# The Wagner Family



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Tony Palmer directed this for the South Bank Show (UK) in 2008. I found it interesting. Any comments?


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

What a very strange documentary. I'm not sure what message, if any, it was trying to convey. I think those of us with any interest in Wagner are well aware of the families complete disfunctionality and this film sheds no new light on it.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Gottfried Wagner, great grandson of Richard, has cast himself as the new Wagnerian hero who takes up the cross of atonement for his family's Nazi associations by inviting the world to savor with him the morbid delight of sorting through every piece of dirty laundry in the Wagners' closet. Such a noble mission.

Unfortunately for this "documentary," Gottfried begins it with a lie: "Wagner himself left in Bayreuth a clear political message not only for Germany but for the rest of the world." Wagner, whose philosophical ramblings were nothing if not inconsistent and whose writings were virtually unreadable, never left any clear political messages anywhere. Moreover, Gottfried's claim that _Parsifal_ contains such political messages and is about "racial purity" has no basis in Wagner's thinking as the opera was conceived, or in the text of the work itself. Equally insupportable is the claim that Hitler's racial theories owe anything to Wagner; in fact there is not a word in Hitler's speeches or writings to indicate that he even understood what Wagner had to say about race, which was essentially nothing until the composer, late in life (with _Parsifal_ already conceived), made the acquaintance of Gobineau, the real ancestor of Nazism (antisemitism, in Wagner's thinking, was basically a question of culture rather than race in the biological sense). Gottfried further informs us that _"Parsifal_ has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity." This is either ignorant or dishonest: Parsifal is not in any dogmatic sense a "Christian opera," but Christianity is more essential to its conception even than Norse myth is to the _Ring._

A pity that the interesting bits of history and the personal glimpses have been framed here by the usual unscholarly garbage about Wagner, and that his music is used - as it's always used in these productions - as subliminal "evidence" of Wagner's supposed ties to Nazism. But this is the fashionable orthodoxy about Wagner, and it just won't leave us alone.


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## Guest (Feb 1, 2018)

UK reviews at the time praised the programme (egTimes, Telegraph). Tony Palmer has a good reputation for films about music and musicians. Curiously, IMDB doesn't list it.

I'll have to watch it later - for those of us who _don't_ already know, I hope it will be insightful - though anyone who relies on a single source for their "history" is liable to come undone!


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Gottfried Wagner, great grandson of Richard, has cast himself as the new Wagnerian hero who takes up the cross of atonement for his family's Nazi associations by inviting the world to savor with him the morbid delight of sorting through every piece of dirty laundry in the Wagners' closet. Such a noble mission.
> 
> Unfortunately for this "documentary," Gottfried begins it with a lie: "Wagner himself left in Bayreuth a clear political message not only for Germany but for the rest of the world." Wagner, whose philosophical ramblings were nothing if not inconsistent and whose writings were virtually unreadable, never left any clear political messages anywhere. Moreover, Gottfried's claim that _Parsifal_ contains such political messages and is about "racial purity" has no basis in Wagner's thinking as the opera was conceived, or in the text of the work itself. Equally insupportable is the claim that Hitler's racial theories owe anything to Wagner; in fact there is not a word in Hitler's speeches or writings to indicate that he even understood what Wagner had to say about race, which was essentially nothing until the composer, late in life (with _Parsifal_ already conceived), made the acquaintance of Gobineau, the real ancestor of Nazism (antisemitism, in Wagner's thinking, was basically a question of culture rather than race in the biological sense). Gottfried further informs us that _"Parsifal_ has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity." This is either ignorant or dishonest: Parsifal is not in any dogmatic sense a "Christian opera," but Christianity is more essential to its conception even than Norse myth is to the _Ring._
> 
> A pity that the interesting bits of history and the personal glimpses have been framed here by the usual unscholarly garbage about Wagner, and that his music is used - as it's always used in these productions - as subliminal "evidence" of Wagner's supposed ties to Nazism. But this is the fashionable orthodoxy about Wagner, and it just won't leave us alone.


Good to see you back W.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Barbebleu said:


> What a very strange documentary. I'm not sure what message, if any, it was trying to convey. I think those of us with any interest in Wagner are well aware of the families complete disfunctionality and this film sheds no new light on it.


Strange documentary? The purpose of documentaries is to inform. Although people who follow Wagner might know the details portrayed there are many culture lovers who don't. I have just seen a documentary on coffee production. No doubt this might be dismissed as not necessary for people who follow the coffee trade. But for those of us who don't it was very informative. I have read a good deal about Wagner and his family and yet I found it informative. It was made around the time when Wolfgang Wagner had handed control of Bayreuth to his offspring so a good opportunity for appraisal. The purpose of South Bank documentaries was to appeal to culture lovers in general not specialists.


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## Byron (Mar 11, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> Gottfried Wagner, great grandson of Richard, has cast himself as the new Wagnerian hero who takes up the cross of atonement for his family's Nazi associations by inviting the world to savor with him the morbid delight of sorting through every piece of dirty laundry in the Wagners' closet. Such a noble mission.
> 
> Unfortunately for this "documentary," Gottfried begins it with a lie: "Wagner himself left in Bayreuth a clear political message not only for Germany but for the rest of the world." Wagner, whose philosophical ramblings were nothing if not inconsistent and whose writings were virtually unreadable, never left any clear political messages anywhere. Moreover, Gottfried's claim that _Parsifal_ contains such political messages and is about "racial purity" has no basis in Wagner's thinking as the opera was conceived, or in the text of the work itself. Equally insupportable is the claim that Hitler's racial theories owe anything to Wagner; in fact there is not a word in Hitler's speeches or writings to indicate that he even understood what Wagner had to say about race, which was essentially nothing until the composer, late in life (with _Parsifal_ already conceived), made the acquaintance of Gobineau, the real ancestor of Nazism (antisemitism, in Wagner's thinking, was basically a question of culture rather than race in the biological sense). Gottfried further informs us that _"Parsifal_ has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity." This is either ignorant or dishonest: Parsifal is not in any dogmatic sense a "Christian opera," but Christianity is more essential to its conception even than Norse myth is to the _Ring._
> 
> A pity that the interesting bits of history and the personal glimpses have been framed here by the usual unscholarly garbage about Wagner, and that his music is used - as it's always used in these productions - as subliminal "evidence" of Wagner's supposed ties to Nazism. But this is the fashionable orthodoxy about Wagner, and it just won't leave us alone.


Thanks for saving me the time. I prefer my documentaries to be factually accurate so I'll pass.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Don't have children, because they might associate with dictators and they'll defame your name for it. Got it! Thanks for the life lesson, Youtube video and DavidA!


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Byron said:


> Thanks for saving me the time. I prefer my documentaries to be factually accurate so I'll pass.


 I certainly wouldn't let one negative view expressed on here put you off what is a very informative documentary made by a brilliant documentary maker and one which was reviewed very favourably at the time. Actually most of the views expressed belong to Wagner's family members anyway, something I found very helpful in the research I was doing at the time. I was particularly intrigued to see that Cosima Wagner was actually spoken of affectionately by her grandchildren as being someone you could have fun with. As the Wagner Canon and family appear pretty short on gags then that was something of a revelation. Of course we get the simply awful Winifred giving her views about Hitler. But then who knows what Anyone might have turned out like it if as an orphan teen you'd have been married off as a stud to a middle aged man. But I was interested to hear what around children had to say about her and her domneering personality and also what they had to say about Wolfgang, who emerges as something of a monster in the way he treated his own family. A chip off the old block?
There was archive footage Palmer had dug up not shown before so this is valuable. Also tantalising gaps in no interview with Siegfried - what did he think of Hitler? Or Wieland. We know Wieland was close to Hitler and helped run a concentration camp (albeit benign by Nazi standards) with slave labour during the war. So was his post war (artistic and personal) revolution after the war a matter of conviction or convenience? We will never know for sure.

Even if like me you don't care for Wagner and his music, this is a fascinating glimpse into a disfunctional family that has helped shape Western culture. As in opera the villains are always more interesting than the heroes!


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

MacLeod said:


> I'll have to watch it later - for those of us who _don't_ already know, I hope it will be insightful - though anyone who relies on a single source for their "history" is liable to come undone!


If you're interested in learning something about the subject, a much more reliable and thorough source that covers a lot of the material covered in the film is the book _Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics _ by the reputed historian Frederic Spotts. Of course it doesn't so much deal with anything related to the Wagner family before or after their association with Hitler, and there is also Jonathan Carr's book _The Wagner Clan_ that goes into all the details of that, although I personally found Carr's continuous attempts to sensationalize the various controversies and indiscretions of the family and turn them into juicy tabloid journalism a bit tiring.

But if you're simply looking for a superficial and mildly entertaining introduction, enjoy this documentary. Just be prepared for plenty of inaccuracies and more spin than your average washing machine.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Faustian said:


> If you're interested in learning something about the subject, a much more reliable and thorough source that covers a lot of the material covered in the film is the book _Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics _ by the reputed historian Frederic Spotts. Of course it doesn't so much deal with anything related to the Wagner family before or after their association with Hitler, and there is also Jonathan Carr's book _The Wagner Clan_ that goes into all the details of that, although I personally found Carr's continuous attempts to sensationalize the various controversies and indiscretions of the family and turn them into juicy tabloid journalism a bit tiring.
> 
> But if you're simply looking for a superficial and mildly entertaining introduction, enjoy this documentary. Just be prepared for plenty of *inaccuracies and more spin than your average washing machine.*[/B]


Well as the 'spin' comes from the Wagner clan themselves then it is probably in keeping with the tradition set by the old man! :lol:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Star said:


> Wolfgang, who emerges as something of a monster in the way he treated his own family. A chip off the old block?
> 
> Even if like me you don't care for Wagner and his music, this is a fascinating glimpse into a disfunctional family that has helped shape Western culture.


