There once was a man named Wagner, Richard Wagner, who dreamed of gods and dwarfs, and of the unification of the Christian German people, and of an art form glorifying the German heritage and future, and of building a shrine to that art, that heritage, those people.
In his teens, one of his gods was surely Goethe, the most influential German writer of the early 19th century, possibly of all time. Wagner thought he might become a playwright, but then he found another god: Beethoven, the most influential German composer of the early 19th century, possibly of all time.
This young man named Wagner dreamed of a new art form fusing the intellectual profundity of Goethe with the heroic music of Beethoven, neither element subservient to the other. But he lacked the experience to create it.
His 1834 opera ``Die Feen'' (``The Fairies'') imitated the secondary German Romantic composers of the day, especially Carl Maria von Weber. His next opera, ``Das Liebesverbot'' of 1836, was patterned after the Italian operas of Vincenzo Bellini.
In both operas, the choruses and arias - the big ``songs'' that make up an opera - alternated with spoken dialogue and half-spoken, half-sung passages called recitatives that were the common way of making a transition into an aria.
Then, in 1840, he produced a more heroic opera called ``Rienzi.'' But this was hardly more original than the earlier works; it was a big, bombastic pageant inspired by the operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer, the toast of Paris.
There once was a man named Wagner who dreamed of a new art form but kept awaking to the same old stodgy artistic conventions. Then he began to learn of his people's legends - heroes named Tannhauser and Lohengrin, selfish gods and flawed mortals, sailors doomed to roam the seas forever. And he began to think about how all these tormented legendary figures were redeemed through love.
In ``Der Fliegende Hollander'' (``The Flying Dutchman'') of 1841, the music and format still had much to do with Weber, but at last Wagner had created an opera around his new theme, and one without spoken dialogue. A Dutch captain is condemned to sail the stormy seas until he finds a woman who can love him purely and unconditionally - redemption through love.
Here Wagner also made use of the leitmotif, or recurring theme symbolizing a character, event or emotion. From ``Dutchman'' on, Wagner would fill his works with such motifs.
In 1845 came ``Tannhauser,'' about a medieval knight who dailies with the love goddess Venus, then makes a pilgrimage to Rome for absolution - which is denied. Later, his miraculous salvation occurs thanks to the intercession and pure love of a woman.
Wagner's music evoked that of Weber and Meyerbeer for the last time. More and more, he was relying not on arias with big tunes but on narrative passages where the music was closely molded to the text, but wasn't as subservient as the old recitatives. Wagner called this musical declamation Sprechgesang , or ``speech song.''
While the aria became less important, the orchestra and its many colors gained a new prominence. The scoring was richer, sometimes louder, certainly more competitive with the voices. And it was in the orchestral web where most of the motifs crawled, mated and dismembered themselves.
In 1848, Wagner completed another opera drawn from folklore, ``Lohengrin.'' The characters were human personifications of good and evil. Lohengrin was a shining knight searching for the Holy Grail, traveling in a swan-drawn boat. He could dwell among people only as long as his identity remained unknown, his motives unquestioned.
For the most part, ``Lohengrin'' contained continuous music and few separate ``numbers'' (the famous bridal chorus is a prominent exception). Artistically and philosophically, the so-called word-tone poet had come of age.
There once was a man named Wagner who dreamed of German glory, a man who at last found his artistic voice and proclaimed it the voice of German musical and dramatic art, a man for whom German glory could hardly be separated from personal glory.
He wrote artistic manifestos, maintaining that opera should be Gesamthunstwerh, or a unified work of art.
Poetry should directly give rise to the music. Opera should exploit every available theatrical resource (scenery, costume, lighting, movement), and it should be presented as a social ritual - initially a collaboration of artists from different fields, then a collaboration between performers and audiences.
Beginning in 1853, Wagner worked intermittently over two decades on four operas known collectively as ``Der Ring des Nibelungen.'' The ``Ring'' cycle, inspired by Nordic myths, is an allegory of the human search for power.
In the first opera, a dwarf steals a lump of magic gold and fashions it into a powerful ring. In the course of the cycle, gods, dwarfs, giants and eventually humans struggle to possess the ring. The world becomes dominated by greed, not love.
It is only through the death of the human hero Siegfried and the sacrifice of the Valkyrie - or warrior-goddess - Brúnnhilde that the Rhine gold is returned to its rightful owners. But in the process, the old ruling order of gods is destroyed and the world is left to unreliable mortals.
Here at last were four full examples of what Wagner termed not ``opera'' but ``music drama.'' The music was unbroken, the singers were given almost nothing but Sprechgesang and were required to bellow over a huge orchestra, the text was full of metaphysics and symbolism, the harmonies were slippery and refused to conform with standard patterns, and the score was crawling with motifs.
Wagner's three remaining operas were refinements of the techniques he mastered in the ``Ring'' cycle. ``Tristan und Isolde'' (1859) contained fewer motifs, but its music was a bit more intense, its orchestration slightly richer, its harmonies more daringly chromatic and further removed from normal tonal relationships.
Significantly, the theme of this story based on Celtic legend dealt not with redemption through love, but redemption through renunciation of doomed love. This would be the whole point of Wagner's final opera, ``Parsifal.''
Before ``Parsifal'' came the 1867 ``Die Meistersinger,'' a satiric artistic manifesto-as-opera in which a pioneering medieval singer must overcome the opposition of entrenched artists and critics - a situation with which Wagner was intimately familiar.
In 1882, ``Parsifal'' culminated the career of Wagner the dreamer. It was an extremely long and dense work returning to the Grail legend touched on in ``Lohengrin.'' The main female character was one of Wagner's most complex - both a temptress and the agent of Parsifal's redemption.
There once was a man named Wagner who dreamed of building a shrine to the glorious new German music that united all the arts, music that also united art and the public. In the early 1870s, he persuaded the Bavarian town of Bayreuth to donate a site for his own specially designed theater where he could present his works to their best advantage.
The Festspielhaus opened in 1876 with all four massive ``Ring'' operas given in a single week. To this day, people from around the world make summer pilgrimages to Bayreuth to experience Wagner's operas. The pilgrims are as serious and exultant as if they were going to pray in Mecca.
There once was a man named Wagner who unified the arts for the German people, but in a highly personal way that could never be successfully imitated. He dreamed of a shrine and built it - but it is a shrine to himself.
Wagner listening suggestions
The greatest Wagner singers died or retired before the advent of stereo recording.
Many voices have been ruined by the music's heroic demands, so today's singers are wary of Wagner. The few Wagner specialists left can expect very short careers.
So stereo recordings of Wagner are judged more by the contributions of conductors than singers. For the ``Ring'' cycle - ``Das Rheingold,'' ``Die Walkure,'' ``Siegfried'' and ``Gotterdammerung'' - the most highly recommendable version is the pioneering set led by Georg Solti on London.
Wagnerites will argue endlessly about the merits of Wagner performances, but Deutsche Grammophon recordings of other operas conducted by Herbert von Karajan usually have enough insight to counteract the late maestro's controversial touches.
For the easiest introduction to Wagner's sound world, try discs containing orchestral excerpts like the overtures to ``Die Fliegende Hollander'' and ``Die Meistersinger,'' and selections from the ``Ring'' like ``The Ride of the Valkyries.''
Good samplers have been recorded by Solti on London, Karajan on Deutsche Grammophon, George Szell on CBS and, for ``Parsifal,'' Sir Adrian Boult on Angel. Listeners who can tolerate mono sound must seek out the work - either complete operas or excerpts - of Wilhelm Furtwaengler on Deutsche Gramophon and EMI.