# Wagner starring Wagner - Meistersinger Bayreuth 2017



## interestedin (Jan 10, 2016)

I think it hasn't been posted yet, so for those who might be interested in it, here's Bayreuth's Meistersinger of this year's festival. A production by Barrie Kosky, the first Jewish director in Bayreuth. Starring Richard Wagner, Cosima Wagner, Franz Liszt, Hermann Levi...






https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/arts/music/wagner-meistersinger-bayreuth-review.html?_r=0
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2...ger-von-nurnberg-bayreuth-wagner-antisemitism

I haven't seen it yet, but WARNING: Regietheater. So traditionalists, keep your blood pressure in mind. :lol:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

It's just amazing how far, 134 years after Wagner's death, the self-appointed guardians of what we thought was our cultural heritage have capitulated to political fashion, and how the portrayal of Wagner as a proto-Nazi and godfather of the Holocaust remains, 70 years after World War II, not only the correct fashion to sport in all seasons, but ever more stylish as the years pass.

The metaphor is intentionally undignified. Our cultural guardians are, to a great extent, intellectual sheep, second-handers, profiteers on ignorance, and frauds. But, as is the case with another fraud recently elected to high office, the general tolerance of pretentious imposture, even the appetite for it, seems limitless.

What we seem to have in this new _Meistersinger_ is only the latest act in what has become a gigantic, endless play called "Apology for Hitler, or The Flagellation of Richard Wagner." According to the second article quoted above: _"At the heart of this Meistersinger is an imaginative, subtle and serious staging of a simple question: how far does Wagner's antisemitism invalidate his artistic achievement?" The article continues: "That question still hangs over Bayreuth and Wagner alike. And note the formulation. Not 'Does it?' but 'How far does it?'"_ It's clear that to this writer, the response "It doesn't" would be unacceptable, and he arrogantly assumes that that response would, and should, be unacceptable to all of us.

In the first article cited, we are given a description of this production's treatment of the hilarious street riot occasioned by Beckmesser's after-hours serenade: _"The riot that Beckmesser sets off at the end of the second act is here an eerie pogrom. When it's over, the clerk puts on an oversize, sneering, hooknosed puppet head, complete with side curls and skullcap, and dances gingerly as an even larger version of the head slowly inflates next to him. It then deflates as the serene music of the night watchman plays and the curtain falls. The scene is one of shame and exclusion more than overt violence, and is the more powerful for that."_

The question of whether Wagner intended Beckmesser to represent a Jew will never be settled to everyone's satisfaction. But at present it seems to be an obligatory fashion statement to assume that it has, and anyone pointing out reasons to assume the contrary, or even reasons why the whole question is irrelevant to the meaning and value of _Die Meistersinger,_ is _prima facie_ unfashionable, naive, and very possibly a closet antisemite himself.

That the descendants of the composer have turned his own theater, his shrine to art, through which he aspired to give reality to the best aspects of his nature and his vision, into a house of inquisition in which his worst vices - and, worse, his imagined vices - are to be vivisected in full view of the world, and all in some sick ritual of Teutonic self-hatred and self-immolation, is an expression of cultural depravity and collapse such as Wagner, for all his faults, could never have imagined.

No man was ever more fortunate to be dead and gone.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> It's just amazing how far, 134 years after Wagner's death, the self-appointed guardians of what we thought was our cultural heritage have capitulated to political fashion, and how the portrayal of Wagner as a proto-Nazi and godfather of the Holocaust remains, 70 years after World War II, not only the correct fashion to sport in all seasons, but ever more stylish as the years pass.
> 
> The metaphor is intentionally undignified. Our cultural guardians are, to a great extent, intellectual sheep, second-handers, profiteers on ignorance, and frauds. But, as is the case with another fraud recently elected to high office, the general tolerance of pretentious imposture, even the appetite for it, seems limitless.
> 
> ...


Wonderful last para, Woodduck. What a pretty pass Bayreuth has come to a mere 130 odd years after Wagner's death. His heirs should hang their heads in shame. Thank goodness we can at least listen to the music without having our sight beaten senseless by the nonsense that is inflicted upon us now.


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

I'm pretty open to regie compared to the average fan, I think. I like that creative people try to find new layers of meaning in the existing works, by setting them in different times or presenting thematically connected images instead of the full stage drama. I've not seen these, but I'm open to watching and probably would enjoy Castorf's or Achim Freyer's Ring, the idea of a rat Lohengrin doesn't bother me in the least, sure why not a Rigoletto set in Vegas, etc etc.

