# Wagner's operas...the most optimistic ?



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Not counting "comic" operas that are meant to be funny,
are Wagner's operas the most optimistic operas?

I know there are tragedies in all of them, but don't the endings point toward something good coming of it?
I think so.

Here are my thoughts:

>Hollander---Senta dies yes, but is seen rising to the sky with the Dutchman. So not only is there an afterlife,
but the two are united in love forever.

>Tannhauser---Tannhauser--the principals die but the staff sprouts leaves indicating redemption and new life.

>Lohengrin--Elsa violates her promise and dies in despair, but Lohengrin returns to his home and the rightful King gets his rightful place.

>The Ring--All kinds of treachery, deceit, greed, murder, incest, etc.,
but all get their just rewards in death and destruction
and the world is cleansed through fire and love.
All is serene and we have a new beginning.

>Tristan and Isolde- Their love which cannot be fulfilled
without betrayal is all consuming.
And is finally fulfilled in death.
REMEMBER- Wagner himself called the ending Love-Death AND Transfiguration which indicates more than just death.

>Meistersinger- Eva gets the husband she wants, Sachs gets the love and admiration of the town and the old and the new come to terms.

>Parsifal-The nights get back the spear, Amortas is healed, Kundry is released from her curse and Parsifal finds enlightenment. The white dove rises representing peace and the holy spirit.

There are tragic events in all these dramas, but it seems to me there is, at the end of the day, all turns out in an overall optimistic conclusion.

Just something I realized lately. I think many listeners tend to think of Wagner's dramas only in a tragic way.
So I thought I'd offer my latest thoughts on these amazing works,
and that Wagner, of all the opera composers, is ultimately the most optimistic of them all.

Just my latest thoughts on it and only in my humble opinion of course.

What are your thoughts my friends?

Thanks for reading all this:tiphat:


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Since Schopenhauer's pessimism influenced Wagner: probably not.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

A very interesting question!

Wagner's protagonists generally experience tragedy in their lives but are driven by the need and hope for redemption and enlightenment. It's hard to say whether or not to call this hope optimism; Schopenhauer, influenced by Buddhism, posited the possibility of enlightenment and serenity in overcoming the will, but no one calls him an optimist (and Buddhism itself has been called pessimistic). But there's no question that Wagner was not content with a purely tragic view of life; compare the bleak endings of Verdi's operas, in which, as Iago says, "la morte e nulla."

I see Wagner working out, from opera to opera, his ideas about where salvation from the tragedy of life is found, beginning with his youthful exaltation of Romantic love as the highest value. This tends to end badly, as the rather contrived deus ex machina endings of the _Dutchman_ and _Tannhauser_ show and that of _Lohengrin_ spells out. _Tristan_ is the ultimate distillation of both the tragedy and the glory of love, but Wagner knew he'd reached an ending with the terrible scene of mass destruction and Isolde's vision before her own death, and he turned to Hans Sachs to represent his maturer perspective, which is carried out partially in _Gotterdammerung_ and finds fulfillment in _Parsifal._

I think I'd call Wagner a pessimist about the world who is optimistic about man's ability to overcome suffering. That's pretty much the way I'm feeling these days too!


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Well, I can see where Tristan is arguable.
But the other dramas have definitely optimistic type endings.

I know all about his reading of Schopenhauer, but how Wagner adapts and processes it is the thing.
And I see nothing but optimism in his endings.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

More optimistic composers:

Baroque composers like Lully and Handel, and Rossini's opera seria. Mythological / political imbroglios end with a happy ending, even for characters who have spent the last three hours seething and trying to murder each other

G L U C K

Mozart's _Idomeneo_ and _Clemenza di Tito_

Beethoven's _Fidelio_
(hymn to freedom and conjugal love, ending with ensemble of unified humanity)

Plus a lot of those Revolution-era composers like Cherubini and Mehul

Berlioz's _Benvenuto Cellini_


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Itullian said:


> Well, I can see where Tristan is arguable.
> But the other dramas have definitely optimistic type endings.
> 
> I know all about his reading of Schopenhauer, but how Wagner adapts and processes it is the thing.
> And I see nothing but optimism in his endings.


