Wagner's Das Rheingold [Paperback]

Richard Wagner's operaDas Rheingoldis a milestone in the composer's output and in the history of music in general. It marked Wagner's return to operatic composition after a hiatus of five years, and signified his definitive break with earlier operatic conventions. It also represents a reconsideration of the whole question of dramatic-musical form, and the role of tonality in articulating this form. Warren Darcy traces here the genesis ofDas Rheingoldthrough the various textual and musical sketches and drafts to the full score, and also develops a theoretical framework within which the opera may be meaningfully analyzed. Using Wagner's manuscripts as a point of departure, Darcy discusses the formal, harmonic, and linear structure of the work. In so doing, he challenges a number of contemporary views about the opera, esppecially those of Carl Dahlhaus.

There is much of value here - meticulous documentary research, original interpretative insight, perceptive musical analysis, and above all, an imaginative synthesis that links compositional genesis, drama, and music into a coherent view of the opera. Darcy is to be commended for the attention that he lavishes on the text of Rheingold. Darcy is well equipped, as both historian and a musician, to handle the task of interpreting the drafts. --Nineteenth-Century Music