Richard Wagner’s music and adaptations were influential both in the composer’s lifetime and for his immediate successors. His position towards medieval sources is best described, for example, by his description of Wolfram von Eschenbach as an incompetent poet, and the fact that he sees his own approach to the issue as the only viable one. Nineteenth-century opera-libretti show that matters adapted by Wagner were largely avoided, although a greater appreciation of medieval adaptations was becoming immanent.
