This chapter demonstrates that despite Wagner’s claims that traditional operatic compositional schemes limited the composer’s ability to project drama successfully, he relied on these procedures in the operas from Die Feen through Lohengrin, and continued to use them thereafter in the mature music dramas. Analysis of Wagner’s first six operas demonstrates that Wagner utilised the formal conventions of Italian opera, including clearly articulated cabalettas, far more frequently than has previously been noted. The conventional Italian form accounts for one-third to one-half of musical numbers in these works. The chapter includes close analysis of four numbers (from Die Feen, Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin) and tabular presentation of all of Wagner’s appropriations of this formal convention in the first part of his career. The chapter further identifies vestiges and transformations of la solita forma in the later music dramas, concluding with speculation on why these formal devices have eluded critical commentary until now.

Building on work by Karol Berger, this chapter analyses the lengthy final scene of Act 1 from Wagner’s Die Walküre (starting at Sieglinde’s re-entry right before ‘Schläfst du, Gast?‘) through the lens of the formal pattern common in Italian operas of the first half of the nineteenth century and known as la solita forma. The model not only serves to identify the various formal types Wagner uses over the course of this scene but also reveals an intense interaction between form and drama: the formal cues of the different stages of la solita forma, each with its specific dramaturgical implications, are shaped by the shifting dynamics in the game of seduction and recognition between the enamoured siblings Siegmund and Sieglinde.