Richard Wagner
By now Wagner was working hard at the Ring cycle again. He had promised the king that the four operas would be performed in Munich when they were ready, but he realized that they would need a special kind of opera house. So he designed his own opera house and had it built in the town of Bayreuth. He spent a lot of time travelling and conducting in order to raise money for this huge project. The King Ludwig also gave him a lot of money, and a lovely new house in Bayreuth which Wagner called Wahnfried (the name of the house means something like: Peace from the mad world). Finally, the complete cycle of four operas was performed in August 1876 in the new opera house, the (Bayreuth Festspielhaus). The third and fourth operas of the cycle, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung  were being performed for the first time.