Wagner's Opera Research Articles

GESTURE AND SCENERY IN MODERN OPERA

IN discussing the modern production of it is unnecessary to go beyond Wagner. Wagner, who left nothing as he found it, not only started the producers upon a new career, he also provided them with a philosophy which purported to raise a respectable handicraft to the level of a deep, hieratic mystery. We find in Wagner's Opera and Drama a clearer suggestion of that shadow-show towards which Mr. Gordon-Craig is now groping than is contained in any of the modern books. In stage-craft, as in music and song, Wagner, who simply sets out to prove that his own dramas were the only possible dramas, proved more than he was aware of. His deep discussion of the function of gesture and stage representation in opera still remains the most convenient point from which to approach the most modern developments. Opera and Drama is perhaps the greatest piece of special pleading in literature. Those critics who have been content to exclaim against its portentous, hopeless and needless difficultywho see in Wagner's prose works little more than a deplorable evidence of the author's pugnacity and conceit-have chosen to deny themselves much light and wisdom. It is true that, if Wagner's operas were destroyed, Wagner's prose works would be unintelligible. But the difficulty of Wagner's prose works almost disappears if we read them as foot-notes and prefaces to his musicdramas. Wagner's prose works in every line and paragraph have a direct bearing upon his own practise. The vast and general statements which sprawl across his pages seemingly without system-statements which to the casual reader are formless and vague-become quite definite and clear when we remember that Wagner is writing, not a self-supporting thesis as he cunningly pretends, but an apt and strictly pertinent defence of some particular musical or literary habit of his own. Wagner in his writings upon is vague and general, and leaves out all the instances which might clinch his propositions, because he is thinking always of his own works-of a passage in Tristan or Siegfried-and does not realise that the general reader is usually a less complete Wagnerian than Wagner. Besides, it would

Wagner's First Grand Opera (From the German.)

Wagner's First Grand Opera (From the German.)

The Mastersingers of Nuremberg. An Analysis of Richard Wagner's Opera (Continued)

The Mastersingers of Nuremberg. An Analysis of Richard Wagner's Opera (Continued)

The Mastersingers of Nuremberg. An Analysis of Richard Wagner's Opera

The Mastersingers of Nuremberg. An Analysis of Richard Wagner's Opera

Introductory to the Study of Wagner's Comic Opera, “Die Meistersinger Von Nürnberg.”

It is not many years since Wagner was frequently spoken of by his friends as the “best-abused musician in Europe.” And so he was; for in almost any circle of musicians mention of his name acted like a red rag upon a bull, and gave rise to all kinds of invectives. Happily for himself and his admirers, he has lived down prejudice, and certainly may now be regarded as the best protected, if not also the best paid among living composers. Throughout the civilised world his works have evoked a far larger amount of attention than those of any other composer have ever done during his lifetime. The interest in them may therefore be regarded as universal. Indeed, thus much has been admitted even by the most determined of his opponents. Under these circumstances I feel that I need not apologise, as I should have had to have done some few years ago, for having made choice of one of Wagner's operas as a subject to bring before the Musical Association. My excuse, if an excuse be needed, for giving the preference to “Die Meistersinger,” rests on the fact of its being one of those of Wagner's operas which have not yet been performed in this country, and on the good probability there seems to be of its being brought to a hearing in London at no distant date.