---
tags: DramaSix, terms, brokenOut
title: Gesamtkunstwerk
---

### Gesamtkunstwerk

#### Definitions
- “a synthesis of music, literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, stage design, and other elements."[^1]
- Possible meanings: Total work of art, Communal work of art, Collective work of art, Combined work of art, Unified work of art

#### Key Features
- A vision of what theater could/should be that resulted in a few very important experiments with staging and theater making.
- Opposed to Grand Opera, which Wagner considered to be a fake unity.
- In "Art and Revolution" Wagner argues that Greek theater, and in particular on the works of Aeschylus, contained a now lost unity of artistic forms and of the political community.
- In "The Artwork of the Future" he describes his plan for a new kind of art that will restore this unity by combining

#### Associated with
- Richard Wagner in "Art and Revolution" and "The Artwork of the Future" both written in 1849
- Bayreuth Festspielhaus
- Hellerau Festspielhaus
- First appears in Wagner's writings in 1849 in "Art and Revolution" and "The Artwork of the Future." Wagner didn't coin the term, but we don't know how influenced he was by previous usages.

[^1]:Pavis, Patrice. 1998. [_Dictionary of the theatre: terms, concepts, and analysis_](http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/39070380). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.