The unconditional affirmation of the tragic hero

Notes on Wagner's Tannhäuser, proposal for a musical tragedy

Abstract

For Richard Wagner (1813–1883), as for all composers of the Romantic period, Beethoven's symphonies were a clear reference, a source from which everyone, at the time, drank. Since we heard the first bars of the Overture of The Flying Dutchman, premiered in 1843, we will notice a clear evocation of the Ninth Symphony. However, through these lines our interest will focus on Tannhäuser, an opera from Richard Wagner's mature period and which we will try to analyze from the perspective of philosophy, and, more specifically, the idea of ​​the tragic, following the Friedrich Nietzsche's thought, coupled with some previous aspects of his indirect teacher, Arthur Schopenhauer.