# Have you heard Wagner's early operas?



## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

Clearly this forum needs another Wagner thread so here it is...

I'm listening to the Sawallisch recording of Die Feen (excellent LP version) and wonder what is so bad about it. The orchestration is lush, the singers get some nice tunes (pre-dating Tannhauser's Dich, Teure halle) the choral sections are good, especially the _a cappella_ section in Act III. I really enjoy listening to it.

Have I got poor taste? Have I lost all sense of reason? Will hardcore Wagnerians shun me?

As for the others, Rienzi is clearly the work of a major emerging talent although I find it a little too much of the same Meyerbeerian style. Wagner's facility for churning out this kind of thing is impressive, and if he was solely concerned with money no doubt he could have done many similar works.

I haven't heard the full Das Liebesverbot, but I'm intrigued and eager to track down a copy, although tough to find on LP these days!

Thoughts on these three?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I heard them all. This is what I wrote afterwards:

Die Feeen (1833)
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunk/Sawallisch (Orfeo, 1984, 2 h 45 min)
[Main soloists: Kurt Moll, Linda Gray, Kari Lovaas, Krisztina Laki, John Alexander]
The Fairies is Wagner's first opera, composed when he was 20 years old. It is very much in the mould of say Carl Maria von Weber, and the lack of musical originality explains why it never made it to the standard repertoire. It does foreshadow some of the later works in its subject themes. Really for completionists only (live recording).

Das Liebesverbot (1834)
Bayerischer Staatsorchester/Sawallisch (Orfeo, 1984, 2 h 35 min)
[Main soloists: Sabine Hass, Pamela Coburn, Robert Schunk, Hermann Prey, Kieth Engen]
The Ban on Love is an early work and only one of two comedies in the Wagner opera repertoire. It is not a lost masterpiece, in fact one could mistake it for a second-grade hybrid of Weber and Rossini, even though at times one gets glimpses of what a great independent composer Wagner would involve into. Like the first effort, this live recording is for completionists only (in fact, I think Die Feen is better than this one).

Rienzi (1840)
Staatskapelle Dresden/Hollreiser (EMI, 1976, 3 h 30 min)
[Main soloists: Rene Kollo, Siv Wennberg, Nikolaus Hillebrand, Janis Martim, Theo Adam]
This dramatic tale of rebellion in medieval Rome was Wagner's first big success, even though he denounced it later - it is rarely staged or recorded nowadays. The overture does get programmed separately and is indeed the most successful part of the opera, which follows the grand opera tradition of the time. Although better than its two predecessors, I still cannot rank this higher than "not required" - the jump in quality to the next one (one year later) is stunning.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

I find them a very enjoyable listen as well.
But with Dutchman starts the genius.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

I definitely think _Die Feen_ should be heard more. A very confident beginning which clearly sounds like his early influences but points forward to his later themes. After that his next two works contain much of the faults of later Wagner, long, bloated and overly sententious, but without the musical qualities that make his mature works flow. Much as I like Sawallisch I prefer the Gabor Ötvös recording, a more immediate, alive version in my opinion.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

quack said:


> I definitely think _Die Feen_ should be heard more. A very confident beginning which clearly sounds like his early influences but points forward to his later themes. After that his next two works contain much of the *faults of later Wagner, long, bloated and overly sententious*, but without the musical qualities that make his mature works flow. Much as I like Sawallisch I prefer the Gabor Ötvös recording, a more immediate, alive version in my opinion.


I beg to differ. I love the length of his operas and don't find them bloated.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Itullian said:


> I beg to differ. I love the length of his operas and don't find them bloated.


Well I don't have a problem with long operas, just they must have enough material to sustain them but also shouldn't be loaded with unnecessary filler. I think his later opera have these issues, with longueurs and recapitulation, as many have noted, but he is able to handle them well and maintain momentum. With _Das Liebesverbot_ and _Rienzi_ they tend to just bog down the work. Plus they sound like bad Meyerbeer pastiches.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

quack said:


> Well I don't have a problem with long operas, just they must have enough material to sustain them but also shouldn't be loaded with unnecessary filler. I think his later opera have these issues, with longueurs and recapitulation, as many have noted, but he is able to handle them well and maintain momentum. With _Das Liebesverbot_ and _Rienzi_ they tend to just bog down the work. Plus they sound like bad Meyerbeer pastiches.


