Recent Studies of Richard Wagner

Eugen d'Albert, who started writing operas in the 1890s, chose subjects that emphasized the irreducible duality of marriage; this mirrors the collaborative process of creating a libretto and score, and as each partner depicts and interrogates the other we have "an implicit rebuke to the Wagnerian model" (p. 130), both on the level of sexuality and on the level of operatic form. Daub argues that, "[wjhere Richard Wagner's operas again and again take opera and the erotic to be naturally in league, Siegfried Wagner pits them against each other" (p. 160). [...]we have a book sparkling with scholarly detail and insightful criticism of the development of opera in the shadow of Wagner, or rather its degeneration from the integrated Wagnerian vision of both love and the music drama to the dis-integration of modem attempts.