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Kirk Ditzler
Kirk Ditzler received a Bachelor's Degree in Music Education and a Master's Degree in Music Literature from the University of Houston. He taught for several years in public schools and is currently teaching at the community college level in the Houston area, in addition to being a Ph.D. student in musicology at Indiana University.
The body of scholarship considers Carl Maria von Weber's 1821 opera Der Freischütz to be the highest achievement in German Romantic opera before Wagner. 1 Heinrich Marschner, a later contemporary of Weber, is generally considered to be the important link between Weber and Wagner in the development of German opera. 2. Wagner had qualified respect for the works of Marschner, who had been Weber's assistant at Dresden briefly in 1819, and had since been accused of plagiarizing the works of Weber. 3. Since the death of Weber in 1826, Marschner had been considered the best living composer of German Romantic opera. 4. His subjects often featured the typically Romantic themes of nature, the folk, and the supernatural, as in Der Vampyr (1827) and Hans Heiling (1833).
Certain similarities, both musical and dramatic, have been noted between Der Vampyr and Wagner's first successful German Romantic opera, Der fliegende Holländer . Though often mentioned in passing, the similarities between these two works have never been discussed in any detail. Most frequently mentioned is the likelihood that Senta's ballad, a pivotal musical and dramatic moment in Der fliegende Holländer , is modeled on a similar ballad in Der Vampyr . 5. This debt of Wagner to Marschner is generally acknowledged with little elaboration. Also significant is the fact that many elements of the plot and dramatic structure of Der fliegende Holländer bear a strong kinship with those in Der Vampyr . Through discussion of selected musical and dramatic elements, I will show in this essay that Heinrich Marschner's Der Vampyr had a significant influence on Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer .
During his journeyman years as conductor in Wurzburg and elsewhere, Wagner had ample opportunity to become acquainted with and conduct works of Marschner, including Der Vampyr and Hans Heiling . Wagner mentions Marschner several times in his letters and in his autobiography Mein Leben. Der Vampyr is specified, along with Giacomo Meyerbeer's