“Compulsive plague! pain without end!” How Richard Wagner played out his migraine in the opera Siegfried

The medical problems of composer and poet Richard Wagner have been widely investigated. He is known to have had functional disorders, skin disorders, acute infections, and minor ailments, as well as heart disease.1 2 3 4 However, the condition that Wagner described as the “main plague of his life”5 was recurring headaches. The details presented in his writings and letters5 6 7 as well as the numerous diary records of his second wife, Cosima,8 9 confirm that Wagner had a severely disabling migraine disorder producing frequent migraine attacks, sometimes with aura.10 Here, we show how Wagner deeply interwove his migraine attacks and auras into his music and libretti, using the opera Siegfried (1876), the third part of the Ring Cycle, as an example.