{"title":"Wagner's Shakespeare: Das Liebesverbot, the Problem Comedy and the Carnivalesque","authors":"Justin Mueller","doi":"10.1017/s1479409822000015","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores Wagner's early comedic opera, Das Liebesverbot. Though his ‘mature comedy’ Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg has been the focus of much scholarly attention, the composer's first and only other foray into the genre has been much less studied and often outright dismissed. While contemporary scholars have increasingly looked to Wagner's pre-Dutchman operas, they often read them purely in light of his later works; with this examination of his adaptation of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, I offer a consideration of the young composer's work in its own right. After considering issues of textual and cultural adaptation, this paper offers close readings of several passages of the opera, in tandem with parallel scenes from the original play-text, to show how Wagner's transformation of this not-quite-so-comedic comedy into an expression of the carnivalesque reveals an expansive and cosmopolitan artistic and political philosophy during a period during which he was greatly influenced by the authors of the Junges Deutschland movement. Such a reconsideration disrupts the standard conception of a composer who is still often considered, in his own words, the ‘most German being’. Here, we see Wagner at arguably his most cosmopolitan, adapting the work of an English playwright he revered, altering the plot so that it ostensibly aligned with the ideological outlook of his German revolutionary colleagues, and setting it to music of a decidedly French and Italian flavour, all this in a way that still preserves many of the same, seemingly contradictory themes present in the original play.","PeriodicalId":41351,"journal":{"name":"Nineteenth-Century Music Review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Nineteenth-Century Music Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1479409822000015","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"MUSIC","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper explores Wagner's early comedic opera, Das Liebesverbot. Though his ‘mature comedy’ Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg has been the focus of much scholarly attention, the composer's first and only other foray into the genre has been much less studied and often outright dismissed. While contemporary scholars have increasingly looked to Wagner's pre-Dutchman operas, they often read them purely in light of his later works; with this examination of his adaptation of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, I offer a consideration of the young composer's work in its own right. After considering issues of textual and cultural adaptation, this paper offers close readings of several passages of the opera, in tandem with parallel scenes from the original play-text, to show how Wagner's transformation of this not-quite-so-comedic comedy into an expression of the carnivalesque reveals an expansive and cosmopolitan artistic and political philosophy during a period during which he was greatly influenced by the authors of the Junges Deutschland movement. Such a reconsideration disrupts the standard conception of a composer who is still often considered, in his own words, the ‘most German being’. Here, we see Wagner at arguably his most cosmopolitan, adapting the work of an English playwright he revered, altering the plot so that it ostensibly aligned with the ideological outlook of his German revolutionary colleagues, and setting it to music of a decidedly French and Italian flavour, all this in a way that still preserves many of the same, seemingly contradictory themes present in the original play.
本文探讨了瓦格纳早期的喜剧歌剧《李》。尽管他的“成熟喜剧”Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg一直是学术界关注的焦点,但这位作曲家首次也是唯一一次涉足这一类型的作品却很少被研究,而且经常被彻底否定。虽然当代学者越来越多地关注瓦格纳在荷兰人之前的歌剧,但他们往往纯粹根据他后来的作品来阅读这些歌剧;通过对他改编自莎士比亚的《度量衡》的研究,我对这位年轻作曲家的作品本身进行了思考。在考虑了文本和文化改编的问题后,本文仔细阅读了歌剧的几个段落,并结合了原剧本中的平行场景,以展示瓦格纳如何将这部不太喜剧化的喜剧转变为嘉年华式的表达,揭示了在他深受德国丛林运动作者影响的时期,一种广泛而国际化的艺术和政治哲学。这样的重新思考颠覆了作曲家的标准概念,用他自己的话说,作曲家仍然经常被认为是“最德国人”。在这里,我们看到瓦格纳可以说是他最国际化的作品,他改编了一位他尊敬的英国剧作家的作品,改变了情节,使其表面上与德国革命同僚的意识形态观点一致,并将其设置为明显的法国和意大利风格的音乐,所有这些都以一种仍然保留了许多相同之处的方式,原剧本中看似矛盾的主题。