Dissertation Defense - Nick Rogers, "Richard Wagner’s Visual Worlds: The Gesamtkunstwerk and the Spectacle of Empire"

Committee: André Dombrowski (chair), David Brownlee, and Liliane Weissberg

In 1849, the opera composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) theorized a new art form, the Gesamtkunstwerk—a total work of art that would integrate the arts of music, painting, architecture, and poetry. Wagner conceived of the Gesamtkunstwerk as a global communist utopia. The harmonious integration of art and society, through the participation of many artists, would spread throughout the world, replacing every other art form. Wagner labored for three decades to realize the theoretical Gesamtkunstwerk on the stage, as The Ring of the Nibelung (1876) and Parsifal (1882). For these works, he wrote the music and text, guided the design of the stage sets and costumes, and constructed a purpose-built opera house. Through the process of realizing these works, the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk changed in fundamental ways. Rather than a communal art, the Gesamtkunstwerk was the product of a single artist’s mastery of all of its artistic forces. The community of creators was replaced by the audience, and the most advanced theatrical technology was employed to draw it into Wagner’s operatic vision. Throughout, two constants defined the Gesamtkunstwerk: the aesthetic ambition to integrate the greatest possible artistic forces, and the political dream of creating an artwork that would operate on a global scale. This dissertation argues that the Gesamtkunstwerk’s aesthetic and political totalities were the products of the culture of nineteenth-century imperialism. The influence of imperialism is found in Wagner’s writing on the Gesamtkunstwerk, his selection of source material for his works, and in the design of their stage sets. Recovering this context reveals two concurrent, conflicting undercurrents that shaped the Gesamtkunstwerk. Institutions of imperial spectacle, in particular the world’s fairs, demonstrated their power through the display of the diverse cultural products of the earth. From these institutions, Wagner borrowed and developed methods of concentrating the Gesamtkunstwerk in a sophisticated spectacle. At the same time, his increasing preoccupation with nineteenth-century theories of race undermined the fantasy of human fraternity for which the Gesamtkunstwerk was first imagined. In the end, the idea of empire, of total control founded on inequality, fractured the Gesamtkunstwerk’s seamless totality.