From romantics to opera: Schopenhauer precursor of Wagner

Abstract

The present work argues about the philosophical importance of the music of the erudite period to the romantic one and the transition given by the opera to the drama in the language of the German composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883). Which in turn, within the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was constituted in the work The World as Will and Representation (1819), where it was the source of immediate inspiration for Wagner. In Schopenhauer, it is in the absence of interest that one finds the pessimistic notion of the world and in art that a clear and free knowledge of suffering until then becomes possible.