WOLF, HUGO ( b. Windischgraz, Austria, 13 March 1869; d. Vienna, 22 February, 1903. )
Apart from a single opera, Der Corregidor (The Mayor, but usually known in English as The Three-Cornered Hat), (1895), Wolf composed little other than songs. His family background was not musical. However his parents, though not wealthy, managed to send him to Vienna to study at the Conservatory.
While still a student, he managed to get Wagner's opinion of his compositions, which was not complimentary. He worked on, despite clashes with his teachers which caused him to be expelled from the Conservatory. Eventually he found his form in Lieder, which he continued to compose throughout his brief life.
Temperamentally, Wolf was sensitive and depressive. He was subject to mood-swings, which made him a difficult companion and led to unhappy and unsuccessful relationships. Yet it was human relationships - and particularly love-affairs - which seem to have unleashed his most creative and prolific song writing.
In the 1880s, in order raise some money, he started to write reviews for the prestigious Wiener Salonblatt. His unconcealed prejudices against the works of particular composers made him many enemies. But he also found supporters for his own compositions and his work was accepted by a highly-respected publishing house.
His supporters included both singers and wealthy patrons. Unfortunately, Wolf was temperamentally incapable of avoiding ill-advised love affairs with singers and patrons alike. By the late 1890s emotional confusion and conflicts of loyalty had begun to affect his ability to compose.
The Three Cornered Hat, with a libretto by an amateur poetess, premièred in 1895. It received public approval but Wolf himself disliked it and behaved very badly towards the cast. It had only two performances, after which it was not revived.
By now Wolf was beginning to show symptoms of the syphilis of which he would die. Despite this he continued to write songs, and determined to write another opera. Manucel Venegas was still unfinished, however, when he became convinced that he, rather than the composer Gustav Mahler, was director of the Imperial Opera. To the horror of his friends, he turned up at the theatre, attempting to throw Mahler out.
In 1897 he was committed to a private asylum. After a series of treatments and readmissions he himself begged to be reconfined. He died in an institution shortly before his forty-third birthday.
