Dalhaus – Kunze: a dialogue on Richard Wagner’s musical drama

Abstract

This article supports the thesis that Carl Dalhaus’s interpretation of the Wagnerian musical drama (drama is here understood as a “dramatic musical form” existing in the score, which fully comes into being only on stage as a concrete artistic creation) is not totally in opposition to Stefan
Kunze’s interpretation, according to whom the Wagnerian drama, as the whole musical theatre of Wagner, is in fact the “imaginative theatre”. It is possible to defend this thesis thanks to my conviction that “imaginativeness” of the theatre and its reality (staging) are not mutually exclusive although they create a particular tension. This article consists of two parts. The first one presents Carl Dalhaus’s interpretation according to which the staging belongs to the history of a particular work of drama, forming its unique character every time again. The other part of the text discusses Stefan Kunze’s interpretation that the imaginary theatre is a part of the dramatic-musical form. There is a punch line, or a specific coda, at the end of the second part of the article, which explains the meaning of both, Dalhaus’s and Kunze’s points of view, seen also from the perspective of Wagner’s musical drama itself. My interpretation presented in this article is – referring to the current state of research and in spite of a large number of literature on this subject – new and original although the meaning of both theories is of great importance for the Wagnerian studies. My interpretation may serve to better understand both – the paradox of Wagnerian studies and the artistic work to which these theories refer.