But I'm not fond of a staging that tries to comment on the work itself at a meta level like this one here, which is less interested in telling the story of Sachs and Eva in a new way, and instead wants to tell a story about Meistersinger the work itself. Intrinsic to a metatextual approach like this is that the audience is invited to think about the work and its history instead of being engaged with the work itself. That strikes me as completely self-defeating--the whole point of a staged performance is to engage the audience with the music and the staged drama. Thoughts about that opera's status in our cultural history is best left for an essay in the program guide.

--

Thanks for posting by the way Interestedin. I've heard Jordan's Meistersinger last year with the Opera Bastille and I'm certainly interested in hearing more of his Wagner. His father's Parsifal is one of my favorites and it's interesting to hear more of Philippe's Wagner--I believe he's the one engaged for the 2019 Met Ring.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

howlingfantods said:


> But I'm not fond of a staging that tries to comment on the work itself at a meta level like this one here, which is less interested in telling the story of Sachs and Eva in a new way, and instead wants to tell a story about Meistersinger the work itself. Intrinsic to a metatextual approach like this is that the audience is invited to think about the work and its history instead of being engaged with the work itself. That strikes me as completely self-defeating--the whole point of a staged performance is to engage the audience with the music and the staged drama. Thoughts about that opera's status in our cultural history is best left for an essay in the program guide.


I would say that such approaches are difficult to do right, but I often find them fascinating, and, especially when that metatextual staging is built from the subtext of the work itself, I find it helpful for engaging with the work, and understanding how it works.

Of course Wagner wasn't only thinking of himself as revolutionary artist that was derided for not following the stuffy rules of the older masters, but that is at least part of what is going on in _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg_ (and _Tannhäuser_). The Ring and _Parsifal_ are also largely about overturning and remaking the old order, in non-musical settings.



howlingfantods said:


> Thanks for posting by the way Interestedin. I've heard Jordan's Meistersinger last year with the Opera Bastille and I'm certainly interested in hearing more of his Wagner. His father's Parsifal is one of my favorites and it's interesting to hear more of Philippe's Wagner--I believe he's the one engaged for the 2019 Met Ring.


Indeed, he is. I haven't seen him conduct a full opera, but I did see him lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic (and Iréne Theorin) in excerpts from The Ring. The transitions were a little awkward but it was still some wonderful music-making.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Barbebleu said:


> Wonderful last para, Woodduck. What a pretty pass Bayreuth has come to a mere 130 odd years after Wagner's death. His heirs should hang their heads in shame. Thank goodness we can at least listen to the music without having our sight beaten senseless by the nonsense that is inflicted upon us now.


Trust me - it is not all like that. There are still things being done in Bayreuth that are truly beautiful and inspiring.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> The question of whether Wagner intended Beckmesser to represent a Jew will never be settled to everyone's satisfaction. But at present it seems to be an obligatory fashion statement to assume that it has, and anyone pointing out reasons to assume the contrary, or even reasons why the whole question is irrelevant to the meaning and value of _Die Meistersinger,_ is _prima facie_ unfashionable, naive, and very possibly a closet antisemite himself.


I'm only through the first act watching this, and most striking thing - other than the gorgeous pair of drooling Newfies that Sachs/older Wagner has during the overture - is how much the stage business with Beckmesser/Hermann Levi is not from the opera, and does not fit with the opera. There's a lot more to go, but this is not promising. And I highly doubt that this is going to be the point.

And thinking of recent stagings, what other ones have gone with Beckmesser as a Jew/caricature? That is not the approach in Wagner's 2008 production at Bayreuth, nor McVicar's 2011 for Glyndebourne, Herheim's 2013 production for Salzburg (another meta-textual take), nor Bösch's 2016 version for Bayerische Staatsoper.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

mountmccabe said:


> I'm only through the first act watching this, and most striking thing - other than the gorgeous pair of drooling Newfies that Sachs/older Wagner has during the overture - is how much the stage business with Beckmesser/Hermann Levi is not from the opera, and does not fit with the opera. There's a lot more to go, but this is not promising. And I highly doubt that this is going to be the point.
> 
> And thinking of recent stagings, what other ones have gone with Beckmesser as a Jew/caricature? That is not the approach in Wagner's 2008 production at Bayreuth, nor McVicar's 2011 for Glyndebourne, Herheim's 2013 production for Salzburg (another meta-textual take), nor Bösch's 2016 version for Bayerische Staatsoper.


I think it's rare actually to _show_ Beckmesser as Jewish. In a realistic production, certainly, that would be absurd, since no town clerk and mastersinger in 16th-century Nuremberg would have been Jewish. The idea that he's supposed to represent a Jew was speculated on quite early; Beckmesser is a caricature of the narrow-minded, conservative music critic, and Wagner had originally thought of calling him Veit Hanslich, clearly after the prominent critic Eduard Hanslick, who was notably conservative and championed the neoclassical Brahms over the radical Wagner. Hanslick's mother was the daughter of a Jewish merchant, and in Wagner's free-associating, synthesizing brain the equation might have been Beckmesser = captious critic = Hanslick = Jew. However, despite some strained attempts by scholars such as Barry Millington to prove otherwise, there really isn't anything stereotypically Jewish about Beckmesser's appearance or behavior. The best argument pro Jewishness is probably found in Wagner's assertion that Jews in Europe could not get past their own heritage and sensibility to produce truly profound art, but could only imitate their models. This is consistent with Beckmesser's garbled attempt at the song he stole from Walther.

If we approach the _Meistersinger_ plot on its own terms, we find that nothing essential is added to our understanding of its characters, situations, or philosophical overtones by attributing a Semitic identity to Beckmesser. Trying to play up such an identity by changing the plot, as the present Bayreuth production does, changes the opera into something substantially unlike, and smaller than, Wagner's own. But then, no punishment is too great for that terrible little man, is it?


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

For the moment we'll keep this thread here rather than in Politics and Religion in Classical Music area. Please be careful to keep comments focused on Wagner and the opera. Some posts were removed for drifting into pure politics (along with replies).


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

Through 2.5 acts so far, just listening and not watching. Pretty dire, Kranzle as Beckmesser is by far the best performer of the bunch, and if the Beckmesser is your sole source for enjoyable singing and charisma in a performance of Meistersinger, that's not going to work out very well. Vogt doesn't work for Walther at all. I'd been looking forward to hearing Volle's Sachs, since he's been getting good notices for a couple of years but he simply doesn't sound like he's got the voice or the breath for Sachs in this performance.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

mountmccabe said:


> I'm only through the first act watching this, and most striking thing - other than the gorgeous pair of drooling Newfies that Sachs/older Wagner has during the overture - is how much the stage business with Beckmesser/Hermann Levi is not from the opera, and does not fit with the opera. There's a lot more to go, but this is not promising. And I highly doubt that this is going to be the point.


Drooling newfies? There are _dogs_ onstage during the overture? I need to research this...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

OK, yes, Wagner was a great dog lover, and his Newfoundland Russ is actually buried at his feet and is represented by statues all over Bayreuth. http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/07/voof.html

Another of Wagner's dogs, Pepys, could (allegedly) distinguish between several keys played on the piano. Maybe they could work that into the song contest in _Tannhauser._


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Drooling newfies? There are _dogs_ onstage during the overture? I need to research this...


To be clear, I don't mean that they're drooling especially much. Most surprising is how little drool we can actually see, given that they're Newfies.

In the linked video they come on stage with Volle as Sachs/Wagner as soon as the scrim goes up at 1:56. They get walked out two minutes later. I have only watched the first two acts, but they have sadly not come back yet.


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## interestedin (Jan 10, 2016)

The dogs are Molly and Marke, at least it says so in the text that is shown during the Vorspiel.

(In German) A list of Wagner's dogs where both are mentioned:

https://blog.staatsoper.de/en/post/...detail&cHash=a5ba15cf0f823d08e7ded9fd7c435b97


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

mountmccabe said:


> To be clear, I don't mean that they're drooling especially much. Most surprising is how little drool we can actually see, given that they're Newfies.


Newfies can be pretty spectacular. I worked in an office once with a woman who owned two Newfies, and she brought them in one day as the staff was setting up the Christmas tree. One Newfie shook its head, and suddenly the tree was coated in tinsel-like drool.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

interestedin said:


> The dogs are Molly and Marke, at least it says so in the text that is shown during the Vorspiel.


The dogs are playing the characters Molly and Marke. Their names are Bingo and Möhre 

Another pic of the dogs on Bayreuth's (new) official Twitter account.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

I've only watched a bit of the production, and am not sure I'd want to trace its conceit developing through the entire opera.

