Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 25, 2025
But consider how little is done in the second act and in the third. These two portions of the music-drama are more symphonic than operatic, and it is small wonder that in the days when good folk expected to see opera when they went into an opera-house, they thought they had been diddled when they were given Tristan for their money.
It has been done with "Tannhauser," though it is, to all intents and purposes, an opera of the conventional type, and not what is called a "music-drama." The reminiscent use of themes is much older than Wagner.
In the emission of a mellow tone, the use of the portamento, in the treatment of scales, of trills, and of other ornaments, and in facile vocalization in general, all nations can learn from the Italians. But the Italian method does not go far enough. It does not meet the demands of the modern opera and the modern music-drama.
Now a longer interval seemed to promise a more careful, a more ambitious work, and when "Aïda" was produced at Cairo , it was at once acknowledged that a revolution had taken place in Verdi's mind and method, which might produce still greater results. The influence of Wagner and the music-drama is distinctly to be felt. But Verdi was apparently not yet satisfied.
So, I'm neither logical nor sincere; nevertheless, I maintain the opinion that absolute music, not programme, not music-drama, is the apogee of the art. A Beethoven string quartet holds more genuine music for me than the entire works of Wagner. There's a prejudiced statement for you! Second: I fear and dislike the music of Arnold Schoenberg, who may be called the Max Stirner of music.
In the beginning it was music-drama of a pedantic kind; then it served as the opportunity for setting singers to deliver a series of beautiful songs for the delectation of an audience largely seated in the wings; and finally Gluck, with his immense dramatic instinct and lack of lyrical invention, saw that by securing a story worth the telling, and telling it well, and inserting songs and concerted pieces only in situations where strong feelings demanded expression, and making his songs truthful expressions of those feelings, a form might be created which would enable him to lever out the best that was in him.
What else is all this but old-fashioned Italian opera with a new name? What else but an inartistic mixture of Scribe libretto and Northern mythology? Music-drama fudge! Making music that one can see is a death-blow to a lofty idealization of the art. Puzzled by the richness of Rentgen's vocabulary, by his want of logic, Alixe asked herself many times whether she was wrong and her husband right.
Mazarin would that she had sung and danced here in Stuttgart! She might have surprised the composer but New York is yet to hear Elektra as music-drama. But not Don Quixote, so full of irony, humour, and pathos; not Elektra, in the strictest sense of the word a melodrama, and certainly not the prankish and ever inimitable Till Eulenspiegel.
However, Bayreuth has done a great service, and now what becomes of it matters to no one. Bayreuth was opened with performances of the Ring, that enormous music-drama which consists of three huge music-dramas and a shorter one. Now, it was the Ring more than any other of Wagner's works which led to him being misunderstood, and afforded opportunities for misrepresentation.
He has also written several songs and piano pieces, and, it is now reported, is engaged upon a dramatic composition called "The Royal Children." He is regarded in Germany as the one composer who gives promise of continuing and developing the scheme of the music-drama as it was propounded by Wagner.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking