The story of 'Die Feen' was taken from one of
Gozzi's fairy-tales, 'La Donna Serpente.' Wagner himself, in his
'Communication to my Friends,' written in 1851, has given us a _resume_
of the plot: 'A fairy, who renounces immortality for the sake of a human
lover, can only become a mortal through the fulfilment of certain hard
conditions, the non-compliance wherewith on the part of her earthly
swain threatens her with the direst penalties; her lover fails in the
test, which consists in this, that, however evil and repulsive she may
appear to him (in the metamorphosis which she has to undergo), he shall
not reject her in his unbelief. In Gozzi's tale the fairy is changed
into a snake; the remorseful lover frees her from the spell by kissing
the snake, and thus wins her for his wife. I altered this denouement by
changing the fairy into a stone, and then releasing her from the spell
by her lover's passionate song; while the lover, instead of being
allowed to carry off his bride into his own country, is himself admitted
by the fairy king to the immortal bliss of fairyland, together with his
fairy wife.'
When Wagner wrote 'Die Feen' he was under the spell of Weber, whose
influence is perceptible in every page of the score. Marschner, too,
whose 'Vampyr' and 'Templer und Juedin' had been recently produced at
Leipzig, which was then Wagner's headquarters, also appealed very
strongly to the young musician's plastic temperament.
Pages:
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179