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Read Ebook: The Complete Opera Book The Stories of the Operas together with 400 of the Leading Airs and Motives in Musical Notation by Kobb Gustav
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Ebook has 1598 lines and 85948 words, and 32 pages
"Hark, Hagen, and let your answer be true. Do I head the race of the Gibichungs with honour?"
"I will press through the circle of flame," he exclaims. "I will seize her and bring her to you--if you will give me Gutrune for wife."
Thus I drink thee troth,
More than Walhalla's welfare, More than the good of the gods, The ring I guard.
Now, Nothung, witness thou, that chaste my wooing is; To keep my faith with my brother, separate me from his bride.
Phrases of the pledge of Brotherhood followed by the Br?nnhilde, Gutrune, and Sword motives accompany his words. The thuds of the typical Nibelung rhythm resound, and lead to the last crashing chord of this eventful act.
"Siegfried knows me not!" she whispers faintly, as she looks up into his face.
"Guardian of honour, hallowed weapon," she cries, "I dedicate your steel to his destruction. I bless your point that it may blight him. For broken are all his oaths, and perjured now he proves himself."
"His death!"
"Aye, all these things demand his death."
Here is the principal theme of their song in this scene:
Rest thee! Rest thee! O, God!
TRISTAN UND ISOLDE
TRISTAN AND ISOLDE
CHARACTERS
Sailors, Knights, Esquires, and Men-at-Arms.
Wagner was obliged to remodel the "Tristan" legend thoroughly before it became available for a modern drama. He has shorn it of all unnecessary incidents and worked over the main episodes into a concise, vigorous, swiftly moving drama, admirably adapted for the stage. He shows keen dramatic insight in the manner in which he adapts the love-potion of the legends to his purpose. In the legends the love of Tristan and Isolde is merely "chemical"--entirely the result of the love-philtre. Wagner, however, presents them from the outset as enamoured of one another, so that the potion simply quickens a passion already active.
THE VORSPIEL
All who have made a study of opera, and do not regard it merely as a form of amusement, are agreed that the score of "Tristan and Isolde" is the greatest setting of a love story for the lyric stage. In fact to call it a love story seems a slight. It is a tale of tragic passion, culminating in death, unfolded in the surge and palpitation of immortal music.
This passion smouldered in the heart of the man and woman of this epic of love. It could not burst into clear flame because over it lay the pall of duty--a knight's to his king, a wife's to her husband. They elected to die; drank, as they thought, a death potion. Instead it was a magic love-philtre, craftily substituted by the woman's confidante. Then love, no longer vague and hesitating, but roused by sorcerous means to the highest rapture, found expression in the complete abandonment of the lovers to their ecstasy--and their fate.
What of the boat, so bare, so frail, That drifted to our shore? What of the sorely stricken man feebly extended there? Isolde's art he humbly sought; With balsam, herbs, and healing salves, From wounds that laid him low, She nursed him back to strength.
If so thou didst love thy lord, Lift once again this sword, Thrust with it, nor refrain, Lest the weapon fall again.
This motive throbs through the rapturous harmonies of the duet: "Oh, sink upon us, Night of Love," and there is nothing in the realms of music or poetry to compare in suggestiveness with these caressing, pulsating phrases.
Night will shield us for aye!
The unexplained, Unpenetrated Cause of all these woes, Who will to us disclose?
The Lay of Sorrow is a strain of mournful beauty, with the simplicity and indescribable charm of a folk-song. Its plaintive notes cling like ivy to the grey and crumbling ruins of love and joy.
"Tristan!"
"Isolde!" he answers in broken accents. This last look resting rapturously upon her, while in mournful beauty the Love Glance Motive rises from the orchestra, he expires.
In all music there is no scene more deeply shaken with sorrow.
DIE MEISTERSINGER VON N?RNBERG
THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBURG
CHARACTERS
Burghers of the Guilds, Journeymen, 'Prentices, Girls, and Populace.
The Mastersingers were of burgher extraction. They flourished in Germany, chiefly in the imperial cities, during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. They did much to generate and preserve a love of art among the middle classes. Their musical competitions were judged according to a code of rules which distinguished by particular names thirty-two faults to be avoided. Scriptural or devotional subjects were usually selected and the judges or Merker were, in Nuremburg, four in number, the first comparing the words with the Biblical text, the second criticizing the prosody, the third the rhymes, and the fourth the tune. He who had the fewest marks against him received the prize.
