It was during the last five years of his brief life,
from 1786 to 1791, that he produced his operatic masterpieces, "The
Marriage of Figaro," "Don Giovanni," and "The Magic Flute." His
marvelous musical and poetic genius, supported by profound scholarship,
led him into hitherto untried regions of expression, and to him it was
given to bring humanity on the stage, splendidly depicting the inner
being of each character in tones. Wagner said of him that he had
instinctively found dramatic truth and had cast brilliant light on the
relations of musician and poet.
Ludwig van Beethoven, the great tone-poet, guided by his profound
comprehension of the deep things of life and his active sympathies to
absolute truthfulness in delineating human passions, made the next
advance in his one opera, "Fidelio," written in 1805. Ranked, though it
is, rather as a symphony for voice and orchestra than as the musical
complement of a dramatic poem, there is nevertheless infused into some
of its chief numbers more potent dramatic expression than is found in
any previous opera.
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