Imagen gráfica y musicología: el motivo iconográfico del Lohengrin wagneriano como fuente para el estudio de la sociedad española de cambio de siglo (1892-1908)

Abstract

In the change from the 19th to the 20th century, Richard Wagner was in Madrid a personality who by far emerged the merely musical field to become a true celebrity. Inside his repertoire, Lohengrin was the most popular opera, so his character was used as a topic of humour, being the subject of jokes, parodies, caricatures and satire. However, humour published in the written media had a short life, since its daily consumption made it perishable, and therefore not very effective with the passing of time. As humour is intrinsic to the contemporaneity of daily life, in our explanation we have carried out the necessary contextualizations for a better understanding by the present-day reader. Three are the main platitudes found: Lohengrin as symbol of Wagner himself is firstly precursor of Symbolism and secondly enemy of France; finally, Lohengrin as personification of the Romanticism, is an unfashionable vision because it implies an unreal and idealized perspective on the life.