The Romantic Era was a period in music in which there was much change during the 1850’s to the 1920’s in the theory and compositional practice of music. The composers wrote their pieces with more artistic freedom, experimentation, and creativity than the artists of the classical era and this caused the melody to become the more dominant feature in the songs composed. Some popular composers that originated out of this era are: Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, and Richard Wagner. For inspiration, many Romantic composers turned to visual arts, poetry, drama and literature, and to nature itself. These influences led composers to express emotion in their music. These changes in the sound of the music came in the form of the increased use of dissonance and the extended use of chromatics. Although Romantic era music contained classical era roots, the instruments used in the Romantic era were changing and brass and woodwind instruments were being improved in the quality of sound, as well as in how they were played. Some Romantic era composers used their compositions to express nationalism by the way of incorporating elements unique to their native cultures, such as folk songs, dances, and legendary histories. Mikhail Glinka is an example of a composer who wrote operas specifically on Russian subjects.

Many great operas derived from the Romantic era including Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, as well as Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. Opera was very dominant in Italy where the operas differed from the operas of the classical era because the form of the pieces were being changed by having the tenors given the heroic lead in operas and by giving the chorus a more important lead than before. Gioachino Rossini was the first composer to initiate an opera in the Romantic era, which started in the early 19th century. His first piece, La Cambiale di Matrimonio, included scenes where the characters expressed emotion through the lyrics of their songs. This was a comedic opera that was the first of its kind which was written in 1810. Many great composers followed Rossini including Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Giuseppe Verdi. These composers continued to change the way operas were being written as well as preformed. These changes were evident in Verdi’s first successful opera, Nabucco, which the general public found interesting because of it’s great choruses. Verdi also continued to express nationalism in his operas, Va, pensiero, which was interpreted as giving meaning to the struggle for Italian independence and Verdi was expressing his hope to unify Italy. By the end of the Romantic era, opera had become a combination of many art forms including the theatre, dance and orchestra oriented music.

Although opera was predominant in Italy, many other European composers were contributing to the changes in the music of their generation, including German composer Richard Wagner. Richard Wagner was born on May 22, 1813 in Leipzig, Germany where he had a difficult childhood. Wagner’s father died of typhus six months after Richard’s birth which led his mother Johanna Rosine Wagner, to begin living with the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer, who had been a friend of Richard’s father up until his death. Richard’s mother then proceeded to marry Ludwig Geyer and they moved the family to Dresden. It is here where Wagner started his musical learning. Richard first took interest in his step father’s love for the theatre and performance arts and he played an angel in a play at a local theatre. When he was seven, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzel’s school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano instruction from his Latin teacher. A year later his stepfather died which led the eight year old Wagner to attend the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden. Although Richard was largely a self taught musician he persuaded his family to allow him to take music lessons. From 1828-1831 Wagner completed his first lessons in composition with Christian Gottlieb Müller and by the time he was fifteen he had already written his first play. Wagner’s focus on drama is one of the reasons his