This chapter demonstrates that despite Wagner’s claims that traditional operatic compositional schemes limited the composer’s ability to project drama successfully, he relied on these procedures in the operas from Die Feen through Lohengrin, and continued to use them thereafter in the mature music dramas. Analysis of Wagner’s first six operas demonstrates that Wagner utilised the formal conventions of Italian opera, including clearly articulated cabalettas, far more frequently than has previously been noted. The conventional Italian form accounts for one-third to one-half of musical numbers in these works. The chapter includes close analysis of four numbers (from Die Feen, Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin) and tabular presentation of all of Wagner’s appropriations of this formal convention in the first part of his career. The chapter further identifies vestiges and transformations of la solita forma in the later music dramas, concluding with speculation on why these formal devices have eluded critical commentary until now.

Richard Wagner’s music and the way he created it are closely interconnected to the vocal delivery of the actors and singers of his childhood and youth. Or to put it more precisely: during the time of his socialisation in early nineteenth-century Saxony, there was practically no difference between the profession of an actor and a dramatic singer. The same people performed in spoken drama and music theatre what led to a declamatory style of singing that was typical for German music theatre. This style shaped Wagner’s Sprechgesang, both considering its structure and its genesis. He did as a composer what the dramatic actors of his time whose performances shifted between singing and speech did on stage: he developed his vocal lines out of declamation and created different degrees of more or less speech-like passages. The latter poses a challenge for the historically informed performance practice of his works.