Wolfgang was indeed horrible, besides being his brother's artistic inferior. He was _not_ "a chip off the the old block"; the old block did not treat his children that way, and his son Siegfried, at least, adored him. Wagner also, by the way, sent money to his first (divorced) wife Minna until her death, and not under court order.

Why is it so tempting to attribute every conceivable fault to Wagner? Didn't he have enough?

I don't think "the family" - as opposed to the composer himself, and to a lesser extent Wieland - has done much at all to shape Western culture, or that this film is anything more than gleefully malicious gossip posturing as "culture" for the cocktail party set. It has a few interesting anecdotes - the "brilliant" filmmaker had to do something to hold people's attention - but no one who's done any balanced thinking and research about Wagner is going to imagine that it has anything important to say except that rabid, tabloid anti-Wagnerism is still popular fare.

Don't feel sad for poor, dear Gottfried, stuck with being a Wagner! He's now the star of his own little movie.


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Gottfried Wagner, great grandson of Richard, has cast himself as the new Wagnerian hero who takes up the cross of atonement for his family's Nazi associations by inviting the world to savor with him the morbid delight of sorting through every piece of dirty laundry in the Wagners' closet. Such a noble mission.
> 
> Unfortunately for this "documentary," Gottfried begins it with a lie: "Wagner himself left in Bayreuth a clear political message not only for Germany but for the rest of the world." Wagner, whose philosophical ramblings were nothing if not inconsistent and whose writings were virtually unreadable, never left any clear political messages anywhere. Moreover, Gottfried's claim that _Parsifal_ contains such political messages and is about "racial purity" has no basis in Wagner's thinking as the opera was conceived, or in the text of the work itself. Equally insupportable is the claim that Hitler's racial theories owe anything to Wagner; in fact there is not a word in Hitler's speeches or writings to indicate that he even understood what Wagner had to say about race, which was essentially nothing until the composer, late in life (with _Parsifal_ already conceived), made the acquaintance of Gobineau, the real ancestor of Nazism (antisemitism, in Wagner's thinking, was basically a question of culture rather than race in the biological sense). Gottfried further informs us that _"Parsifal_ has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity." This is either ignorant or dishonest: Parsifal is not in any dogmatic sense a "Christian opera," but Christianity is more essential to its conception even than Norse myth is to the _Ring._
> 
> A pity that the interesting bits of history and the personal glimpses have been framed here by the usual unscholarly garbage about Wagner, and that his music is used - as it's always used in these productions - as subliminal "evidence" of Wagner's supposed ties to Nazism. But this is the fashionable orthodoxy about Wagner, and it just won't leave us alone.


Thanks for this, and ditto welcome back. As an aside, what's your favorite(s) among documentaries on all things Wagner?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

bz3 said:


> Thanks for this, and ditto welcome back. As an aside, what's your favorite(s) among documentaries on all things Wagner?


Honestly, I've never seen a good documentary about Wagner, but then I don't make an effort to watch films. I would hope there are some!


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Honestly, I've never seen a good documentary about Wagner, but then I don't make an effort to watch films. I would hope there are some!


I have the Richard Burton miniseries but someone here (Faustian I think) said it was crap. I'll eventually watch it but I've never seen any film or documentary on Wagner, which is not the case for most of the other composers I love.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

bz3 said:


> I have the Richard Burton miniseries but someone here (Faustian I think) said it was crap. I'll eventually watch it but I've never seen any film or documentary on Wagner, which is not the case for most of the other composers I love.


Burton's Wagner is awful - stodgy and dull, nothing like the high-strung, volatile, emotional, brilliant but irrational, and sharply witty character that the composer was. I remember little else about the series.

I think Wagner would be a terribly difficult character to attempt to portray, and that may explain the lack of a good biopic. Frankly, given the warped and oversimplified popular conceptions of Wagner and his legacy, I would be dubious and fearful about any contemporary attempt. I suspect he's just too big, complicated, and culturally impactful to be a movie subject. Would a character like him even be believable?


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## damianjb1 (Jan 1, 2016)

bz3 said:


> I have the Richard Burton miniseries but someone here (Faustian I think) said it was crap. I'll eventually watch it but I've never seen any film or documentary on Wagner, which is not the case for most of the other composers I love.


I watched all of it and made absolutely no sense to me at all.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couchie said:


> Don't have children, because they might associate with dictators and they'll defame your name for it. Got it! Thanks for the life lesson, Youtube video and DavidA!


Just applies to the family in this particular documentary - not all of us thankfully!


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## Guest (Feb 3, 2018)

DavidA said:


> Well as the 'spin' comes from the Wagner clan themselves


Exactly so. Palmer chose not to present any "story": no overt chronology, no narrative thread, or explicit editorial or authorial voice. Instead he stitched together what the Wagners and their biographers had to tell us about the family. That made it more of a challenge to those coming without much knowledge of the family - well, certainly a challenge to me. The advantage was that it didn't present the kind of agenda that Woodduck seems to have taken from it (#3); if there was any agenda it was, "listen to what these people have to say about themselves, their family, their close friends, each other and decide for yourself." And "these people", we are to accept, are of interest, of importance, because they are the inheritors of the Wagner legacy and Bayreuth is of importance to German culture.



Woodduck said:


> Unfortunately for this "documentary," *Gottfried begins it with a lie*: "Wagner himself left in Bayreuth a clear political message not only for Germany but for the rest of the world." Wagner, whose philosophical ramblings were nothing if not inconsistent and whose writings were virtually unreadable, never left any clear political messages anywhere. _[...]_
> 
> A pity that the interesting bits of history and *the personal glimpses have been framed here by the usual unscholarly garbage* about Wagner, and that his music is used - as it's always used in these productions - as subliminal "evidence" of Wagner's supposed ties to Nazism. But this is the fashionable orthodoxy about Wagner, and it just won't leave us alone.


The agenda, if there was one, was nothing more than "personal testimony is unreliable". Some of the players seemed blissfully unaware of the irony in some of their pronouncements, casting immediate doubt on the truth of what they were saying. The biographers were no more to be trusted than their subjects ("Oh my God, Gertude was a nympho, she was awful" says one, revelling in it).

"Falsifying the truth is part of the history of the Wagner family" were Gottfried's first words, and this was not a lie. If it begins with a lie, it was that "Wagner was the greatest composer of the 19th C." (Melvyn Bragg). To take anything said after that as lie or truth is to miss the point. It was about lies, deception and intrigue, as Bragg says.

As for "unscholarly garbage" about Wagner, that's because no other "scholar" than biographers was invited to say anything specifically for the film. Palmer tried to use first hand interviews where possible, delving back into archives as often as he could so, for example, Winifred and Wolfgang could sepak for themselves as well as those still alive at the time.

I thought that, insofar as I have much interest in the Wagner family, it was quite interesting. But I'm not about to read any books on the subject - I don't need to search out "the truth" about the Wagners as the kind of dynastic tale is just not that appealing (any more than the antics of our Royal Family are appealing). What it failed to do was make me want to go and listen to the music. That wasn't its aim of course, but one might have hoped for some beneficial spin-off!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> Palmer chose not to present any "story": no overt chronology, *no narrative thread, or explicit editorial or authorial voice.* Instead he stitched together what the Wagners and their biographers had to tell us about the family... *The advantage was that it didn't present the kind of agenda that Woodduck seems to have taken from it* (#3); if there was any agenda it was, "listen to what these people have to say about themselves, their family, their close friends, each other and decide for yourself."
> 
> The agenda, if there was one, was nothing more than "personal testimony is unreliable". Some of the players seemed blissfully unaware of the irony in some of their pronouncements, casting immediate doubt on the truth of what they were saying. The biographers were no more to be trusted than their subjects ("Oh my God, Gertude was a nympho, she was awful" says one, revelling in it).
> 
> ...


I'm not sure that you're conscious of the underlying problem with this film, which is that it conflates two separate purposes: to air the dirty laundry of the Wagner family, and to perpetuate the post-Holocaust view of Wagner as a proto-Nazi. The second of these, as I point out, is used to frame the first and give it the appearance of being something more than high-class gossip, something scholarly and culturally significant. This is not to say that those interested in the personalities and intrigues of Wagner's descendants won't find the anecdotes interesting. But the "framing" - the use of _Parsifal_ as an artistic "leitmotiv" for Nazi genocide - is dishonest and contemptible.

Your denial of an "explicit editorial or authorial voice" indicates only your unawareness of one. The fact that the film's two purposes are conflated with such casual ease and total brazenness means that the end product amounts to propaganda: a con job, with the filmmaker using, as his mouthpiece, Gottfried Wagner, a tabloid messiah crucified by bad genes and exulting in the cleansing power of confession/accusation. Perhaps he hopes that the last line of _Parsifal_ - "Redemption to the Redeemer" - was his great-grandfather's prophecy of the coming of Gottfried, "God's peace."

(Btw, "Wagner was the greatest composer of the 19th century" is not a lie but an opinion, and a not uncommon one. The worst that can be said about it here is that it is drained of credibility by the discussion of _Parsifal_ that follows.)


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## Guest (Feb 3, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> I'm not sure that you're conscious of the underlying problem with this film, which is that it conflates two separate purposes: to air the dirty laundry of the Wagner family, and to perpetuate the post-Holocaust view of Wagner as a proto-Nazi.


What I'm conscious of is that you seem to have determined the "purposes" of the film in advance. What you see it in, I did not see.



