The Humanistic Tradition, Book 5 Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

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CHAPTER 29 The Romantic Style in Art and Music 67

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write as my heart dictates.” The heroines of Verdi’s most
beloved operas—Rigoletto(1851),La Traviata(1853), and
Aïda(1870)—are also creatures of the heart, who all die
for love.
Perhaps the most famous of Verdi’s operas isAïda, which
was commissioned by the Turkish viceroy of Egypt to mark
the opening of the Suez Canal.Aïdamade a nationalistic
plea for unity against foreign domination—one critic
called the opera “agitator’s music.” Indeed, the aria “O
patria mia” (“O my country”) is an expression of Verdi’s
ardent love for the newly unified Italy. ButAïdais also the
passionate love story of an Egyptian prince and an
Ethiopian princess held as a captive slave. Verdi’s stirring
arias, vigorous choruses, and richly colored orchestral pas-
sages can be enjoyed by listening alone. But the dramatic
force of this opera can only be appreciated by witnessing
firsthand a theatrical performance—especially one that
engages such traditional paraphernalia as horses, chariots,
and, of course, elephants.

The Birth of Photography

In Germany, the master of opera and one of the most for-
midable composers of the century was Richard Wagner
(1813–1883). The stepson of a gifted actor, he spent much
of his childhood composing poems and plays and setting
them to music. This union of music and literature culmi-
nated in the birth of what Wagner called music-drama—
a continuous fabric of sound and story that replaced the

traditional divisions of the opera into arias, duets, chorus-

es, and instrumental passages. Wagner’s conception of

opera shattered long-standing Western theatrical tradi-

tions. He aimed, as he explained, “to force the listener, for

the first time in the history of opera, to take an interest in

a poetic idea by making him follow all its developments” as

dramatized in music. While earlier composers generally

told the story by way of the vocal line, Wagner made the

orchestra an equal component in the drama. Heroic in size,

Wagner’s orchestra generally engulfs the listener in a mael-

strom of uninterrupted melody. Characters and events

emerge by way of the application of the leitmotif, a short

musical phrase that—like the idée fixe—signifies a particu-

lar person, thing, or idea in the story.

Deeply nationalistic, Wagner based his music-dramas

almost exclusively on heroic themes from Germany’s

medieval past. His librettos, which he himself wrote,

brought to life the fabulous events and personalities of

German folk tales and legends. Among his recurring

themes are two he shared with Goethe: the redeeming love

of the Eternal Female and the Faustian lust for power.

Magical devices—the ring, the sword, or the chalice—like

the individual characters in the opera, might each assume

its own musical phrase or leitmotif.

Of his nine principal operas, the most ambitious is a

monumental fifteen-hour cycle of four music-dramas col-

lectively titled Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the

Nibelung). Based on Norse and Germanic mythology, The

Ringinvolves the quest for a magical but accursed golden

ring, whose power would provide its possessor with the

potential to control the universe (Figure 29.22). Out of a

struggle between the gods of Valhalla and an assortment of

giants, dragons, and dwarfs emerges the hero, Siegfried,

whose valorous deeds secure the ring for his lover

Brünnhilde. In the end Siegfried loses both his love and his

life, and Valhalla crumbles in flames, destroying the gods

and eliciting the birth of a new order. Like Goethe, whose

Faust was a lifetime effort and a tribute to his nation’s past,

Wagner toiled on the monumental Ringfor over twenty-

five years, from 1848 to 1874.

While The Ringgives imaginative breadth to the hero

myths of Germanic literary tradition, its music matches its

poetry in scope and drama. Wagner’s orchestra for the

cycle called for 115 pieces, including 64 string instru-

ments. No fewer than twenty individual leitmotifsweave a

complex web of dramatic musical density. “Every bar of

dramatic music,” proclaimed Wagner, “is justified only by

the fact that it explains something in the action or in the

character of the actor.” In harmonic style, some

Wagnerian passages anticipate the more radical experi-

ments of twentieth-century music, such as dissonance and

the dissolution of classical tonality (see chapter 32).

Orchestral interludes that “describe” raging floods and

rings of fire capture the Romantic sublime in musical form.

The artist’s mission, Wagner insisted, is to communicate

“the necessary spontaneous emotional mood.” In music-

drama he not only fulfilled that mission, but brought

Romantic music to the threshold of modernity.

Figure 29.21Maria Taglioni in her London debut of 1830. Color
lithograph. In romantic ballet, grace, delicacy, and flamboyant
technique were paramount. Taglioni is shown here dancing en
pointe, a talent that brought her fame as a prima ballerina.