Wagner : a genius in exile

Wagner : A Genius in Exile

In this biographical and musical road movie by Andy Sommer, Antoine Wagner, a young (30-year-old) photographer living in New York, heads to Switzerland on the trail of his great-great-grandfather, the renowned composer Richard Wagner.

It is not widely known that Wagner spent several years in Switzerland – first as a political exile then as an artist who had become famous. It was in that country that he wrote his great theoretical essays, began working on the composition of Der Ring des Nibelungen and wrote Tristan und Isolde, the Wesendonck-Lieder and Die Meistersinger. There, too, he lived the two great love stories of his life: first with Mathilde Wesendonck and later, with the woman who would become his wife, Cosima Liszt.

In order to apprehend this complex personality, Antoine Wagner returns to Zurich and Lucerne and the sites where his ancestor had lived, meeting historians, musicologists, musicians and enlightened amateurs. He also sets off on a mountaineering expedition in contact with a grandiose, violent Nature, exploring those landscapes that Wagner so admired and which were a profound source of inspiration for him.

With Antoine Wagner, Dagny Beidler, Katja Fleischer, Laurenz Lütteken, Albert Lutz, Eva Rieger, Armin Trösch, pianist Mikhail Rudy and conductor Philippe Jordan.

Bonus: Interview with Eva Rieger (24’57”) •Interview with Philippe Jordan (33’31”) • Wagner’s Alpine landscapes in Switzerland (20’26”)

Wagner : A Genius in Exile

With Antoine Wagner
Dagny Beidler
Katja Fleischer
Laurenz Lütteken
Albert Lutz
Eva Rieger
Armin Trösch
Mikhail Rudy
Philippe Jordan

Directed by Andy Sommer