David Breckbill, ‘Where’s the Drama?’: Personal Reflections on the Intersection of Music and Theatre in Wagner Performance

March 2015, Volume 9, Number 1, 4–15.

When one experiences a Wagner opera in performance, where is the drama? Or, more broadly, how does drama manifest itself in the act of perceiving Wagner’s works? There can be no question that the Gesamtkunstwerk ideal Wagner imagined and towards which he began to strive has been a perpetual challenge to realise and encompass, nor that this will remain so as long as Wagner’s works continue to be performed and to be considered relevant by performers and audiences. Both the history of Wagner performance and polarised perspectives in our own time concerning how to produce Wagner’s works make it clear that balancing the dimensions of intellectual, psychological, political and cultural content with the demands of musical performance and theatrical realities requires a set of imaginative and perceptual skills that eludes most people, whether they be performers/producers or audiences. Among those of us unable to boast equivalent competence in all dimensions that contribute to the Wagnerian synthesis, it is frighteningly easy and tempting for each person to delimit the scope of Wagner’s dramatic achievement to the realm(s) of his/her own interest and expertise.