Opera and Drama

It belongs with other essays of the period in which Wagner attempted to explain and reconcile his political and artistic ideas, at a time when he was working on the libretti, and later the music, of his Ring cycle.

[citation needed] He gave public readings of large extracts in Zurich in early 1851, with a dedication to Theodor Uhlig.

Like the original, this is full of complex phrases, grammar and structure, which render the work difficult to absorb.

In this section Wagner makes his famous allegation of Meyerbeer's operas consisting of "effects without causes".

The Wagner scholar Curt von Westernhagen identified three important problems discussed in the essay which were particularly relevant to Wagner's operatic development: the problem of unifying verse stress with melody; the problems caused by formal arias in dramatic structure, and how opera music could be organized on a different basis of organic growth and modulation; and the function of musical motifs in linking elements of the plot whose connections might otherwise be inexplicit (what was to become known as the leitmotif technique, although Wagner himself did not use this word).