The Unending Melody.—Beginning with Lohengrin, Wagner abandoned fixed forms and substituted what he called unending melody, a practically continuous flow of tone divided alike between voices and instruments. For the most part he assigned the singer a declamation as far removed from the set aria on the one hand as it was from dry recitative of the early Italian opera on the other. Yet like the latter it was conditioned by principles of speech. Like the early composers, also, his subjects with but two exceptions were mythical or legendary. This, because the supernatural and the unreal correspond more closely with the ideal element introduced by the use of song for speech than material drawn from everyday experience or from the exact chronicles of history.
The Ring of the Nibelung.—In the old Teutonic folk-epic, the Nibelungen Lied (Lay of the Nibelung), Wagner found the inspiration for his next and most extended work. This is the great tetralogy, Der Ring des Nibelung (The Ring of the Nibelung), composed of four dramas designed for continuous representation: Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold), Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried, Die Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods). It was begun and partially finished during his stay in Switzerland, but his discouragement over what he felt to be the hopeless task of ever securing its performance led him to abandon it and to set to work on another drama which he decided should be lighter in character and less difficult to execute, in order the more readily to find acceptance.
Tristan and Isolde.—The result of this resolution was Tristan und Isolde, but far from being a return to his earlier style, as he had planned, it was and probably still is the most intricate operatic score in existence. It was accepted by the Opera in Vienna, but after fifty-seven rehearsals the singers declared themselves unable to learn it and it was given up as impossible of execution. Three years after his return to Germany an unlooked-for change took place in his fortunes. The young king of Bavaria, Ludwig II, who had just ascended the throne, had been an ardent admirer of Wagner since as a boy of fifteen he had heard Lohengrin. Hardly had he taken his seat before he summoned the discouraged composer to Munich and assured him support and protection. Tristan und Isolde was soon brought out (1865), and Wagner busied himself with the composition of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Master Singers of Nuremberg), produced in 1868.
Die Meistersinger.—This is his only comic work, full of hitherto unsuspected humor and geniality. The story of the young poet endeavoring to gain admission to the jealously-guarded ranks of the master singers who, notwithstanding the beauty of his song, reject him because he has violated their hide-bound rules has a distinctly autobiographic value. Wagner had endured too much from similar pedants to be lenient with the picture he drew of their prototypes in medieval Nuremberg. As strikingly diatonic in style as Tristan und Isolde is chromatic, these two works are the strongest illustrations of his versatility.
Bayreuth and the Festival Theatre.—Wagner had long cherished the plan of a festival theatre for the performance of his Ring of the Nibelung. Jealousy of his favor with the king led to various intrigues which prevented the building of such a theatre in Munich. The quiet town of Bayreuth, therefore, as being a central point, was chosen, and there in 1876 the Festspielhaus was opened with the first complete performance of the Tetralogy. It made a profound impression, but the expense of the undertaking was so great that it resulted in a heavy loss and the theatre was closed for a number of years. In 1882, however, it reopened with Parsifal and since then its triumphant career has been part of musical history.
Parsifal.—Until 1903, when it was given in this country, Parsifal was heard only in Bayreuth. Its semi-sacred character, its mingling of religious mysticism and sorcery, its unrivaled stage effects, its overwhelming power of climax, the consummate art of its thematic construction have made it the most discussed of Wagner’s works. What place it may eventually hold in respect to the others can be decided only by time. As it is, it stands alone; a second Parsifal is hardly conceivable.
Influence of Wagner.—Unlike Weber, Wagner did not create a school—he belonged to the school which Weber founded. Like Gluck, his influence permeated all schools but to a much greater extent; none has succeeded in escaping it. Thus far in Germany it has been felt more in the development of program music, the symphonic poem, etc., than in the music drama itself. Many have attempted to follow directly in his steps, among them August Bungert (1846———) with a cycle of music dramas, Die Homerische Welt (The World of Homer), founded upon the Iliad and the Odyssey, and Richard Strauss (1864———) with his Guntram, Feuersnoth (Fire Famine) and Salome, but none has yet shown the power to bend the bow of Achilles. Engelbert Humperdinck (1854———) is the only one of Wagner’s successors to develop a new phase of the music drama. This he did by applying it to the fairy tale in his Hänsel und Gretel (1893), which soon found its way to all stages, the first German opera to have such a success since the death of Wagner.
Wagner in France.—In France, Wagner acted at first not so much directly as indirectly, and more in his connection with the Romantic school of Weber than through his individual style as revealed in the music drama. The characteristic conservatism of the French school was shown in holding to forms which had been fixed for generations, but little by little these were filled with the new romantic spirit. This comes to the fore in Charles Gounod (1818-1893), whose Faust (1859) has exercised a strong and lasting influence on the lyric drama in France. Though set forms are not abandoned, they are closely joined by a melodious declamation which approaches the song-speech of Wagner; the orchestration, too, is unmistakably romantic in treatment. Georges Bizet (1838-1875) in Carmen (1875), an opéra comique notwithstanding its tragic denouement, produced a work of great individuality, which shows even more plainly the influence of modern romanticism. Had the composer’s career not been cut short by his untimely death, it is possible that the French school would have maintained a more commanding position. For Paris no longer holds her former preëminence as operatic centre; she has been distanced by Bayreuth. Of late years the works that have had the most pronounced success in the French capital have been Wagner’s music dramas. A little more than a generation ago, in the palmy days of Auber and Meyerbeer, a success at the Grand Opéra or the Opéra Comique had an international import and meant a speedy transference to foreign stages. Now the interest is largely local; but few of the modern French operas are heard outside of France. The influence of Wagner is evident in a new French school, consisting in the main of young composers whose works manifest strongly transitional features. At present this school is in its storm and stress period; it is yet too early to forecast its ultimate effect.
Wagner in Italy.—Italy proved more responsive to Wagner’s influence than France. The performance of Lohengrin (1868), in Bologna, created much enthusiasm among the young musicians of northern Italy, but it was the septuagenarian Verdi who inaugurated the era of the music drama by his Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). Strictly speaking, he had been anticipated by Arrigo Boïto (1842———), who, thrown under Wagner’s influence in Germany, had followed his example in being the poet and composer alike of Mefistofele (1868), a version of the Faust legend. But this was Boïto’s only opera, and though he gave the initial impulse to the movement, it was Verdi who carried it to a triumphant issue.
Verdi’s Latest Style.—Aïda had been a grand opera with strong musico-dramatic tendencies. In Otello and Falstaff, Verdi made a definite entrance into the music drama. The latter in particular, founded on Shakespeare’s “Merry Wives of Windsor,” is an astonishing tour de force for a man of four-score years. Full of the sparkle and freshness of youth, yet in every measure revealing the ripeness of matured genius, it is one of an immortal trio of lyric comedies of which the others are Mozart’s Figaro and Wagner’s Meistersinger. The set and traditional forms of the opera here disappear entirely; the music is conditioned by the text and its dramatic requirements; the orchestra supports the voices in a full, melodious, and comprehensive flow, but never overpowers them. Hardly anything can be detached from its context without losing significance and interest; and this, by the way, is one of the most distinctive peculiarities of the music drama and more than anything else points the radical difference between it and the opera. Yet though this change of manner is undoubtedly due to Wagner, Verdi is in no sense an imitator. The style remains his own and is essentially Italian in character—that is, it is based upon vocal rather than instrumental capabilities.