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Article: Tenebrous Teutons.(German Opera: From the Beginnings to Wagner)
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- May 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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John Warrack German Opera: From the Beginnings to Wagner. Cambridge University Press, 4-59 pages, $62.95.
Italian opera before the mid-nineteenth century is a cavalcade of great names, from Monteverdi to the young Verdi. France's pre-1850 operatic tradition, less consistently impressive, still boasts a humbling succession of notables from Lully and Rameau to Berlioz and the young Gounod (whose Faust appeared in 1859, only just after our cutoff date). By contrast, Germanic-language music theater before Wagner's advent resembles not an artistic canon but a lunar landscape, with a few mountains jutting forth from seas of all too forgettable tranquility. There are ...