Richard Wagner as a Precursor of Cinematographic Art

Piotr Kletowski

Abstract

Kletowski considers Richard Wagner to be a precursor of cinematic art. Kletowski stresses that Wagner headed in his theoretical works and stage productions at toward materialisation of Gesamtkunstwerk, „a total work of art”, and that film would be the full embodiment of the idea. The concept of Gesamtkunstwerk lies in a fusion of all elements of a stage production into a single idea, namely to create a spectacle that is the synthesis of all the arts united by music. Kletowski thinks that the composer’s stage solutions, leading to a full illusion of the reality of the world shown on the stage, assumed the dimensions of an audio-visual spectacle which brought to mind a cinematic spectacle. Wagner’s music dramas inspired film score composers, especially those who perceived the cinema as a vehicle for creating the synthesis of the arts, Gesamtkunstwerk. Soviet director Sergey Eisenstein identified the concept of the organization of artifacts (montage) as common to all the arts but central to film, and the films he made in association with composer Sergey Prokofiev perfectly fit in the paradigm of Gesamtkunstwerk.