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Important German composer (1813–1883) who single-handedly revolutionized opera and attained status as one of the most influential geniuses in the history of music. Handwritten musical manuscript by Richard Wagner, one page, 6.75 x 3.25, no date but circa March 1861. A manuscript comprising Tannhäuser's final words in the second Act "Vers Rome," in score, for voices and strings. Four measures, notated in pencil on six staves. This is probably an alteration attached to the manuscript of the French score of the opera. It appears to have been written for the second performance in Paris, where Wagner changed Tannhäuser's words from “À Rome!” to “Vers Rome!" (see Wagner Werk-Verzeichnis, XIVe). Mounted, cloth-matted, and framed with a portrait to an overall size of 17.5 x 11. In fine condition.
Wagner’s Tannhäuser, first staged in Dresden in 1845, stands among his great middle-period operas, uniting medieval legend, erotic temptation, religious guilt, and the possibility of redemption in a work of sweeping musical and dramatic ambition. Its 1861 Paris production became one of the most notorious episodes in Wagner’s career: revised extensively for the Opéra, including the famous Venusberg ballet, the work was met with organized hostility from the Jockey Club and withdrawn after only three performances. This small alteration to Tannhäuser’s cry toward Rome thus belongs to a charged moment in the opera’s history, when Wagner was reshaping one of his defining works for the French stage under extraordinary artistic and social pressure.
