Opera

D

The Rise of Comic Opera

Yet another operatic development that spread from Naples across Europe was opera buffa (comic opera), the inevitable reaction to opera seria. Opera buffa was characterized by lighter (though not always comic) subject matter and by the use of speech in place of some or all of the recitative. It quickly traveled, to Vienna, Paris, and London. Naples had inherited a tradition of earthy comedy from the Spaniards, who ruled Naples during the 16th and 17th centuries. Although suppressed by teachers in music conservatories, this Spanish-influenced comedy proved irresistible to students. One of these students was Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, who at the age of 23 wrote a short comic opera, La serva padrona (1733), to serve as an intermezzo (intermezzi were commonly played between the acts of opera seria). There had been earlier intermezzi, but no intermezzo enjoyed the fantastic success of Pergolesi’s work. La serva padrona took as its subject current scandal rather than ancient heroism. Its characters were familiar from Italian commedia dell’arte, improvised comedies that featured stock comic figures such as the wily servant and the gullible old man. Its music was quick and tuneful, yet substantial.

The opera buffa of later Neapolitans such as Giovanni Paisiello and Domenico Cimarosa, who extended the intermezzo to full-opera length, owed much to La serva padrona, as did the comedies of Mozart. So did French opéra comique. Composers such as François Philidor and Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny of France and André Grétry of Belgium took to heart Pergolesi’s flouting of convention and evolved a simpler idiom, taking care, however, to use spoken dialogue in place of recitative.

E

Opera Reform

In the second half of the 18th century, a movement to reform opera took place, and it focused on the relationship between the music and the libretto. Its father was French writer and philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. A musician before he became a philosopher, Rousseau supported opera buffa and—in line with his back-to-nature philosophy—he demanded a return to simplicity in opera. In 1752, the year of the successful Paris production of La serva padrona, Rousseau composed his own comic opera, Le devin du village (The Village Sage), following it with a caustic “Letter on French Music” that singled out Rameau for particular abuse.

An influential pamphleteer of this time, Francesco Algarotti, laid down many of the ground rules for a reformed operatic style in his Essay on the Opera (1755). All elements of an opera, Algarotti argued, should be subordinate to the intrinsic demands of the dramatic subject. The drama, he wrote, ought “to delight the eyes and ears, to rouse up and to affect the hearts of an audience, with the risk of sinning against reason or common sense.” Five years later, Parisian choreographer Jean Georges Noverre called for similar reforms in ballet, which was cluttered with extravagances. Noverre called for a simpler vocabulary of gesture, one that allowed the ballet to express emotion and drama, rather than being an end in itself.

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The composer who put these reform principles into practice was Christoph Willibald Gluck of Germany. Like many revolutionaries, Gluck began conservatively. For years he turned out successful tragedies in the old style, switching to opéra comique out of convenience rather than conviction. Then Gluck fell under the influence of the reformist Ranieri di Calzabigi, who was determined to restore to operatic texts the natural power they had possessed in the days of the Florentine Camerata.

Gluck tested the reformist waters with his full-length, narrative ballet Don Juan (1761), then joined with Calzabigi to produce the opera that would become synonymous with reform, Orfeo ed Euridice (1762). Subsequently, the two collaborated on Alceste (1767) and Paride ed Elena (Paris and Helen, 1770). None won popular favor. In these works Gluck and Calzabigi cut back significantly on recitative, da capo arias, coloratura, and pageantry that were unrelated to the text. Orpheus’s “Che faro senza Euridice?” (“What will I do without Eurydice?”) and Alceste’s 'Divinites du Styx' show a pronounced concentration and purposefulness within the aria format. The music of these operas, vocally and instrumentally, underlines the text and—especially in the orchestral interludes—sets the scene with great forcefulness.

When Gluck moved to Paris and offered the same aesthetic in French, he enjoyed much greater success. Iphigénie en Aulide (1774) and its successor, Iphigénie en Tauride (1779), infused a reformed opera seria libretto with warmer harmonies taken from German practices and achieved a lyric nobility worthy of the plays by Greek dramatist Euripides on which the two operas were based. Gluck even reset a text employed by Lully, Armide (1777), daring to beat the old master on his own turf. Gluck’s mantle, and many of his stylistic traits, fell to Italian composer Antonio Salieri, who enjoyed similar success in Paris with his opera Les Danaïdes (1784).