If _Parsifal_'s ending is his ultimate statement about life, then I guess he was an optimist. And after all, he didn't _have_ to end the _Ring_ with a musical promise of new life. He could have just incinerated the world and left us all in despair. .


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> If _Parsifal_'s ending is his ultimate statement about life, then I guess he was an optimist. And after all, he didn't _have_ to end the _Ring_ with a musical promise of new life. He could have just incinerated the world and left us all in despair. .


Exactly! He could have done that in any of his operas, but he didn't.
And if you look at each ending there is always a hope
or something good that comes out of it.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

My first choice is Parsifal.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Also, Wagner wrote all his own librettos, so it's all him!
Wagner with 10 major works wins!!! :tiphat:


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

I don't know why I missed this thread, but this is a interesting topic.

I think Wagner's works do show a core of optimism. One that is complicated with all manner of death, murder, betrayal and sadness obviously, but this just makes his writing even more analogous to real life.


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Even when Wagner himself felt at his most misanthropic, and wrote to Theodor Uhlig (15 July 1852) about the "torture and torment" that the "worthless rabble" "vexed (him) time and again" with. He still felt the need to write in the same letter "and yet- how I long to be with people."
His ever present love of, and fascination with, nature also seems to me to play a big part in his wellspring of optimism.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

People always talk moralistically about Wagner's unpleasant traits (as if they knew him personally!), but clearly he had a vibrant spirit that was exciting and attractive to people as well. It must have been hard to BE such an intense person, but he sustained his immense ambitions through many difficulties, including a failed marriage, political exile, poverty, frequent ill health, and ridicule by the press. I think of him as someone who, like Beethoven, was a fallible but brilliant vehicle for a genius that took up residence inside him and drove him through every obstacle. He had to be an optimist - at least an unshakable believer in himself - despite wearing the paradoxically dark cloak of Schopenhauer.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> People always talk moralistically about Wagner's unpleasant traits (as if they knew him personally!), but clearly he had a vibrant spirit that was exciting and attractive to people as well. It must have been hard to BE such an intense person, but he sustained his immense ambitions through many difficulties, including a failed marriage, political exile, poverty, frequent ill health, and ridicule by the press. I think of him as someone who, like Beethoven, was a fallible but brilliant vehicle for a genius that took up residence inside him and drove him through every obstacle. He had to be an optimist - at least an unshakable believer in himself - despite wearing the paradoxically dark cloak of Schopenhauer.


if it were not for Ludwig II of Bavaria, Wagner would be never have composed his late operas. He was obvisously irresponsible, since until his 50's he was running from dept and creditors all the time. All these difficulties they you describe might have well been caused by his difficult personality, too great ambitions, strange political opinions (anarchism) etc.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Jacck said:


> if it were not for Ludwig II of Bavaria, Wagner would be never have composed his late operas. He was obvisously irresponsible, since until his 50's he was running from dept and creditors all the time. All these difficulties they you describe might have well been caused by his difficult personality, too great ambitions, strange political opinions (anarchism) etc.


A complicated, contradictory, driven man, unquestionably, who found life difficult and made life difficult for himself and others. The positive consequence for us is a series of innovative operas of unequaled psychological and philosophical depth and intensity. Not many people with such immense ambitions actually achieve them and survive the struggle to gain recognition in their lifetimes.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Jacck said:


> if it were not for Ludwig II of Bavaria, Wagner would be never have composed his late operas.


And if Wagner had not been so extraordinary, Ludwig would never have bothered with him.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

You can pretty much trace when Wagner was naively/dangerously idealistic (Rienzi), when he falls into Schopenhauer-ish pessimism (Dutchman, Tannhauser, Lohengrin), and when he at last undergoes a sort of spiritual transformation and becomes convinced that enlightenment and escaping the cycle of suffering is possible (Ring onwards); this is achievable through detachment from earthly desires (including the thirst for knowledge, hence seemingly glorification of ignorance, the "pure fool"), and an enlightenment via love and compassion alone. 

