About the work
Die Feen was Richard Wagner's first completed opera; he wrote both text and music himself, based on Carlo Gozzi's fairy-tale comedy La donna serpente, with an added motif from Gozzi's Il corvo. Wagner composed the work in Würzburg in 1833–34, but it was not premiered until 29 June 1888, posthumously, at the Royal Court and National Theatre in Munich, staged by Hermann Levi and Richard Strauss.
Plot
Prince Arindal falls in love with the fairy Ada, who agrees to reveal her true nature only if he asks her no questions for eight years. When Arindal loses patience and curses her, Ada is turned to stone for a century. To free her, he descends into the underworld, passes several trials and wakes her with a magic lyre; as a reward he is granted immortality and remains with her in the fairy realm.
Cultural significance
Although modestly successful, with fifty performances by 1891, the work failed to establish itself in the repertoire; critic Eduard Hanslick called it "unpalatable". As Wagner's only fully completed early opera, Die Feen nonetheless remains an important document of his compositional beginnings.