poet-composer's

Updated: May 20, 2025

The Wagnerian list presents something like a parallel, and it would be a pleasant thing if two of the modern poet-composer's dramas which have community of subject could be brought into similar association, so that one might be performed as a sequel to the other. The operas are "Lohengrin" and "Parsifal."

Henry Edward Krehbiel - A Book of Operas : Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music

There are texts in the prefatory excerpt for a discussion of "Tannhauser" from all the points of view which might make such a discussion interesting and profitable. There is no doubt in my mind that it is the poet-composer's noblest tragedy and, from a literary point of view, his most artistic.

Henry Edward Krehbiel - A Book of Operas : Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music

These are the folklore elements in Wagner's "Parsifal." It is plain that they might have been wrought into a drama substantially like that which was the poet-composer's last gift to art without loss of either dignity or beauty. Then his drama would have been like a glorified fairy play, imposing and of gracious loveliness, and there would have been nothing to quarrel about.

Henry Edward Krehbiel - A Book of Operas : Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music

An expository note may, however, profitably be added in the poet-composer's own words: "Goethe places around Faust at the beginning of the scene four ghostly figures, who utter strange and obscure words.

Henry Edward Krehbiel - A Book of Operas : Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music