This is central theme of his mature operas and is basically a re-statement of the core, unadulterated message of the Torah, Buddha, Jesus Christ, and Muhammad. He attempts to really drive this message home especially in Parsifal when he presents these world religions in a unified abstraction as having lost their way and corrupted by an emphasis on doctrine and ceremony, and all of them are redeemed when Parsifal, uncorrupted by the world's knowledge, kisses Kundry and becomes aware of the true nature of suffering and how such suffering is ended by detachment and love. This is also the central theme of the Ring and Tristan (although people go out of their way to complicate and misunderstand them). Meistersinger was a break to make a necessary response to his critics encouraging people to shelter themselves from Wagner's "formless and melodiless" music, which was in fact specifically engineered by Wagner to be disorienting to the viewer such that they detach themselves from the outside world and attach themselves to the works in preparation of receiving their message. It is my belief that the mature works were intended by Wagner to be a sort of expedited Zen-Buddhist meditation leading to spiritual enlightenment.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

amfortas said:


> And if Wagner had not been so extraordinary, Ludwig would never have bothered with him.


Frankly is the sponsorship of a man who was mad much of a recommendation?


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## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

King Ludwig was not mad. He was a closeted homosexual, and an eccentric lover of the Arts. It is a terrible and tragic story how his ministers railroaded him.

He was pronounced "insane" by a Dr. Gudden, the King asked; "How can you declare me insane? After all, you have never seen or examined me before," only to be told that "it was unnecessary; the documentary evidence [the ministers' reports] is very copious and completely substantiated. It is overwhelming." (As a "eccentric artist-type" myself, I must admit to finding this story terrifying)

So they took him away. The next day he was found dead in a lake, and it was declared suicide by drowning, (the water was barely waist deep, and the King was known to be a strong swimmer), ...oh, and no water was found in his lungs.

Ironically, the reasons that the King's ministers used to have him "declared insane" included his extensive buildings, (it is often presented or insinuated, that he use state funds to build his castles, but in truth he mostly used his family money, and borrowed funds), and now that same architectural legacy is Bavaria's biggest tourist attraction.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> You can pretty much trace when Wagner was naively/dangerously idealistic (Rienzi), when he falls into Schopenhauer-ish pessimism (Dutchman, Tannhauser, Lohengrin), and when he at last undergoes a sort of spiritual transformation and becomes convinced that enlightenment and escaping the cycle of suffering is possible (Ring onwards); this is achievable through detachment from earthly desires (including the thirst for knowledge, hence seemingly glorification of ignorance, the "pure fool"), and an enlightenment via love and compassion alone.
> 
> This is central theme of his mature operas and is basically a re-statement of the core, unadulterated message of the Torah, Buddha, Jesus Christ, and Muhammad. He attempts to really drive this message home especially in Parsifal when he presents these world religions in a unified abstraction as having lost their way and corrupted by an emphasis on doctrine and ceremony, and all of them are redeemed when Parsifal, uncorrupted by the world's knowledge, kisses Kundry and becomes aware of the true nature of suffering and how such suffering is ended by detachment and love. This is also the central theme of the Ring and Tristan (although people go out of their way to complicate and misunderstand them). Meistersinger was a break to make a necessary response to his critics encouraging people to shelter themselves from Wagner's "formless and melodiless" music, which was in fact specifically engineered by Wagner to be disorienting to the viewer such that they detach themselves from the outside world and attach themselves to the works in preparation of receiving their message. It is my belief that the mature works were intended by Wagner to be a sort of expedited Zen-Buddhist meditation leading to spiritual enlightenment.


I think this is basically right, though I see _Tristan_ and _Die Meistersinger_ a little differently. They belong together, representing the turning point in Wagner's philosophical awakening.