For what it's worth, I will say the director seems to have a coherent concept, presented in a lively, imaginative staging, worked out in careful synchronization with the music, and employing attractive sets and costumes. Of course, none of this matters much if you reject the underlying premise, but I do appreciate the painstaking craftsmanship on display. Something we don't always see.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

I must confess I find the Mastersingers far too long and desperately unfunny despite some pretty wonderful music at times. Unfortunately Wagner being Wagner loves the sound of his own voice and draws the whole thing out into a bottom numbing four-odd hours. Peter Jackson is obviously a disciple of Wagner's love of length. So anything really to add interest to what is a pretty uninteresting story is welcome. But I do think Wagner was a bit more subtle than top parade his anti-semitism on stage in the way suggested. Beckmesser is generally reckoned to be a hit at Hanslick (I believe Wagner's original name for him was Hans Lich) but of course a town clerk in Nuremberg would not have been a Jew. However there is an undeniably Jewish caricature there in some of the music he sings and the way he sings it. So I suppose the director feels justified in what he is doing. Personally I never feel that Regietheatre comes off as the text just doesn't marry with the actions. It's interesting concept but not if you're paid to see Wagner's Mastersingers


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## wkasimer (Jun 5, 2017)

> However there is an undeniably Jewish caricature there in some of the music he sings and the way he sings it.


Really? I've spent a fair amount of time among Jews, and I'd hardly call it "undeniable".


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

wkasimer said:


> Really? I've spent a fair amount of time among Jews, and I'd hardly call it "undeniable".


Likewise, and I've listened to a lot of Jewish music. Wagner was certainly familiar with the sound of cantorial music and whatever klezmer music may have sounded like in the 1860s - in fact he expresses his dislike of it in his infamous essay - and could have imitated it if he'd wanted to. Beckmesser's serenade is in a minor key, and has some awkward melismas as his exasperation mounts, but it doesn't sound particularly Jewish. I suppose some would argue that Wagner didn't want to make the reference too obvious, but this seems a version of the attempt to prove something is present by the fact that it's so cleverly camouflaged that unsuspecting people can't see it. I've also seen references to Beckmesser's supposedly Jewish "speech patterns," but to my ears he speaks German as well as any of the other characters in the opera.


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Likewise, and I've listened to a lot of Jewish music. Wagner was certainly familiar with the sound of cantorial music and whatever klezmer music may have sounded like in the 1860s - in fact he expresses his dislike of it in his infamous essay - and could have imitated it if he'd wanted to. Beckmesser's serenade is in a minor key, and has some awkward melismas as his exasperation mounts, but it doesn't sound particularly Jewish. I suppose some would argue that Wagner didn't want to make the reference too obvious, but this seems a version of the attempt to prove something is present by the fact that it's so cleverly camouflaged that unsuspecting people can't see it. I've also seen references to Beckmesser's supposedly Jewish "speech patterns," but to my ears he speaks German as well as any of the other characters in the opera.


From an American perspective, Beckmesser always struck me more as an Anglo caricature of Germans (officious, fussy, pedantic) than any caricature of Jewish culture I've ever encountered.

I can kind of see an argument for Alberich and Mime as Jewish stereotypes (although I think these arguments are clearly wrong as well) but I've never understood the argument re: Beckmesser.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

howlingfantods said:


> From an American perspective, Beckmesser always struck me more as an Anglo caricature of Germans (officious, fussy, pedantic) than any caricature of Jewish culture I've ever encountered.
> 
> I can kind of see an argument for Alberich and Mime as Jewish stereotypes (although I think these arguments are clearly wrong as well) but I've never understood the argument re: Beckmesser.


My suspicion is that once it got started, bolstered by the fact that Eduard Hanslick's mother was Jewish, it blew up like the spit-curled balloon in this production. I guess that like most of these attributions of Jewishness to Wagner's villains, it will never be allowed to fade away.


