Opera as a literary genre
- Thread starter carlton_bach
- Start date
Dr. Strangelove
Banned
You could start with butterflying away Wagner, who wrote his own librettos and was the first proponent of Opera as a total work that seamlessly combined music and words. Before him, writers were considered almost as important as composers in opera.
Interesting, given that the Wagner gets no support thread is where the idea hit me... so if we take the POD suggested there and put Wagner in Britain or the US, where he would depend on other librettists, we are some way there? Neat.
Abdul Hadi Pasha
Banned
I don't think what Dr Strangelove said is accurate, and I'm claiming "hand" because I was a music major, and I just got back from Strauss' Elektra, which BTW, was one of the finest performances I've ever attended. Wagner was not the first proponent of seamlessly combining music and words - that's kind of what opera is in the first place. His concept was Gesamtkunstwerk, or a synthesis of all the arts, with all of them being important. But still, it's the musical score that unites it all.
I don't see how it's possible for the librettist to achieve greater fame than the composer. There is just no comparison between the amount of work that goes into composing an opera vs a libretto, and if the libretto has literary merit, it is usually because the source of it was already a great or important work, like Figaro. A libretto will always have to compromise itself to fit the music.