_Tristan,_ in my view, was the moment of crisis in Wagner's work, the final push of his Romantic, romantic quest for redemption through sexual love as expressed in the _Dutchman, Tannhauser_ and _Lohengrin_. In it the striving of desire reaches its logical extreme, the point beyond which nothing is possible except complete obliteration or a revolution in perspective. I think the opera delivers both. Death, in the clash of the "day" and "night" worlds, is both tragic and welcome - and inevitable. Isolde's final ecstasy is ambiguous: it's both passion's triumph and a deliverance from passion, a fulfillment of love's promise and a vision of what lies on the other side when all-consuming passion, and life itself, has been exhausted. She does not live to become become wise, but she is bathed in the light of a new world before the darkness closes in for good.

Having got the tragedy of the striving "will" out of his system, Wagner returns to the day world in _Meistersinger_ and gives us Hans Sachs, who understands the world's illusions and deliberately puts the brakes on the midsummer madness of both Walther and Beckmesser, carefully bringing the former's unbridled passion and wild creativity, and the latter's envy and dishonesty, under the rubrics of artistic discipline and social responsibility. It's _Meistersinger_ that prepares Wagner, and us, for the return of an enlightened Parsifal to the society of the Grail, which the struggles of passion, both indulged and repressed, have thrown into chaos.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> I think this is basically right, though I see _Tristan_ and _Die Meistersinger_ a little differently. They belong together, representing the turning point in Wagner's philosophical awakening.
> 
> _Tristan,_ in my view, was the moment of crisis in Wagner's work, the final push of his Romantic, romantic quest for redemption through sexual love as expressed in the _Dutchman, Tannhauser_ and _Lohengrin_. In it the striving of desire reaches its logical extreme, the point beyond which nothing is possible except complete obliteration or a revolution in perspective. I think the opera delivers both. Death, in the clash of the "day" and "night" worlds, is both tragic and welcome - and inevitable. Isolde's final ecstasy is ambiguous: it's both passion's triumph and a deliverance from passion, a fulfillment of love's promise and a vision of what lies on the other side when all-consuming passion, and life itself, has been exhausted. She does not live to become become wise, but she is bathed in the light of a new world before the darkness closes in for good.


I disagree the love is sexual and I actually see Tristan these days not as a tragedy, but as Tristan and Isolde releasing themselves of the shackles of Western dualism (Night/Day, Life/Death, Good/Evil, etc.) which creates an insatiable _longing for the other_, and a release into Eastern monism. They arrive here by the totality of exhaustion of the alternative, they literally _long_ so much the illusion of dualism implodes into meaninglessness. They don't fade away into the dark abyss, it is the distinction of night and day itself that fades into the abyss. They are freed of the Western project/obsession to ascribe a label to everything, with every label implying its inverse or absence and creating an impenetrable web of concepts and their relations that ensnares the human psyche and dooms it to prejudice, desire, and _longing_. Hence at the end Isolde realizes death is neither something to be avoided nor pursued. Like life, it merely _is_. This is _enlightenment_; in the Liebestod she experiences herself as part of the eternal global consciousness, the illusion of individualism eliminated. It is ambiguous whether she lives or dies because in the end, as enlightenment is neither a state of life nor death. It is a release from the cycle of both.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> I disagree the love is sexual and I actually see Tristan these days not as a tragedy, but as Tristan and Isolde releasing themselves of the shackles of Western dualism (Night/Day, Life/Death, Good/Evil, etc.) which creates an insatiable _longing for the other_, and a release into Eastern monism. They arrive here by the totality of exhaustion of the alternative, they literally _long_ so much the illusion of dualism implodes into meaninglessness. They don't fade away into the dark abyss, it is the distinction of night and day itself that fades into the abyss. They are freed of the Western project/obsession to ascribe a label to everything, with every label implying its inverse or absence and creating an impenetrable web of concepts and their relations that ensnares the human psyche and dooms it to prejudice, desire, and _longing_. Hence at the end Isolde realizes death is neither something to be avoided nor pursued. Like life, it merely _is_. This is _enlightenment_; in the Liebestod she experiences herself as part of the eternal global consciousness, the illusion of individualism eliminated. It is ambiguous whether she lives or dies because in the end, as enlightenment is neither a state of life nor death.


