# Disastrous Evening at the Bayreuth Festival



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

I wonder what the problem was. 









Disastrous evening at the Bayreuth Festival: performance booed mercilessly - audience angry


Disastrous evening at the Bayreuth Festival: performance booed mercilessly - audience angry Created: 06/08/2022 09:44 By: Franziska Konrad The new production of the “Ring der Nibelungen” was mercilessly booed by the audience at the Bayreuth Festival. © Imago Images Last Friday evening will not...




newsrnd.com


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

I've seen one photo and heard a summary and the production is based on the theme of child trafficking. With the gold in the first scene of Rheingold being a child.

Sounds dreadful perhaps, but without seeing it I can't comment.

I'm glad the tradition of booing the Ring at Bayreuth is being upheld.

N.


----------



## Philidor (11 mo ago)

The Conte said:


> Sounds dreadful perhaps, but without seeing it I can't comment.


That's the point.

The production by Boulez/Chéreau was booed horribly in its first year, and after the fifth year it was praised as the production of the century.

So let's see how understanding will evolve.


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Philidor said:


> That's the point.
> 
> The production by Boulez/Chéreau was booed horribly in its first year, and after the fifth year it was praised as the production of the century.
> 
> So let's see how understanding will evolve.


True, the Boulez/Chéreau Ring was very controversial, but the controversy was all about the production. This one appears to have fallen short musically as well. I don't think anybody booed the singers or conductor in the Boulez production.


----------



## haziz (Sep 15, 2017)

It's about time we've had another riot during a musical performance .......


----------



## bagpipers (Jun 29, 2013)

I read the article and it said something about Wagner's The Ring but nothing of child trafficking?


----------



## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

You buried the lead! According to the account you linked, multiple people were killed following the performance!!!:

"The team around director Valentin Schwarz received loud protests when they showed themselves to the audience.

Those in the audience who tried to counter it with applause and bravos perished."


----------



## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

Das Rheingold review – no ring, no gold, instead child abuse and abduction drive Bayreuth’s new Ring | Opera | The Guardian 

This article has three photos and a fuller description of the production.

"Vocally, Bayreuth standards are more often decent than stellar these days. So it proved here. "
Interesting that this is now taken for granted and gets one line.

Also, I find the idea of productions like Chereau weird. If you think the Ring is an metaphor for exploitative capitalism and modern culture, that's fine. That's a legitimate reading (as opposed to the child abduction one). But by making it literal in the production, it's no longer a metaphor for that, it just is that. That makes it redundant and limiting in my view.


----------



## ALT (Mar 1, 2021)

What has been happening with increasing and alarming frequency at the Festival is sheer garbage. And it isn’t just the productions that I am talking about.


----------



## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Going to Bayreuth and watching Wagner performed there has been on my bucket list for some time. But their productions have gotten so far away from the master's intention that I'm not sure I care anymore. The last time Seattle Opera did the Ring (the "green" Ring") it was tremendous - a great dragon, superb giants, wonderful horses for the Valkyrie...very close to Wagner's stage direction. I don't know if it's because audiences don't "get" anachronistic settings, or directors are full of themselves, but I'm old-fashioned and want the staging to be something the composer would have recognized.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

EdwardBast said:


> Those in the audience who tried to counter it with applause and bravos perished.


*RIOT AT THE RING*


----------



## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

EdwardBast said:


> You buried the lead! According to the account you linked, multiple people were killed following the performance!!!:
> 
> "The team around director Valentin Schwarz received loud protests when they showed themselves to the audience.
> 
> Those in the audience who tried to counter it with applause and bravos perished."


You know what they say, what happens in Bayreuth....


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

EdwardBast said:


> You buried the lead! According to the account you linked, multiple people were killed following the performance!!!:
> 
> "The team around director Valentin Schwarz received loud protests when they showed themselves to the audience.
> 
> Those in the audience who tried to counter it with applause and bravos perished."


We Wagnerians take our music _seriously,_ man.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I'll be interested in reading more about the production, but seeing as how this is Wagner and Bayreuth in 2022, nothing would surprise me - absolutely nothing, except great singing.


----------



## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Yabetz said:


> I wonder what the problem was.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Aside from the clunky translation issues, this seems to be a remarkably _poorly written_ review. 

