Wagner’s "Gesamtkunstwerk" Concept Influence On Musical Theater

The formation of Richard·Wagner’s “gesamtkunstwerk” concept marked that he had broken with traditional drama completely,and he opposed to the creation way of regarding the music as the core of opera,putting forward the view of “drama as goal,music as means”,he also required all the art performance means to be formed into an integral artwork under the rule of drama.Such creation viewpoint not only influenced his music drama creation,but also made a great difference to the later music drama.Paying attention to the expression of drama connotation not only makes musical theater gain more praise,but also makes it obtain more permanent vitality.Since the birth of musical theater,it has experienced the process of changing from disorderly musical drama to the music drama with “gesamtkunstwerk”,which fully showed Richard·Wagner’s foresight towards future art.For this reason,the paper takes Wagner’s “gesamtkunstwerk” concept as the research clue,to mainly explain the connotation of “gesamtkunstwerk” and its influence on the creation of musical theater.