That's getting a bit woowoo for me, but it certainly has support in Wagner's thinking and in the libretto. It just goes to show how multileveled Wagner's work is.

Tristan and Isolde may want to escape from dualism - "nicht mehr Tristan, nicht mehr Isolde" - but dualistic reality exacts its revenge: "tod den alles, alles tod!" I see their belief in the possibility of such an escape as illusion - "maya," if you will - as much as the fantasy of romantic love is; in fact, it's just a way of dressing up the latter in quasi-religious jargon. I think the dark and violent music tells us the truth: enlightenment doesn't come in the form of suicidal madness, and doesn't sound like an extended orgasm. Drained of all hope, Isolde's mind has "flipped" into a mystical consciousness of union with things (I've experienced that sort of thing myself), but she is dying, as those around her have died. She's afforded a glimpse of fulfillment, but it brings not life but extinction, leaving her survivors in sorrow, and leaving us with only a last sensual thrill and a benediction to sweeten our post-coital exhaustion.

I think _Tristan_ occupies an ambiguous middle ground between the (relatively) realistic world of _Meistersinger_ and the fully symbolic world of _Parsifal._ Thus it can be read on both levels, on one of which it's a devastating personal tragedy about love and society's destructiveness to human aspiration, and on the other of which it's a work of pseudo-religious hocus-pocus. Perhaps that's what's so disturbing about it, and an important key to its undying fascination. What it's telling us is both very right and very wrong; it shows the danger of the very thing it exalts. Nietzsche hit the nail on the head when he said that "the world is poor for him who is not sick enough for this voluptuousness of hell."


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> That's getting a bit woowoo for me, but it certainly has support in Wagner's thinking and in the libretto. It just goes to show how multileveled Wagner's work is.
> 
> Tristan and Isolde may want to escape from dualism - "nicht mehr Tristan, nicht mehr Isolde" - but dualistic reality exacts its revenge: "tod den alles, alles tod!" I see their belief in the possibility of such an escape as illusion - "maya," if you will - as much as the fantasy of romantic love is; in fact, it's just a way of dressing up the latter in quasi-religious jargon. I think the dark and violent music tells us the truth: enlightenment doesn't come in the form of suicidal madness, and doesn't sound like an extended orgasm. Drained of all hope, Isolde's mind has "flipped" into a mystical consciousness of union with things (I've experienced that sort of thing myself), but she is dying, as those around her have died. She's afforded a glimpse of fulfillment, but it brings not life but extinction, leaving her survivors in sorrow, and leaving us with only a last sensual thrill and a benediction to sweeten our post-coital exhaustion.


The dualist/objective-materialist interpretation of the kind of idealism espoused by Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Wagner is quite literally "madness" by their definition of reality, so it's easy to see Tristan and Isolde pessimistically as simply going insane. But this is not madness from the eastern perspective, but merely an alternate perception of reality at the fundamental level. This shift in thinking from West to East requires nothing short of an existential crisis and subsequent deconstruction of identity and meaning, typically brought about by tragedy. Either that or lots and lots of meditation, but I don't see Wagner arriving at his views by sitting around doing nothing. He had a tragic early life.

Eastern philosophy arrives at the West with David Hume, the first to challenge the dualist orthodoxy courtesy of Aristotle. Kant builds on Hume via pure idealism, and from there Schopenhauer writes on the world being mere will and representation, reality merely a dream, espousing ideas very, very, similar to Buddhism.

