Richard Wagner's works for the stage, representing more than 50 years of creative life, comprise his 13 completed operas and a similar number of failed or abandoned projects. His first effort, begun when he was 13, was a prose drama,
Leubald, but thereafter all his works were conceived as some form of musical drama. It has been suggested that Wagner's wish to add incidental music to
Leubald, in the manner of
Beethoven's treatment of
Goethe's drama
Egmont, may have been the initial stimulus that directed him to musical composition.