CONCLUSION
BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY
230. The Wagnerian Triumph.—In the last third of the century
the supreme single event was the achievement of Wagner's
lifelong ambition. The Bayreuth performances from 1876
onward made an epoch in musical art. They brought out
Wagner's later dramas in accordance with all his ideas of
apparatus and effect. They demonstrated his power to command
popular enthusiasm and critical respect. They led at once
to productions elsewhere on a somewhat parallel scale, at least
with exceptional attention to the detail of representation. They
forced the operatic world to adjust its thought to new ideals of
technique on every side. They stimulated a profound remodeling
of style on the part of dramatic and orchestral composers in
all countries, tending more or less toward an imitation of the
Wagnerian procedures, often extremely clever, but, as a rule,
without creative energy to be compared with his. They thus
introduced into the musical world a ferment whose working is
still widely conspicuous.
The first consequence of all this was naturally a fresh attention to the opera as a consummate art-form, viewed now not from the restricted and manneristic angle of the earlier Italian writers, but as a genuine drama in music. Of course, the traditions of each country and school continued to make themselves felt, so that new types were never without evident connection with the past—as, for example, in the case of Verdi. But everywhere the details of treatment began to undergo extensive readjustments to fit them to compete before the critics and the public with the gigantic Wagnerian constructions. The two most striking instances of this process were the evolution of the French drame lyrique out of the opéra comique under a series of composers, and the setting up of a new type of Italian opera under the lead of Verdi. Equally important was the unfolding of the modern German opera, but in this case no such recon-