Only once could I find a specific reference to WHY the audience might have been *"booing"*: *"loud and sometimes ruthless conducting"*, although there are some criticisms that actually make no sense, such as the director *"seemed to capitulate to his extremely ambitious and imaginative directing concept. He presented a surprisingly conventional and at times long-winded interpretation of the murder of Siegfried and the return of the gold to the sisters of the Rhine."* (but that *"imaginative directing concept"* is not explained, and is even more confusing given that in the next sentence his directing is called *"conventional"*.

The *"loud and ruthless conducting"* is repeated later in the review. *"Loud"* could be a sound issue, but what, precisely, is meant by *"ruthless conducting"*? Relentless? Too aggressive? Too fast?

The reviewer then gives a vague criticism, *"The music also left a lot to be desired."* How so? Poorly played? Bad notes? Out of synch? Out-of-tune? Too slow? Too fast? Too harsh? Too muted? Was it a sound system issue? 

Yeah, many references to the *"boos"*, but very little as to WHY they were booing.


----------



## haziz (Sep 15, 2017)

pianozach said:


> Aside from the clunky translation issues, this seems to be a remarkably _poorly written_ review.
> 
> Only once could I find a specific reference to WHY the audience might have been *"booing"*: *"loud and sometimes ruthless conducting"*, although there are some criticisms that actually make no sense, such as the director *"seemed to capitulate to his extremely ambitious and imaginative directing concept. He presented a surprisingly conventional and at times long-winded interpretation of the murder of Siegfried and the return of the gold to the sisters of the Rhine."* (but that *"imaginative directing concept"* is not explained, and is even more confusing given that in the next sentence his directing is called *"conventional"*.
> 
> ...



I strongly suspect English is not the native language of the reviewer. I wouldn't be surprised if a computer generated translation is also involved.


----------



## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

haziz said:


> I strongly suspect English is not the native language of the reviewer. I wouldn't be surprised if a computer generated translation is also involved.


Very likely.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

pianozach said:


> The *"loud and ruthless conducting"* is repeated later in the review. *"Loud"* could be a sound issue, but what, precisely, is meant by *"ruthless conducting"*? Relentless? Too aggressive? Too fast?


It probably means they did this too much -(0:10~0:20)


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> I'll be interested in reading more about the production, but seeing as how this is Wagner and Bayreuth in 2022, nothing would surprise me - absolutely nothing, except great singing.


It may be the current artistic preoccupation with making A Statement. Artistic considerations are secondary at best.


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

They only booed? What a failure of a production. If you're not getting a full-blown riot in the auditorium, production simply isn't trying hard enough. What will it take? Have they tried replacing the string section with kazoos?

Bayreuth is a joke. I recommend not going and saving your money. If you want to eat ****, you can get it for free right out of your own toilet.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

The thing is, Wagner is pretty detailed with his stage directions, and they aren't really objectionable -- although no doubt difficult to realize in a theater. I don't know why his own directions can't be followed.


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Yabetz said:


> The thing is, Wagner is pretty detailed with his stage directions, and they aren't really objectionable -- although no doubt difficult to realize in a theater. I don't know why his own directions can't be followed.


Because the Nazis followed his stage directions, and we don't want to be Nazis. (This is historically accurate).


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Couchie said:


> Because the Nazis followed his stage directions, and we don't want to be Nazis. (This is historically accurate).


But there's nothing Nazi about them. The Wagner-as-Nazi stuff gets really old.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Can't spell "Wagner" without "War". Linguistically proven fact.


NLAdriaan said:


> Historically proven fact: Wagner=War.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

I can imagine the faces of the crowd as they were leaving. It would have been tragic.


----------



## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

Yabetz said:


> I don't know why his own directions can't be followed.


I've said it before, but it mystifies me why it is an unthinkable violation of taste, decency, and honor, worse than violating the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, and the Prime Directive all at once, to perform early music in a Romantic style, but it's okay to do whatever you want to, no matter how anachronistic, with staging. Performing music in a museum-style is a must, but it would be lazy and un-intellectual to stage the production in the way it would have been staged historically.