Wagner became quite obsessed with Buddhism around 1856 and penned a sketch for a "Buddhist opera" called _Die Sieger._ I believe this sketch would later become both _Tristan und Isolde_ and _Parsifal_:

_Die Sieger was drafted between 1856 and 1858, at a period when Wagner had become greatly interested in Buddhism. The fragmentary prose sketch which survives shows that it was based on legends which Wagner discovered in Eugène Burnouf's 1844 Introduction to the History of Buddhism. The story tells of the love of the outcast chandala Prakriti for the monk Ananda. Although both are ostracised by the other monks, Buddha permits their chaste union, and allows Prakriti to join the monastic community. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Sieger_


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> The dualist/objective-materialist interpretation of the kind of idealism espoused by Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Wagner is quite literally "madness" by their definition of reality, so it's easy to see Tristan and Isolde pessimistically as simply going insane. But this is not madness from the eastern perspective, but merely an alternate perception of reality at the fundamental level. This shift in thinking from West to East requires nothing short of an existential crisis and subsequent deconstruction of identity and meaning, typically brought about by tragedy. Either that or lots and lots of meditation, but I don't see Wagner arriving at his views by sitting around doing nothing. He had a tragic early life.
> 
> Eastern philosophy arrives at the West with David Hume, the first to challenge the dualist orthodoxy courtesy of Aristotle. Kant builds on Hume via pure idealism, and from there Schopenhauer writes on the world being mere will and representation, reality merely a dream, espousing ideas very, very, similar to Buddhism.
> 
> ...


I know the progression of Wagner's thinking. You seem to give him more credit than I do for personal transformation when you speak of tragedy bringing about a "deconstruction of identity and meaning" and remark that his early life was tragic. Difficult? Yes. Tragic, no. We hardly observe in his life the subduing, much less the extinction, of the desire to live of which he spoke and wrote so portentously. Wagner was always torn by the contradictory aspects of his nature; I think he was like any number of westerners fascinated with eastern thought, trying it on for size, perhaps benefiting from its insights but unable to submit their nervous Greco-Judeo-Christian egos to its transformative disciplines despite its seductive promise of self-mastery and serenity. I don't think it's an accident that he abandoned his Buddhist project _Die Sieger,_ or that the aspects of it that he could fully identify with were absorbed by that most voluptuous of spiritual expressions, _Parsifal._ Old Wagner still had far too many "earthly desires" to fulfill ever to be a Parsifal, however fondly he may have fancied himself the chaste or chastened Redeemer of Art. His works are shot through with that ambivalence, which nevertheless does not undermine their sincerity or compromise their power to provoke and move us.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Couchie said:


> You can pretty much trace when Wagner was naively/dangerously idealistic (Rienzi), when he falls into Schopenhauer-ish pessimism (Dutchman, Tannhauser, Lohengrin) . . .


Just to be clear, Wagner was first introduced to Schopenhauer's work by the poet Georg Herwegh in 1854, years *after* the premieres of Dutchman, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin.

Of course, you can argue he was already "Schopenhauer-ish" before reading Schopenhauer; Wagner himself would later make that claim.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Wagner focuses pretty much entirely on the Buddhist aspects of _Prajñā_ and _Karuṇā_: enlightenment and compassion. He was so excited by the freedom from the hell of the mind-body dilemma that _Prajñā_ brings, he never got around much to the renunciative/noble path aspects of the religion, instead obsessing over communicating these two aspects to the Western viewer via his works. Clearly he was more interested in making known the philosophical implications and abstract principles than actually attempt to live the simple renunciative life a real Buddhist would typically seek.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

amfortas said:


> Just to be clear, Wagner was first introduced to Schopenhauer's work by the poet Georg Herwegh in 1854, years *after* the premieres of Dutchman, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin.
> 
> Of course, you can argue he was already "Schopenhauer-ish" before reading Schopenhauer; Wagner himself would later make that claim.


I would also argue that. Dutchman, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin are also more simplistic settings of source material Wagner simply identified with, unlike his mature works which are more complex distillations of a variety of influences assembled in an original vehicle in order to convey Wagner's mature message and fleshed-out take on Schopenhauer/Buddhism.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Still thinking that compared with other opera composers of serious operas as opposed to buffo or comedies his operas are the least pessimistic. Or even o optimistic or can be interpreted for the good.


