The Operas of Richard Wagner Vernacularized Into American

By Arthur W. Ritchie

This comes in three parts: A short bio of the unusual facts about Richard Wagner, then a precise and libretto in American for Die Feen, Wagner's first opera and a total flop. Its libretto is included that you might see how he progressed in his writing style. This is followed by a precise of Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi without librettos as they're almost never played today, and then the rest of the Wagner cannon: The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan & Isolde, Die Meistersinger, and Parsifal with precision and libretto in American. For additional information on the Ring operas, see my other free book, Richard Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arthur W. Ritchie
• Release date: Aug 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463475522

Book preview

The Operas of Richard Wagner

A Vernacularized into American

By Arthur W. Ritchie

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 9780463475522

Copyright 2019 Arthur W. Ritchie

Smashwords Edition License Notes:

This e-book is for your personal enjoyment and you may use it in any way you like other than to make money. That right I reserve to myself.

Enjoy!

AWR

For Bobbi Agins!

The Love and Joy of my Old Age

Growing older is mandatory

Growing up, is optional

Table of Contents

Wilhelm Richard Wagner

Born: Let’s begin with his side of the story: He said he was born May 22, 1813, in Leipzig, Germany, as the seventh surviving member of the nine children of Johanna Rosine [née Pätz 1778-1848] the daughter of a baker, and Carl Friedrich Wilhelm. [1770-1813] He further states that he was baptized two days later as Wilhelm Richard Wagner.

In addition to the obvious wagoneer, Wagner can also be translated as, one who dares.

Carl Wagner was a clerk in the Leipzig police service whose fluency in French at a time of French occupation, was looking forward to becoming chief constable at the time of his death [November 13, 1813] when Richard was 5¹/² months old.

Deeply interested in the arts, the Wagner family’s closest friend was the itinerant actor, singer, and painter, Ludwig Geyer, and 10 months after Carl Wagner’s death, Richard’s mother married Geyer. [August 28, 1814] He later wrote of this [1869], "[my mother’s] chief characteristics seem to have been a keen sense of humor and an amiable temper, so we need not suppose that it was a mere sense of duty toward the family of a departed friend that induced the admirable Ludwig Geyer to enter into matrimony with her when she was no longer youthful, but rather that he was impelled to that step by a sincere and warm regard for the widow of his friend." Note how he fails to mention the other side of the story.

Before Richard’s birth, his father was having an affair with Friederike Wilhelmine Hartwig, leaving good friend Geyer ‘home alone’ with Johanna Wagner. Carl Wagner was only dead seven months when Johanna became pregnant with Geyer’s child, and was three months pregnant at the time of her marriage to him. Their daughter, Cicilia, was born in February of 1815.

And, Wagner’s statement that he’d been baptized two days after his birth is refuted by public records. Immediately after his birth—and this was during a war—his mother ventured through enemy lines to visit Geyer in Teplitz where she moved into rooms above his as is documented by her signature in the town’s visitor’s registry. And Richard was not baptized on May 24th as he says but on August 16th. Naturally, some biographers have taken this to mean that Richard was Geyer’s son and that the trip and delayed baptism were the result of a feud between Carl and Johanna Wagner over the child’s paternity. It’s also interesting that no evidence of a marriage is known to exist between Johanna and Carl Wagner.

In Cosima’s Diary, we find Wagner denying flat-out that he was Geyer’s son, but the evidence suggests that he and, perhaps some of the other Wagner children were. A year and a half after his mother’s remarriage, the family moved to Dresden where the man we know as Richard Wagner was registered in the local school as Richard Geyer. And his autobiography tells us he used that name until several years after he was 14, yet he was only eight years old when Geyer died. [1821] But when the family moved back to Leipzig, they all reverted to using the name Wagner. But when Richard chose an emblem his autobiography’s spine, his choice was not the wagon as his name might imply, but a vulture: And the German word for vulture is? Geyer.

Died: Richard Wagner died at 3:30 PM on February 13, 1883, in Venice, Italy, of a heart attack and was buried in the garden behind his Festspielhaus five days later. His last words were, My watch. And while 69 years, eight months and 18 days old, he never spent a moment of that time writing a will.

