Die deutsche monumentale Oper nach Wagner

Loos, Helmut (2011) Die deutsche monumentale Oper nach Wagner. Studia Musicologica, 52 (1-4). pp. 363-372. ISSN 1788-6244

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Abstract

Opera is an exceedingly multiform and multilayered genre which has in its disposition as Gesamtkunstwerk not only to meet the most varied artistic demands, but which because of the great spiritual and pecuniary expenditure necessary for its production, also takes a highly exposed position in the sociocultural environment of its birth and performance. As courtly opera it served the representation and increase of dynastic glory, in the guise of the German Singspiel it strengthened bourgeois self-esteem and as rescue opera it compensated collective anxiety states. The early romantic claim of music to be considered as Kunstreligion was transferred to opera by Richard Wagner who as Ludwig van Beethoven’s self-appointed heir catapulted himself in the position of a Führer of the bourgeois society with the aim to give through his works trend-setting impulses for its further development. His adaptations of German myths exerted a dominating influence and have found a diversified following. As componists of monumental operas are primarily to be named August Bungert, Felix von Weingartner, Felix Draeseke, Max von Schillings, Cyrill Kistner and last but not least Richard Strauss.

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