Richard Wagner was an Austrian composer, who dominated the German music scene of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and whose work is central to the development of the Romantic era. Wagner was born in Leipzig, Saxony, on 21 December 1813 as the son of a clerk in the court orchestra in Dresden. His father died when he was two years old and he grew up in the poor household with his mother and sister. He showed an early interest in music and was given lessons by his father's friend, Carl Maria von Weber
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In 1836, aged fourteen, he enrolled at the Leipzig Conservatory and made such an impression on his tutors that they sent him to Prague to study under František Xaver Škroup. In Prague he wrote his first symphony and went on to create his first opera which he finished in September 1839. By this time Wagner had become acquainted with other young composers including Franz Liszt among them.
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