera, the Parsifal, under the conductor Hermann Levi.

Shortly before his death in February 1883, the aged Wagner travels to Venice, Italy with his family. There, he reflects with Liszt on his life: the people he has known, the events that occurred and the music he composed.

CAST
Richard Burton as Richard Wagner
Vanessa Redgrave as Cosima von Bülow, later Wagner
Gemma Craven as Minna Planer, later Wagner
Sir John Gielgud as Franz Seraph von Pfistermeister
Sir Laurence Olivier as Sigmund von Pfeufer [de]
Sir Ralph Richardson as Baron Karl Ludwig von der Pfordten
Ronald Pickup as Friedrich Nietzsche
Sigfrit Steiner as King Ludwig I of Bavaria
Miguel Herz-Kestranek as Hans von Bülow
László Gálffi as King Ludwig II of Bavaria
Zoltán Gera as Lüttichau
Ekkehard Schall as Franz Liszt
Marthe Keller as Mathilde Wesendonck
Richard Pasco as Otto Wesendonck [de]
Peter Hofmann as Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld
Dame Gwyneth Jones as Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld
Jess Thomas as Albert Niemann
Vernon Dobtcheff as Giacomo Meyerbeer
Gabriel Byrne as Karl Ritter
Sir William Walton as King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony
Lady Susan Walton as Maria Anna of Bavaria, wife of Frederick
Barbara Leigh-Hunt as Queen Marie of Bavaria Marie of Prussia
Daphne Wagner as Princess Pauline von Metternich
Dame Joan Plowright as Mrs Taylor
Corin Redgrave as Dr Pusinelli
Prunella Scales as Frau Pollert
Andrew Cruickshank as the Narrator

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Screen Adaptation - Co-Production : MISANTHROPOS – Official Website - https://www.misanthropos.net

Adapted by Maximianno Cobra, from Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens", the film exposes the timeless challenge of social hypocrisy, disillusion and annihilation against the poetics of friendship, love, and beauty.