Nickname: As his sobriquets tended to be coined by those knowing him, none are used in polite society.

Physical appearance: After Dresden’s May Uprising, [First shots fired Wednesday May 3, 1849] a Wanted poster went up [May 16, 1849] reading:

"Wagner is of medium stature; [His passport put his height at 5’5] has brown hair, an open forehead, eyebrows brown; eyes, grayish blue; nose and mouth, proportioned; chin, round, and wears spectacles. Special characteristics; rapid in movements and speech ... At a time when arrest warrants were being issued wholesale, for 30 odd mayors, most of the [by then dissolved] Landtag members, town counselors, lawyers, teachers, military officers and even clergymen, Wagner’s warrant was #8. Well, he could be annoying.

And while there are numerous photographs of him, her, and they together, only their 1881 family portrait has her standing next to him for a height comparison. But as he’s standing one step up behind her, my assumption is that her height was his 5’5 plus the 8 height of the step, plus the inch or so that she’s taller than he in the picture, I making her roughly the height of her father, Frantz Liszt, who was 6’1". And there don’t seem to be any photos of Wagner wearing glasses.

After conducting the Tannhäuser overture in England, [1855] he met Queen Victoria who wrote of him in her diary: short, very quiet, wears spectacles & has a very finely developed forehead, a hooked nose & projecting chin.

Personality: If a psychopath is a person born incapable of developing a conscience, Richard Wagner was a textbook psychopath of the purest stripe. Taking egomania to an extreme, he tolerated people only so long as they worshiped him without question and gave to him without stint. Considering his friends’ wallets and wives as his own, he was quick to drop anyone questioning his impertinence. And while he made and borrowed a fortune during his lifetime, he squandered it all playing ‘the great man’ that his acquaintances might prove themselves by giving him even more.

His hobbies included convincing people to become vegetarians, arguing that Christ was not a Jew, bathing in scented water, and ordering screaming pink silk underwear. [Other fabrics seem to have annoyed his thin skin.] An egomaniacal user, virulent anti Semite,† political revolutionary, pathological liar, and consummate hater, he worshiped only himself and, to date, has been music’s most despicable composer. As he himself said, no lasting personal bond of friendship ever found its way into my life.

† Today, his home at Bayreuth [Wahnfried] sports a plaque translating Wagner was not an anti-Semite. This silly attempt at character rehabilitation ignores everything he ever wrote or spoke on the subject. But to be fair, it should be noted that his second wife, Cosima, was ¼ Jewish. Cosima’s mother, the Countess Marie Cathérine Sophie d’Agoult’s father was a Jewish banker.

Marriage #1: Minna Planer was the first to suffer the title, Frau Wagner. At 17, Minna had an illegitimate daughter she named Ernestine Nathalie, [but always known as Nathalie] and decided to leave home for a career as an actress / singer. And, alas, she ran into Wagner.

Taking the job as the Magdeburg Theater Company’s conductor, Wagner didn’t like what he saw and resigned on day one. But just hours later, he ran into Minna, the company’s junior lead and instantly retracted his resignation. His diary says of her: Looking very charming and fresh, the young actress’s general manner and movements were full of a certain majesty and grave assurance which lent an agreeable and captivating air of dignity to her otherwise pleasant expression. Her scrupulously clean and tidy dress completed the startling effect of the unexpected encounter. But that image didn’t last, for soon he was writing, I don’t believe she ever felt any passion or love for me, or that she was capable of such a thing; and I can only describe her feelings for me as heartfelt goodwill. His other marriage related comments include:

• "There are three things I love: My poodle, my watch, and Minna Planner. [Note: dog wins, new watch, places, and fiancé, shows.]

• When they made up after a fight and Minna met him in Switzerland with their dog, parrot, and so-called sister, Nathalie, he wrote, I must honestly confess that the little dog and bird made me happy. And:

• His last words were, My watch.

