RICHARD WAGNER

Richard Wagner is a famous 19th-century German composer, opera creator, a man of special talent and strong spirit. Inexhaustible energy and fanatical confidence in his righteousness helped the composer to make a breakthrough in music. Wagner himself announced that he was creating “the music of the future”. “The Art-Work of the Future” is an example of the synthesis of art. Wagner had little interest in what went beyond the opera genre. His greatest achievement is opera reform. He called his operas music dramas, integral works of art – Gesamtkunstwerk. Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser is based on three medieval legends. The main character Tannhäuser is a romantic, two-faced hero, an eternally disconcerted seeker of the ideal. Neither sensual pleasures nor noble aspirations of the spirit satisfy him. Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, seeks to keep Tannhäuser in her world of sins. But he is also seduced by Elizabeth’s purity; her noble love and death atone for Tannhäuser’s sin. Of particular note is the overture to this opera. It is often performed in classical music concerts. Ferenc Liszt called Tannhäuser overture a program symphony. It is a monumental symphonic prologue that conveys the content of the opera with generalized images and is based on its most important themes.

The Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Renato Balsadonna, an Italian baton master of operatic and choral repertoire.