Well, Solti said that Meistersinger doesn't have one unnecessary note. Tristan and Gotterdammerung are masterpieces. So which ones?

And what "long" operas pass your test ?


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

And John Ruskin said about _Die Meistersinger_... and Otto Gumprecht said about _Die Meistersinger_... you can find just as many negative criticisms of the work, criticisms that say as little as Solti's praise does. It's not really my test, Wagner's works are regularly criticised for their length even when they are rarely any longer than much of the repertoire. No one can be so enamoured of Wagner to not know this is one of the things people have a problem with. His continuous melody gives people that perception. As I said, which you seem to have missed, he makes these longueurs work in his later operas but they overwhelm his earlier couple.


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

I don't think there's any point in arguing that his music-dramas are _long_, of course they are. But I think it's interesting to relate how the length of the operas are tied to their aesthetic goals. There's a very interesting speech by Nicholas Spice where he points out how Wagner's dramas have a unique effect upon the audience:



> The dialogue between Brünnhilde and Siegmund in Act Two of Die Walküre, where Brünnhilde tells Siegmund the game's up, is a beautiful example of the way Wagner maps narrative structure onto musical argument: the simplicity of the question and answer routine creates utterly transparent musical paragraphs, while the music lends a profound abstract weight to the emotional essence of the scene. At 11 minutes, the musical treatment takes five times longer than the dialogue would if spoken ♪ listen . In passages such as this one, Wagner's music has an effect on our sense of time that is the reverse of the effect most music in the classical canon has on us. Where most classical music expands our sense of temporal duration, Wagner's contracts it. Most music, though short, seems long; Wagner, though long, seems short.


And again:



> Where in much classical music, the exposition of material (the presentation of musical data to the listener's ear) stands in a very high ratio to passing time, in Wagner's work this relationship is radically relaxed. He sets out the basic propositions of his musical argument with extraordinary parsimony, letting the line out inch by inch, making absolutely sure that we have understood each element in the music before he introduces another one. The norm in classical music is for dense vertically integrated hits of musical information that are cognitively impossible to grasp in their full detail at the time of listening. Wagner spreads out the musical variables horizontally, allowing us all the time we need to register them fully.


You can read or listen to the whole speech here if you'd like.

I personally haven't seen any of his first three operas, but I have heard they are more well-disposed to cuts than his later ones, which could help with the length issue.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

To me, the length of his operas plays a large part in casting their spell.
I dont think they would have that suspension of time feel if they were shorter.
I like being swept away and engulfed by them.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I haven't heard Die Feen ,but have heard the Sawallisch recording of Das Liebesverbot broadcast
over WQXR ,some years ago .
I know Rienzi fairly well from the Hollreiser/EMi recording and have also heard the live
Sawallisch /Munich recording . The Hollreiser is the only commercial studio recording of it
so far , and while not % 100 complete , all the other live recordings are much more heavily cut .
We badly need a first rate absolutely uncut studio recording ,but given the fact that for
economic reasons , studio recordings of operas have pretty much gone the way of the dinosaur,
this is not very likely to happen . But we can always hope . . . 
Rienzi would be a great role for Jonas Kaufmann . If only DG or Decca could get 
Christian Thielemann to do conduct that Rienzi recording . . . . with the Dresden Staatskapelle . . . .
Dream on!


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Rienzi is the only one of his earliest operas with which I'm acquainted. It may have been the two versions I consulted, but I was surprised to like it much better than I anticipated. After all, this opera was a considerable hit at its premiere and for years afterwards, his most popular opera until perhaps Tannhauser and certainly Lohengrin. I have the live Set Svanholm version (circa 1959) and this videotaped production, with Torsten Kerl:


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

I like this version better but it is heavily cut (to be honest I'm not complaining....)


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

The Hollreiser EMI has been ok with me.
It's a very fine recording.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I feel that even Fliegende Hollander isn't a fully characteristic mature work, despite some great moments and an impressive overture. Wagner really only hit his stride with Lohengrin.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> I feel that even Fliegende Hollander isn't a fully characteristic mature work, despite some great moments and an impressive overture. Wagner really only hit his stride with Lohengrin.


