1896–1904

Dvořák’s final period saw the composer moving towards opera and programme music. For his musical treatment he chiefly sought fairy-tale motifs and fanciful themes illustrating supernatural phenomena. Works from this point in his career demonstrate the peak of Dvořák’s instrumentation mastery and his ability to express dramatic situations purely through musical devices. In his operas he again found inspiration in the principles of Wagner’s dramas which – unlike the composer’s experiments from the late 1860s and early 1870s – were now organically incorporated into the framework of Dvořák’s musical language. The masterpiece from this period is the opera Rusalka, which would secure the composer a leading position on the world’s opera stages after his death. In his last completed work, the opera Armida, Leoš Janáček noted the beginning of a new shift in Dvořák’s style. Shortly after its premiere, however, Dvorak passed away.