Götterdämmerung - 'Siegfried's Death and Funeral March'.[HD]

Münchner Philharmoniker conducted by Sergui Celibidache (live performance 3 & 4 February 1993).
The Swan King: Ludwig II of Bavaria.
Ludwig II’s short life was steeped in tragic irony. Through his idealistic quest for romance and his fixation with Bavarian myths and legends, most tellingly with the Grail stories of Lohengrin - so potently incarnated in Wagner’s operas - the Swan King became more fabled than the very legends he sought to recreate. Yet in his desire to escape from a cloistered upbringing and the stale pattern of his adult life as king and his subsequent neglect of Bavaria at such a fragile period in its history, Ludwig planted the seeds of his own undoing - exposing himself to the treachery of factions unnerved by his eccentricity, extravagance, and luminous vision. Ludwig II’s death marked the passing of the old Bavaria and the birth of a new order, yet his legend lives on, a nineteenth century King Arthur, a man surpassed by his own mythological persona.
One of the most enigmatic figures of the 19th century, described by Verlaine as "the only true king of his century". A man of wildly eccentric temperament and touched by a rare, imaginative genius, Ludwig II of Bavaria is remembered both for his patronage of Richard Wagner and for the fabulous palaces which he created as part of a dream-world to escape the responsibilities of state. In the realization of his fantasies, he created a ferment of creativity among artists and craftsmen, while his neglect of Bavaria's political interests made powerful enemies among those critical of his self-indulgence and excesses. At the age of 40, declared insane in a plot to depose him, Ludwig died in mysterious circumstances.
The "ideal monarchical poetic solitude" which the king chose for himself was not in the long run compatible with his duties as a head of state. The new settings he was constantly devising for himself were equally beyond the private means of a king. Ludwig failed through his desire to anchor his illusions and dreams in reality.
From 1885 onward foreign banks threatened to seize his property. The king's refusal to react rationally led the government to declare him insane and depose him in 1886 - a procedure not provided for in the Bavarian constitution. Ludwig II was interned in Berg Palace.
On June 13, 1886, just three days after he had been deposed, Ludwig and Von Gudden (the psychiatrist who had certified him as insane) went for a walk on the banks of a lake in a palace garden. Neither was seen alive again. Their bodies were retrieved from the shallows of the lake a few hours later, with Von Gudden’s showing signs of being attacked. Ludwig’s death was attributed to drowning although no water was found in his lungs and he was a strong swimmer.
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