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Opening page from the score of Die Feen

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DieFeen

1833–1834Romantic opera in three actsMunich, 1888

A promise is made in one world and tested in another.

A mortal at the edge of another world
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01 / The dramatic threshold

A mortal at the
edge of another world

Wagner's first completed opera already reaches for total transformation. Arindal loves the fairy Ada, but their union depends on a prohibition he cannot keep and a trial he barely understands.

The work moves through portals: kingdom to wilderness, mortal time to fairy time, speech to song. Every crossing asks whether love can survive the demand to know everything.

01 / Die Feen

Opening score, nineteenth-century edition

02 / The action

The world changes
in movements.

This is a dramatic map, not a replacement for the full libretto. Each movement marks a change in what the characters believe is possible.
  1. I

    The broken condition

    A question opens the wound

    The fairy garden and Arindal's lost kingdom

    Arindal has lived with Ada under one condition: he must not ask who she is. He asks. She vanishes, and messengers call him back to a kingdom under attack.

    Dramatic turnCuriosity does not reveal the beloved, it separates him from her.
  2. II

    The trial

    Love appears as betrayal

    A besieged realm

    Ada returns in terrifying forms. She appears to destroy their children and abandon Arindal's people, forcing him to choose whether trust can outlast what his eyes report.

    Dramatic turnHe curses her. The images dissolve, but the curse turns Ada to stone.
  3. III

    The song

    Art crosses the last boundary

    The underworld of the fairies

    Warriors cannot rescue Ada. Arindal enters the enchanted realm with a lyre, and music succeeds where force fails. The stone figure answers song with life.

    Dramatic turnThe mortal becomes capable of the fairy world by making music.
Opening page from the score of Die Feen
Archive fragment

Opening score, nineteenth-century edition

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03 / The dramatic machine

What moves
beneath the plot.

Objects, musical ideas and theatrical systems carry memory across the work. These are three ways into its deeper construction.

Do not ask

The prohibition

A forbidden question creates the entire dramatic machine. Knowledge is desired as proof of love, yet the demand for proof destroys trust.

Mortal / enchanted

The double world

The opera keeps placing the visible and invisible beside one another. Neither world is complete without the other.

Song acts

The lyre

Music is not decoration at the conclusion. It becomes an instrument that changes matter, reverses punishment and completes the crossing.

04 / Figures in the world

Six lines of
dramatic pressure.

Each figure occupies a different distance from the work's central conflict. Voice type is included as a practical listening guide.
01

Ada

Soprano

A fairy who accepts mortality for love
02

Arindal

Tenor

A mortal prince whose doubt creates the trial
03

Lora

Soprano

Arindal's sister and defender of the kingdom
04

Morald

Baritone

A warrior who fights beside Lora
05

Gernot

Bass

Arindal's companion and skeptical observer
06

The Fairy King

Bass

Guardian of the boundary between worlds

05 / A line from the stage

Wie muss ich doch beklagen, dass du dein Wort gebrochen.
How deeply I must mourn that you have broken your word.

The first world is built around a broken promise, not a defeated enemy.

Ada, Act I

06 / The work in time

A stage world
with a physical history.

Dates and categories anchor the experience without reducing the opera to a catalogue entry. The archive remains visible behind the theatre.
Literary source
Carlo Gozzi, La donna serpente
Completed
Würzburg and Leipzig, 1834
First performance
Posthumously, Munich, 29 June 1888
Dramatic shape
Three acts, spoken myth transformed into music
WWV 32

Romantic opera in three acts

07 / The living work

Find the next
Die Feen.

The performance world will connect this opera to verified dates, theatres and productions across Europe. The architecture is ready for listings that can be traced directly to presenting institutions.

Open performances ↗