If Gluck struggled to eliminate all that was unnecessary from opera seria, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart set out to supply all that was missing from opera buffa. He gave the form grace and humanity, even grandeur, often deepening the shadows to heighten the flashes of wit. He created in music that rare kind of comedy that can move an audience to tears. He was able to do so in part because of his early—almost uncanny—ability to assimilate and surpass the opera seria technique of Gluck. Mozart’s Mitridate (written in 1770, when he was 14) and Idomeneo (1781) are severe, dark, psychologically tortured dramas, expressed in music of indelible power. By the age of 20, Mozart had written some ten operas and was well prepared for the demanding audiences that awaited him in Vienna. His genius for characterization has never been surpassed.

A sophisticated childhood as a traveling musical prodigy exposed Mozart early to all kinds of music, including Neapolitan song, German counterpoint, and Viennese symphony. Out of these he forged a cosmopolitan operatic style, marked by a balance between solo and ensemble voices and between singers and orchestra. Right on the heels of Idomeneo came Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio, 1782), which both embraced and elevated the Singspiel, the German-language equivalent of opera buffa. Mozart laid out the usual elements of nobly suffering lovers, comic servant romances, and exotic peril in music unprecedented for its sophistication, elegance, and purposeful virtuosity. Even the comic villain, Osmin, is a figure of menacing vocal finesse. Mozart did not return to Singspiel until just before his death, with Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute, 1791). In this opera, the heavenly grandeur of the music for the characters who are considered enlightened complements the irresistible comic invention and endless good humor of their earthly counterparts. Librettist Emanuel Schickaneder not only presented Die Zauberflöte in his own theater but also played the comic lead of Papageno himself. With its mix of magic, allegory, romance, philosophy, and low comedy, Die Zauberflöte scored a triumph in its time, and the opera’s popularity continues unabated.

Between these two pillars of Singspiel stand three comic operas of unequaled achievement, fruits of Mozart’s collaboration with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. The collaborations of da Ponte and Mozart are marvels of verbal and musical invention working hand in glove. Their choice of subject matter put them well ahead of musical taste in Vienna, however, and the operas ran into some problems. Le Nozze di Figaro (1786) showed servants standing up to their masters at a time when revolutionary sentiments were brewing in France, and the relentless pursuit of women in Don Giovanni (1787) and the outright spouse-swapping of Così fan tutte (1790) offended moralists. Both Figaro and Don Giovanni were huge successes in Prague (in what is now the Czech Republic), the latter receiving its premiere there, but most of Mozart’s output fell into general neglect until the early 20th century, when major revivals finally made Mozart operas a staple of the opera repertory.

No one has ever duplicated the distinctive energy and delicate pathos that flowed from Mozart’s pen, but his breaking down and remolding of accepted forms inspired succeeding composers. His finales were of unprecedented scope and ingenuity. The conclusion to The Marriage of Figaro moves from duet to septet, passing through numerous dramatic and musical reversals along the way. Don Giovanni’s first-act finale (which runs nearly half an hour) includes all the opera’s characters save one, a scene change, three onstage dance bands, chorus, and a climactic septet with offstage thunderstorm—all of which are, however, tailored to the drama, enhancing and advancing the story. Mozart’s idiom eased operatic music out of the strict musical forms of the classical era toward the romantic period, whether in the long-lined heartbreak of Fiordiligi’s aria “Per pieta” in Così fan tutte or in the cataclysmic intervention of the 'stone guest' at the climax of Don Giovanni.

Meanwhile, in France, where revolution arrived in 1789, composers trimmed their sails to fit the prevailing breeze. Italian composer Luigi Cherubini began his Parisian career (by way of London) writing grand, courtly dramas such as Démophon (1788). He later accommodated himself to the French Revolution, which continued until 1799, giving voice to its principles in the propagandistic Lodoïska (1791). Later, with the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and a somewhat more regimented society, Cherubini turned in Les deux journées (1800) to the so-called rescue opera (a then-popular genre in which plots revolved around the rescue of a main character). He was somehow still in favor when the monarchy was restored in 1814.

