User:Smerus/Wahnfried

Wahnfried is an opera in two acts, written by the Israeli composer and conductor Avner Dorman to a libretto by Lutz Hübner and Sarah Nemitz. It was premiered at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Germany, on 28 January 2017.

"Wahnfried" was the name given by Richard Wagner to his villa in Bayreuth. The name is a German-language compound of Wahn (delusion, madness) and Fried(e), (peace, freedom). The name is a German compound of Wahn (delusion, madness) and Fried(e), (peace, freedom). The opera is centred loosely on Wagner's son-in-law, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and his role as an intermediary between the world of Wagner (who died in 1873 and whom Chamberlain never met), and the world of Adolf Hitler, who was closely associated with the Bayreuth Festival of Wagner's operas from the 1920s onwards. Chamberlain believed

"This is a great story, clearly, one that offers fantastic opportunities for satire and a certain amount of playing off Wagner's own sound-world, since this narrative is in many ways a grotesque offshoot from what he achieved. But it's not just a fascinating tale, it's a parable. A parable about what terrible things can happen when a mediocre spirit and intellect are welded to overwhelming ego and ambition. And few can doubt that this is a warning from history to our own times."