I'm interested to hear and compare this one. The director of the Paris opera took Wagner's idea of a work based on the legend and gave it to Pierre-Louis Dietsch to produce his own version, _Le Vaisseau fantôme_. Although apparently it isn't really similar to Wagner's. It has both Dietsch and an early version of the Wagner opera.


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## Frasier (Mar 10, 2007)

Have to say I find his early dramas easy to listen to. I realised on hearing Die Feen that he was destined to write for the stage at that early age. It's interesting that he wrote Fliegende at roughly the same time he was working on Rienzi - markedly different works but a sign of what was to come.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> I feel that even Fliegende Hollander isn't a fully characteristic mature work, despite some great moments and an impressive overture. Wagner really only hit his stride with Lohengrin.


I'll grant that _Lohengrin_ is a big step forward, but the one element that holds it back for me is rhythmic monotony. Never exactly an innovator in the area of rhythm, Wagner in all his early works falls over and over into the same basic 4/4 pattern, beginning a melody with quarter note, dotted eighth, sixteenth, quarter, quarter, or some slight variant thereof, with the next bars similarly square. This, or something close to it, is the rhythmic template for tune after tune, and for me it's actually most problematic precisely in _Lohengrin_, giving the opera a slightly stodgy, old-fashioned feel and patches of dullness despite its advanced aspects and gorgeous orchestration. Wagner doesn't break fully free of this rhythmic straightjacket until _Rheingold_, the opening scene of which still thrills me with its freedom and its brave new sound world. I wish the rest of _Rheingold_ were as consistently good, but I can understand having to wade a bit haltingly into the deep ocean of the _Ring_. Any other composer attempting it would have drowned straightaway!


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Die Feen isn't bad. Liebsverbot is interesting to hear once or twice. Rienzi is the one I can't get into at all- too damn long. Nice overture though.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

quack said:


> And John Ruskin said about _Die Meistersinger_... and Otto Gumprecht said about _Die Meistersinger_... you can find just as many negative criticisms of the work, criticisms that say as little as Solti's praise does.


I wonder if Solti had opinions about the quality of watercolors or writing?


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

bigshot said:


> I wonder if Solti had opinions about the quality of watercolors or writing?


I'm sure he did, like most people, but as conducting was his main skill rather than cultural criticism his one line thoughts aren't especially notable.

I actually got around to hearing that Dietsch opera _Le Vaisseau fantôme_ it sounds a lot like Offenbach to my ears. Nice enough certainly but very much in the style of the Paris opera that Wagner would try escape in his works. The Wagner recording in that set I wasn't overly impressed with, Minkowski makes the _Dutchman_ seem a little small and forgettable.


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## Signor Crescendo (May 8, 2014)

_Die Feen_ is hardly great opera (the characters are too flat, and the drama's stilted), but the music is surprisingly accomplished, given how young Wagner was. The soprano has several beautiful songs in full bel canto style, while much of the other music (including a comic duet) is brisk and tuneful. Exactly what you expect from Wagner! The best numbers:
Overture (



)
The opening chorus
Ada's aria: Wie muss ich doch beklagen (I) (



)
Act I finale
Lora's aria & cabaletta: O musst du Hoffnung schwinden (II) (



)
Ada's aria: Weh mir, so nah die fürchterliche Stunde (II)

The joys of internet translation:

How should I interpret his mood, he pressed his prostrate so hard!

("Wie soll ich seine Stimmung deuten, die ihn so schwer dernieder drückt.")


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## Signor Crescendo (May 8, 2014)

(From a blog I started, and didn't continue)

"The 'grand opera', with all its scenic and music display, its sensationalism and massive vehemence, loomed large before me; and not merely to copy it, but with reckless extravagance to outbid it in every detail, became the object of my artistic ambition."-Richard Wagner, A Communication to My Friends (1851)

The result is an elephantine, enormously bombastic monstrosity. Wagner's idea of outbidding grand opera is to flatten the listener into submission. Listening to _Rienzi _is like being walloped around the head and yelled at for nearly five hours. To be precise, 4 hours 40 minutes. (The first performance, including intervals, lasted seven hours.) Act II alone goes for more than an hour and a half.