During the revolution, the Paris Opéra played host to a string of pastiches and spectacles composed primarily to flatter those in power. Meanwhile, Belgian composer Andre Grétry was recouping his fortunes at the rival Opéra-Comique, anticipating the return of Parisian grand opera with his Guillaume Tell (1791). Cherubini contributed to this trend with his most famous opera, Médée (1797), but the resurgence of French opera on an even grander scale than before came with Gasparo Spontini. He introduced long-form musical construction and tighter thematic unity. Particularly favored by Napoleon, Spontini composed several imperialistic grand dramas, including Fernand Cortez (1809), a flag-waver for Napoleon’s military campaign in Spain, as well as the triumphant La Vestale (1807). Spontini, who subsequently became court composer in Berlin, continued to innovate, as in his historical-romantic drama Agnes von Hohenstaufen (1829), which dispensed with individual numbers and delivered its story in a blend of arioso (mini-aria), ensemble, and recitative. Between them, Spontini and Cherubini laid the groundwork for the kind of spectacle-oriented Parisian opera that would become popular, in various forms, in the 19th century.

F

Romantic Opera

At the beginning of the 19th century, an artistic movement known as romanticism arose, and within a few decades it became widespread in literature, art, and music. It emphasized the imagination, subjectivity of approach, and creative freedom. Under the spell of romanticism, operatic music became more grandiose and lush. Especially in grand opera, composers typically used larger orchestras, gigantic choruses, and innovative harmonies. Romanticism also manifested itself in subject matter, with an abundance of faraway settings; intense, tempestuous romances; unstable or melancholic characters, or characters who were outcasts; nationalistic themes; and supernatural or magical elements. Along with this heavily emotional content, though, composers began to show a concern for realism and examine contemporary social issues. Although tales of royalty, mythological figures, or stereotypical comic personalities remained popular, operas soon featured such characters as impoverished artists, disabled peasants, and diseased prostitutes.

F

1

Romantic Opera in Italy

The rise of the romantic novel inspired a spate of Italian operas. Gioacchino Rossini delved into the works of British author Sir Walter Scott for the opera La donna del lago (The Lady of the Lake, 1819), and both Rossini and Gaetano Donizetti tried their hand at adapting Scott’s novel Kenilworth (1821). Donizetti’s Elisabetta al Castello di Kenilworth (1829) has largely slipped into obscurity, while Rossini’s Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra (1815) has enjoyed intermittent success. Donizetti is most famous for Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), based on Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor (1819). Also in 1835 Vincenzo Bellini composed I Puritani, an adaptation of Scott’s novel Old Mortality (1816). Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini are nearly always bracketed together as the bridge between the post-Neapolitans and Giuseppe Verdi, generally considered the greatest of Italian opera composers. Their comedies, however, reveal many differences.

Rossini mastered the sparkling, stylized opera buffa. He honed his craft with a series of one-act gems, such as L’Occasione fa il Ladro (1812). Relying largely on his natural gift for melody and rhythm, from 1813 to 1817 he produced a string of successes: L’Italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers, 1813); Il Turco in Italia (The Turk in Italy, 1814); his comic masterpiece, Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1816); and La Cenerentola (Cinderella, 1817)). All except Turco are staples of the operatic repertory today. These works have an air of irreverence, because Rossini dared to write out the runs and ornaments with which singers of the day were accustomed to adorn their music—yet he left room for the creative singer to provide additional decoration. The operas move forward on clear and pointed orchestration, with the action often brought to a climax through a lengthy, gradual crescendo.

Rossini also composed opera seria, including the spare and grave Tancredi (1813) and Otello (1816). As he devoted more of his energy to grand opera, he channeled much of his bravura into gigantic choral and orchestral effects. This impulse is evident in Mosè in Egitto (Moses in Egypt, 1818) and Maometto II (1820), both later reworked, and particularly in his most epic works, the virtually unknown Ermione (1819) and the popular Semiramide (1823). The latter works show mastery of musical structure, with gargantuan set pieces that incorporate multisection arias, recitative, ensembles, and choruses. Eventually the lucrative temptations of the Paris Opéra proved too great to resist, and Rossini left Italy for the French capital. Aside from reworking a number of his grand operas to suit Parisian tastes, his original contributions were one final comedy, Le Comte Ory (1828), and the epic, lengthy Guillaume Tell (1829).

