# Wagner after the 10



## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

Where do the Wagnerians recommend looking into Wagner beyond the 10 mature operas? Should I work backwards chronologically, or forward, or are some more crucial to his development than others? How deeply should I delve into the non-opera works?

I understand some would say "hear it all" and eventually I might but I'm still not as familiar as I'd like to be with some of the 10. I'm more interested in exploring a few early works simultaneously and since I don't own any copies of Wagner outside of the 10 mature works I thought I'd put it to the panel here.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

I would go for Die Feen and Rienzi.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

His best works outside the 10 are the _Siegfried Idyll_ and the _Wesendonck Lieder._ The _Faust Overture_ is a fine, quasi-Lisztian tone poem that's often overlooked. The three early operas are all interesting and it doesn't matter much how you approach them; chronologically makes sense. In them Wagner explores different types of opera, influenced by contemporary French and German models and occasionally even sounding like himself. The very early _Symphony in C_ is pleasant enough, though no masterpiece; likewise the piano music. Other orchestral pieces haven't much to recommend them; as Wagner said of his _Philadelpha Centennial March_,"The best thing about it is the money I got for it." Honesty is good.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

^^^ Agree with almost all of the above. Of the three early operas, I might start with _Rienzi_, the most mature, recognizably Wagnerian piece, and work my way backwards. But either approach has merit.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

IMO the first three are for completionists only, the level is much lower than the 10 famous ones. FWIW, my preference is Rienzi (the overture is really worthwhile), ahead of Die Feeen, and Das Liebesverbot dead last.


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## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> His best works outside the 10 are the _Siegfried Idyll_* and the *_*Wesendonck Lieder*._ The _Faust Overture_ is a fine, quasi-Lisztian tone poem that's often overlooked. The three early operas are all interesting and it doesn't matter much how you approach them; chronologically makes sense. In them Wagner explores different types of opera, influenced by contemporary French and German models and occasionally even sounding like himself. The very early _Symphony in C_ is pleasant enough, though no masterpiece; likewise the piano music. Other orchestral pieces haven't much to recommend them; as Wagner said of his _Philadelpha Centennial March_,"The best thing about it is the money I got for it." Honesty is good.


yes yes yessssssssssssss........check used at Amazon, sung with piano










Sung with orchestra......


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

I do love the Wesendonck Lieder. And unusually the singers that do tackle them rarely, if ever, do a bad job!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DarkAngel said:


> yes yes yessssssssssssss........check this used at Amazon, sung with piano
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Other fine Wesendoncks with orchestra are Jessye Norman's and Janet Baker's.


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

What all the others said--Wesendonck and Siegfried Idyll first, then maybe his early operas. Rienzi is the best of his early operas, but most approachable if you can find an aggressively edited version--it is full of filler like the long Act 2 ballet, and the 4 or 5 hour versions are not a fun listen.


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## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

This discussion reminds me that Wagner's surge from _Rienzi _to _Der fliegende Holländer_ is almost a metamorphosis, not incremental changes. What contributed to this transformation exactly?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

silentio said:


> This discussion reminds me that Wagner's surge from _Rienzi _to _Der fliegende Holländer_ is almost a metamorphosis, not incremental changes. What contributed to this transformation exactly?


The first three operas were experiments in style. _Rienzi_ was a conscious emulation of French grand opera by a young composer yearning for success. Meanwhile Wagner's imagination was simmering. But it's arguable that _Tristan_ was as striking an advance as _Hollander._ Wagner's whole composing career was an astonishing metamorphosis. Does any composer show a greater, or even equal, transformation between unpromising beginnings and maturity? And do any composer's operas exhibit such variety of musical technique and dramatic atmosphere? Each opera takes us into a new world of sound and meaning. Wagner's imagination seems limitless. It's as if he was inhabited by some genie that periodically popped out and granted him another wish. Who can explain it? He was actually amazed by it himself.

Periodically the concept of "genius" is debated on this forum. As proof of its validity, Wagner, I think, is Exhibit A.


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## Guest (Oct 28, 2016)

This is the one I have,do I miss something?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Traverso said:


> This is the one I have,do I miss something?


Flagstad recorded the songs several times. That was her last, with orchestra. The one DarkAngel mentions is with piano.