The music is overwhelmingly forceful and strident, rightly described as "unashamed, bullying, hectoring hysteria" (David Pountney, Cambridge Opera Guide, 134). Because it's pitched at a constant level of high excitement, it seems overheated, then exhausting, then deeply boring. It's _monotonous_.

True, there are moments of genuine beauty and effectiveness. The overture (



), with its majestic, beautiful theme from Rienzi's Prayer, and its bouncy finish. The Prayer itself (



), admired by Berlioz. The Silbergroschen part of the Act III finale. The opening, which is brisk and exciting (a street fight and an attempted kidnapping), before you realise that the whole thing is going to sound like this.

Processions, marches, oaths, battles, and crowd scenes galore. The BRASS! Trumpets! Brass! Drums! Brass! The massed choral sound (which sounds nothing like Meyerbeer's rhythm and ligne brisée). Brass! And then there's the ballet (



). O God, the ballet. Do you think of ballet as graceful and elegant? Or do you think of it as 40 minutes of _ffff _that makes the walls of the house shake and your eardrums bleed? What sort of dancers was Wagner imagining? They certainly weren't human.

Despite the mass of sound, the opera itself feels small scale. There's little in the way of action, and certainly not enough to justify this gargantuan expenditure of musical and scenic resources. In other words: effects without causes!

To call this heavy, bloated, monstrous, metallic thing "Meyerbeer's best opera" (Hans von Bülow) is an insult to Meyerbeer. True, Wagner surely had the Huguenots Act III finale in mind when he wrote the big choruses in Acts I & V (



), just as the Adriano/Irene love duet in Act III is modelled on the Raoul/Valentine duet. But it's hard to imagine anything _less _Meyerbeerian. Meyerbeer's operas are well paced, ironic, full of inventive and often delicate instrumental colour, subtlety, charm and warmth, which Rienzi is not. Thematically, too, it's unMeyerbeerian.* _Rienzi _ glorifies strength, nationalism, and fanaticism-everything the cosmopolitan, liberal Meyerbeer detested.
*: William Pencak argues that _Le prophète _was intended as a "riposte" to Rienzi and a critique of its fiercely militant nationalism. (William Pencak, "Why we must listen to Meyerbeer" (1999), in Robert Ignatius Letellier (ed.), Giacomo Meyerbeer: A Reader, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007).

The characters lack interiority. Throughout the opera, political identity triumphs over private feeling. Rienzi is entirely a political animal, given to grandstanding, rabble-rousing, and declamatory rhetoric. Nearly all his lines are propaganda, spoken with an eye to their effect on his audience. He has a sense of purpose and complete conviction, but no inner life; the only time he is alone on stage is his prayer at the start of Act V, and even that is a plea to continue his mission. His greatest love is Rome ("Roma heißt meine Braut!").

His sister Irene (a fundamentally passive character) is given the choice between being a woman or a Roman ("Kein Rom gibt's mehr, sei den ein Weib!"). Impossible to be both, according to Wagner. She unhesitatingly chooses her brother / Rome over her lover Adriano.

Adriano is the only character who is motivated by private feelings, torn between his love for Irene, his admiration and then hatred for Rienzi, and his duty to his father Colonna. Rienzi's decision to spare the noblemen (Act II), at the pleading of Adriano and Irene, is privately motivated and politically disastrous.

For modern audiences, the opera is tainted by its association with Adolf Hitler. (Witness the furore when the Deutsche Oper scheduled Rienzi for Hitler's birthday, 20th April, in 2012.) The idea for National Socialism came to Hitler during a performance in Linz, 1906 ("In jener Stunde begann es"). The overture was the theme for Nazi Party rallies. And when Hitler committed suicide in the Berlin bunker, the score (presented to him by Winifred Wagner) was in his possession.

It is easy to see why Hitler loved it. The story of a charismatic demagogue's rise to power, and his mystic unity with the people. The Nuremberg aesthetic: excessive visual display, communal expressions of nationalistic fervour, the worship of force, military processions, marches and heroic oaths… And then there are passages like this:

RIENZI:
Der Staat verbleibe seinem Haupt.
Gesetze gebe ein Senat.
Doch wählet ihr zum Schützer mich
der Rechte, die dem Volke zuerkannt,
so blickt auf eure Ahnen
und nennt mich euren Volkstribun.

