Page 227 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

Wagner found a safe haven in Switzerland, which was to be his home, on and off, for the next dozen years. Having read the recently published edition of the Germanic epic entitled Niebelungenlied (Song of the Nibelungs), Wagner began to imagine a complex of music dramas on a vast and unprecedented scale. What he ultimately created was Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelungs), a set of four operas, now called the Ring cycle, intended to be performed during the course of four successive evenings. As with Tolkien’s tril- ogy The Lord of the Rings, Wagner’s Ring cycle involves wizards, goblins, giants, dragons, and sword-wielding heroes. Both sagas also revolve around a much- coveted ring, which offers its possessor unparalleled power, but also carries a sinister curse. And as with Tolkien’s tale, Wagner’s story is of epic length. Das Rheingold, the first opera, lasts two and a half hours; Die Walküre and Siegfried each runs nearly four and a half hours; the finale, Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), goes on for no less than five and a half hours. Wagner began the Ring cycle in 1853 and did not finish until 1874, perhaps the longest-running project by a single creator in the history of art.
Most composers make music to fit the context (performance place) in which it is to be heard. But Wagner was no ordinary composer. When producers refused to mount his epic, fantastical operas, megalomaniac Wagner solicited money from a king and built his own performance opera house at Bayreuth, Germany (Figure 13.8). His was the first hall to have an orchestral pit, the first to dim the lights during performance, and the first not to admit late-comers— Wagner would suffer no distractions from his art.
The first performance of Wagner’s Ring cycle took place at Bayreuth in August 1876, the first time these operas had been heard as a group. Following Wagner’s death in 1883, his remains were interred on the grounds of the Wagner villa in Bayreuth. Still controlled by descendants of Wagner today, the Bayreuth Festival continues to stage annually the music dramas of Wagner—and only Wagner. Tickets cost upwards of $500 apiece,
and the wait to get them can stretch from five to
ten years. Yet each summer, nearly 60,000 Wag-
nerites make the pilgrimage to this theatrical
shrine to venerate one of art’s most determined,
and ruthless, visionaries.
Wagner’s “Music Dramas”
With few exceptions, Wagner composed only
opera, ignoring typical concert hall genres such
as the symphony and concerto. But he wanted
his opera to be radically different, so he gave
it a new name: music drama. Wagner’s music
drama differs from conventional Italian opera
in three important ways. First, Wagner removed ensemble singing almost en- tirely; duets, trios, choruses, and full-cast finales became extremely rare. Sec- ond, Wagner did away with the traditional Italian “numbers opera,” in which separate, closed units, such as aria and recitative, are strung together. Instead, he wrote an undifferentiated stream of solo singing and declamation, what is
Figure 13.8
Bayreuth Festival Theater, an opera house built especially to produce the music dramas of Richard Wagner—and only Wagner
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