Hans Sachs, the most famous of the Mastersingers, born November 5, 1494, died January, 1576, in Nuremburg, is said to have been the author of some six thousand poems. He was a cobbler by trade--
Hans Sachs was a shoe- Maker and poet too.
A monument was erected to him in the city of his birth in 1874.
"The Mastersingers" is a simple, human love story, simply told, with many touches of humour to enliven it, and its interest enhanced by highly picturesque, historical surroundings. As a drama it conveys also a perfect picture of the life and customs of Nuremburg of the time in which the story plays. Wagner must have made careful historical researches, but his book lore is not thrust upon us. The work is so spontaneous that the method and manner of its art are lost sight of in admiration of the result. Hans Sachs himself could not have left a more faithful portrait of life in Nuremburg in the middle of the sixteenth century.
"A professional musician was engaged in a discussion of Wagner in the corridor of the Metropolitan Opera House, while inside the orchestra was playing the 'Meistersinger' overture.
"'It is a pity,' said this wise man, in a condescending manner, 'but Wagner knows absolutely nothing about counterpoint.'
"At that instant the orchestra was singing five different melodies at once; and, as Anton Seidl was the conductor, they were all audible."
In a rare book by J.C. Wagenseil, printed in Nuremburg in 1697, are given four "Prize Master Tones." Two of these Wagner has reproduced in modern garb, the former in the Mastersingers' March, the latter in the Motive of the Art Brotherhood.
Soon after the curtain rises the cobblers arrive, and as they march down the meadow, conducted by the 'prentices, they sing in honour of St. Crispin, their patron saint, a chorus, based on the Cobbler Motive, to which a melody in popular style is added. The town watchmen, with trumpets and drums, the town pipers, lute makers, etc., and then the journeymen, with comical sounding toy instruments, march past, and are succeeded by the tailors, who sing a humorous chorus, telling how Nuremburg was saved from its ancient enemies by a tailor, who sewed a goatskin around him and pranced around on the town walls, to the terror of the hostile army, which took him for the devil. The bleating of a goat is capitally imitated in this chorus.
With the last chord of the tailors' chorus the bakers strike up their song and are greeted in turn by cobblers and tailors with their respective refrains. A boatful of young peasant girls in gay costumes now arrives, and the 'prentices make a rush for the bank. A charming dance in waltz time is struck up. The 'prentices with the girls dance down toward the journeymen, but as soon as these try to get hold of the girls, the 'prentices veer off with them in another direction. This veering should be timed to fall at the beginning of those periods of the dance to which Wagner has given, instead of eight measures, seven and nine, in order by this irregularity to emphasize the ruse of the 'prentices.
PARSIFAL
Stage Dedication Festival Play in three acts, words and music by Richard Wagner. Produced Bayreuth, July 26, 1882. Save in concert form, the work was not given elsewhere until December 24, 1903, when it was produced at the Metropolitan Opera House at that time under the direction of Heinrich Conried.
CHARACTERS
Brotherhood of the Knights of the Grail; Youths and Boys; Flower Maidens .
"Parsifal" is a familiar name to those who have heard "Lohengrin." Lohengrin, it will be remembered, tells Elsa that he is Parsifal's son and one of the knights of the Holy Grail. The name is written Percival in "Lohengrin," as well as in Tennyson's "Idyls of the King." Now, however, Wagner returns to the quainter and more "Teutonic" form of spelling. "Parsifal" deals with an earlier period in the history of the Grail knighthood than "Lohengrin." But there is a resemblance between the Grail music in "Parsifal" and the "Lohengrin" music--a resemblance not in melody, nor even in outline, but merely in the purity and spirituality that breathes through both.
Three legends supplied Wagner with the principal characters in this music-drama. They were "Percival le Galois; or Contes de Grail," by Chr?tien de Troyes ; "Parsifal," by Wolfram von Eschenbach, and a manuscript of the fourteenth century called by scholars the "Mabinogion." As usual, Wagner has not held himself strictly to any one of these, but has combined them all, and revivified them through the alchemy of his own genius.
THE VORSPIEL
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