To the Barricades: A comprehensive study of Wagner’s Dresden years is appraised by Arnold Whittall

Review of Ortrun Landmann, Wolfgang Mende and Hans-Günter Ottenberg, eds, Richard Wagner: Kgl. Kapellmeister in Dresden. Dresdner Beiträge zur Musikforschung, 4 (Georg Olms Verlag, 2016).

November 2016, Volume 10, Number 3, 95–6.

What if the 1848–9 upheavals in Europe had never happened? Can we imagine how Wagner’s career might have evolved had he remained Königliche Kapellmeister in Dresden for another thirty-five years? How would we feel about an operatic output in which Lohengrin was followed by Siegfrieds Tod and then by Friedrich I. or Jesus von Nazareth? Idle if fascinating questions, but at the very least they serve to reinforce the common perception that there were few more pivotal years in Wagner’s life than 1848–9, and few more pivotal places than Dresden. Acknowledging all this, an international conference held in that city in January 2013 got the bicentenary year off to a suitably august start. Three years later, this substantial and well-produced volume deriving from conference contributions is the result.