Woodduck said:


> Your denial of an "explicit editorial or authorial voice" indicates only your unawareness of one.


No, it doesn't. It indicates that I didn't make sufficiently clear what I meant by an "explicit" voice: that is to say, there was no-one narrating a story and therefore, no-one editorialising that narration - that's all. What that means is that the viewer has to rely on the music, words of the "actors", and the pictures to piece together what may be a "purpose" or "voice".

Whether Gottfried is to be taken to be the "authorial voice" is, in my opinion, open to question. Given that we should treat all the actors' testimonies with some scepticism, why wouldwe not treat his with scepticism too? You may identify Gottfried with Palmer, I do not. And if I might be permitted to point out an error in your viewing, you said, "Gottfried's claim that _Parsifal_ [...] is about "racial purity"" was inaccurate. It was Gutman who said that.



> "Wagner was the greatest composer of the 19th century" is not a lie but an opinion


Quite right. Funny thing is that what you yourself said was a lie, I would have said was an opinion too!



> "Wagner himself left in Bayreuth a clear political message not only for Germany but for the rest of the world."


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> What I'm conscious of is that you seem to have determined the "purposes" of the film in advance. What you see it in, I did not see.
> 
> Funny thing is that what you yourself said was a lie, I would have said was an opinion too!


If it can easily be checked against the facts, and neither Wagner's great-grandson nor the filmmaker can be bothered to present the facts but would prefer, respectively, defamation and entertainment, "lie" is not too strong a judgment. "Wagner is the greatest...", by contrast, is an assertion of an entirely different order which no one is expected to take as a statement of objective fact (especially, I might add, in this piece of infotainment).

A "purpose" doesn't have to mean a consciously defined or specified purpose. It can also refer to underlying motives, even if unconscious and achieved by stealth and deception. At the very start, the anonymous introducer makes a few simple factual statements about Bayreuth, and then suddenly and casually slips in, out of nowhere, the judgment that Wagner's antisemitism "is still unforgivable." Well now...Whose job is it to forgive, or not forgive, dead composers their faults? Is it this scruffy-looking person's job? Is he speaking for the filmmaker, or for the world at large? Is he telling us what to think before the film even begins? He then goes on to laud Tony Palmer as if nothing had happened. For anyone who's kept an eye on the propaganda literature on Wagner, a red flag is already waving in the breeze. Gottfried then takes over the narration and lays out the explicit premise of the film - the Wagner family's dishonest presentation of itself to the world - which is all well and good. But after this introductory talk, the first "filmic" thing Palmer creates for us is ominous footage of Nazis, accompanied by the music of _Parsifal,_ while Gottfried makes the blatantly false statement that "Wagner himself left in Bayreuth a clear political message not only for Germany but for the rest of the world." Red flags flapping wildly now! The distorted discussion of _Parsifal_'s meaning soon follows in an apparent attempt to illustrate Wagner's "clear political message," with the disreputable Robert Gutman telling us with smug matter-of-factness that the opera's explicit theme of enlightenment and redemption through Buddha-like empathy with human suffering is not its "real" theme, that the real subject of the work is "racial purity," and that "the whole purpose of _Parsifal_ was to explain how the Aryan race might be restored." Palmer's own purpose in starting off with this intellectual fraud is clearly to show that Wagner exemplified in _Parsifal_ the dishonesty of his family, as well as to cement the cliche of Wagner's antisemitism as essentially identical to, and foundational to, Hitler's.

People with less knowledge of Wagner may not consider this artfully dramatized episode important to the "purpose" of the film - and that is a problem. We are just expected to take it in, nod and agree. I can't do that, and so I am here to point out intellectual dishonesty in a film that attempts to show the dishonesty of the Wagner family and engages in dishonest tactics to do so. Gottfried Wagner thinks that his family's dishonesty needs to be called out. Should he object to our calling out his own bias and that of the filmmaker who gives him a megaphone?


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## Guest (Feb 4, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> If it can easily be checked against the facts, and neither Wagner's great-grandson nor the filmmaker can be bothered to present the facts but would prefer, respectively, defamation and entertainment, "lie" is not too strong a judgment. "Wagner is the greatest...", by contrast, is an assertion of an entirely different order which no one is expected to take as a statement of objective fact (especially, I might add, in this piece of infotainment).


So in your view Gottfried was "lying". Quite possibly, but it's also possible that he has discerned an underlying "message" (as you discerned an "underlying purpose" in the programme). It's also consistent with my view that all, apart from the introducer, are presenting biased and potentially false testimony which needs to be listened to with a high degree of scepticism.



Woodduck said:


> A "purpose" doesn't have to mean a consciously defined or specified purpose. It can also refer to underlying motives, even if unconscious and achieved by stealth and deception.


Of course. But who's to say whether the purpose you've discerned is more valid than the one I've discerned? I would agree that if you take the first few minutes as laying out the essential story as you've seen, it looks like a typical shallow representation of Wagner as a proto-Nazi, with footage and music assembled to sway the credulous viewer; Palmer as Riefenstahl, if you will. But by the end of the whole presentation, I believe that Gottfried's views have to be treated with exactly the same suspicion as all the other presenters, and not be seen as the authorial voice.



Woodduck said:


> At the very start, the *anonymous *introducer makes a few simple factual statements about Bayreuth, and then suddenly and casually slips in, out of nowhere, the judgment that *Wagner's antisemitism "is still unforgivable." *Well now...Whose job is it to forgive, or not forgive, dead composers their faults? Is it this *scruffy-looking* person's job? Is he speaking for the filmmaker, or for the world at large? Is he telling us what to think before the film even begins? He then goes on to laud Tony Palmer as if nothing had happened. For anyone who's kept an eye on the propaganda literature on Wagner, a red flag is already waving in the breeze.


In the Youtube version, the usual introduction to the South Bank Show was missing - perhaps it wasn't there as usual in the original, but either way, Melvyn Bragg is well-known as the regular presenter of the show. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvyn_Bragg. (I see that you're not above your own editorialising with 'scruffy-looking' - what does your view of his appearance matter to the value of what he says?)

Quite rightly, however, you pose a series of questions about what he has said, questions which every viewer who comes to the programme with an open mind should ask. He may 'laud' Tony Palmer, but he also refers to the arguments they've had in the past, so he is not uncritical of him.

(Isn't Wagner's antisemitism unforgivable? Perhaps a question for a separate thread, but there've already been many of those, so maybe we needn't return to it again.)



Woodduck said:


> Gottfried then takes over the narration and lays out the explicit premise of the film - the Wagner family's dishonest presentation of itself to the world - which is all well and good.


The explicit premise - as _you _see it. It's not what I see as the one and only premise on which Palmer wants to base his entire film, but I agree that it's one of the possible premises - but since Palmer has put your premise into the mouth of one of the protagonists, we can't be sure - and it's certainly not _explicit_.



Woodduck said:


> the first "filmic" thing Palmer creates for us is ominous footage of Nazis, accompanied by the music of _Parsifal,_ while Gottfried makes the blatantly false statement that "Wagner himself left in Bayreuth a clear political message not only for Germany but for the rest of the world." Red flags flapping wildly now!


Red flags flapping for us all. The viewer who knows what Parsifal is about (and that since Wagner died well before the end of the 19th C, he could hardly be associated with the Nazis) may either wait and see what follows, thinking, "This is not true, so what's going on?" or may dismiss the programme as a distortion. The viewer who doesn't know (me) will either wait and see or swallow the whole thing.



Woodduck said:


> The distorted discussion of _Parsifal_'s meaning soon follows in an apparent attempt to illustrate Wagner's "clear political message," with *the disreputable Robert Gutman *


I looked up Gutman. I've not read his work, but it's clear that there is more than one view of the quality of his biography. Where you believe him to be "disreputable", others don't.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/...ographer-of-wagner-and-mozart-dies-at-90.html

You'll forgive me if I didn't go much further than this article - credit me with also being aware that the NY Times also needs to be treated with scepticism.



Woodduck said:


> Palmer's own purpose in starting off with this intellectual fraud is *clearly *


No, it isn't clearly anything, but I think I covered that point.



Woodduck said:


> *People with less knowledge of Wagner* may not consider this artfully dramatized episode important to the "purpose" of the film - and that is a problem. *We are just expected to take it in, nod and agree.* I can't do that, and so I am here to point out intellectual dishonesty in a film that attempts to show the dishonesty of the Wagner family and engages in dishonest tactics to do so. Gottfried Wagner thinks that his family's dishonesty needs to be called out. Should he object to our calling out his own bias and that of the filmmaker who gives him a megaphone?


People with less knowledge aren't _expected _to take it in, nod and agree, though they may indeed do so. _You _can't, but then you're not "people with less knowledge, so that 'expectation' doesn't apply to you, does it? You know better.

What you twig by the end is the irony throughout the programme which is that nothing said can be taken at face value, and Gottfried seems unaware that having criticised the rest of the family for lies and deception, it's just possible that we might consider him as lying and deceiving as well. So, yes, you are expected to "call him out"!

No one with an ounce of common sense is going to listen to the long parade of Wagners and simply accept what they say as truth, no matter how much knowledge they have of Wagner. I'm not going to worry about those without an ounce of common sense.

It has to be acknowledged that Palmer is known to be a provocative filmmaker, and he's certainly provoked.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

^^^ I would give all of your "buts" more credit if this film included any "buts" to balance its own statements. That's obviously not something Palmer is interested in doing - balance isn't very entertaining, is it? - and I find his film not "provocative" (generally meant as a compliment) but merely, and only mildly, "provoking" (generally not). For me it held only two surprises worth knowing: the portrait of Cosima as funny and great with children, which makes one curious about life at home with Richard and the kids; and the revelation that Wolfgang was cruel in ways that his grandfather was not. So, you see, I am not immune to the appeal of gossip! If only Palmer had confined himself to that and dispensed with the misguided intellectual pretentions, this could have been great fun.

