Die Sieger
draft sketch for an opera text by Richard Wagner
Die Sieger (The Victors; WWV 89), is a draft sketch for an opera text by Richard Wagner.
Die Sieger was drafted between 1856 and 1858, at a period when Wagner had become greatly interested in Buddhism. The fragmentary prose sketch which survives shows that it was based on legends which Wagner discovered in Eugène Burnouf's 1844 Introduction to the History of Buddhism. The story tells of the love of the outcast chandala Prakriti for the monk Ānanda. Although both are ostracised by the other monks, Buddha permits their chaste union, and allows Prakriti to join the monastic community.
Writing to Marie Sayn-Wittgenstein in 1857, Wagner refers to the girl as 'Savitri' and suggests a three-act structure. He further wrote about the project to Mathilde Wesendonck from Venice in 1858, comparing himself and Mathilde to Ananda and Savitri.
No musical sketches for this work are known to have been undertaken. Although Wagner planned a production of Die Sieger for 1870 in his 1865 programme of proposals for King Ludwig II of Bavaria, he never took it further. However, elements of the story persist in his opera Parsifal.
“Die Sieger” enters the record as draft sketch for an opera text by Richard Wagner. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sieger, draft and sketch can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Die Sieger” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Sieger, draft and sketch provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5274434. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1856, 1858, 1844 and 1857.
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This entry incorporates text from “Die Sieger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.