Page 189 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

ROMANTIC 1810–1920 187

time, the lights in the auditorium wife, Cosima, famously complained conventional symphonies and
would be extinguished during the that the costumes, painstakingly those who were fully under the
performance, and comings and researched, made everyone look Wagnerian spell.
goings were forbidden. like Native American chiefs. The Leitmotif became a standard
dragon Wagner had ordered from technique for a generation of
Operatic pilgrimage Manchester, UK, for Siegfried, never younger composers, many of whom
From the very first festival in 1876, arrived in full—the neck section, attempted, after Wagner’s death,
the great and the good flocked the story goes, ended up not in to create earnest facsimiles of his
to Bayreuth, and with Wagner’s Bayreuth but Beirut. operatic works. Italy, traditionally
final opera, Parsifal (1882), the the home of opera, had a crisis
unmistakable allure of the festival A new beginning of musical identity, torn between
only grew. Things were not The legacy of The Ring, Wagner’s embracing Wagner’s innovations
straightforward, however, and the Bayreuth project, and the composer and preserving its own revered
unprecedented scenic demands himself cannot be overestimated. traditions. Thanks to Wagner,
of The Ring were only imperfectly Wagnérisme was fashionable in opera—which he once criticized
met at its first production. One of Paris at the end of the 19th century for being too susceptible to
Wagner’s most vocal critics, Eduard as artists were inspired by the frivolousness—was now an art
Hanslick, said that the rainbow heady mix of religion and sex in form that dealt with the grandest
bridge that leads to Valhalla at the Parsifal. Meanwhile, in Vienna, philosophical questions and
end of Das Rheingold resembled a debate raged between those who demanded a new revolutionary
“seven-colored sausage”; Wagner’s supported Brahms and his more sort of music to do so. ■

Bayreuth Festspielhaus
The opera house Wagner had
built in Bayreuth was designed
by Gottfried Semper, with
continental seating (no central
aisle) that allowed all patrons Dressing rooms beside
an equal view of the stage. the stage for the opera's
principal singers.

Wings providing
access to the stage
from the dressing rooms.
Deep stage to allow
action in the foreground,
middle ground, and
background.

Sunken orchestra pit
to give the illusion that
the sound is coming
from the stage.
Wooden interior to
provide greater resonance.
No boxes or galleries,
in line with Wagner’s
democratic principles.

Fantailed seating
instead of traditional
Darkened auditorium to horseshoe shape to focus
create a “mystic chasm.” attention on the stage.

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