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

Fun I like regie like this. Much better than the usual nonsense.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

Star said:


> I must confess I find the Mastersingers far too long and desperately unfunny despite some pretty wonderful music at times. Unfortunately Wagner being Wagner loves the sound of his own voice and draws the whole thing out into a bottom numbing four-odd hours. Peter Jackson is obviously a disciple of Wagner's love of length. So anything really to add interest to what is a pretty uninteresting story is welcome. But I do think Wagner was a bit more subtle than top parade his anti-semitism on stage in the way suggested. Beckmesser is generally reckoned to be a hit at Hanslick (I believe Wagner's original name for him was Hans Lich) but of course a town clerk in Nuremberg would not have been a Jew. However there is an undeniably Jewish caricature there in some of the music he sings and the way he sings it. So I suppose the director feels justified in what he is doing. Personally I never feel that Regietheatre comes off as the text just doesn't marry with the actions. It's interesting concept but not if you're paid to see Wagner's Mastersingers


Conversely I love just about every minute of this wonderful work of art, without its prodigious outpouring of melody and patterns of images and metaphors that gather and cluster and grow until we are left with an illustrious web, rich in meaning and full of penetrating insights into the complexities of life. I find that far from being overlong, it's just long enough to do justice to these vividly realized characters, to depict the analogies that Wagner draws between the rules of art and morality and the conduct of life, and finally to provide a satisfying and uplifting conclusion to the narrative arch. It is of course brimming with high spirits and subtle humor, but it also take on more than many comedies in the way it ponders the madness that affects human lives and seems to acknowledge that as tragic as life can be, one won't make it any better by crying so one might as well laugh. Die Meistersinger fascinates because on so many levels, and in such intricate ways, it enacts its significance; helping us to accept the inevitable sadness in life as well as to embrace the sheer joy of creation and being alive.

I realize that starting in the twentieth century the tendency has arisen to treat works of art as journeys into the inner life of their creator, and to act like the best way to understand them is by not looking at what they say but by trying to see what they reveal about the person who made them, but I don't detect even the slightest scent of antisemitism in the operas. If we knew absolutely nothing about the life and opinions of Wagner, would we in anyway be inclined to see them as colored by antisemitism, or to consider antisemitism a key to unlocking their meaning? To me the answer is such an obvious "no" that it's hard to see why it is worthwhile in pursuing the matter any further. Consider that every contention of "Jewishness" regarding Beckmesser can easily be explained in the terms and framework of the drama itself. Instead of considering Wagner's essay "Jewishness in Music" when listening to Beckmesser's serenade in Act II, all a listener has to do is recognize how Beckmesser's song is more than a ridiculous Master-Song riddled with mistakes: it is intended as a genuine expression of feelings, and the reason why someone as highly trained in the art of Master-Songs as Beckmesser makes so many mistakes is that he is trying to express feelings within a framework that has become stagnate, showing exactly what is wrong with the rules and touching on one of the core themes of the opera.

As far as this production goes (and to perhaps echo some of my previous comments on regietheater), I agree with you. This seems to be just another demonstration that the figure who has taken precedence over everyone and _everything_ else in the opera house is the director, and that most of them operate under the assumption that Wagner's works, and operas in general, are raw materials for them to work on: bringing the action up to date, placing it in an unlikely setting, getting characters to behave in a way that sharply contradicts their words and most often the music Wagner gave them. Essentially the director has taken over the role of critic or commentator, so that we are made to see the works in a certain slanted way. In the most extreme examples, such as this one, the musical performance and action on stage have very little to do with one another. Were one to use the quaint criterion of whether someone who didn't know work would, upon seeing this production, have any idea of what was going on, the answer would be a decided negative. This is Wagner for jaded connoisseurs, who need to be shaken out of their ritual experience of the works by a series of shock tactics. The problem is that 1) we've reached the point that nothing shocks us any longer, and 2) audience members such as myself who love these works dearly are forced to become detached to them, to view them from a distance and evaluate them coolly, rather than to be swept away by them in performance, all in the desperately misguided pursuit of trying to make them "relevant". Certainly it is the case here that many people in the audience will be seeing their tenth staging of Die Meistersinger, but does that mean that the producer should cater only to their need for novelty of interpretation? I can't help but feel that it is up to each individual to think about the works they see, to read critical essays on them, to digest them, to evaluate them and look for relevance in them to their own life rather than having deconstructive ideas rammed down their throats, often at serious cost to the integrity of Wagner's great works.


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

wkasimer said:


> Really? I've spent a fair amount of time among Jews, and I'd hardly call it "undeniable".


As a Jew I would say it is 'undeniable'!


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

Star said:


> As a Jew I would say it is 'undeniable'!


:lol:

Kudos on the excellent DavidA impersonation.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Star said:


> As a Jew I would say it is 'undeniable'!


As a Jew, Robert Gutman, in his infamous bio "Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music" (1968), thought (or at least claimed) that it was undeniable that _Parsifal_ was a homoerotic allegory of the corruption of the pure Aryan bloodline by Jewish blood, and a celebration of the triumph of the former over the latter. That his theory is easily exploded simply by consulting the chronology of the opera's genesis and composition in relation to Wagner's own thought and the history of ideas didn't seem to trouble Gutman in the least.