After proving to the very bureaucratic German registrars that they were of legal age —he was 23¹/² and she 27—Richard and Minna married at 11 AM on November 24, 1836. Why go into such detail on this? Because, the very next day he was in the Königsberg debtors court pleading that he should not be required to pay his debts because he was a minor! The court didn’t buy it. Anyway, six months after their marriage, she and Nathalie took off with a rich merchant named Dietrich. [May 31, 1837]

He wrote her a lot of smoochy letters; they got back together; and she put up with a lot before finally ditching him for good: His debtors prison stint, [October 28th, to November 17, 1840]; his banishment from Germany for writing inflammatory pamphlets during Saxony’s abortive revolt; ["Rise up you people of the earth! Up you oppressed! You poor! You…]

Wednesday, May 3, 1849 was an unusual day in Dresden’s history: While some rebels fired their first shots in the city, others deliberately set fire to the opera house. In 1855, King Johann of Saxony hinted that, had Wagner been caught, he’d have been executed. His exile lasted until 1861

While in Zurich, Wagner spent time writing inflammatory pamphlets, the most brutal, Judaism in Music, was the last straw for Minna, for as she wrote, [May 8, 1850]

You always made me so happy, sang and played almost every new scene for me. But since two years ago, when you wanted to read me that essay in which you slander whole races which have been fundamentally helpful to you, I could not force myself to listen; and ever since you’ve borne a grudge and punished me for it such that you never again let me hear anything from your works.

Then there was his affair with Jessie Laussot, [February 1850] during the Wagners’ stay in Zurich, Switzerland, [1849 – 1858] as the guest of silk merchant Otto Wesendonck. Jessie was the wife of a local wine merchant. His affair with his patron’s wife, Mathilde Wesendonck, began in 1853. Still, the Wagners’ icy relationship hung together until Minna intercepted a love note Richard had written to Mathilde and the fur flew!

"Before I leave," she wrote Mathilde, let me tell you that you’ve managed to separate my husband from me after 22 years! They got together once or twice after that, but when she left in 1862, their childless marriage of 25¹/² years was over.

Wagner later wrote, She had not the slightest passion for the stage and, utterly devoid as she was of any levity or coquetry, she merely saw a theatrical career as a means of earning a quick and possibly even a rich, livelihood … As she was without idealism, she had no artistic feeling; neither did she possess any talent for acting, and her power of pleasing was entirely due to her charming appearance.

Ernestine Nathalie Planer: [1826-1892?] was Minna’s illegitimate daughter by Ernst Rudolph von Einsiedel, an officer in the Royal Saxon Guards. Always pawned off as Minna’s sister, there isn’t a hint that Nathalie ever learned who her real mother was! From Wagner’s autobiography: Until her [Minna’s] death she shamefully withheld from the girl the fact that she was her mother. [Nathalie was 39 when Minna died, and was still ignorant of her parentage when she vanished from history.]

Marriage #2: Several years of travel and womanizing followed before Cosima Liszt von Bülow, the daughter of Franz Liszt and wife of conductor Hans von Bülow, mentioned she might be pregnant. [Wagner may have had an affair with Cosima’s sister, Blandine, about this time also.]

Cosima’s father, Ferencz Liszt, Germanized his name without bothering to learn that language, so his spoke with his 1½ year younger son-in-law, Wagner, in French, a language Wagner seems to have been comfortable with, while despising the French people, so….

Liszt was 6’1" and extremely slender with a pallid face and eyes of the deepest sea green … it was impossible to count the ravishing celestial women who came to fall trembling like poor little larks at the feet of the terrible enchanter.

One of the era’s greatest pianists, he never married and eventually took four minor Franciscan orders to end his days in a monk’s habit. But before that, he had three famous mistresses and it was during his 11-year affair [1833-44] with the first of these, the Countess Marie Cathérine Sophie [née Flavigny] d’Agoult], that he somehow became involved in the creation of her three illegitimate children.

The daughter of a Jewish banker, she married Count Charles d’Agoult in 1827 with no less than King Charles X of France and Louis Philippe, the Duke of Orleans, as witnesses.

