Classical Music Discoveries

Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love, WWV 38), is an early opera in two acts by Richard Wagner, with the libretto written by the composer after Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Described as a Große komische Oper, it was composed in 1834, and Wagner conducted the premiere in 1836 at Magdeburg. Poorly attended and with a lead singer who forgot the words and had to improvise, it was a resounding flop and its second performance had to be cancelled after a fist-fight between the prima donna's husband and the lead tenor broke out backstage before the curtain had even risen; only three people were in the audience. It was never performed again in Wagner's lifetime. Wagner's second opera, and his first to be performed, has many signs of an early work: the style is modelled closely on contemporary French and Italian comic opera. It is also referred to as the forgotten comedy, in that only two of Wagner's works are comedies, the other being Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.