Rossini’s style is pungent, vigorous, and dramatic. That of his contemporary Vincenzo Bellini is aristocratic and languid. Bellini cast a veil of sheerest melancholy even over his nominally comic opera La Sonnambula (1831). Within his elegiac style, however, he could generate great intensity, as in his compact setting of the Romeo and Juliet story, I Capuleti ed i Montecchi (1830). His melodies, many of which evolve in the orchestra over slow-moving arpeggiations (notes of chords played in succession), won favor for their simple, lyrical poise.

Bellini wrote his scores for the most gifted singers of his day, supplying elegant melodies to be decorated with the most exacting embellishments. His later operas showed a new muscularity, as in the martial episodes of Norma (1831) and his final work, I Puritani (1835). At the same time, the musical demands increased, as in the extremely long melodic lines of Norma or the exactingly high tenor music of I Puritani.

Midway between Rossini and Bellini in both age and style, and more prolific than either, was Donizetti. He penned melodies less gracefully than Bellini and set them in motion less dashingly than Rossini, but he supported them with fuller instrumental harmonies and generally strove for a higher dramatic temperature in his works. In his talent for combining lyricism and theatricality, Donizetti is the musical precursor of Verdi. Donizetti’s true gifts did not display themselves until he reached middle age, starting with Anna Bolena (1830). The upward curve can be traced through such works as Lucrezia Borgia (1833), Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), and Don Pasquale (1843).

Donizetti moved easily between Italian and French sensibilities, displaying the latter in La fille du régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment, 1840), an opera in French that premiered in Paris. Donizetti’s dramatic operas show a fullness of characterization and theatrical impulse that suggest the principles of Gluck translated into Italian. Romantic realism was on the way in and opera buffa was declining, though Donizetti sent it out in a blaze of glory with L’elisir d’amore (The Elixir of Love, 1832) and Don Pasquale.

Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini were still strongly influenced by the traditions of the 18th century. The ideals of romanticism are more apparent in their librettos than in their music. A rising Italian nationalism, surging against Austrian oppression, is tacitly voiced in some of their operas, but nationalism became overt and glorious in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, whose work brandishes the flag of romanticism with utmost fervor.

Verdi was a peasant from a poor province of disunited Italy. These roots, which he never allowed himself to forget, may explain his disinterest in the intrigues and fads that clouded opera houses in his day. For instance, Verdi is credited with ending the custom of paying the composer only after the third performance of an opera, for he knew from experience that all too often there was no third performance. A self-taught and fiercely independent composer, he stubbornly found his own way and learned from his mistakes. Though well-read, Verdi kept himself ignorant of contemporary musical fashions and was more likely to be influenced by his early grounding in the works of Beethoven and Austrian composer Joseph Haydn than by what was occurring in other opera houses.

After composing two early operas that largely failed, Verdi found his voice in his third opera, Nabucco (1842), an allegory of oppressed Christianity that took the Babylonian Captivity of the Jews as its apparent subject. Restless nationalist sentiments boiled beneath the surfaces of I Lombardi (1843), Ernani (1844), and Macbeth (1847), with authority being challenged by increasingly brazen musical language. Another strain running through Verdi’s output is compassion for society’s outcasts. In Verdi’s eyes and pen, a hunchback, gypsy, prostitute, or slave had as much moral authority, or often more, than a king did. Macbeth showed a concern for developing characterization through vocal line and instrumental texture. Verdi refined and concentrated this musical characterization through Luisa Miller (1849), a middle-class tragedy; Rigoletto (1851), about the exploitation of a hunchbacked jester and his daughter; Il Trovatore (1853), in which a nobleman’s son is raised by an old gypsy and persecuted by his own brother; and La Traviata (1853), which shows society’s indifference to a courtesan with tuberculosis. Verdi expressed these daring, even shocking subjects—which often ran afoul of omnipresent government censors—in powerful melodies, rhythms, and orchestral color.

