Wagner Dream

Wagner Dream is an opera by Jonathan Harvey, premiered in 2007, to a libretto by Jean-Claude Carrière, which intertwines events on the last day of the life of Richard Wagner with elements from a fragmentary opera sketch by Wagner himself, Die Sieger (The Victors).

Die Sieger was drafted between 1856 and 1858, at a period when Wagner had become greatly interested in Buddhism. It is based on legends which Wagner discovered in Eugène Burnouf's 1844 Introduction to the History of Buddhism. The story tells of the love of the outcast chandala Prakriti for the monk Ananda. Although both are ostracised by the other monks, Buddha permits their chaste union, and allows Prakriti to join the monastic community. Although Wagner planned a production of this work for 1870 in his programme for King Ludwig II of Bavaria, he never progressed it – (however elements of the story persist in his opera Parsifal).

Harvey's opera intersperses the Prakriti/Ananda story with the events surrounding Wagner's death in Venice. As Wagner dies from a heart attack, he recalls the opera he never completed. Whilst the "Indian" roles are all sung, the members of the Wagner household, including his wife Cosima and the soprano Carrie Pringle (with whom it has been alleged that Wagner had his last love affair) are spoken roles.

The opera was premiered at the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg in April 2007, prior to a run at the Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam, in a production by Pierre Audi for De Nederlandse Opera which commissioned the work. Its British premiere took place at the Barbican Centre as a concert performance in London on 29 January 2012. The first British staged performance was given on 6 June 2013 in the Wales Millennium Centre Cardiff by Welsh National Opera, directed by Pierre Audi.

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