History
Wagner, who had been elected in January 1843 to the committee of a cultural association in the city of Dresden, received a commission to evoke the theme of Pentecost. He had just successfully played Rienzi in Dresden. However, Der fliegende Holländer was not quite so successful.
The premiere took place at the Dresdner Frauenkirche on 6 July 1843, and was performed by around a hundred musicians and almost 1,200 singers, from all Saxony. It was dedicated to Charlotte Emilie Weinlig, the widow of Wagner's former teacher Christian Theodor Weinlig. The concert was very well received, but Wagner was disappointed by its "relatively feeble effect" in view of the vast assembly of singers it had brought together.
Read more about this topic: Das Liebesmahl Der Apostel
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (18751947)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of Gods property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)