Wagner himself gave his “Ring” (as it is often called for short) the subtitle “Bühnenfestspiel” (bee-nen-fest-speel), or stage-festival play. It was in the summer of 1876 that he first gave it to the world, in a specially constructed theater in Bayreuth, Bavaria; and he did this in accordance with a plan conceived by him as a necessity more than a quarter of a century before.
To understand why he regarded such a festival as a necessity we must know something about the operatic situation at the time when he composed this colossal and revolutionary work. The originators of Italian opera, who lived at Florence three centuries ago, held that the play (or libretto) in an opera was as important as the music. In their eagerness to make it possible for the hearer to understand every word of the text they banished all flowing melody in favor of a dry recitative, halfway between speech and song, one of them actually boasting of their “noble contempt for melody.”
INTERIOR, BAYREUTH OPERA HOUSE
This, naturally, led to a reaction, which went so far to the side of melody that finally nobody listened except when the prima donna or the tenor sang a brilliant aria, the play being entirely ignored.
FELIX MOTTL
One of the leading conductors at the early festival performances at Bayreuth
Efforts to curb the singers and restore the play to honor were made by several composers, the most important of them being Gluck (1714-1787). So thoroughly was he imbued with the importance of the play in an opera that he once wrote, “Before I begin to work I try to forget above all things that I am a musician.” Yet in his operas, too, the arias remain the principal points of interest, as they do in the operas of his successors, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Mozart, Weber.