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## Loge (Oct 30, 2014)

Definitely the Wesendonck Lieder. Im Treibhaus is my favourite, you will recognise the tune from Tristan.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Liebesverbot is better than any Wagner opera after Lohengrin.


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## interestedin (Jan 10, 2016)

SimonTemplar said:


> Liebesverbot is better than any Wagner opera after Lohengrin.


 That's some opinion!


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

SimonTemplar said:


> Liebesverbot is better than any Wagner opera after Lohengrin.


Simon, you're hilarious. Delusional, but hilarious!


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Well, maybe "I like it more" would be accurate. [1]

That said, it's severely underrated. It's exhilarating in a way few Wagner operas are - the brilliant overture in the style of Herold or Auber, dancing rhythms, imaginative use of percussion, lots of big ensembles, and an impressive elaborate multi-section finale. There are passages of lyrical beauty, such as Isabella's aria or her duets with Friedrich and Claudio.

Negatively, it doesn't get bogged down in philosophy, or have any of the mauvais quarts d'heures or dubious political / racial / religious elements that mar Wagner's works. (All Wagner's late works have sublime passages, powerful or beautiful, but I find it hard to warm to any of them as a complete opera.)

[1] So, for a different reason, would saying "Liebesverbot is a better opera than any Wagner work after Lohengrin". The later works are music dramas - but that's crossing into pedantry!


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

SimonTemplar said:


> Well, maybe "I like it more" would be accurate. [1]
> 
> That said, it's severely underrated. It's exhilarating in a way few Wagner operas are - the brilliant overture in the style of Herold or Auber, dancing rhythms, imaginative use of percussion, lots of big ensembles, and an impressive elaborate multi-section finale. There are passages of lyrical beauty, such as Isabella's aria or her duets with Friedrich and Claudio.
> 
> ...


Nicely done! I must admit to having a sneaky liking for Rienzi. I have three versions of it so it must be pushing some correct buttons.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

SimonTemplar said:


> [1] So, for a different reason, would saying "Liebesverbot is a better opera than any Wagner work after Lohengrin". The later works are music dramas - but that's crossing into pedantry!


Actually, I think it illustrates an important point that was made by Michael Tanner and is often overlooked when it comes to Wagner, on just how unique his later "music dramas" are from pretty much everything else in the operatic tradition. And while lumping Tristan und Isolde with a work like Il Barbiere di Siviglia under the homogeneous title of "opera" may be convenient, it glosses over the radical differences between them.

Now I'm in the completely opposite camp, who believes that everything he composed _after_ Lohengrin is on a completely different level than what came before. Not to say that I don't have a deep love and admiration for Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin, but I'm simply struck by how Wagner's later style, with as he put it a "new form of dramatic music that must demonstrate the unity of symphonic writing", makes for a more profound dramatic experience and provides opportunities for deeper characterization and psychological insights. The music dramas are like huge symphonic constellations that are able to paint in amazingly vivid detail the development and situations of characters; their motivations, drives, feelings, desires, and states of mind. And I have to admit, when someone expresses the opinion that they prefer one of his earlier operas, like Holländer, to one of the later music dramas, like Die Meistersinger, I'm usually a little taken aback. Haha. But reading your comments I'm reminded why it's entirely possible and even quite common that an opera fan can find more to enjoy in the more traditional operatic conventions of a Tannhäuser or the gusto, liveliness and confusion that a work like Das Liebesverbot shares with Italian opera buffa.

At the same time, I can't agree that Wagner's late works are "bogged down" in philosophy, anymore than a play like Hamlet is bogged down in philosophy. True, these are works of art that attempt to penetrate and explore aspects of the human condition and embrace all of life's richness and variety, and in that sense are "philosophical". But for many of those reasons I find them to be incredibly powerful and completely absorbing. Also, it should be noted that even in his earlier operas like Lohengrin there is plenty of allegory, symbolism, and philosophy beneath the surface of more ordinary operatic numbers and choruses. And I don't believe any of his works contain "dubious" political/racial/religious elements; but again, I see just as much political implication and and religiosity in a Tannhäuser as a Parsifal.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

SimonTemplar said:


> That said, it's severely underrated. It's exhilarating in a way few Wagner operas are - the brilliant overture in the style of Herold or Auber, dancing rhythms, imaginative use of percussion, lots of big ensembles, and an impressive elaborate multi-section finale. There are passages of lyrical beauty, such as Isabella's aria or her duets with Friedrich and Claudio.
> 
> Negatively, it doesn't get bogged down in philosophy, or have any of the mauvais quarts d'heures or dubious political / racial / religious elements that mar Wagner's works. (All Wagner's late works have sublime passages, powerful or beautiful, but I find it hard to warm to any of them as a complete opera.)


