Elegie or Schmachtend. WWV93

Wilhelm Richard Wagner 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).

Wagner's Bicentenary (May 22th 1813-2013)

This one page piece is also known as "Schmachtend" ("Languishing"). Some say this was one of Wagner's last compositions (December 26th 1881) but others that Wagner was in the midst of composing Tristan und Isolde when he wrote this achingly beautiful page in 1858 and its desolate harmonies anticipate the most austare late work of his father in law Franz Liszt.
Music below.

His operas in order;
http://www.operafolio.com/list_of_operas.asp?n=Richard_Wagner