A New Form of Art: the Gesamtkunstwerk

Wagner wanted to create a balance between the words, the music and the action on stage. From this balance would spring true opera, the so-called ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’. For all his musical genius, Wagner considered the drama the soul of the play. If the dramatic action were not true, it would cramp the whole piece. However all elements of the performance were given ample consideration and had to be united harmoniously in performance. Consequently, every part had to be executed with the utmost skill (and this principle applied to the technical parts as well). Any kind of star-system was unthinkable. The notes for musicians and actors that Wagner pinned to the walls of the Festspielhaus just before the first performance of Rheingold on August 20th, 1876 give an indication of his attitude towards the performance.

One of these notes was titled ‘Final Request to my dear Comrades’ [Bayreuth, 1979, 4] and it says:

‘Clarity! - The long notes will take care of themselves;

Never address the audience, but always your partners;

During monologues, look downwards or upwards, never straight ahead. –

Last request:

Think of me kindly, my dear friends!’

The call for clarity is urgent. The demand not to address the audience is understandable. In the contemporary theatre and opera houses, the soloists tended to overtly address the public in an attempt to capture and hold the focus of attention. They literally performed on the first plane (at the front part of the stage) and the whole performance was revolving around a few important arias and great scenes. Obviously, addressing the audience destroys the theatrical illusion and that’s why Wagner tried to ban the habit from his stage. The final phrase quite possibly refers to the rehearsals that had been far from easy.

One of Wagner’s guiding principles was that everything on stage had to happen from necessity and that all elements of performance had to be ordered according to the dramatic design (instead of the musical design as was customary in opera). The actors/singers had to be absorbed by their role. Only the character was allowed to be visible onstage, not the actor’s individuality. The music was instrumental in enhancing the right mood, the emotion, the beauty of the performance, and to define the general atmosphere in the theatre.

There had to be a gap between the illusional, ideal world on stage and the everyday reality of the spectators in the auditorium, a ‘mystical abyss’ as Wagner called it. In the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, the abyss became real, with a sunken orchestra to separate the audience physically from the stage. Bayreuth’s triple proscenium-arch was devised to create an important optical illusion by depriving the eye of a standard of measure. Hence, everything on the stage looked deeper, wider, and larger. Even the human body looked taller, more unreal, almost mythical, at least, that was the intention.

In his later opera works, Wagner took great care to match the words with the music so they would form a natural union. In all matters, he strived for ‘the utmost clarity’: diction, musical phrasing, acting and scenery.

However, his vision on the latter was rather traditional (although Wagner would never admit it). He resorted to the conventional two dimensional painted backdrops and wings of his era but at the same time stressed the importance of complete scenic illusion and historical accuracy. In a way, Wagner considered the scenery a necessary condition in the theatre, a means to stage the play, and the scenic possibilities never were allowed to dominate the picture or to become an aesthetic goal in itself. Still, the combination of his complicated plays and his demand for perfect illusions required the most advanced technical equipment of the time. Great care was taken to create the right atmosphere through colour and the special effects were carried out with the greatest skill (by Carl Brandt, one of the most competent stage managers in the world at the time), but it has to be said that the result was far less convincing than hoped for. In fact, the elaborate scene transformations prescribed by Wagner, required equipment not even invented at the time in order to be convincing. Wagner faced a typical problem of the theatre: the realisation of a vision on the actual stage. There was a big gap between thought and practice. Though Wagner did reform the way of opera production, the stage-picture remained a problem he did not resolve in a satisfactory manner. The reality of the nineteenth-century stage was not entirely compatible with the mythical world of Wagner’s heroes.