With all due respect, I think the appeal to the demonstrable content of a work of art is a more reliable key to its meaning than one's own ethnic identity. If there is anything actually Semitic about Beckmesser as Wagner wrote him (as opposed to the way a given production might present him), I have yet to see the evidence. Do you have any to offer?


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> As a Jew, Robert Gutman, in his infamous bio "Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music" (1968), thought (or at least claimed) that it was undeniable that _Parsifal_ was a homoerotic allegory of the corruption of the pure Aryan bloodline by Jewish blood, and a celebration of the triumph of the former over the latter. That his theory is easily exploded simply by consulting the chronology of the opera's genesis and composition in relation to Wagner's own thought and the history of ideas didn't seem to trouble Gutman in the least.
> 
> With all due respect, I think the appeal to the demonstrable content of a work of art is a more reliable key to its meaning than one's own ethnic identity. If here is anything actually Semitic about Beckmesser as Wagner wrote him (as opposed to the way a given production might present him), I have yet to see the evidence. Do you have any to offer?


It's probably just the transitive property. "Wagner didn't like Jews; he didn't like Beckmesser; ergo Beckmesser is a stand-in for Jewish culture." It doesn't seem to matter in any of these arguments that Beckmesser holds a position in medieval Nuremburg that a Jewish person would never have, or that the attributes that characterize Beckmesser has little to do with any historical stereotypes of Jewish people, or that Beckmesser's characteristic music has no whisper of a connection to Jewish folk music.

Of course, Wagner had many dislikes; friends/creditors who were too insistent on repayment of debts, hangups on bourgeois morals preventing him from sleeping with friend's wives, scratchy fabrics. But arguing Beckmesser as the symbol for the mass mechanization of clothing production leading to inevitable scratchy wool sweater production would probably not get you much plaudits in the media or good marks in your dissertations.


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## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

Star said:


> I must confess I find the Mastersingers far too long and desperately unfunny despite some pretty wonderful music at times.


"Comedy" in the Aristotelian sense means a drama that has a happy ending for it's central characters, not a tragic one. The modern definition of "barrel of laughs" is most certainly not what Wagner was going for. Although I will also admit that German humor is largely lost on me, and some of the humor in Meistersinger is wordplay which doesn't translate very well.

Meistersinger is the only work that challenges Parsifal in my affections as the greatest work of the western classical tradition, so I think you should try giving it more of a chance. I know other non-Wagnerians I've exposed Meistersinger to both on stage and trapped on road trips with me have ended up enjoying it greatly.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

howlingfantods said:


> It's probably just the transitive property. "Wagner didn't like Jews; he didn't like Beckmesser; ergo Beckmesser is a stand-in for Jewish culture." It doesn't seem to matter in any of these arguments that Beckmesser holds a position in medieval Nuremburg that a Jewish person would never have, or that the attributes that characterize Beckmesser has little to do with any historical stereotypes of Jewish people, or that Beckmesser's characteristic music has no whisper of a connection to Jewish folk music.
> 
> Of course, Wagner had many dislikes; friends/creditors who were too insistent on repayment of debts, hangups on bourgeois morals preventing him from sleeping with friend's wives, scratchy fabrics. *But arguing Beckmesser as the symbol for the mass mechanization of clothing production leading to inevitable scratchy wool sweater production would probably not get you much plaudits in the media or good marks in your dissertations.*


It would also fail to afford an easy (long deceased) target to those obsessed with avenging historical persecution, and to descendants of the persecutors who try to expiate their forefathers' guilt by spitting on their own cultural heritage. Wagner's operas will always be antisemitic to those who need them to be.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Not in Meistersinger, but at Bayreuth 2017:

Today was the final _Götterdämmerung_ of the festival, and the Brünnhilde, Catherine Foster, tore a muscle and was not able to go on stage for the 2nd or 3rd act. Assistant director Andreas Rosnar mimed the part on stage, while Catherine Foster sang.

Announcement tweet from the Bayreuth festival

From Catherine Foster "A simple quick wrong turn at speed to come out for a bow and it felt like l'd been kicked in the calf..No my muscle ripped! @WagnerFestival"

Another twitter user has grainy curtain call photos showing Foster in Crutches, and Rosnar in costume as Brünnhilde.


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