Robert Gutman _is_ disreputable, by the way. Responsible scholars have had no difficulty exposing his confused chronology of Wagner's life, a serious error in scholarship, perhaps not entirely innocent, which he needs to support his attempts to relate Wagner's thinking to his operas. Specifically, Gutman finds in _Parsifal_ racial theories Wagner didn't even encounter until after the opera's scenario was fully conceived, as well as some ideas Wagner would never even have considered (homoeroticism). That doesn't mean that a lot of less responsible commentators don't salivate over Gutman's racial obsessions and continue to make use of them. But no one deserves credit for salivating.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> If it can easily be checked against the facts, and neither Wagner's great-grandson nor the filmmaker can be bothered to present the facts but would prefer, respectively, *defamation* and entertainment, "lie" is not too strong a judgment. "Wagner is the greatest...", by contrast, is an assertion of an entirely different order which no one is expected to take as a statement of objective fact (especially, I might add, in this piece of infotainment).
> 
> A "purpose" doesn't have to mean a consciously defined or specified purpose. It can also refer to underlying motives, even if unconscious and achieved by stealth and deception. At the very start, the anonymous introducer makes a few simple factual statements about Bayreuth, and then suddenly and casually slips in, out of nowhere, the judgment that Wagner's antisemitism "is still unforgivable." Well now...Whose job is it to forgive, or not forgive, dead composers their faults? Is it this scruffy-looking person's job? Is he speaking for the filmmaker, or for the world at large? Is he telling us what to think before the film even begins? He then goes on to laud Tony Palmer as if nothing had happened. For anyone who's kept an eye on the propaganda literature on Wagner, a red flag is already waving in the breeze. Gottfried then takes over the narration and lays out the explicit premise of the film - the Wagner family's dishonest presentation of itself to the world - which is all well and good. But after this introductory talk, the first "filmic" thing Palmer creates for us is ominous footage of Nazis, accompanied by the music of _Parsifal,_ while Gottfried makes the blatantly false statement that "Wagner himself left in Bayreuth a clear political message not only for Germany but for the rest of the world." Red flags flapping wildly now! The distorted discussion of _Parsifal_'s meaning soon follows in an apparent attempt to illustrate Wagner's "clear political message," with the *disreputable* Robert Gutman telling us with smug matter-of-factness that the opera's explicit theme of enlightenment and redemption through Buddha-like empathy with human suffering is not its "real" theme, that the real subject of the work is "racial purity," and that "the whole purpose of _Parsifal_ was to explain how the Aryan race might be restored." Palmer's own purpose in starting off with this intellectual fraud is clearly to show that Wagner exemplified in _Parsifal_ the dishonesty of his family, as well as to cement the cliche of Wagner's antisemitism as essentially identical to, and foundational to, Hitler's.
> 
> People with less knowledge of Wagner may not consider this artfully dramatized episode important to the "purpose" of the film - and that is a problem. We are just expected to take it in, nod and agree. I can't do that, and so I am here to point out intellectual dishonesty in a film that attempts to show the dishonesty of the Wagner family and engages in dishonest tactics to do so. Gottfried Wagner thinks that his family's dishonesty needs to be called out. Should he object to our calling out *his own bias *and that of the filmmaker who gives him a megaphone?


 It is ironic that you should talk about 'defamation' when the composer concerned spent endless time producing tracts defaming a whole race! Of course Wagner left a clear political message concerning the Jews. He wasn't shy about it. He had (as you would say) 'an agenda'. Just read his writings. Whether he would have approved of the way the Nazis went about fulfilling it is something, of course, we don't know. I believe there was a comment from a family member to that effect.
Also because Gutman and others come to a different conclusion about Parsfal than you do, it doesn't make them 'disreputable'. It just means they (together with many others) disagree.

https://classicalvoiceamerica.org/2016/05/31/robert-w-gutman-altered-views-of-mozart-wagner/

Even Wolfgang Wagner said Parsifal has different layers of meaning. To brand people who disagree with your opinion as telling 'lies' is (to me) not n. In any case most of the 'lies' (so called) were told by the family and as the documentary was about the family people could make their own minds up.


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## Guest (Feb 4, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> ^^^ I would give all of your "buts" more credit


Just one or two acknowledgements would do. 

I remember when I watched Palmer's films about pop music and The Beatles; too long ago to remember much about the specifics, and I was too young to know the "truths" the film purported to show. But my older brothers and sisters were incensed. So, yes, very 'provoking'.

As for the problem of explicit purpose and authorial voice, in this interview, Palmer says:



> Another thing that marks out his documentaries is the lack of voiceover. "Oh, I hate it when they try to tell you what to think," he says. My epiphany came with 2001: A Space Odyssey. The beginning of the film, the apes, all tells a story without words, just the music. I left the cinema invigorated and desperate to get back to editing."


https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jul/28/tony-palmer-hes-with-band


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

I think we can consider this can of worms well and truly opened!:lol:

"Lay on fans, and damned be him who first cries Hold! Enough!"


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## Guest (Feb 4, 2018)

Barbebleu said:


> I think we can consider this can of worms well and truly opened!:lol:
> 
> "Lay on fans, and damned be him who first cries Hold! Enough!"


More than one can, I'd say. The more important can is not about the Wagner family itself - there's more than enough controversy to go round for the most avid readers of tabloid gossip - but about how/whether the "truth" can be told through this or that documentary style. How about this review (of the extended DVD version)?



> "If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody," Alice Roosevelt Longworth once said, "come sit next to me." Director Tony Palmer must have extended the same invitation to the biographers, musicians and especially the Wagner descendants who address the camera in this verbose documentary that seems incapable of organizing its justified biliousness and outrage. [...]Palmer's scattershot approach, circuitous narrative and inadequate identification of speakers and their relationships can make a viewer long for the clarity and focus of a Ken Burns [...]
> 
> In its zeal to equate Wagner and Nazism, the film cites some simple-minded charges, such as branding _Parsifal_ a paean to German racial purity. Too often Palmer relies on knee-jerk associations, pairing Nazi footage with a Wagnerian soundtrack as if the two arose from a single source.
> 
> And yet, even this confused jeremiad eventually airs some interesting artistic and ethical issues concerning the current Wagner generation. [...]Gottfried's final comment after all the crimes and recriminations also has considerable resonance: "Can you be proud to be a Wagner?"


David J Baker - https://www.operanews.com/Opera_News_Magazine/2012/2/Recordings/The_Wagner_Family.html

(Admittedly random searching of the internet turns up stuff with, as far as I'm concerned, unknown provenance. Who is David J. Baker and is Opera News worth reading?)


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

Star said:


> It is ironic that you should talk about 'defamation' when the composer concerned spent endless time producing tracts defaming a whole race!


As Bryan Magee has written, "The repellent nature of Wagner's anti-semitism is not a license to misrepresent it. Revulsion easily leads us into sweeping assertions that are not true, and in a case like this it matters. In spite of a fully justified repugnance, we should still aim at a proper understanding...Somewhere at the back of many people's minds is an uncomfortable feeling that to understand is to exonerate. I am afraid that this is how all too many of the writers I am referring to respond to the situation: they are afraid to try to understand, for they fear that they will then be seeming to condone. They either want, or they want to be seen - perhaps both - to give expression to towering anger and indignation, with no shred of condonation, and therefore no concession to understanding. But this is the mentality of the lynch mob, so morally outraged by the terrible crime someone is accused of having committed that they string him up or beat him to death without enquiring seriously into his guilt; and if anyone protests this is wrong, or attempts to stop them, they accuse that person of condoning the crime, and being in effect on the side of the criminal, and they turn against him as well. What they are actually concerned to do is not arrive at truth or justice but give vent to their righteous (in itself) indignation at the heinousness of the crime, and they will savage anyone who gets in the way of their doing so."



> Of course Wagner left a clear political message concerning the Jews. He wasn't shy about it. He had (as you would say) 'an agenda'. Just read his writings.


I have read his writings, and know Woodduck has as well. Have you? Because if you read them, you would see his writings about the the Jews were addressing cultural concerns, not political ones. What mattered to him overwhelmingly were art and music, and he held his attitudes predominately in regards to those. He never argued like some of his contemporaries did that Jews should be subjected to legal disabilities or forfeit their civil rights. One of his last made remarks on the subject was "If I ever were to write again about the Jews, I should say I have nothing against them, it is just that they descended on us Germans too soon, we were no yet stable enough to absorb them". Again, to quote Bryan Magee: "Wagner's anti-semitism, his hatred of the French, and his nationalism flowed from a common source, which was a desire to see a united Germany self-confident in its own culture, undominated and uncontaminated by non-German cultural influences the proud custodian of the greatest of all traditions in the greatest of all the arts, and carrying that tradition forward into the future with outstanding new composers on a par with those of the past. This was his vision, and he hated with a ferocious hatred anything or anyone that stood in the way of its realization".

So what exactly is this clear political message regarding the Jews that you've discerned from (not) reading his writings?



> Also because Gutman and others come to a different conclusion about Parsfal than you do, it doesn't make them 'disreputable'. It just means they (together with many others) disagree.
> 
> https://classicalvoiceamerica.org/2016/05/31/robert-w-gutman-altered-views-of-mozart-wagner/
> 
> Even Wolfgang Wagner said Parsifal has different layers of meaning. To brand people who disagree with your opinion as telling 'lies' is (to me) not n.


