Abstract
This essay is not so much a discussion of one particular opera as of an ‘opera novel’ which portrays the triumph of opera over music drama, genres identified particularly with two exact contemporaries: Verdi and Wagner. Franz Werfel's book Verdi, published in 1924, eschews earlier expressionist excesses and is original in its championship of Verdi at a time when Wagner seemed to triumph. Verdi's art, for Werfel, is republican par excellence, drawing its roots from the Italian tradition of song; Wagner on the contrary derives from German Romanticism and speaks to devoted acolytes. Thomas Mann's enthusiastic praise for the work guarantees that it is not crudely simplistic but a subtle and stimulating analysis.
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