Summary: As part of Radio 3's Wagner week, Tom Service travels to Switzerland to explore Richard Wagner's life before Bayreuth - his years as a poltical exile in Zurich, and at the Wagner family home at Tribschen on the shores of Lake Lucerne. Tom's guides to Wagner's Swiss years are the authors Chris Walton and Eva Rieger. He also meets Wagner's great-granddaughter Dagny Beidler, and the director of the Zurich Festival Elmar Weingarten. Stephen Evans reports on Wagner's complex relationship with his home town of Leipzig, and Leipzig Opera's music director Ulf Schirmer makes the connection between the early operas he wrote there and his mature works.
