Genoveva has never won a large popular audience, but it continues to be revived at regular intervals throughout the world and has been recorded several times.

His notebooks from this period show that, among others, Schumann considered the stories of the Nibelungen, Lohengrin and Till Eulenspiegel to be good candidates for settings in German opera.

In 1844, he and Clara moved to Dresden, where his depression eventually moderated and he began work on a number of compositions, including Genoveva.

Opera magazine of London wrote that it is possible to say from the impression created by Geoffrey Moull's vigorous conducting that Schumann's theatre music is more plausible, more tense and more exciting than has so far been conceded.

He also omitted recitative, a recent innovation on Wagner's part which shared the burden of expounding an opera's plot more evenly between libretto and music.

Wagner, like Schumann, had an eager interest in the art and culture of the middle ages which was due in part to Romantic revivalists like Schiller and Eichendorff.

After Wagner, but also in keeping with Schumann's own longstanding penchant for ciphers and coded messages in music, Genoveva makes use of leitmotifs; for instance, Golo is represented by a descending fifth then a dotted rhythm rising stepwise through a minor third.