After Wagner: Histories of Modernist Music Drama from Parsifal to Nono

his book offers histories of music drama after Richard Wagner, concentrating upon works which fall not only chronologically but also in some sense harmoniously and antagonistically within a Wagnerian tradition. Beginning with Parsifal, in which Wagner himself reckoned with, extended, and questioned his achievements in previous works, this book proceeds to treat with the æsthetics, politics, and works of five subsequent composers: Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Luigi Dallapiccola, Luigi Nono, and Hans Werner Henze. Finally, Wagner's legacy is considered in terms of operatic staging: Regietheater, which Wagner in many ways, theoretical and practical, may be understood to have initiated.