To suggest that Woodduck is branding people who disagree with him as telling lies is (to me) not right. The fact is Robert Gutman made numerous unsubstantiated claims regarding the substance of the operas and their origination. If calling someone who twists facts and puts forth conclusions without any evidence to back them up a "liar" is too strong a word for you, fine. At the very least it is bad scholarship.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

It is ironic that you should talk about 'defamation' when the composer concerned spent endless time producing tracts defaming a whole race!

Not ironic at all. It's entirely possible, and entirely wrong, to defame anyone, regardless of their own faults, and we should object to it.

Of course Wagner left a clear political message concerning the Jews. 

No, he didn't. His views on the Jews were mainly cultural, not political (see Faustian's post above). Nor were they racial; he didn't think of Jews - or Germans - as a "race," and when this pseudo-biological notion gained currency in his late years he thought about it but never had a coherent notion of it and definitely didn't see in it a justification for political action.

He had (as you would say) 'an agenda'. Just read his writings. Whether he would have approved of the way the Nazis went about fulfilling it is something, of course, we don't know.

From what we do know, it's highly unlikely. He scoffed at the idea of the Germans as a "master race," and the idea of military domination of one people by another repelled him. Wagner was political in his youth, but became increasingly pessimistic about political solutions to mankind's problems. His last thoughts on the subject were that the degenerate human race, regardless of ethnicity, culture, etc., could only be saved through some vague sort of Christian/Buddhist/Schopenhauerian spirituality. Fortunately, Wagner the artist was more coherent than Wagner the philosopher, and _Parsifal_ makes a better argument for his final outlook than do his somewhat crazy last essays (which Robert Gutman and others carelessly cite as a basis for interpreting _Parsifal,_ which had already been composed and had been fully conceived many years earlier).

Also because Gutman and others come to a different conclusion about Parsfal than you do, it doesn't make them 'disreputable'. It just means they (together with many others) disagree.

Having a different opinion doesn't make one's opinion valid. Some things are just incorrect, and some things can be proven to be incorrect. Gutman's view of _Parsifal_ as a racist tract with political (proto-Nazi) implications - a view Palmer appears to swallow hook, line, and sinker - is easily shown to be incorrect by referring to both the progression and chronology of Wagner's thought and to the internal evidence of the work itself. Gutman was enough of a scholar to have known better, and I don't believe "mistakes" of that magnitude are likely to be innocent.

Even Wolfgang Wagner said Parsifal has different layers of meaning.

It does. It's extraordinarily rich in meanings. The restoration of a pure-blooded Aryan master race is not one of them.


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## Guest (Feb 4, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> a view Palmer appears to swallow hook, line, and sinker -


Does he? On what do you base your evidence?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> Does he? On what do you base your evidence?


The mere fact that he presents that view without qualification, and gives Gutman, of all possible people, a personal forum. What else do you need?


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> The mere fact that he presents that view without qualification, and gives Gutman, of all possible people, a personal forum. What else do you need?


You mean that because he presents a view without telling us what to think about it, he must himself have accepted it?

I'd need much, much more than that. It looks like you're the one swallowing something hook, line and sinker.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Faustian said:


> As Bryan Magee has written, "The repellent nature of Wagner's anti-semitism is not a license to misrepresent it. Revulsion easily leads us into sweeping assertions that are not true, and in a case like this it matters. In spite of a fully justified repugnance, we should still aim at a proper understanding...Somewhere at the back of many people's minds is an uncomfortable feeling that to understand is to exonerate. I am afraid that this is how all too many of the writers I am referring to respond to the situation: they are afraid to try to understand, for they fear that they will then be seeming to condone. They either want, or they want to be seen - perhaps both - to give expression to towering anger and indignation, with no shred of condonation, and therefore no concession to understanding. *But this is the mentality of the lynch mobso morally outraged by the terrible crime someone is accused of having committed that they string him up or beat him to death without enquiring seriously into his guilt;* and if anyone protests this is wrong, or attempts to stop them, they accuse that person of condoning the crime, and being in effect on the side of the criminal, and they turn against him as well. What they are actually concerned to do is not arrive at truth or justice but give vent to their righteous (in itself) indignation at the heinousness of the crime, and they will savage anyone who gets in the way of their doing so."
> 
> I have read his writings, and know Woodduck has as well. Have you? Because if you read them, you would see his writings about the the Jews were addressing cultural concerns, not political ones. What mattered to him overwhelmingly were art and music, and he held his attitudes predominately in regards to those. He never argued like some of his contemporaries did that Jews should be subjected to legal disabilities or forfeit their civil rights. One of his last made remarks on the subject was "If I ever were to write again about the Jews, I should say I have nothing against them, it is just that they descended on us Germans too soon, we were no yet stable enough to absorb them". Again, to quote Bryan Magee: "Wagner's anti-semitism, his hatred of the French, and his nationalism flowed from a common source, which was a desire to see a united Germany self-confident in its own culture, undominated and uncontaminated by non-German cultural influences the proud custodian of the greatest of all traditions in the greatest of all the arts, and carrying that tradition forward into the future with outstanding new composers on a par with those of the past. This was his vision, and he hated with a ferocious hatred anything or anyone that stood in the way of its realization".
> 
> ...


Ah, according to MacGee, Wagner is now the victim? Poor Richard! If he is the victim he has only himself to blame because he himself was the author of the poisonous racist diatribes that came from his pen. And whether we turn the racism political or cultural (and the two are not exclusive) does tis make it any more defensible? The lengths people go to defending his writings is quite beyond me. 
Whether or not Robert Gutman is a good or bad scholar The word lie is inappropriate when used for someone giving an opinion. I can tell you in the work of scholarship you would not get away with saying something like that about another scholar.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> You mean that because he presents a view without telling us what to think about it, he must himself have accepted it?
> 
> I'd need much, much more than that. It looks like you're the one swallowing something hook, line and sinker.


No, that's not what I mean. What I mean is what I said.

Artists (let's credit Palmer with being one) make choices for a reason. Palmer could have chosen any number of "authorities" to express any number of opinions. He chose that one. Why do you suppose he did, unless he considered Gutman's view the most necessary one to communicate at that point, the one that best supported the premise of the rest of the film? And why would he consider it the most necessary one? My answer: because it's most consistent with the idea, expressed by Gottfried, that the Wagner family is full of dirty secrets which they are not honest about. Palmer brings Gutman on to tell us the supposed dirty secret of _Parsifal_ - that it's a vicious racist tract in disguise - in order to show that Bayreuth has been a nest of lies from the get-go. This is clear throughout the film. I'm not making it up.

If Palmer didn't agree with Gutman's view, he would have found some other - hopefully more accurate - way to make his point.


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> No, that's not what I mean. What I mean is what I said.
> 
> Artists (let's credit Palmer with being one) make choices for a reason. Palmer could have chosen any number of "authorities" to express any number of opinions. He chose that one. Why do you suppose he did, unless he considered Gutman's view the most necessary one to communicate at that point, the one that best supported the premise of the rest of the film? And why would he consider it the most necessary one? My answer: because it's most consistent with the idea, expressed by Gottfried, that the Wagner family is full of dirty secrets which they are not honest about. Palmer brings Gutman on to tell us the supposed dirty secret of _Parsifal_ - that it's a vicious racist tract in disguise - in order to show that Bayreuth has been a nest of lies from the get-go. This is clear throughout the film. I'm not making it up.
> 
> If Palmer didn't agree with Gutman's view, he would have found some other - hopefully more accurate - way to make his point.


I can't see a way past this. You've determined the premise of the film and everything rests on that, even to the extent of presuming that Palmer agrees with Gutman and Gottfried. What makes you so sure that this is the case? Do you think he also agrees with what Winifrid had to say about Hitler?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Star said:


> Ah, according to MacGee, Wagner is now the victim? Poor Richard! If he is the victim he has only himself to blame because he himself was the author of the poisonous racist diatribes that came from his pen. And whether we turn the racism political or cultural (and the two are not exclusive) does tis make it any more defensible? *The lengths people go to defending his writings is quite beyond me. *
> Whether or not Robert Gutman is a good or bad scholar The word lie is inappropriate when used for someone giving an *opinion.* I can tell you in the work of scholarship you would not get away with saying something like that about another scholar.


No one has "defended Wagner's writings," or his antisemitism, or any other fault he may have had. Why don't you just read what MacGee is actually saying? You might realize that you're just proving his point: that people who strive to be objective about Wagner and refuse to accept careless accusations against him are accused of "condoning" his faults. Relax! No one is condoning his faults. But neither are we allowing irresponsible statements about him to pass unchallenged.

I have asked you in the past to defend your assertions about Wagner and you've refused to do so, taking refuge instead in the "we all have our opinions" game. That game is invalid. Truth matters. I have stated objective facts showing why Gutman's theories about _Parsifal_ are founded on faulty scholarship. Either offer evidence to the contrary, or have the good grace to acknowledge that Gutman got it wrong. This pointless, nagging opposition is tiring.

In case anyone is interested, here is a worthy discussion which looks at Gutman's view:

http://www.monsalvat.no/racism.htm

The website http://www.monsalvat.no/index.htm is a remarkable source of information about _Parsifal._


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> It is ironic that you should talk about 'defamation' when the composer concerned spent endless time producing tracts defaming a whole race!
> 
> *Not ironic at all. It's entirely possible, and entirely wrong, to defame anyone, regardless of their own faults, and we should object to it.*
> 
> ...


So when you call Mr Gutman 'disreputable' it's not defamation? Seems like it to me!

