Term used frequently throughout the history of music for a dramatic work with music, and particularly one in which the music plays a primary role. ‘Dramma per musica’ (or ‘dramma in musica’) is a designation used in Italy from the early 17th century and also in Germany during the 18th; Handel, in 1744, described Hercules as a ‘musical drama’. The term has been found convenient by composers and others anxious to escape the more specific term ‘opera’.
The term is generally used to distinguish Wagner’s works from Das Rheingold onwards, both from his own earlier operas and from those of other composers, though it was not Wagner’s own designation. In his theoretical essays of 1849–51, where the projected new genre is outlined, he used terms such as ‘drama’, ‘drama of the future’, ‘the complete work of art of the future’ (‘das vollendete Kunstwerk der Zukunft’), ‘the universal drama’ (‘das allgemeinsame Drama’) and, of course, Gesamtkunstwerk. Wagner himself continued to use various terms: Tristan and Meistersinger are often called simply ‘operas’ in his writings (though the former was formally designated ‘Handlung’, i.e. ‘drama’), while the Ring and Parsifal were called respectively ‘Bühnenfestspiel’ (‘stage festival play’) and ‘Bühnenweihfestspiel’ (‘sacred stage festival play’). Wagner further used the expression ‘musikalisches Drama’, and in the essay Über die Benennung ‘Musikdrama’ (1872) suggested that it was this term that had been corrupted into ‘music drama’. The latter, however, he rejected, on the grounds that it attempts to fuse disparate entities: music is an art while drama is an ‘artistic act’. Hence the formulation ‘acts of music made visible’ (‘ersichtlich gewordene Taten der Musik’) proposed (only semi-seriously) for the new genre. Wagner ended the essay by inviting suggestions for an appropriate designation.
BARRY MILLINGTON