The Count was rich, boring, 20 years her senior, and two children later, she met Liszt. The year was 1832; she was 27 and grieving over the death of a child; Liszt 22; and the rest is history. Liszt’s two daughters by the Countess d’Agoult involving Wagner were:

Blandine Liszt [1835 -1862] The first wife of the future Prime Minister of France, Émile Ollivier, she died in childbirth of puerperal fever at age 26. Many believe she had an affair with Wagner.

Francesca Gaetana Cosima Liszt [December 25, 1837 - April 1, 1930] Music’s only Christmas baby was born in Italy, raised mainly in France, and lived to the age of 92. She was the Wagner’s widow for 47 years.

She said she was born on December 25th and Wikipedia says it was the 24th, who do you want to believe?

Franz Liszt died on July 31, 1886 in Bayreuth while attending Cosima’s staging of Tristan. He is buried in the municipal cemetery there.

While on a trip to Paris, [October 10, 1853] to see his children for the first time in eight years, Liszt’s 6’1 15-year-old daughter, Cosima, met the 5’5 Wagner for the first time.

Four years later, she married her father’s pupil, the pianist / conductor, [Guido] Hans von Bülow [August 18, 1857] in a Protestant ceremony in Berlin. Her father attended, her mother did not. At his time, the Wagners were living in a house [Der Asyl, the Refuge] loaned to them by his patron, Otto Wesendonck and he invited the von Bülows to honeymooned there with them. Hans drank beer and bragged; Richard drank Champaign and ogled. Almost 25 years older than Cosima, Wagner was only a year and a half younger than her father.

The von Bülows’ had two daughters, Blandine and Daniela before they began working with Wagner: Hans came to produce his operas; Cosima to produce his children.

Wagner’s Children:

By Christiane Wilhelmine [Minna] Planer: None.

By Cosima [Stork] Liszt von Bülow: Three:

Isolde: [1865 - 1919] was born while Hans was preparing for the premiere of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. [June 10, 1865] She married Franz Beidler and had one child, Franz.

Eva: [1867 - 1942] married Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the author of several books on Wagner. They were childless.

Helferich Siegfried Richard Wagner: [1869 – 1930]

Wagner moved to Triebschen on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland on April 15, 1866 and Cosima followed with her kids ‘for a visit’ on May 12. Becoming pregnant with Siegfried, she asked Hans for a divorce, but, being a good Catholic, he said No. So Cosima with Isolde and Eva moved back with Wagner permanently. [November 16, 1868] and Siegfried was born there.

__________________________

Minna—remember her? Wagner’s first wife? She died on January 25, 1866 leaving him free to remarry. So, after much soul searching—Hans—a Catholic who had yet to meet wild love of his life #2—said OK, so Hans and Cosima divorced [July 18, 1870] allowing her to marry Richard. [August 25, 1870] She was 32, he was 57. Anyway, by then she’d given up having kids to start worrying about Judith Mendès Gautier.

If romance blooms in our teenage years, and Paris is the city of love, then 15-year-old Judith Mendès never stood a chance when she met the 48-year-old Wagner. It was love-at-first-sight during his three-day Tannhäuser run in Paris! [1861] A time she’d never forget. In time, she married the poet Théophile Gautier, but it was the divorcee Gautier that attended the opening of Wagner’s Festspielhaus [1876]—on the arm of her former husband—met Wagner for the second time—and moved in with Richard and Cosima. [By then Wagner was 63, Cosima 38, and Judith 31] Cosima played it cool. She simply pretended the young beauty wasn’t there and, sure enough, by 1878, the passion was gone and so was the last of the Wagner mistresses.

Religion: Lutheran, well, sort of: At the time of my confirmation at Easter, 1827, Wagner wrote, "I had considerable doubt about this ceremony, and I already felt a serious falling off of my reverence for religious observances.

The boy who once gazed with agonized sympathy on the altar piece in the Kreuz Kirche [Church of the Holy Cross], and yearned to hang on the Cross in place of the Savior, had now as an adolescent, lost his veneration for the clergy and was quite ready to make fun of them. The shudder with which I received the Bread and Wine was so ineffaceably stamped on my memory that I never again partook of the Communion, lest I should do so with levity.

