He was an intelligent child who had an early interest in the theatre. Thanks to his stepfather Geyer, Wagner got to know Carl Maria von Weber. Wagner saw von Weber conduct Der Freischutz, which had a lasting impression on him. "What attracted him to the theatre was, by Wagner's own account, not so much the search for entertainment as the pleasurable excitement of a purely imaginary world" (Westernhagen 1981, 19).
Early on Wagner wanted to be a composer and "On 23 February 1831 he matriculated at the university in Leipzig as a music student" (Westernhagen 1981, 27). His first important music teacher was Christian Theodor Weinlig, the cantor at Thomaskirche (J.S. Bach's old job). Wagner studied counterpoint with Weinlig and much attention was paid to the form of the works of Mozart.
Wagner was impressed with von Weber, but Beethoven, Wagner was always to admit, formed the most inspiring influence in his youth. Reflecting back on rehearsals for a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Wagner said, "If I look back on my life as a whole, I can find no event that produced so profound an impression on me".
Wagner's first professional appointment, secured by his bother Albert, was as chorus master at the theatre in Wurzburg. There he encountered repertory works by Marschner, Weber, Cherubini, Rossini and Auber, of which composers the first two influenced him most strongly in his music setting of Die Feen (1833-4), a working by Wagner himself (he was to write his own librettos) of Gozzi's La donna serpente (Sadie 1992, IV:1054).With his first three operas, Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi Wagner experimented with different styles before he formed his mature operatic style of composition.
His first effort occurred in 1833-34, when he composed Die Feen. Even a casual examination of this opera reveals how closely Wagner tried to correlate his style to the German world of Mozart, Beethoven and Weber. . . . In composing Das Liebesverbot, Wagner modeled the opera after the Italian bel canto school of Bellini and Rossini. . . . Wagner's third attempt to carve a niche in the firmament and to find a meaning for his life, as well as economic survival, came with Rienzi which he began in 1838, at the age of twenty-five. Wagner now tried the third opera idiom of his day -- French grand opera. . . . Rienzi achieved some success, but Wagner recoiled when a critic pointed out the not so subtle musical influence of Meyerbeer. (Aberbach 1988, 1-2)It was at the time of the composition of Rienzi and his appointment as musical director at the Konigsberg theatre in 1837, that Wagner had some difficulties in his personal life.
He returned home from rehearsals one evening to make the dreadful discovery that Minna [his wife] had run off with a rich merchant . . . 'Death in his heart', he hurried after her . . . 'With that I knew enough to ask my fate why, when I was still so young, was I doomed to undergo so frightful an experience, one, it seemed, that would poison the whole of my life.' (Westernhagen 1981, 6)Wagner's next opera The Flying Dutchman would set him out into a new world of opera, which he called simply drama. "Regardless of what Wagner called it, its purpose was clear: 'the raising of the dramatic dialogue itself to the main object of musical treatment'" (Aberbach 1988, 5). The Flying Dutchman was central to the development of his new ideas, which he put into his music and his theoretical writings.