ALFRED CHOUBRAC (1853-1902) LOHENGRIN / GRAND OPÉRA DE R. WAGNER. After 1891. 39 1/4x59 1/2 inches, 100x151 cm. F. Appel, Paris. Condition B+: creases in image; foxing in margins and image. Wagner did not have a happy relationship with the opera world in Paris. The 1861 French premier of his opera Tannhäuser resulted in protests and a disruption of the production itself, which grew into more than just a difference in national artistic sensibility, but became an international scandal in and of itself. After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, French and German relations became even worse. So much so, that when Wagner's Lohengrin premiered in France in 1887 it was met with similar hostility. The French music world was in an uproar that Wagner took such revolutionary steps with his opera, breaking from the Italian tradition and composing a "total work of art," in which a recurring leitmotif thematically bound the entire opera together. L'Affaire Wagner became a major cause célèbre for France's intelligentsia, in which writers, philosophers and artists all took sides in the debate, one side went as far as to publish a magazine, La Revue Wagnerienne to promote their cause. The work was finally performed at the Paris Opera in 1891 (promoted by a poster designed by Georges Rochegrosse). After 1891 the opera toured all over France and we expect this is a stock poster from that tour. Although unsigned it is clearly the work of Alfred Choubrac whose unique style is immediately recognizable. The scene is from Act I when Elsa von Brabant calls for a knight to defend her honor against Count Telramund, and Lohengrin appears on a boat pulled by a swan. Previously unrecorded, this rare poster is an important piece of Wagneriana.
