Wagner and music drama

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Genre

Wagner and music drama · Richard Wagner no longer wanted opera made up of separate numbers, but a continuous music drama in which music, text and stage form a single whole. Characters and ideas were given a recognisable motif of their own, the leitmotif, with which the orchestra helps tell the story. In Tristan und Isolde (1865), Wagner postpones the resolution of his dissonant chords for hours. In 1876, his own festival theatre opened in Bayreuth with the complete Ring des Nibelungen.

Listening

• 
  Tristan und Isolde: Vorspiel (Philharmonia Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler) · Richard Wagner, 1859
• 
  Die Walküre: Walkürenritt (Wiener Philharmoniker, Georg Solti) · Richard Wagner, 1856
• 
  Lohengrin: Vorspiel zum 3. Akt (Symphonieorchester des BR, Mariss Jansons) · Richard Wagner, 1848

See also

• Franz Liszt
• Romanticism
• Bel canto and Italian opera
• Late Romanticism