Was Richard Wagner ever commited into an insane asylum?
Thank you for using the Jiskha Homework Help Forum. Here are some bios on Richard Wagner. They are most interesting and I saw Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival one summer. Skimming these bios, I did not see he had been institutionalized.
1. (Broken Link Removed)
2. http://www.island-of-freedom.com/WAGNER.HTM
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wagner#Final_years
No doubt he was obsessive. No doubt he was compulsive. He wrote early of Hamlet and King Lear, both having one leg across the line of sanity.
I don't think he was committed, however, he was in opera.
Austrian conductor Franz Schalk is noted for the most emblematic words about opera life: "Every theatre is an insane asylum, but an opera theatre is the ward for the incurables."