Wilhelm Richard Wagner was born in 1813 in Leipzig as the ninth child of police clerk Carl Friedrich Wagner and baker's daughter Johanna Rosine Wagner, and he died in 1883 in Venice, at the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi. He was a composer, playwright, philosopher, poet, writer, theater director, and conductor. With his music dramas, he is considered one of the most significant innovators of European music in the 19th century. He transformed the expressive capabilities of romantic music and the theoretical and practical foundations of opera by shaping dramatic actions as a total work of art, writing text, music, and stage directions. As the first composer, he founded festivals in the Bayreuth Festival House, which he designed. His innovations in harmony influenced the development of music into modern times. With his essay "Judaism in Music," he is historically associated with the advocates of anti-Semitism.