Opera and Drama

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (1813–1883) — a legendary German composer and music theorist.
«Opera and Drama» — a philosophical and aesthetic work in which the composer reflects on the past, present, and future state of opera, concluding: «…the future is only conceivable insofar as it is conditioned by the past». It is in this book that the idea of the synthesis of the arts in the «drama of the future» emerges. Wagner considered the main problem to be the disconnection of music from poetry. Not all composers agreed with his theses. It is known that Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov frequently opposed Wagner's bias as a theorist.