I must confess I groan when I see some of these arguments. Of course the Wagner viewed the Jews is a race or are you just trying to use semantics to make his views more palatable? And why when you give such dogmatic opinions do we find other scholars giving different opinions? Your point that Palmer appears to swallow hook line and sinker Gutman's opinion on Parsifal just because he allows that opinion to be expressed does not follow at all logically. The documentary allows a lot of opinions to be expressed without comment. You might just as well say he 'swallows' Winifred Wagner's opinion on Hitler as he allows it to be expressed. 
As Wolfgang Wagner said, Parsifal has different layers of meaning. I give no opinion but I believe that Wagner's racist theories were well enough developed by the time he wrote the libretto that he did not need Gobineau to give expression to them.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Star said:


> So when you call Mr Gutman 'disreputable' it's not defamation? Seems like it to me!
> 
> I must confess I groan when I see some of these arguments. Of course the Wagner viewed the Jews is a race or are you just trying to use semantics to make his views more palatable? And why when you give such dogmatic opinions do we find other scholars giving different opinions? Your point that Palmer appears to swallow hook line and sinker Gutman's opinion on Parsifal just because he allows that opinion to be expressed does not follow at all logically. The documentary allows a lot of opinions to be expressed without comment. You might just as well say he 'swallows' Winifred Wagner's opinion on Hitler as he allows it to be expressed.
> As Wolfgang Wagner said, Parsifal has different layers of meaning. I give no opinion but I believe that Wagner's racist theories were well enough developed by the time he wrote the libretto that he did not need Gobinau to give expression to them.


"Disreputable" means "having a bad reputation." He does, and it isn't "defamation" to say so.

Groan all you like. The point which escapes you is that "race," in the modern sense, was not the basis of Wagner's dislike of the Jews nor even something he gave thought to till he met Gobineau. His antisemitism was culture-based, especially when it came to the Jewish religion, which Wagner detested. I have already explained this.

My opinions are not "dogmatic." I give reasons for them. Try it.

No, giving a forum to Gutman is not equivalent to featuring statements by the Wagner family. I have explained the peculiar nature of that choice to MacLeod in post 35.

You "have no opinion," yet you proceed to offer an opinion which you - as usual - have no evidence for.

Whew.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> I can't see a way past this. You've determined the premise of the film and everything rests on that, even to the extent of presuming that Palmer agrees with Gutman and Gottfried. What makes you so sure that this is the case? *Do you think he also agrees with what Winifrid had to say about Hitler?*


My God, what a question? Did you really ask it?

All right. What do _you_ think Palmer is doing putting this dramatic exposition of _Parsifal,_ complete with his scholar of choice, in this film?


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> "Disreputable" means "having a bad reputation." He does, and it isn't "defamation" to say so.


The article I referred to didn't seem to present him as having a bad reputation. Controversial, yes.



> His Wagner book, which placed its subject in the larger intellectual context of his times, infuriated idolaters, for whom the master could do no wrong.





> Throughout his work, Mr. Gutman was attuned to the fact that he was puncturing long-held beliefs about venerated figures.





> Reviewing the biography in The New York Times Book Review, Herbert Weinstock called it "much the richest and best-accomplished single volume on Wagner in English."


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> The article I referred to didn't seem to present him as having a bad reputation. Controversial, yes.


That was one article. The quotes from it are likely (and perhaps intended) to offend those who have exposed Gutman's scholarly errors, fallacious thinking, and gleefully determined, Jewish (alas), anti-Wagner agenda.

Gutman's infamous book is well-written and has a lot of worthwhile information in it, but so do a lot of Wagner studies. His racial purity theory made quite a splash in 1968 (I think), and has poisoned popular conceptions about Wagner's art to this day. This race-and Nazi-obsessed brand of anti-Wagnerism became quite trendy and can now be heard coming out of the mouths of people who actually know nothing at all about the subject. It's a gross miscarriage of historical justice. "Disreputable" is a mild word for Gutman.


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> My God, what a question? Did you really ask it?


Yes, the logic of your position is that we must accept uncritically as Palmer's opinions, all the opinions expressed by all the players.

Alternatively, we select which of the contributors we wish to fit with our view of the purpose of the programme.

Or consider that he presents a range of people with a range of opinions and we must decide for ourselves what the narrative is. So, it seems reasonable to me that I can dismiss Winifred's views of Hitler, but perhaps I also have to accept that as it was her view, and she knew him personally, whereas I didn't, Palmer is saying something about the nature of personal testimony, and personal relationships that poses a dilemma for the documentarian and for the viewer



Woodduck said:


> All right. What do _you_ think Palmer is doing putting this dramatic exposition of _Parsifal,_ complete with his scholar of choice, in this film?


Given Gutman's reputation, perhaps his purpose was to provoke Wagner idolaters? It is certainly Palmer's reputation to provoke.

As someone who knows little about Wagner, his works, his life, his family, his biographers - though something of his reputation - I was in the fortunate position of coming to the documentary able to listen to each player without prejudice. What I heard and saw was a succession of talking heads who painted a picture of a famous, powerful, and influential family tarnished by association with Nazism and rent with sibling rivalries. Wagner himself and his music seemed much less relevant to the story than the "scandals" that followed long after his death and which had nothing to do with him. The early section on Parsifal was, in my opinion, not central to Palmer's "thesis" (whatever that was) but it was a convenient (and obviously controversial) way to sketch out Wagner's anti-semitism which some members of his family maintained.

You're right that Palmer could have chosen another scholar, but to assume that he picked Gutman because he wholeheartedly believed Gutman's analysis of Parsifal is to leap to an unwarranted conclusion - just as it would be an error to assume that he presents Gottfried uncritically. I think Palmer liked the irony present in Gottfried's last words - "Who would be proud to be a Wagner?"



Woodduck said:


> That was one article.


Yes - We were asked our opinions about the documentary - if we are to maintain any kind of conversation about it here, I've not got the time to do the kind of research necessary to catch up with the experts.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Yes, the logic of your position is that we must accept uncritically as Palmer's opinions, all the opinions expressed by all the players. Alternatively, we select which of the contributors we wish to fit with our view of the purpose of the programme.

No, that is not the logic of my position. That is a completely illogical position. Gutman's function in the film is unique, quite different from that of the members of the Wagner family. They are the subject of the film. Gutman is not. Gutman is a scholar brought in to provide commentary on Wagner.

Or consider that he presents a range of people with a range of opinions and we must decide for ourselves what the narrative is.

I have indeed decided for myself. I have decided, lacking any evidence to the contrary, that a particular scholar with a particular view that reinforces the view expressed conspicuously and clearly by Gottfried - that Wagners, beginning with Richard and his work, are nasty and dishonest - is the principal point the film is making.

So, it seems reasonable to me that I can dismiss Winifred's views of Hitler, but perhaps I also have to accept that as it was her view, and she knew him personally, whereas I didn't, Palmer is saying something about the nature of personal testimony, and personal relationships that poses a dilemma for the documentarian and for the viewer.

Um... He might be saying that, but that isn't his main purpose.

Given Gutman's reputation, perhaps his purpose was to provoke Wagner idolaters? It is certainly Palmer's reputation to provoke.

So Palmer is just a troll? He isn't really saying anything, and his choice of an outrageous scholar, and his vivid graphics of Nazi storm troopers accompanied by music from _Parsifal_, are just designed to upset people? That's rather insulting to Palmer, isn't it? This film is clearly more purposefully designed than that (see the next comments).

*As someone who knows little about Wagner, his works, his life, his family, his biographers - though something of his reputation - I was in the fortunate position of coming to the documentary able to listen to each player without prejudice.* What I heard and saw was a succession of talking heads who painted a picture of a famous, powerful, and influential family tarnished by association with Nazism and rent with sibling rivalries. Wagner himself and his music seemed much less relevant to the story than the "scandals" that followed long after his death and which had nothing to do with him. The early section on Parsifal was, in my opinion, not central to Palmer's "thesis" (whatever that was) but it was a convenient (and obviously controversial) way to sketch out Wagner's anti-semitism which some members of his family maintained.

Knowing little about Wagner and Wagner scholarship and criticism makes you _"fortunate"?_ Might it rather not incline you to miss points that the film is making?

The idea of using Robert Gutman and his theories is, to one who does know something (quite a bit) about this subject, obviously more than "a convenient (and controversial) way to sketch out Wagner's anti-semitism." The context of the discussion, established immediately at the outset, was the dishonesty of the Wagners, and the first words of the film, accompanied by the ominous strains of Siegfried's death march, are Gottfried's: "Falsifying the truth is unfortunately part of the history of the Wagner family. It starts with Richard Wagner himself..." Gottfried expands upon this theme, speaking of "lies and falsification" and the "abuse of power" that "began with Richard Wagner himself." This is inescapably the _emphatically stated_ theme of the film, and it goes on being stated until minute 3:00, at which point we are delivered to the Nazis, _Parsifal,_ and Gutman, with Gottfried talking about Wagner's "clear political message." There is not one detail to suggest that we are not expected to find what is said credible. There is no "questioning" or being merely "provocative." We are given what appears to be a documentary history, and Gutman's views and the vivid graphics are woven seamlessly into Gottfried's narrative, showing clearly how the beautiful Grail legend is _not_ what _Parsifal_ is "really" about. Palmer makes much too much of this for it to be merely an illustration of Wagner's antisemitism; obviously, what it it illustrates is the "falsification" which, according to Gottfried, began with Wagner himself. Palmer knows exactly what he's doing here!

You're right that Palmer could have chosen another scholar, but to assume that he picked Gutman because he wholeheartedly believed Gutman's analysis of Parsifal is to leap to an unwarranted conclusion - just as it would be an error to assume that he presents Gottfried uncritically. I think Palmer liked the irony present in Gottfried's last words - "Who would be proud to be a Wagner?"

