This Thursday the Rhodes University International Office and School of Languages present a showing of Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) at 6.30pm at the Eden Grove Blue lecture venue.
This Thursday the Rhodes University International Office and School of Languages present a showing of Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) at 6.30pm at the Eden Grove Blue lecture venue.
Next Thursday, German opera lovers will have to choose between Tannhäuser at Eden Grove Blue and Lohengrin at the Zoo Major lecture theatre, both starting at 6.30pm.
Wagner’s late 20s were restless and stormy years. His marriage to Minna was at best shaky, his career as musician uncertain because of financial and political vagaries and as a composer, of his first three operas, only one had a performance and that was poorly received.
After living in several towns there was a humiliating flight from his debtors in Riga which led to Minna having a miscarriage. His chosen destination, Paris, was even worse.
Relief came when the celebrated Meyerbeer secured a performance for Rienzi in Dresden, Germany. There the Wagners had six relatively peaceful and creative years from 1842-1846.
He loved the new opera house, where he secured a position and would use it as a blueprint for his own in Bayreuth many years later. Above all he could start giving the world a new type of opera.
Wagner turned away from history and looked to Germanic legends and medieval epics for material. The results were the three operas of his “middle period” or “Romantic period”, his first great masterpieces, all of which became very popular and found permanent places in the opera repertoire.
The restless and unhappy heroes of The Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser are looking for redemption in love. Even Lohengrin, knight of the Holy Grail, longs for repose in love.
Love is central to all the Wagner operas.
After the uprisings of 1848, Wagner had to flee to Switzerland where he wrote Lohengrin, a performance of which King Ludwig II saw as a 15-year-old. He became an ardent Wagnerite – and “saved” Wagner for posterity.
