German opera
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Mozart stands as the first true master of German opera. His singspiel The Magic Flute (1791) is a masterpiece still performed today. His other German operas, The Abduction from the Seraglio and The Impresario are also often performed.
Beethoven followed him. He only wrote one opera, Fidelio, but he wrote it many times. The form did not come easy to him, and the philisophical ideals that he was trying to express would at times dilute the impact of the drama. None the less, his resuce opera is still widely performed.
Weber began pioneering the dissolution of the aria and recitative form, implementing the concept of musical unification. Furthermore, Weber used remeniscience motifs and melodrama, both of which lie in between Wagner's musical drama, and the opera from an earlier era. His masterpiece, Der Freischütz, is considered the first German Romantic opera.
Wagner pioneered a through-composed style, in which recitative and aria blend into one another and are constantly accompanied by the orchestra. Wagner also made copious use of the leitmotif (Weber had used a similar device earlier), a musical device which associates a musical line with each character or idea in the story.
Richard Strauss (1864 - 1949) wrote the last great romantic opera, Der Rosenkavalier in 1910, but is also known for Elektra and Salome. These two operas stretched the tonal music system to the breaking points. The highly chromatic music featured harsh disonances and unresolved harmonies. This, paired with the grusome subject matter, developed expressionism.
Alban Berg produced the only atonal opera in to reach an international standing. His Wozzeck continued the exploration of mankind's darker side that Strauss had started, but his drama was much more internal and psychological, using a musical language the combined elements of twelve tone music, serial music, and tonal music. Strictly speaking, Berg was Austrian not German, but Wozzeck was premiered in Berlin.
See also Category: German-language operas.