I see no irony in those last words. Those are Gottfried's real feelings - I do know something about the man and his mission to cleanse his family's sins by defying and exposing his uncomfortable heritage - and Gottfried is presented in this film as positive and as one who is revealing important truths. But even if we can be skeptical of his missionary zeal, he has still enunciated clearly the theme of the film.

Yes - We were asked our opinions about the documentary - if we are to maintain any kind of conversation about it here, I've not got the time to do the kind of research necessary to catch up with the experts.

Well, I can't ask to be taken on faith, and I've tried to give evidence for what I take to be Palmer's purpose. I don't claim I've got it perfectly, but I have to say that if he's going to give a forum to someone like Gutman and present his cracked theories in a positive and apparently historical context, he's only reinforcing the popular conflation of Wagner and Hitler, a false and defamatory view our culture appears to be stuck with. That is irresponsible at best.

P.S. I have just discovered that Palmer was also the director of the British miniseries on Wagner starring Richard Burton. Having seen parts of that, and found it pretty unconvincing (it's been criticized by others too), I have to say my respect for Palmer is not increased.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> "Disreputable" means "having a bad reputation." He does, and it isn't "defamation" to say so.
> 
> Groan all you like. The point which escapes you is that "race," in the modern sense, was not the basis of Wagner's dislike of the Jews nor even something he gave thought to till he met Gobineau. His antisemitism was culture-based, especially when it came to the Jewish religion, which Wagner detested. I have already explained this.
> 
> ...


Gutman has a bad reputation? Well amng people who think like you perhaps? Certainly his obituaries did not give that impression. I might point out that Wagner's own reputation is none to hot among some people.

Might I just point out that 'dogmatic' means 'inclined to lay down principles as undeniably true.' just look back at your posts on the thread.

"Givng a forum to Gutman" makes it sound as if Gutman is some kind of heretic. Perhaps he is to you. But there are many others who view Wagner as an opera composer. You almost make it sound as if it's some religious cult that has to be defended at all costs. This is opera not life.

And please read what I said. I said that I give no opinion on Parsifal as frankly I have got enough to do without entering into interminable arguments on the meaning (if any) of that pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo that is Wagner's libretto. At least at present. Please don't take it that I have no opinion or no evidence for it as that is an argument from silence which is invalid


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> That was one article. The quotes from it are likely (and perhaps intended) to offend those who have exposed Gutman's scholarly errors, fallacious thinking, and gleefully determined, Jewish (alas), anti-Wagner agenda.
> 
> Gutman's infamous book is well-written and has a lot of worthwhile information in it, but so do a lot of Wagner studies. His racial purity theory made quite a splash in 1968 (I think), and has poisoned popular conceptions about Wagner's art to this day. This race-and Nazi-obsessed brand of anti-Wagnerism became quite trendy and can now be heard coming out of the mouths of people who actually know nothing at all about the subject. It's a gross miscarriage of historical justice. "Disreputable" is a mild word for Gutman.


Can I just say that this tone is to my mind absolutely insulting. First of all in implying some kind of 'Jewish' conspiracy. Secondly in saying that people who happened to agree with it are somehow 'Nazi-obsessed'. This habit of yours of making a straw man to knock down is not proper argument and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Other people have a right to their opinion without being branded in this way by you. However strongly you feel may I ask you to moderate the expression of your views of people who disagree with you.
May I say that if (and I say if) Wagner has 'suffered a gross miscarriage of historical justice' in people misinterpreting his wirks, then who lit the fuse? Wagner himself in his own writings


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Star said:


> Gutman has a bad reputation? Well amng people who think like you perhaps? Certainly his obituaries did not give that impression. I might point out that Wagner's own reputation is none to hot among some people.
> 
> Might I just point out that 'dogmatic' means 'inclined to lay down principles as undeniably true.' just look back at your posts on the thread.
> 
> ...


There's really nothing here to discuss. It's clear that you have nothing positive or informative to say about a composer whom you loathe and whose work you characterize as "pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo." All you're doing is criticizing people who actually understand and appreciate Wagner's genius and the stature and meaning of his work, as Faustian and I (at least) do. What's the point? If you aren't willing to consider thoughtfully the arguments of people who speak from a lifetime of accumulated understanding of a subject you don't even care about, then why say anything at all? Why make people patiently explain their positions, again and again, only to be met with nagging criticism and putdowns, again and again?

You dislike Wagner? Fine. I dislike Lachenmann. And you know what? I don't get into arguments with people who like Lachenmann. I have better things to do than to stay up late having pointless tugs-of-war with people whose main interest seems to be to express their disdain for things I love and their disrespect of me for loving them.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Star said:


> Can I just say that this tone is to my mind absolutely insulting. First of all in implying some kind of 'Jewish' conspiracy. Secondly in saying that people who happened to agree with it are somehow 'Nazi-obsessed'. This habit of yours of making a straw man to knock down is not proper argument and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Other people have a right to their opinion without being branded in this way by you. However strongly you feel may I ask you to moderate the expression of your views of people who disagree with you.
> May I say that if (and I say if) Wagner has 'suffered a gross miscarriage of historical justice' in people misinterpreting his wirks, then who lit the fuse? Wagner himself in his own writings


It is not for you to tell me that I'm insulting Robert Gutman (who is dead, by the way). I've said what I think of his nonsensical theories, and I'm totally within my rights to say it. Your criticism of me is out of line. Please just give it up, unless it's your intention to get this thread shut down.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

Star said:


> Whether or not Robert Gutman is a good or bad scholar The word lie is inappropriate when used for someone giving an opinion. I can tell you in the work of scholarship you would not get away with saying something like that about another scholar.


Gutman does much more than state the facts and give his opinion. His book is littered with intellectually dishonest statements where the composer's every utterance is distorted to fit the author's conception of the demonic character of Wagner the monster, and his operatic texts and prose works are contorted by Gutman beyond recognition and mixed in with his opinions in such a fine mesh that it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

To give one of many examples, in March of 1878 Wagner spoke to Cosima about the character of Klingsor from his opera Parsifal. Wagner had said: "In Klingsor the peculiar quality which Christianity brought into the world; just like the Jesuits he does not believe in goodness, and this is his strength but at the same time his downfall, for through the ages one good man does occasionally emerge!" However, in his analysis of Parsifal Gutman writes "Klingsor represented not only the Jew, Wagner told Cosima, but the Jesuit too." The clear implication is that Wagner told Cosima that Klingsor represented the Jew. In fact Wagner told her nothing even suggesting such a thing. Nonetheless, Gutman can tell us without embarrassment that "This painful interpretation of Parsifal has been traced largely with the creators own words."


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> I think Palmer liked the irony present in Gottfried's last words - "Who would be proud to be a Wagner?"
> 
> I see no irony in those last words. Those are Gottfried's real feelings


I can see that we're not going to agree on much, if anything at all - at least, not without my watching the whole thing again which I'm not inclined to do. I cannot hope to persuade you that my ignorance about Wagner is anything but an impediment to my understanding of a TV programme on which, IMO it is actually possible to make judgements without having the detailed knowledge that you have of The Wagner Family.

The one point I do want to query is the extract above. You do understand that I don't think it is Gottfried that is being ironic, but the presenting of a Wagner saying "Who would be proud to be a Wagner"? Palmer is prompting the viewer to ask, "And are you proud to be a Wagner?"

PS. Palmer's Burton's Wagner was also praised by some - so this tells us little.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Faustian said:


> Gutman does much more than state the facts and give his opinion. His book is littered with intellectually dishonest statements where the composer's every utterance is distorted to fit the author's conception of the demonic character of Wagner the monster, and his operatic texts and prose works are contorted by Gutman beyond recognition and mixed in with his opinions in such a fine mesh that it is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.
> 
> To give one of many examples, in March of 1878 Wagner spoke to Cosima about the character of Klingsor from his opera Parsifal. Wagner had said: "In Klingsor the peculiar quality which Christianity brought into the world; just like the Jesuits he does not believe in goodness, and this is his strength but at the same time his downfall, for through the ages one good man does occasionally emerge!" However, in his analysis of Parsifal Gutman writes "Klingsor represented not only the Jew, Wagner told Cosima, but the Jesuit too." The clear implication is that Wagner told Cosima that Klingsor represented the Jew. In fact Wagner told her nothing even suggesting such a thing. Nonetheless, Gutman can tell us without embarrassment that "This painful interpretation of Parsifal has been traced largely with the creators own words."


Thanks for supplying that concrete example of Gutman's sloppy/dishonest scholarship. I read his book whole when I was a young music-lover, and my overall impression is still vivid, but I've only sampled it since through other sources. I really don't want to waste my money buying it just to be able to discuss it here with people who defend, without either knowledge or rationality, its author's perverse obsessions. I'd far rather discuss - as I and others have on other threads - what Wagner actually put into his work and what can reasonably be extrapolated from it. There's so much of genuine value there - more than the musical genius which nearly everyone concedes - but people won't discover it if they see it through the filter of the cultural mythology that's grown up around Wagner, mythology which Gutman shamelessly helped to shape and which Palmer, in this film, only reinforces.


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> I'd far rather discuss - as I and others have on other threads - what Wagner actually put into his work and what can reasonably be extrapolated from it. There's so much of genuine value there - more than the musical genius which nearly everyone concedes - butpeople won't discover it if they see it through the filter of the cultural mythology that's grown up around Wagner, mythology which Gutman shamelessly helped to shape and which Palmer, in this film, only reinforces.


