As he gravitated toward a career in music from the late 1820s and into the 1830s, Wagner was torn between a cultural and perhaps philosophical allegiance to the symphonic tradition of Viennese classicism, above all the recently canon- ized genius of Beethoven, and a temperamental affinity with the conjunction of poetry, music, and theater in opera. By 1833 at the latest (when he composed his first operatic score, Die Feen), he had definitively cast his lot with opera, and