Das Liebesverbot

Das Liebesverbot
Opera by Richard Wagner
1922 vocal score with illustration by Franz Stassen
Librettist	Richard Wagner
Language	German
Based on	Shakespeare's Measure for Measure
Premiere	29 March 1836 (1836-03-29) Stadttheater Magdeburg

Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love, WWV 38), is an early comic opera in two acts by Richard Wagner, with the libretto written by the composer after Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Described as a Große komische Oper, it was composed in early 1836.

Restrained sexuality versus eroticism plays an important role in Das Liebesverbot; these themes recur throughout much of Wagner's output, most notably in Tannhäuser, Die Walküre and Tristan und Isolde. In each opera, the self-abandonment to love brings the lovers into mortal combat with the surrounding social order. In Das Liebesverbot, because it is a comedy, the outcome is a happy one: unrestrained sexuality wins as the carnival of the entire population goes rioting on after curtain-fall.

Das Liebesverbot was Wagner's second opera and his first to be performed. It has many signs of an early work, carrying a style modelled closely on contemporary French and Italian comic opera. It is also referred to as the forgotten comedy, being one of Wagner's only two comic works along with Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.