A period of refinement and consolidation followed, in which Verdi produced Simon Boccanegra (1857), his most explicit tribute to Italian unity; Un Ballo in Maschera (1859), dealing with regicide (killing of a king); and La Forza del Destino (1862), an epic driven by racist persecution. Verdi then crafted a truly superior Parisian grand opera, Don Carlos (1867), which many consider his greatest work. He returned to this form in his extremely popular but more simplistic Aïda (1871). Verdi integrated ballet and spectacle into these works with complete dramatic justification. Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff (1893), comes perhaps as close to perfection as any opera can, with a score ranging from riotous humor to the delicacy of chamber music.

Even as Verdi’s career wound to a close, it was evident that Italy lacked a successor to carry the standard of serious opera forward. Such Germanic-influenced composers as Alfredo Catalani, Amilcare Ponchielli, and Arrigo Boito proved too short-lived, insufficiently popular, and prohibitively slow-working, respectively, to fill the void. What rose instead was a debased version of Verdi’s social realism called verismo (Italian for “realism”), which in essence presented short, violent episodes from working-class life. Riccardo Zandonai quickly applied the brutishly violent but lushly harmonized style to exotic subject matter, as in Francesca da Rimini (1914).

For the most part, verismo composers such as Pietro Mascagni and Ruggero Leoncavallo drew upon events in everyday life—although sometimes of the tabloid journalism variety—for the subject matter of their operas. Into their most popular operas—Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana (1890) and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (1892)—they poured a heady brew of fiery passion and music to match. Verismo composer Giacomo Puccini also had a flair for theater and a gift for distilling sentiment into warm melodies. In La Bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904), and Turandot (unfinished, but posthumously completed by Franco Alfano in 1926), the orchestra comments continuously on the action. A simple parlando (speaking) vocal line takes the place of recitative and all but a few real arias and ensembles. Puccini’s art has a photographic immediacy and his music serves the drama. Furthermore, few composers have had such a sensational flair for theatrical effect—so much so that Puccini basically took serious Italian opera to the grave with him, although followers of Verdi such as composers Luigi Dallapiccola, Ildebrando Pizzetti, and Renzo Rossellini did their best to keep it alive in the 20th century.

F

2

Romantic Opera in Germany

Excepting Verdi, the outstanding figure in 19th-century opera was a German, Richard Wagner. Yet at the beginning of the romantic period there was hardly any such thing as German opera. There had been German opera composers, but they had left Germany to prosper elsewhere—Handel to England, Hasse to Italy, Gluck to Vienna and Paris—and left their own court theaters to the fashionable Italians. The popular German Singspiel had blossomed later than its Italian and French counterparts, opera buffa and opéra comique. After Mozart’s death, the great poets Friedrich von Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe urged other German composers to adopt the Singspiel. Goethe even wrote several himself, including a sequel to Mozart’s The Magic Flute, but few notable works came forth.

Romanticism entered the Singspiel with Fidelio (1805), the only opera by Ludwig van Beethoven. A passionate believer in the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution and offended by the infidelity in Mozart’s Cosí fan tutte, Beethoven painstakingly crafted this thriller about a dedicated wife’s liberation of her husband from prison. Ironically, Vienna had fallen into French hands at the time of Fidelio’s premiere, and the opera failed before a first-night audience composed mostly of officers from Napoleon’s army. Two revisions—one in 1806, the other in 1814—resulted in the masterpiece we know today. Although Beethoven’s natural dramatic flair led him to flirt with a number of other subjects, including Macbeth, the difficult composition of Fidelio discouraged him from composing another opera.

