Opera heard in his earlier operas such as "Der fliegende Holländer", "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin"; and he was prepared to violate accepted musical conventions, such as tonality, in his quest for greater expressivity. In his mature music dramas, "Tristan und Isolde", "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg", "Der Ring des Nibelungen" and "Parsifal", he abolished the distinction between aria and recitative in favour of a seamless flow of "endless melody". Wagner also brought a new philosophical dimension to opera in his works, which were usually based on stories from Germanic or Arthurian legend. Finally, Wagner built his own opera house at Bayreuth with part
Opera and Drama Opera and Drama Opera and Drama () is a book-length essay written by Richard Wagner in 1851 setting out his ideas on the ideal characteristics of opera as an art form. It belongs with other essays of the period in which Wagner attempted to explain and reconcile his political and artistic ideas, at a time when he was working on the libretti, and later the music, of his Ring cycle. As the longest of all of Wagner's literary works apart from his autobiography "Mein Leben" (376 pages long in its English translation), "Opera and Drama" is perhaps better described by