Musical Drama and Personality Cult Genre-based Definitions of Ethnography to Richard Wagner-Associations

The paper investigates the categorizations of Richard Wagner's "Musikdramao" among members of current Wagner societies. Taking up Lydia Goehr's assumption that Wagner resisted a strict categorization of his works to foreground his own personality, Gesa zur Nieden studies the relation between the cult of Wagner's personality and the denotation of his works, applying methodological concepts from grounded theory and histoire croisee. On the basis of narrative interviews, the author shows that members of Wagner societies mainly use the term opera. for Wagner's works in order to express their criticism of current productions characterized by very free interpretations of Wagner's text by theater directors ("Regietheater"). Using the term "opera", they also refer back to their initial experience with Wagner and put their engagement with him and his works in a long-term perspective. These processes of consolidating musical experiences, connected to family traditions as well as to music lessons at school, constitute an important issue to connect social behavior with musical analysis within the study of musical genres.