It remained for a more cosmopolitan composer than Beethoven to create a national opera that was German in theme as well as language. Carl Maria von Weber accomplished this. Trained in a multiplicity of skills (including engraving and writing), he toured central Europe as a piano virtuoso and later directed the opera houses of Prague and Dresden, Germany. On the road, he absorbed the idiom of folk song; in the theater, he became fascinated by the descriptive possibilities of different instruments. In Der Freischütz (1821), based on German folklore, he brought these two elements together. The opera tells the story of a huntsman who is lured into casting magic bullets—with Satan’s assistance—in order to win the local shooting contest and the hand of the pure girl he loves. Only divine intervention saves the day. Der Freischütz, a highly romantic Singspiel, reflects in harmonic and orchestral color both the fear of the supernatural and the fascination of the forest depths. Its rustic choruses and atmospheric orchestral effects deeply influenced all subsequent German opera. Heinrich Marschner achieved a successful blend of Singspiel and supernatural elements in Der Vampyr (1828) and Hans Heiling (1833). Marschner also jumped on the Sir Walter Scott bandwagon with Der Templer und die Jüdin (1829), his adaptation of Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819).

The influences of Weber and Marschner, as well as those of Spontini and Cherubini, can be traced in the early work of Richard Wagner. Rienzi (1842), his first successful opera, was so heroic and on such a scale as to put the whole school of French grand opera—which it emulated—to shame. Although a work of considerable merit, its prohibitive length and demanding vocal writing discourage frequent revival, and Wagner himself excluded it from the official canon of his works, along with his other early operas.

Wagner began to find his individual voice with Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman, 1843). Although still made up of set pieces in the Italian style—arias and choruses—it marks his first real step toward a through-composed work (a unified work set to music throughout). Holländer integrates numbers rather than setting them off and even dispenses with an intermission over its two-and-one-half hour length. The opera also sees the appearance of a dominant Wagnerian theme: redemption through a woman’s transcending love. Wagner wrote the text himself—he was one of the first composers to do so.

In Tannhäuser (1845) and Lohengrin (1850), in addition to delving further into medieval German folklore, Wagner expanded the musical discourse into rhetorical declamation over a continuously active orchestra. Significant musical themes or “tags,” called leitmotifs, permeated the musical structure. Leitmotifs were short, recurring phrases associated with specific characters, incidents, or ideas and were designed to provoke a subconscious emotional response in the listener. Wagner’s next step was to interweave these leitmotifs, transferring the chief role in the drama from the sung melody to the symphonic web of orchestra and voice. Finally, he placed this method into the service of a new subject matter: the Norse epic, which Wagner believed sprang from the prehistoric cultural roots of Germans.

Wagner’s political indiscretions (which included participation in the unsuccessful Revolution of 1848) forced him into exile until 1861—a time of gestation for Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). This was a cycle of four operas based on the German epic poem called the Nibelungenlied. Other disruptions were brought about by Wagner’s own creative growth, as he periodically broke off to write other operas. Influenced by both medieval lore and the pessimistic theology of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, Wagner composed Tristan und Isolde (1865), a tale of obsessive love based on Arthurian legend. In the happier, melodically profuse Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868), also set in the Middle Ages, Wagner glorified the role of art in German national identity. The composer then returned to the Ring, his enormous tapestry of gods and warrior maidens. Das Rheingold (1869) and Die Walküre (1870), the first two Ring operas, had been premiered in Munich by Wagner’s patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria (while Wagner was in exile in Switzerland). But Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods) were not heard until the first presentation of the entire Ring cycle at Wagner’s newly built Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1876.

The restless, chromatic harmonies of Tristan influenced the course of classical music for the next century. The premieres at Bayreuth also marked the beginning of modern lighting and stage direction in opera. In his final masterpiece, Parsifal (1882), Wagner applied what he had learned about vocal writing and orchestration in performances of the Ring to the legend of the Holy Grail. The work, a complex web of myths and religions, is a solemn, semisacred drama that Wagner intended exclusively for the Festspielhaus. Such beautiful music, however, could not be confined, and other opera houses took it up as soon as possible. One can think of no more fitting capstone to Wagner’s work than Parsifal.

One disciple of Wagner was Engelbert Humperdinck, who assisted in the mounting of Parsifal and who echoed its idiom in his own Hänsel und Gretel (1893), a little masterpiece that adapts Wagnerian techniques to the realm of fairy tale, folk song, and folk dance. Wagner’s son Siegfried went back to the pre-Wagnerian idioms of Weber and Marschner for a long string of operas mixing folklore, mythology, and modern psychology.

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