Operatic meaning

On the operatic scale established by Wagner such detail is simply lost.

Every critic could recognize the structural merits of the earlier plays, for their operatic conventionalities and abruptness of motive are always intelligible as stage devices.

Be this as it may, we may confidently date the purification of Wagner's music at the moment when he set to work on a story which carried him finally away from that world of stereotyped operatic passions into which he had already breathed so much disturbing life.

The conflict between her passionate fascination and her disgust at her father's vulgarity is finely realized both in music and drama; but, if we are able to appreciate it, then the operatic convention by which Senta avows her passion becomes crude.

Ethical and operatic points of view are similarly confused when it is asserted that the Flying Dutchman can be saved by a faithful woman, though it appears from the relations between Senta and Erik that so long as the woman is faithful to the Dutchman it does not matter that she jilts some one else.