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Die Feen (The Fairies) is one of Richard Wagner's earlier operas. Rarely performed today, it was both started and quickly completed in 1833, when the composer was only 20 years old; the opera remained unheard until after his death in 1883.
Wagner's 2nd Opera
Before embarking on it, he wrote a libretto for a different opera before scrapping it — therefore it is technically not the composer's first operatic output.
Harmonic Complexity
Being such an early oeuvre, Die Feen is much more harmonically stable than Wagner's later operas, which saw him discarding tonality completely in complex chromatic chains of melody.
Performances
Although today regarded as a puerile and relatively worthless piece, the opera proved crucial in Wagner's development as a composer and a man.