Personally, I think the principle should be that both musical and stage interpretations can be free as long as they are in the spirit of the original work and any liberties are still good music and good theater. That does not seem to be the case here. Certainly, the singing is not. Although, to be fair to this production, it seems par for the course:
Götterdämmerung Bayreuth 2016 - YouTube


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

vivalagentenuova said:


> I've said it before, *but it mystifies me why it is an unthinkable violation of taste, decency, and honor, worse than violating the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, and the Prime Directive all at once, to perform early music in a Romantic style, but it's okay to do whatever you want to, no matter how anachronistic, with staging.* Performing music in a museum-style is a must, but it would be lazy and un-intellectual to stage the production in the way it would have been staged historically.
> 
> Personally, I think the principle should be that both musical and stage interpretations can be free as long as they are in the spirit of the original work and any liberties are still good music and good theater. That does not seem to be the case here. Certainly, the singing is not. Although, to be fair to this production, it seems par for the course:
> Götterdämmerung Bayreuth 2016 - YouTube


Exactly. As someone put it in a blog post about HIP:


> They don’t want any more brilliant mavericks like Huberman, Toscanini, Chaliapin, Callas, Glenn Gould or Virgil Fox to come along, upset the apple cart, and suddenly amass a large following that does not follow their approved, regulated, and _standardized _tenets of music-making. On the other hand, they _do _want stage productions of operas—even older operas that, musically, fit into this category—to be as modern, outré, perverted and bizarre as possible, _even while the orchestra and singers are toeing the HIP line. _The results are ludicrous and bizarre to say the least. A good example was the Zurich production of Mozart’s _Die Zauberflöte _in which Papageno, in a cage, wore a black suit covered with bird**** and the Queen of the Night was some blind, mole-like creature who felt her way along a wall, all the while Nikolaus Harnoncourt was conducting the orchestra in proper HIP style. What exactly is the point of this? If you’re going to give us a strict, hemmed-in reading of the score following HIP guidelines, you should also insist on a strict 18th-century production with costumes and “stage machinery” that uses _nothing _invented after 1791. As a matter of fact, you should also have all the musicians wear clothing and powdered wigs of that period and have the stage and their music stands lit only by candlelight. (Technically, you should also have the musicians enter and leave by the servants’ entrance.)


----------



## Philidor (11 mo ago)

If I remember correctly it was Wagner's objective to write a drama that

should be performed only once
should change the audience's mind

So if some performance just confirmed the expectations of the audience, wouldn't be be opposite to Wagner's wishes?


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Philidor said:


> If I remember correctly it was Wagner's objective to write a drama that
> 
> should be performed only once
> should change the audience's mind
> ...


I don't think he expected his works to be performed only once, but he did have a vision as to how they should be performed and there's not really much doubt since the stage directions in the scores are in such detail, although of course they're very difficult to achieve in a theater. What he thought was that the music and action were an inseparable artistic unity. Actually I think Wagner was sort of a film "auteur" before there was such a thing as film.


----------



## Philidor (11 mo ago)

Yabetz said:


> I don't think he expected his works to be performed only once,


You are right and my memory was wrong - he wanted to perform it three times at the river of Rhine in a theatre which is built only for this purpose, and after the third performance he wanted to burn the score.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

"Wagner proposed that the reborn (and not recreated) Greek tragedies should be performed at festivals and not in the commercial theatre as part of its repertory. The performances of these new tragedies would be special occasions. Indeed, at one point he suggested that his "Siegfried opera" should be performed only once, in a specially built wooden theatre, and that after the performance, both the theatre and the score should be burned. Perhaps not an entirely serious suggestion but there was a serious idea behind it: one performance of _Siegfried's Tod_ would be a world-changing event. It would show to the men and women of the (failed) revolution of 1848-49 the true meaning of that revolution. Then, inspired by Brünnhilde's valedictory lines, like the audience that had been inspired by Auber's _La Muette de Portici_, the audience would pour out of the theatre and begin the revolution anew."





Wagner, Ancient Greece and the Gesamtkunstwerk







www.monsalvat.no


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

hammeredklavier said:


> "Wagner proposed that the reborn (and not recreated) Greek tragedies should be performed at festivals and not in the commercial theatre as part of its repertory. The performances of these new tragedies would be special occasions. Indeed, at one point he suggested that his "Siegfried opera" should be performed only once, in a specially built wooden theatre, and that after the performance, both the theatre and the score should be burned. Perhaps not an entirely serious suggestion but there was a serious idea behind it: one performance of _Siegfried's Tod_ would be a world-changing event. It would show to the men and women of the (failed) revolution of 1848-49 the true meaning of that revolution. Then, inspired by Brünnhilde's valedictory lines, like the audience that had been inspired by Auber's _La Muette de Portici_, the audience would pour out of the theatre and begin the revolution anew."
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah but if that were true in 1876 there wouldn't have been a Festspielhaus.


