What is Gesamtkunstwerk?
1.
This word, coined by Richard Wagner in his theoretical essays of 1849-51, means literally "whole arts work". It is the idea of combining many variations of media for the purpose of Drama.
"That Opera was such a good example of gesamtkunstwerk"
"Well that idea is similar to Wagner's gesamtkunstwerk"
See
2.
‘complete-art-work’. London Review of Books, Vol 24, No. 6, 21st March 2002, page 16 col 3 by Hal Foster, ‘Andy Paperbag’. “And these devices became central to his persona, which is sometimes seen as his ultimate work: Warhol as the spectral centre of a flashy scene, a kind of blank Gesamtkunstwerk–in-person”.
'Mediaeval cathedrals were the Gesamtkunstwerks of their era', recently heard on BBC Radio 4,