Over time, Wagner became a devout worshiper of himself and only proselytized Christians to his faith, although he once tried talking conductor Hermann Levi into being baptized, presumably as a first step on the road to his Wagnerization.

Whoever wants to understand National Socialistic Germany, Adolph Hitler would later say, must know Wagner. [They had more in common than their love of dogs.]

Work Style: Always working when not borrowing money, squandering money, writing inflammatory books or explaining his genius to someone. He was an almost totally self-taught composer and is one of the very few of whom it can honestly be said that, he changed music forever. Or, as Modest Mussorgsky put it, Wagner is powerful! Powerful in that he lays his hands-on art and yanks it around!

Musical Skills: As he wrote: "When I was 12, my mother engaged a tutor for me named Humann from whom I received regular music [piano] lessons, although of a very mediocre description. As soon as I had acquired a very imperfect knowledge of fingering I begged to be allowed to play overtures in the form of duets, always keeping Weber [a family friend in Wagner’s youth] as the goal of my ambition. When I got so far as to be able to play the overture to Freischütz [Weber’s most famous opera] in a very halting manner, I felt the object of my study had been attained and was not inclined to devote any further attention to perfecting my technique."

While others have described his piano playing as halting or even dreadfully, his autobiography gives several instances of his accompanying fairly famous singers on the piano so ....

While semi famous as a conductor, he personalized the works of Beethoven and Mozart etc. such that, at Dresden, he was told flat-out: Do it the way it was written, or find another job! His tempos annoyed critics, such as Berlioz, who thought he was all, rubato, the Italian word meaning, ‘to rob’ which means his beat was deliberately unsteady. [He was always changing the tempo, okay?]

Operas: Wagner not only wrote his own librettos—something many consider a mixed blessing at best—he’d then write books explaining how his operas were to be performed. He’d later say these guidebooks were rubbish.

Die Feen: The Fairies, [1833 - 34] Never performed during Wagner’s lifetime, and banished from his Festspielhaus by his widow as not up to what we have come to recognize as the master’s standards. However, five years after Wager’s death it premier at King Ludwig II’s Munich theater by royal command. [June 29, 1888] It’s a clinker that’s never caught on and its libretto is included here only as a starting post for the study of Wagner’s growth as a composer.

Das Liebesverbot: The Forbidden Love, [1836] Premiering as Die novize von Palermo [The Novice from Palermo] a name change suggested by the local police—it’s a takeoff on Shakespeare’s, Measure for Measure, had exactly one disastrous performance during Wagner’s lifetime, and bankrupted the opera company.

Rienzi: Rienzi, Last of the Tribunes, [1840] The first Wagnerian success premiered October 20, 1842. [It was Hitler’s favorite opera and he noted that he’d seen it countless times.] Hans von Bülow called it, Meyerbeer’s best opera, but today it’s rarely performed outside of Germany and, like its two predecessors, is banned from his Festspielhaus.

Der Fliegende Holländer: The Flying Dutchman, [1841] premiered on February 2, 1843 to become the first Wagnerian opera to enter the world’s permanent repertory and is the first of his operas to be regularly performed at his Festspielhaus.

Tannhäuser: [1845] The Song Contest at Wartberg. Originally, Der Venusberg, its name was once again changed by order of the police for being too risqué.

Lohengrin: [1848]—Premiered August 28, 1850

Das Rheingold: The Rhine Gold [1854]—Premiered September 22, 1869 [Ring opera #1]

Die Walküre: The Valkyrie [1856]—Premiered June 26, 1870 [Ring opera #2]

Tristan und Isolde: [1859]—But not premiered until June 10, 1865. If ‘modern’ music is based on the suspension of a central tonality—that is, it is atonal—without a readily discernable key—than Tristan is the first ‘modern’ opera and, probably, the finest atonal piece ever written. But mention this to musicologists and they’ll bring up Mozart’s quartet K. 428 as if our boy was a mere pilferer! Don’t you believe it! From Tristan’s opening notes it its final chord, it is sheer genius. Never confuse the man’s despicable character with his sublime music!

Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg: [1867] The Master Singers of Nuremberg —Premiered June 21, 1868. His only successful comedy—his second opera, Das Liebesverbot was a comedy but never caught on. It’s the longest opera in the current repertory running about six hours intact or roughly five and a quarter hours with the standard cuts; and, at 823 pages, is the largest score ever printed. [Dover Press Reprints]

Siegfried: [1869]—Premiered 1876 [Ring opera #3]

Götterdämmerung: [1874] The Twilight of the Gods, Premiered 1876. [Ring opera #4]

Wagner’s Festspielhaus opened with the first full production of all four ring operas on August 13, 14, 16 and 17th of 1876. Attendees of that opening cycle included: Kaiser Wilhelm I, Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, Anton Bruckner, Camille Saint-Saëns and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Wagner’s father-in-law, Franz Liszt, died there during the 1886 festival.

Parsifal: [1882] He had one more in him. When it premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on Christmas Eve in 1903, a special, Parsifal train ran from Chicago to NYC just for this performance.

Other works: A symphony in C, written when he was 20 which is rarely played; an adaptation of Beethoven’s 9th symphony for two pianos; A Faust Overture; The Siegfried Idyll [written as a birthday / Christmas present for his wife, it premiered at the foot of the stairs leading to her bedroom on Christmas morning, 1870]; and a few songs including five with words by his mistress, Mathilde Wesendonck.

Things that are uniquely Wagner’s: While Offenbach founded companies to exclusively perform his works, Wagner built his own opera house, which is exclusive to the point of even omitting Wagner’s first three operas and all 14 of his son’s.

Its cornerstone was laid on Wagner’s 59th birthday [May 22, 1872] with only about a third of the project’s cost on hand; so with only the vaguest idea of how he was going to raise the rest, he dubbed it, Wahnfried, free of delusion.

As Wagner’s opera house was being built, so was his patron’s, New Swan Castle. [Neuschwanstein] Ludwig named it after the transit system in Wagner’s opera, Lohengrin.

Lohengrin, ends with the title character exiting the stage in a swan shaped boat pulled by a bird. Well, one day as tenor Leo Slezak was singing his heart out, stage hands pulled the boat off stage early, and as our brave tenor finished his song, he turned to the audience and asked, "Anyone know when the next swan leaves?"

________________________

Wagner’s Festspielhaus opened in 1876, with at least one significant unique feature: The world’s first sunken orchestra pit. Covered by a dome with holes in it, Wagner called it a Mystical abyss. His musicians called it, the boiler room. And when American reporters on opening night mentioned it in their reports sent via the 10-year-old and relatively expensive transatlantic cable, Americans took credit for inventing the orchestra pit.

At opera’s beginning in 1600, orchestras were seated on stage behind the singers, but later in that century, they moved to the theater floor in front of the stage at audience level.

Wagner was the first to suggest a double reed wind instrument to fill the gap between the oboes and bassoons, and while Wilhelm Heckel didn’t get around to making one until 1904, 21 years after Wagner’s death, the Heckelphone fits into the orchestra exactly as Wagner said it would.* Quickly put to use by Richard Strauss in his, Salome [1905] it has since lost favor and is rarely written for today.

* Playing an octave lower than the oboe, it has an extra note on the bottom, the low A.

Wagner is also responsible for the tenor tuba [sounding at the 9-foot pitch in B Flat] and the bass tuba [sounding at the 12-foot pitch in F and not to be confused with the monstrous orchestral tuba in F] Called Wagner Tubas, they are played by French Hornists using French Horn mouthpieces to fill the soft-brass gap between the French Horns and the ponderous bass trombone and orchestral Tuba. He then had built the enormous kontrabasstuba in C. The largest of all tubas to bottom a true tuba choir. [This is a one breath per note instrument.]

Tristan changed our concept of harmony forever with its suspension of a central tonality as Wagner meanders through a seemingly endless melodic / harmonic development he called Gesamtkunstwerk. Or, as Sir Thomas Beecham put it: We’ve been rehearsing for two hours and we’re still playing the same bloody tune!

