Opera and Drama

by Richard Wagner, Curtis Bowman (Translator)

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Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Essays

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Germanic legends often based romantic operas of especially known composer Richard Wagner, who worked Tannhäuser (1845) and the tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (1853-1876).

From 1872, Richard Wagner lived at Bayreuth to 1883 and designed the opera house, used chiefly for performances of his works.

Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).

Wilhelm Richard Wagner conducted, directed theater, and authored essays, primarily for his later called "music dramas." Unlike most other greats, Wagner wrote the scenario and libretto.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard...

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is very interesting to hear Wagner’s though process behind the conception of his Music Dramas.

That said, it is overly long, and sections of it—particularly as he is tracing the development of drama, speech, and even music—seem to just be fantasy to fit his own Mythos.

I must admit I have a hard time taking him seriously because of his tremendous ego, nationalism, and antisemitism.

[EasyReader · Rating 2 out of 5]

I admit to skimming many sections, because the pedantic style was very difficult. Volume 1 is very, "personal" history of basically all of western music, with a focus on the elements that combine to create opera. I am familiar with music history, and he simply is giving his aesthetic opinion without any historical reference. It is not an analysis, but rather an apologia -- starting with his conclusion and making broad statements that "support" that conclusion. There are enough straw man arguments to supply the scarecrow industry for a thousand years. Volume 2 does the same for western drama, and has a few interesting sections, but by and large it is also an aesthetic critique divorced from historical scholarship. The sections on legend (Greek, Christian, German) are probably worth a read. Volume 3 is where it really gets down to details. It presents his experience -- I'd hardly call it a theory, and neither does he -- in combining drama ("poetry") with music. There are detailed analyses of the relation of words to music, and of drama to the various components of music, and many many other details that help in understanding Wagner's approach. But the presentation is overly long. Overall, I found the volume lacking in analytic rigor, and overly long. I am not going to critique his rather strange and sometimes abhorrent analogies as the point of reading this is to understand where he was coming from. (Here is one example. Music is female: Italian music is a harlot, French is a Coquette, German is a Prude. Because music is female it is only completed by the male "drama", and must be the means by which the male "conception" is "delivered". Perhaps for the audience of his day he had to go to such great lengths and these analogies were acceptable, but for our day they are problematic. So, in sum, worth skimming and reading certain sections if you want to know more about Wagner's music, but even so, reading the whole thing closely would be only mildly rewarding.

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

It might be the particular translation I have, but a lot of the German psychology and art terms were retained so I had to constantly use Google to translate. Basically, this is a treatise of how much Wagner hated his contemporaries. He felt other composers were selling out to the opera houses and their demands to sell more tickets. They were knocking out operas too fast with just a few catchy tunes without devoting time to develop each piece in total; music, story and dramatic and vocal performance. Wagner thought a lot of himself and this work was a way for him to rant.

[Melissa Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

A VERY LONG and rambling treatise on Wagner's philosophy of operatic art. I struggled to focus on his arguments, mostly because of his writing style. If you need to know his views on the dramatic musical, and a bit about his views on society and religion, this is a go-to resource.

[David Withun · Rating 4 out of 5]

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