Wagner In Rehearsal 1875 1876

A renowned music scholar narrates the social history of European opera during its golden age in the 18th and 19th centuries by taking readers behind the scenes at the premiere performances of five extraordinary and influential operas. 88 illustrations.

For Richard Wagner, the summer months of 1875 and 1876 were among the most critical of his life: the months of organization and rehearsals for the first presentation of his Ring cycle of operas. Several Wagner biographers make reference to his close friend and associate, the ballet master Richard Fricke, as the one who solved the problems and provided the coolness and common sense required for dealing with artistic emergencies. Fricke's diaries of this period were printed posthumously in 1906 as Bayreuth vor dreissig Jahren, and were considered of sufficient interest and importance to warrant reprinting in 1983 as Richard Wagner auf der Probe. Translated by George Fricke, the great-grandson of Richard Fricke, Wagner in Rehearsal 1875-1876 represent an invaluable and unique source of information about the composer's preparations for the Ring premiere. It also provides interesting insights into Wagner's concepts of dance, gesture and the body in general. With contributions by Liszt scholar James Deaville (historical introduction, annotations, bibliography, index), this work also sheds sheds significant light upon the world of Franz Liszt.

Richard Wagner is remembered as one of the most influential figures in music and theatre, but his place in history has been marked by a considerable amount of controversy. His attitudes towards the Jews and the appropriation of his operas by the Nazis, for example, have helped to construct a historical persona that sits uncomfortably with modern sensibilities. Yet Wagner's absolutely central position in the operatic canon continues. This volume serves as a timely reminder of his ongoing musical, cultural, and political impact. Contributions by specialists from such varied fields as musical history, German literature and cultural studies, opera production, and political science consider a range of topics, from trends and problems in the history of stage production to the representations of gender and sexuality. With the inclusion of invaluable and reliably up-to-date biographical data, this collection will be of great interest to scholars, students, and enthusiasts.

Offers histories of music drama beginning with Wagner's Parsifal and then looking at works by Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Luigi Dallapiccola, Luigi Nono and Hans Werner Henze.

Richard Wagner: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography concerning both the nature of primary sources related to the composer and the scope and significance of the secondary sources which deal with him, his compositions, and his influence as a composer and performer.

Seven leading international writers discuss the genesis, libretto and music, and performance and reception history of Wagner's Tristan.

For two centuries, Gesamtkunstwerk—the ideal of the “total work of art”—has exerted a powerful influence over artistic discourse and practice, spurring new forms of collaboration and provoking debates over the political instrumentalization of art. Despite its popular conflation with the work of Richard Wagner, Gesamtkunstwerk’s lineage and legacies extend well beyond German Romanticism, as this wide-ranging collection demonstrates. In eleven compact chapters, scholars from a variety of disciplines trace the idea’s evolution in German-speaking Europe, from its foundations in the early nineteenth century to its manifold articulations and reimaginings in the twentieth century and beyond, providing an uncommonly broad perspective on a distinctly modern cultural form.