This thread is supposed to be a discussion about the documentary about The Wagner Family, and not about the music of Wagner. If you were looking for a discussion with people about the value of his music and his genius, what are you doing here?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> This thread is supposed to be a discussion about the documentary about The Wagner Family, and not about the music of Wagner. If you were looking for a discussion with people about the value of his music and his genius, what are you doing here?


Well well. Dear dear. I've just gone four pages talking in considerable depth and detail about Mr. Palmer's film. I even recall that you participated. One of us is suffering severe memory loss.


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## Guest (Feb 5, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Well well. Dear dear. I've just gone four pages talking in considerable depth and detail about Mr. Palmer's film. I even recall that you participated. One of us is suffering severe memory loss.


I don't need my memory...I can read back what we discussed which focused almost entirely on the first few minutes of the film, and then you summarily dismiss the whole conversation, wishing you were talking about something else (and obviously not with the ignoramuses who know little and care less.)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> I don't need my memory...I can read back what we discussed which focused almost entirely on the first few minutes of the film, and then you summarily dismiss the whole conversation, wishing you were talking about something else (and obviously not with the ignoramuses who know little and care less.)


Why so captious? For me Palmer's intellectual credentials seemed questionable, and I questioned them. I stated my view succinctly early on and would have left it at that, but people kept questioning my point of view and my word choices. Sorry you find my attempts to satisfy your inquiries (and to fend off spitballs by a certain other) so inappropriate. No one is forcing you to keep up the nitpicking.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

How about those Eagles?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

amfortas said:


> How about those Eagles?


This is supposed to be a discussion of a documentary about the Wagner family! What's with the ornithology?


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> This is supposed to be a discussion of a documentary about the Wagner family! What's with the ornithology?


Just trying to steer us toward something less contentious. Then again, half the people here are likely to be Patriots fans, so . . . carry on.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

amfortas said:


> Just trying to steer us toward something less contentious. Then again, half the people here are likely to be Patriots fans, so . . . carry on.


I like eagles. Almost as much as wood ducks (Carolina ducks,for our British friends).


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

I watched the first episode of the Burton Wagner miniseries. I didn't hate it but it was pretty boring. I'll probably table the balance of series until I have the flu or something. What do Wooduck/Faustian/others think about starting on Wagner's life with Millington's book?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

^^^ I haven't read much of Millington, bz3, but his scholarship is generally considered sound. Unfortunately he works a bit too hard to locate antisemitic messaging in the operas, and his "evidence" and arguments are somewhat fanciful and don't hold up well under scrutiny.

I'll draw your attention to a web page by Michael Tanner, who himself wrote an excellent shortish study of Wagner's operas, in which he recommends a few books on the composer and his work: https://fivebooks.com/best-books/wagner/ Ernest Newman's "Wagner as Man and Artist" is an old classic and still a fine bio, scholarly and objective. The literature on Wagner is immense and impossible to keep up with unless you have a long life and nothing else to do, but the main thing is to read critically and watch out for authorial biases and agendas. Studies that purport to explain Wagner's influence on Hitler and Nazism are apt to be minefields in this respect, and you need a good grounding in the composer's life to keep your perspective on such things.


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## bz3 (Oct 15, 2015)

Thanks I'll check it out. I saw the Millington referenced in a user review for the book being discussed in this thread. Oddly enough, the reviews on aamzon got mixed up with another book - George Bernard Shaw's commentary (a Marxist one at that!) on the Ring. That sounds like a hoot. Anyone read it?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

^^^ Shaw on Wagner is predictably entertaining. He interprets the _Ring_ as a socialist allegory, which is at least consistent with Wagner's political tendencies in his young manhood, when the _Ring_ was conceived. Of course Wagner's thinking evolved during the 25 years it took to write the whole cycle, and so Shaw has a problem when it comes to fitting _Gotterdammerung_ into his scheme. He has to conclude that Wagner failed and ended up writing an old-fashioned grand opera.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

DavidA said:


> Strange documentary? The purpose of documentaries is to inform.


misinform, as practice shows.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

bz3 said:


> Thanks I'll check it out. I saw the *Millington *referenced in a user review for the book being discussed in this thread. Oddly enough, the reviews on aamzon got mixed up with another book - George Bernard Shaw's commentary (a Marxist one at that!) on the Ring. That sounds like a hoot. Anyone read it?


I have read Millington which gives a pretty balanced view imo although I know some will disagree. Article by Millington in the Spectator which gives some idea of the line he takes

http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/3rd-august-1996/33/arts

I don't think it is an appropriate place to discuss it here as this thread is actually about the Wagner family. Please note!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Zhdanov said:


> misinform, as practice shows.


It informed us of the views expressed by the Wagner family at a time when Bayreuth was being handed over. It informed us how they think.


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## Granate (Jun 25, 2016)

Probably it has nothing to do on the topic, but if we are now talking about authors... I happen to have an old book about the Ring that I got second-hand for £3 when I lived in Coventry. I haven't read much of it since: 

It's called Wagner's _Ring_ and its Symbols, by *Robert Donington* in the Faber paper editions.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Of course there is Deryck Cook's commentary on Decca









I have it but have never had the time or inclination to listen to much of it.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

On topic I would recommend the book, 'The Wagner Clan' by Jonathan Carr. A very readable version of this ghastly soap opera!

NY Times review of the book

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/books/review/Riding-t.html


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Granate said:


> It's called Wagner's _Ring_ and its Symbols, by *Robert Donington* in the Faber paper editions.





DavidA said:


> Of course there is Deryck Cooke's commentary on Decca


There is also Cooke's _I Saw the World End: A Study of Wagner's Ring_--which takes a dim view of Donington.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Of course there is Deryck Cook's commentary on Decca
> 
> View attachment 101387


Exclusively a musical analysis, but extremely useful for those who want to understand the Ring at that level.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

amfortas said:


> There is also Cooke's _I Saw the World End: A Study of Wagner's Ring_--which takes a dim view of Donington.


He's certainly critical of Donington's interpretation, but all of his criticisms are fair and well argued. Donington's Jungian approach certainly leaves some matters untouched and risks replacing particular dramatic meanings with a general theory of what humans are. But these criticisms don't invalidate Donington's dramatic insights, and I have found both books to be immensely rewarding.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Faustian said:


> He's certainly critical of Donington's interpretation, but all of his criticisms are fair and well argued. Donington's Jungian approach certainly leaves some matters untouched and risks replacing particular dramatic meanings with a general theory of what humans are. But these criticisms don't invalidate Donington's dramatic insights, and I have found both books to be immensely rewarding.


Wagner is rich enough to support many interpretive approaches, which may be quite different yet complementary. Donington blew my mind wide open when, in my twenties, I read his study of the _Ring_ - I'd been discussing Jung with a Jungian psychologist - and I found that perspective to be at least as fertile when applied to _Parsifal,_ in which basic archetypes of human psychological development are presented in even more concise and focused form. Wagner's final opera really is the pinnacle of his peculiar musical-dramatic approach, and when you realize this, a crank like Gutman appears utterly shallow and ridiculous.


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## SenaJurinac (Nov 29, 2017)

*Wagners' biographical movies*



damianjb1 said:


> I watched all of it and made absolutely no sense to me at all.


Much more than Richard Burton's, I prefered the olde "Magic Fire" directed by William Dieterle back in 1955.

http://classicfullmovies.web.tv/video/magic-fire-alan-badelyvonne-de-carlo-1955-full-movie__5dzsbhpugyu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Fire









Who understands German may be interested in this German TV channel ZDF's documentary, "Genius and Demon", on teh topic of Wagners antisemitism:

http://klassikundopern.web.tv/video/richard-wagner-genie-und-dmon-genius-and-demon__6oyext4kfvi


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

Couple of books I read in my research which give two differing sides of the story.

The father









The son









Some families are destined to never get on!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

SenaJurinac said:


> Much more than Richard Burton's, I prefered the olde "Magic Fire" directed by William Dieterle back in 1955.
> 
> http://classicfullmovies.web.tv/video/magic-fire-alan-badelyvonne-de-carlo-1955-full-movie__5dzsbhpugyu
> 
> ...


I saw the Dieterle film back in the 1960s, and also read the book on which it was based, Bertita Harding's fictionalized biography, also titled "Magic Fire." Both were immensely enjoyable to a young man just discovering Wagner. Having seen the film again recently and learned something about its history, I can appreciate the impossibility of compressing Wagner's life into such a brief telling, but I now know that the film was originally more than an hour longer than the version finally released and must have been considerably more satisfying. The version we have is still fun (if sometimes melodramatic) but has lost a lot of its continuity, especially in the latter part of Wagner's life; the Bayreuth years pass in a flash, and the ending - a Hollywoodish bit of fictionalization - is quite abrupt and unsatisfying.

There are a few inaccuracies in the film, no doubt for the purpose of concise storytelling, and Wagner's cultural background, his rich intellectual life, and his home life with Cosima and the children are virtually untouched; there's no reference to Weber, Mendelssohn, or Berlioz, no discovery of Schopenhauer, no Nietzsche, no suggestion of Wagner's intellectual and social life at Wahnfried, no tirades against the Jews or the French, etc. Some of this can no doubt be blamed on the film's drastic cutting, but there's no question that not even a full two-and-three-quarter hours would have sufficed to encompass such a rich and fascinating life.

Whatever its weaknesses, this little movie is more enjoyable than the stuffy British miniseries with Richard Burton. The last thing Wagner was was stuffy! "Magic Fire" is well-produced, directed and acted, Alan Badel looks strikingly like the composer, and the soundtrack makes exclusive and effective use of Wagner's own music skillfully arranged by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who also makes a cameo appearance as conductor Hans Richter.

Three out of five stars for a film that probably deserved four in its original form.


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