----------



## Philidor (11 mo ago)

Yabetz said:


> Yeah but if that were true in 1876 there wouldn't have been a Festspielhaus.


In the about 25 years of writing the Ring, Wagner changed his persepctive ... very clearly to be seen at the title: "Siegfrieds Tod" -> "Götterdämmerung" (Siegfried's Death -> Twilight of the Gods), i. e. the change from a young revolutionist who fails sine culpa (without guilt) to the fall of the dynasty of the gods.

What happened? Wagner got acquainted to Ludwig II. ... this changed a lot ...


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Philidor said:


> ...
> What happened? Wagner got acquainted to Ludwig II. ... this changed a lot ...


One thing might be that Wagner had sold off the performance rights of his works to get some quick cash. Bayreuth wasn't subject to restrictions. But Wagner had been thinking of some sort of festival for a long time.

_“I intend to perform my myth in three complete dramas that are preceded by a great prelude. With these dramas, though each of them is supposed to form a self-contained whole, I still have no “repertory pieces” according to the modern theatrical elements, but for their portrayal I hold to the following plan: In the course of a specifically designated three-day festival plus a preceding evening, I intend to perform those three dramas together with the prelude. I regard the purpose of this performance as perfectly accomplished if I succeed, along with my artistic comrades, the real performers, in sharing with the spectators who gathered on the four evenings to learn about my intention, this intention to convey artistically real feelings (not critical ones) and understanding. Another consequence is just as indifferent to me as it seems to me superfluous.” _(1851)

As much as I love Wagner's work, some of his writings and statements have to be taken with heaps of salt or taken with a dose of "dramatic license".










History - Bayreuther Festspiele







www.bayreuther-festspiele.de


----------



## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

When I was a kid, there were these fun activity books wherein one would write down a number of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and then on the next page a random story would be created where you put your selections of words into prewritten text. I often feel it is on these principles that Opera's are staged nowadays.

For example, I created one for a new production of Don Giovanni. You must select:
noun 1-7
verb 1-4
adjective 1-6
adverb 1

Having selected your seven nouns, four verbs, six adjectives, and one adverb (and number them), fill in the blanks below for your very own Regietheater staging of Act 1 of _Don Giovanni_.

_Act 1_

Don Giovanni was an evil (noun 3). The first scene opens with his sidekick (adjective 2) Leporello worrying about Don Giovanni's attempt to (verb 4) the Commendatore's daughter. This ends in disaster, but Don Giovanni manages to escape by (verb 1), but kills the Commendatore in the process. The Commendatore's daughter is (adjective 3).

After this kerfuffle, Leporello (verb 3)s Don Giovanni, telling him he is a (adjective 1). This does not go over well with Don Giovanni, who attempts to (noun 1) himself, by (verb 4) Donna Elvira. Donna Elvira is most displeased with Don Giovani's attempt to (verb 4) her, and decides to tell the world. Don Giovanni again escapes by (verb 1). Like the Commendatore's daughter, Donna Elvira is (adjective 3).

After his escape Don Giovanni finds himself in a town full of naked (noun 2)s symbolising (noun 5)s in the context of the operas previous (adjective 4) events. Here he meets two peasants Masetto and Zerlina who are passionate (noun 6)s. Don Giovanni again attempts to (verb 4) Zerlina. The naked (noun 2)s catch on when the (adjective 3) Elvira shows up and wises them up to the fact that Don Giovanni is an evil (noun 3). Here the whole of the (adjective 4) plot blows up in a giant hoo-hah symbolising the common peoplehood screaming as (adverb 1) as they could over the evil of unchecked capitalism in the (adjective 5) post-colonial era. The naked (noun 2)s perform an Irish jig to African drum music to celebrate the (adjective 6) downfall of the rich. The (adjective 2) Leporello teems with inner conflict expressed through the presence of one clothed (noun 7) on stage.

_End of Act 1_


----------



## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

Philidor said:


> If I remember correctly it was Wagner's objective to write a drama that
> 
> should be performed only once
> should change the audience's mind
> ...


Well, with any luck this production will be performed only once, so the first point is possible. Unfortunately, I went in expecting that it would be crap, and it didn't change my mind, so I'm not sure it fulfills the second point.

