Keywords

Apocalypse Now, 1979
Francis Ford Coppola

Richard Wagner
The Valkyrie/Die Walküre
The Ring Cycle/Wagner’s Ring/The Ring of the Nibelung/Der Ring des Nibelungen, 1848-1874, first performed 1876

Gesamtkunstwerk
Gesamt—Kunst—Werk
Total Work of Art

Art and Revolution/Die Kunst und die Revolution, 1849
The Art Work of the Future/Das Kunstwerk de Zukunft, 1850
Opera and Drama/Oper und Drama, 1851

music-drama

Ancient Greek Tragedy
Greek Masks of Comedy and Tragedy, Roman mosaic, Hadrian’s Villa, Tivoli, 2nd C AD
Mask of Dionysus, Greek, 2nd C BC
Dionysus Theatre, Athens, 3rd C BC (reconstruction)
Greek Theatre at Kos

stage festival play
Festival Playhouse, Bayreuth, 1872-76

Nibelungenlied, c. 1200
Medieval epic poem

Romantic period

The Rhinegold/Das Rheingold (Preliminary Evening)
The Valkyrie/Die Walküre (First Day)
Siegfried/Siegfried (Second Day)
Twilight of the Gods/Götterdämmerung (Third Day)

spectacle: from Latin, “spectare” = “to look at”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Don Giovanni, 1787
Lorenzo da Ponte, libretto
Estates Theatre, Prague
recitative
aria

Act I: Leoporello

Act I: Siegfried and Mime

motif of reminiscence/leitmotif
melodic verse/Versmelodie