His books include:

Über deutsches Musikwesen, [1840] On German Music.

Das Kunstwerk der Zunkunft, [1849] Art in the Futurei

Die Kunst und die Revolution, [1849] The Arts and the Revolution.

Das Judenthum in der Musik, [1850] Judaism and Music, of which he noted:

Although I did not wish to hide my identity as its author, yet I considered it advisable to adopt a pseudonym lest my very seriously intended effort should be degraded to a purely personal matter.… It should be remembered that almost all the newspapers in Europe are in the hands of Jews.

Oper und Drama, [1851] Opera and Drama, he worked out his Gesamtkunstwerk theory.

Ein Mitteilung an meine Freunde, [1851] A Message to my Friends.

Über das Dirigieren, [1860] On Conducting.

Über die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama, [1879] The Application of Music to Drama.

Religion und Kunst, [1880] Religion and Art.

Mien Leben, 1885—1890] My Life, as dictated to his wife, Cosima.

Background: Composed in 1833 when Wagner was 20 and working as a part-time chorus master, Die Feen’s plot was based on Gozzi’s La donna serpente (The Snake Woman), and the names of the opera’s two principal characters, Ada and Arindal, are from Die Hochzeit. (The wedding night)

Wagner gave the original manuscript to King Ludwig II of Bavaria, but it eventually wound up in Adolf Hitler’s possession, as did the original score of Rienzi. Both were known to be with Hitler in his Berlin bunker during the final days of World War II and have since vanished.

Never performed during Wagner’s lifetime, even after his death, his widow refused to allow its performance in his own Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. Now, it’s occasionally performed in Germany as a historic curiosity.

Synopsis:

Act 1: While other fairies amuse themselves in a fairy garden, Zemina and Farzana discuss how their mistress, the half-fairy Ada, has renounced her immortality to live with her beloved mortal, Arindal. Not caring for this, the fairy-king places a condition on Arindal that he is not expected to comply with even with the help of the magician Groma. Nevertheless, Zemina and Farzana get the other fairies and spirits to pledge their help in separating Ada from the mortal.

Arindal’s been missing for eight years during which time his father, the king, has died. And now with the kingdom under attack, Morald and Gunther have been sent to meet Gernot to find out what’s happened to him. Gernot tells of how he and Arindal had hunted a doe to a river where it vanished. Then, hearing a voice, they jumped into the river, and there found a beautiful woman declaring her love for Arindal and saying they could remain together forever—if Arindal did not ask who she is for eight years. Well, I did mention that she was beautiful and the day before that time was up, he did the unthinkable: He asked who she was, and she and her palace instantly vanish and Arindal and Gernot found themselves in a wilderness.

Having learned nothing, Morald and Gunther depart and Arindal appears to tell us of his grief at losing Ada. Gernot argues that Ada is a sorceress who’s abandoned him and that he should return to his kingdom. He sings of an evil witch who had disguised herself as a beautiful woman.

Gunther returns, disguised as a priest, and attempts to persuade Arindal that the witch will turn him into a wild beast unless he returns at once. Morald disguises himself as the ghost of Arindal’s father to tell him that his kingdom is threatened. Each disguise is magically destroyed just as Arindal is about to be convinced. However, they finally persuade him of his country’s need and they all agree to depart for home in the morning. Arindal fears he’ll never see Ada again as he falls into an enchanted sleep.

The scene changes to a fairy garden where, leaving a palace, Ada is telling of how she’s willing to pay the price of sacrificing her immortality to win Arindal. Arindal awakens and declares his joy at seeing Ada again, but she announces that he will abandon her the next day. Gernot, Gunther and Morald arrive with companions to fetch Arindal. Those who have not seen her before are struck by Ada’s beauty and fear Arindal may change his mind again about returning home. A procession of fairies exiting the palace tell Ada that her father has just died and that she is now queen. Ada tells Arindal that she must leave but will see him tomorrow. She asks him to swear that whatever happens he will not curse her. He swears it even though she takes back her request. She expresses her fear that they will both be destroyed as a