Existing comment:
Richard Wagner: German Opera:
Although the first German-language operas date from the early seventeenth century, German composers did not completely break from the dominance of Italian opera for another two hundred years. During the eighteenth century the "Singspiel" (sung play) was the most popular form of musical stage entertainment in Germany. It featured spoken dialogue and musical numbers that ranged from simple songs to fully operatic arias (elaborate solos) and vocal ensembles. The form reached its pinnacle in 1791 with Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791), who was equally successful with his Italian-style operas, such as Don Giovanni (1787).
By the 1820s, German opera drew increasingly on the rich Germanic literary heritage. In the 1840s Richard Wagner (1813–1883) began to develop "music dramas" that combined every aspect of the operatic production into a single vision, his own. Wagner became the towering figure of German opera, and his four-opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), was the most complete expression of his artistic philosophy. By redefining the operatic genre and widening its musical vocabulary, Wagner paved the way for twentieth-century operas such as the masterpieces of Alban Berg (1885–1935). |