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• 27 Lug 2014

June Anderson – “Die Feen” – Aria of Lora – Richard Wagner.
LIVE performance with multiple cuts to the score Munich Opera Festival (1983) – M.° Wolfgang Sawallisch Conductor.

“Die Feen” (“The Fairies”) is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. The German libretto was written by the composer after Carlo Gozzi’s “La donna serpente.” “Die Feen” was Wagner’s first completed opera, but remained unperformed in his lifetime. It has never established itself firmly in the operatic repertory although it receives occasional performances, on stage or in concert, most often in Germany.
Although the music of “Die Feen” shows the influences of Carl Maria von Weber and other composers of the time, commentators have recognised embryonic features of the mature Wagnerian opera. The fantasy plot also anticipates themes such as redemption that were to reappear in his later works.
“Die Feen” was composed in 1833, when Wagner was 20 years old and working as a part-time chorus master in Würzburg. Wagner revised the score of “Die Feen” in 1834, when he hoped for a production. Among the changes in the 1834 version was the rewriting from scratch of Ada’s grand scene “Weh’ mir, so nah’ die fürchterliche Stunde.”
Wagner personally gave the original manuscript of “Die Feen” to King Ludwig II of Bavaria. The original manuscript is now lost. A draft, in Wagner’s hand, of dialogue he wrote to substitute for some of the opera’s recitatives, is in the “Stefan Zweig Collection” at the British Library.