The End of Convention



On this very date in eighteen hundred thirteen

A very unconventional composer came into being

Richard Wagner first saw daylight in Leipzig ...

By twenty ... he'd written his first operatic jig



Following The Fairies ... came Forbidden Love

Written out of the passion for his own first dove

Marrying Minna Planer, then writing Rienzi ...

(His second passionate work many would envy)



Then, whilst crossing the Channel in thirty-nine

Whilst sailing to London - penned the most fine

The Flying Dutchman was completed in France

For Wagner only stayed a week, then advanced



And in eighteen forty two - moved to Dresden ...

Where he'd become a conductor, and then pen

Tannhauser ... the most ambitious opera ever

Which did not initially win him any feathers ...



And so the Court Theater refused to produce ...

Lohengrin ... and so Liszt did ... what could he lose? 

For the Hungarian composer had already shown ...

Tannhauser at Weimar, even tho it was overblown



In Switzerland ... Wagner wrote a four-opera series

Based upon an epic German poem - Nibelungenlied

Beginning at the end of the story with the first ...

Gotterdammerung, The Twilight of the Gods, was terse ...



So he followed it up with the third part - Siegfried

Which helped, but there was still more need ...

So the third and fourth parts were written together

Das Rheingold and Die Walkure were tethered ...



Then came the famous work - Tristran and Isolde

Based upon the legendary Arthurian knight's role

In rescuing Iseult from the arms of his uncle Mark

Who'd sent Tristram to get her to be his bridal spark



And then he'd fallen madly in love with the damsel

(Actually - because of a potion with a magic spell)

Which reflected his own new love for another lady

Eventually causing his marital breakup and trading

 

... Minna in on a newer model - Cosima Von Bulow

Liszt's daughter was not doing well with hubby Guido

So she chucked in the pianist/conductor to bestow ...

All her love on her Dad's oldest friend, a man to know



Who then wrote Siegfried Idyll - really for Cosima

Followed by one based on the Holy Grail - Parsifal

Which'd be the last of the Wagnerian music dramas

For he died six months after producing Parsifal's arias



Leaving in his wake a vastly different form of opera ...

Dramas evolving thru music with a leading motive are 

A style which had never really been seen before ...

Now all art since has been influenced by his store ...



- Tristram



© Christopher W. Thomas

5:45pm Saturday, May 22nd, 1999