VOLK:
Rienzi, Heil dir, Volkstribun!
Dir huldigt freier Römer Schwur!
Wir schwören dir, so groß und frei
soll Roma sein, wie Roma war.
Vor Niedringkeit und Tyrannei
sie unser letztes Blut bewahr'!
Schmach und Verderben schwören wir
dem Frevler an der Römer Her'!
Ein neues Volk erstehe dir,
wie seine Ahnen groß und hehr!

(RIENZI: Let the state remain without a head, let a Senate make the laws. Yet you have chosen me your protector, the right man, recognised by the people, so look back to your ancestors, and call me your Tribune of the People.

PEOPLE: Hail Rienzi, Tribune of the People! The oath of free Romans is your homage. We swear to you, Rome shall be as great and free as Rome once was. May the last drop of our blood protect us from subjugation and tyranny! Death and destruction we pledge to the blasphemer, and honour to the Roman! A new people shall arise before you, as great and magnificent as its ancestors!)

And this (which is music to goosestep to):

RIENZI:
Der Tag ist ja, die Stunde naht
zur Sühne tausendjähr'ger Schmach!
Er schaue der Barbaren Fall
und freier Römer hohen Sieg!
So stimmt denn an den Schlachtgesang,
er soll der Feinde Schrecken sein!
Santo Spirito cavaliere!

SCHLACHTHYMNE:
Auf, Römer, auf, für Herd' und für Altäre!
Fluch dem Verräter an der Römer Ehre!
Nie sei auf Erden ihm die Schmach verziehn,
Tod seiner Seel', es lebt kein Gott für ihn!
Trompeten schmettert, Trommeln wirbeit drein,
es soll der Sieg der Römer Anteil sein!
Ihr Rosse stampfet, Schwerter klirret laut,
heut ist der Tag, der eure Siege schaut!
Paniere weht, blinkt heil, ihr Speere!

(RIENZI: The day has dawned, the hour is approaching to expiate a thousand years of shame! May it see the downfall of the barbarians and the great victory of free Romans! So all join in the battle hymn, that it may strike fear into the enemy's heart! Santo Spirito cavaliers!

BATTLE HYMN: Arise, Romans, arise, for your homes and your altars! Cursed be he that betrayed the honour of Rome! May the shame never be forgiven him on earth, death to his soul, there is no God living for him! Let the trumpets sound and the drums roll to take part in the Roman's victory! Horses stamp, swords loudly clatter, this is the day which will see your victory! Standards wave, brightly glint, spears!)

One could suggest that Hitler's conception of Rienzi may not have been Wagner's (Verdi, after all, considered an opera of Cola di Rienzo, seen as a hero of the Risorgimento-but then Mussolini modelled himself on Rienzi). Nevertheless, as Thomas Grey ("Richard Wagner and the legacy of French grand opera", in David Charlton (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, 2003, 327-28) and Paul Lawrence Rose (Wagner: Race & Revolution, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1992, 25-26), Hitler was acting on what was in the text: "resentful hatred" and "messianic political revolutionism", "mass politics, propaganda, the Führer-principle". (It would be fascinating to stage it with _Coriolanus _as a study in demagoguery.) The fact remains that there's something deeply and unattractively proto-Fascist about Rienzi.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

An let us not forget that the basis for the libretto, and that of Verdi's unrealized Cola di Rienzi project, was not the historical record of the real Rienzi, per se, but Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel _Rienzi: The Last Tribune_. A lot of the mystic nationalist, back-to-Rome-of-old verbiage is in the novel. Then again, B-L was the writer who began one of his novels with "It was a dark and stormy night." So he inspired Wagner, Verdi, Mussolini, Hitler... and Snoopy.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Itullian said:


> To me, the length of his operas plays a large part in casting their spell.
> I dont think they would have that suspension of time feel if they were shorter.
> I like being swept away and engulfed by them.


Wagner is best if you immerse yourself into it, bathe in it, totally give yourself over to it and let the music carry you along. It's a trip!


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## Sieglinde (Oct 25, 2009)

I've heard Rienzi on a recording (I think with René Kollo? it was very long ago) and founds it beautiful. Are there any good videos, preferably of a normal production?


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