MUS 10 Lecture Notes - Arrigo Boito, Cosima Wagner, Sergei Diaghilev
Document Summary
At age 73 verdi was cajoled by his wife and the composer/librettist. Arrigo boito to undertake otello, adapted from shakespeare. This great masterpiece was followed by falstaff, a comedy after. As a refugee in switzerland and elsewhere he developed his philosophy of opera as total art (gesamtkunstwerk). Two epochal projects took shape: a series of four operas called the ring of the nibelung (a tale of valhalla, the god wotan, the valkyrie brunnhilde, and the hero siegfried) and the even more intense psycho-drama, tristan und isolde. In the 1860s he attracted the patronage of king ludwig ii of bavaria-- and a liaison with cosima liszt von ow, wife of the conductor hans von. B low (and daughter of franz liszt), whom he married in 1870. In the 1870s he oversaw the construction at bayreuth of the festspielhaus (a theatre for his works). The ring was first performed there in august 1876.