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## Bellerophon (May 15, 2020)

An aspect of this which I find interesting (and have not come to any real conclusion upon) is this. In ‘Tristan’ romantic or erotic love is presented as the way to a kind of spiritual enlightenment or - see the interview with Roger Scruton on the Michael Tanner thread - an experience of the sacred. Yet it is Parsifal, the man who refuses Kundry’s advances and enters a holy order, who goes on to have a son, while Tristan and Isolde’s love ends only in death. Nietzsche thought Parsifal anti-life and admired Tristan. Did he have it the wrong way round?


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## annaw (May 4, 2019)

Bellerophon said:


> An aspect of this which I find interesting (and have not come to any real conclusion upon) is this. In 'Tristan' romantic or erotic love is presented as the way to a kind of spiritual enlightenment or - see the interview with Roger Scruton on the Michael Tanner thread - an experience of the sacred. Yet it is Parsifal, the man who refuses Kundry's advances and enters a holy order, who goes on to have a son, while Tristan and Isolde's love ends only in death. Nietzsche thought Parsifal anti-life and admired Tristan. Did he have it the wrong way round?


Nietzsche dismissed _Parsifal_ mainly because he interpreted it as a propagation of Christian morals which Nietzsche called the slave morals. He also had his reasons because supposedly Wagner had talked about his new Christian sympathies to Nietzsche during one walk (it might have been the last time they met) but eventually _Parsifal_ doesn't strike me as thoroughly Christian. Rather Wagner used the themes to convey his own views.

This is from _The Case of Wagner_: "Is it necessary in his case to say (as I have heard people say) that "Parsifal" is "the product of the mad hatred of knowledge, intellect, and sensuality?" a curse upon the senses and the mind in one breath and in one fit of hatred? an act of apostasy and a return to Christianly sick and obscurantist ideals? And finally even a denial of self, a deletion of self, on the part of an artist who theretofore had worked with all the power of his will in favour of the opposite cause, the spiritualisation and sensualisation of his art?"

For Wagner the true love Tristan and Isolde wished was possible only after death, for him it's not the end but rather the beginning of the love they both desire. Such "melting together into one", that Tristan and Isolde seem to strive for, is possible for Wagner but doesn't seem to be for Schopenhauer. I certainly wouldn't say that _Tristan_ is "a denial of self" of which Nietzsche accused _Parsifal_. It might have been if Tristan had done nothing about his love and had left Isolde for King Marke but the way I see it, is that the whole essence of Tristan transforms into his love. This love (i.e. his "life" and self) can live on only after his own physical death, meaning that only through death he can live. It's paradoxical but then again it's art. These are my limited views but I'm sure others might have something more insightful to say.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

It helps to remember that Wagner called the Tristan music
liebestod AND Verklarung not just liebestod.
It was changed later.
And that Tristan and Isolde were already in love BEFORE they drink the potion.

Those things helped me,


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Bellerophon said:


> An aspect of this which I find interesting (and have not come to any real conclusion upon) is this. In 'Tristan' romantic or erotic love is presented as the way to a kind of spiritual enlightenment or - see the interview with Roger Scruton on the Michael Tanner thread - an experience of the sacred. Yet it is Parsifal, the man who refuses Kundry's advances and enters a holy order, who goes on to have a son, while Tristan and Isolde's love ends only in death. Nietzsche thought Parsifal anti-life and admired Tristan. Did he have it the wrong way round?


I think it is best to think of Tristan, Meistersinger, and Parsifal presented as a sort of trifecta of competing ideologies. The Dionysian ecstasy of the lovers in Tristan is contrasted to the ascetic, Apollonian order of the grail knights. Meistersinger walks a sort of middle ground between the two, being a meditation on the balance between rules and tradition, and the innovations wrought by passion. I'm not sure we can say Wagner is endorsing one over the other. We will likely identify and lean into the one of them most attuned with our own personalities, and find within it each our own ecstasies.


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