So . . . Wagner for people who don't like Wagner.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

amfortas said:


> So . . . Wagner for people who don't like Wagner.


That reminds me of something critic Conrad L. Osborne said in his review of a _Parsifal _recording. I paraphrase: "If _Die Meistersinger_ is the Wagner opera for people who don't care for Wagner, _Parsifal_ often seems to be the Wagner opera for Wagnerites only."

Wagner's works may be freighted with philosophical and psychological implications, but the main reason they endure is that their music is so compelling that we can experience them on whatever level of intellectual comprehension we're content with. I first became absorbed in the operas in my mid-teens, but even in my philosophical/psychological naivete I found the music as powerful and enchanting then as I do now, fifty years later. Time continues to bring deeper insights into Wagner's dramatic conceptions, but the process is anything but a painful duty. The music, so expressive of the subtlest and most occult meanings of the symbolic stories, can give us answers even to questions we don't yet know to ask. But we really don't need to ask many questions, if the mythical imagery and music reach us where Wagner himself said he wanted them to: through our emotions.

The primacy of music - its role as the basic medium of expression in "music drama," just as it had been in traditional opera, though on a level of greater complexity - was something Wagner needed time to understand. But once he'd gotten his theories about the "total art work" out of his system with his essay "Music and Drama," and found, with the composition of _Tristan,_ that in a collaboration of the arts music was more than the greatest among equals, Wagner characterized his late music dramas as "deeds of music made visible." He did not call them "deeds of philosophy made audible"!

Wagner's libretti are often philosophical but, contrary to a common impression, remarkably undidactic; characters reflect upon the meaning of their experiences, but don't try to convince us of anything. Even the overwrought diction and supposedly Schopenhauerian conversation that fills the "love scene" in _Tristan_ exists mainly to give the lovers something to sing during the immense outpouring of passion in the score, and once we know the gist of it there's little to be learned by giving it further attention.

The philosophical and religious significance of Wagner's work is not something we need to worry about. It's certainly there if we care, and it can be an endless source of fascination and amazement. The music dramas do become larger for us the longer and better we know them. There aren't many operas of which that can be said.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

SimonTemplar said:


> Liebesverbot is better than any Wagner opera after Lohengrin.


I have to say that it is the Wagner opera I like the least.
Die Feen is on the other hand really nice.

I would rank the 10 famous operas except for Tannhäuser equal and ranking them have most to do with my personal mood and what I feel for listening too. If I want to be stirred up I would prefer Dutchman, Lohengrin and The Ring. For just relaxing beautiful music Tristan and Parsifal. Meistersinger comes somewhere in between.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> That reminds me of something critic Conrad L. Osborne said in his review of a _Parsifal _recording. I paraphrase: "If _Die Meistersinger_ is the Wagner opera for people who don't care for Wagner, _Parsifal_ often seems to be the Wagner opera for Wagnerites only."


Oh yes an over four hour long opera were they are mostly having conversations is the opera for people who don´t like Wagner. I really don´t get that.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Sloe said:


> Oh yes an over four hour long opera were they are mostly having conversations is the opera for people who don´t like Wagner. I really don´t get that.


A church service, a bunch of rowdy apprentices, a vocal audition, a street serenade, a burglary, a town riot, a couple of meditative monologues, a quintet, a festival with processions, dances and a song contest... _Meistersinger_ contains a lot more than conversations. I suppose it's a favorite because its characters are "ordinary people," not mythical beings who live underground or on mountaintops or in magic castles, and because it has a warm, _gemuetlich_ atmosphere and a bit of humor instead of people dying for love or trying to rule the universe. Personally, I'm into Oz more than Kansas, but for all the jes' plain folks out there old Nuremberg is apparently a nice place to hang out for four hours.


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