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Der
Fliegende Holländer
(1841) was less successful. It was based on Heine's version of
the legend of the Flying Dutchman, a legendary phantom ship, and
it foreshadows the idea, developed in Tannhäuser
(1843–44) and prevalent in later works, of redemption by love.
Tannhäuser, based in part on the actual life of Tannhäuser,
and Lohengrin (1846–48) brought the German romantic
opera to culmination. In Lohengrin, Wagner for the first
time is more interested in his characters as symbols than as
actual personages in a drama.
Wagner participated in the Revolution of 1848, fled Dresden, and
with the help of Liszt escaped to Switzerland, where he stayed
eight years. There he wrote essays, including Oper und Drama
(1851), in which he began to articulate aesthetic principles
that would guide his subsequent work.
Der Ring des Nibelungen
(1853–74), his tetralogy based on the Nibelungenlied, embodies
the most complete adherence to his stated principles. In 1857,
having completed the composition of the first two works of the
cycle, Das Rheingold (1853–54) and Die Walküre
(1854–56), and two acts of Siegfried (1856–69),
Wagner laid the Ring aside without hope of ever seeing it
performed and composed Tristan und Isolde (1857–59) and
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1862–67), his only
comic opera. Tristan, based on the legend of Tristam and
Isolde, was so utterly in opposition to the operatic conventions
of the day that it required the intercession and support of
Louis II of Bavaria to have it produced (1865) in Munich.
In 1872 Wagner moved to Bayreuth, where in 1874 he completed the
third act of Siegfried and all of Götterdämmerung,
the last work of the Ring cycle. There he was able to
build a theater, Das Festspielhaus, adequate for the proper
performance of his works, in which the complete Ring was
presented in 1876. At Bayreuth, Wagner entertained the great
musicians of his day. Parsifal (1877-82) was his last
work. He died in 1883.
Wagner indulged in much financial foolishness and in the end
enjoyed considerable critical success. Although during his
lifetime opposition to him and to his ideas went to fantastic
lengths, Wagner's operas held a position of complete dominance
in the next generation, retaining their enormous popularity in
the 20th cent. |