I think Wagner had a greater objective in writing the _Ring_ than either of those points.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

vivalagentenuova said:


> Well, with any luck this production will be performed only once, so the first point is possible. ...


----------



## Philidor (11 mo ago)

vivalagentenuova said:


> I think Wagner had a greater objective in writing the _Ring_ than either of those points.


As already pointed out: His objectives were subject to changes during the 26 years of work.

In the beginning, it was a revolutionary piece, driven by the revolution of 1848 and its ideas.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Philidor said:


> As already pointed out: His objectives were subject to changes during the 26 years of work.
> 
> In the beginning, it was a revolutionary piece, driven by the revolution of 1848 and its ideas.


Honestly I think his artistic objectives remained remarkably steady and coherent over that length of time. And while he was working on it he was also producing Tristan and Meistersinger.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Yabetz said:


> Exactly. As someone put it in a blog post about HIP:


Sorry to quote myself, but here's an even better example of the phenomenon described in the blog post I cited. The music here sounds acceptably HIP...but that staging...why oh why?


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Yabetz said:


> Sorry to quote myself, but here's an even better example of the phenomenon described in the blog post I cited. The music here sounds acceptably HIP...but that staging...why oh why?


Here's some truly eclectic style (a mixture of ancient Greek, 18th century European (there's even a Baroque wig, worn by the countertenor), modern)-


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

hammeredklavier said:


> Here's some truly eclectic style (a mixture of ancient Greek, 18th century European (there's even a Baroque wig, worn by the countertenor), modern)-


Musico-dramatic multiple personality disorder. Best comment on the YT video I linked: 
"I don't get it. They are being executed by SAC and F-14 Tomcat pilots."


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Yabetz said:


> Best comment on the YT video I linked: "I don't get it. They are being executed by SAC and F-14 Tomcat pilots."


If they really found the staging baffling, they would have come to the performance and booed it.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

hammeredklavier said:


> If they really found the staging baffling, they would have come to the performance and booed it.


I wasn't in the crowd. I don't know what happened or even if it was a live performance. But if that can be swallowed, I don't know why this can't be:


----------



## Eugen von Bismarck (5 mo ago)

Couchie said:


> Because the Nazis followed his stage directions, and we don't want to be Nazis. (This is historically accurate).


That is the biggest political correctness ******** idea ever. It is like banning Christianity because of murderous wars conducted in the name of Christ while too obliterating Islamist because of ISIS


----------



## BBSVK (10 mo ago)

Somebody at facebook blogged about the event: A Netflix? original disturbing series: Götterdämmerung at the Bayreuth Festival.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BBSVK said:


> Somebody at facebook blogged about the event: A Netflix? original disturbing series: Götterdämmerung at the Bayreuth Festival.


This person's review ends with the paragraph:

_Bayreuth, as a werkstatt, an experimentation atelier, is a laboratory of staging trends, artistical and even political discussion for decades. In Germany, it is always in the national point of view every summer. Successful or not, Valentin Schwarz, Katharina Wagner, and even the booing audience have reached their goal: that we discuss about this production. And thanks to German television, the millions of people in the whole world can join this debate. *Nothing could make Wagner happier.*_

I'll wager that being too dead to know what nonsense his name is attached to is making him happier by far.


----------



## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

After 15 years of queuing up, I have spent an entirely decadent budget to attend this week's full ring cycle. Though I have an extremely low opinion of critics, it's not just the critics that are stirring the pot: apparently the entire town is abuzz with rumour of a disastrous first cycle.

As far as parallel storytelling in staging goes, I'll clarify my own position: I am absolutely fine with parallel storytelling in staging. I would be extremely displeased to see operas in period décors and costumes all the time, and that alone is enough for me to leave the opening for the wild stuff one might see today. At the same time, I personally do think the sound of the opera ought not to be touched. No problem with seeing HIP performance in a space age visual here. In fact, sometimes the parallells or contradictions directors can draw out are thought provoking and tittilating!

I'll report back when I've seen it myself.


----------



## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Couchie said:


> Because the Nazis followed his stage directions, and we don't want to be Nazis. (This is historically accurate).


Nazis also ate food and drank water. 
(This is historically accurate).


----------



## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Another review with descriptions of the staging. 









Review: A New ‘Ring’ at Bayreuth Does Wagner Without Magic


Valentin Schwarz’s production of the four-opera epic presents human characters with relations even more tangled than usual.




www.google.com


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Rasa said:


> After 15 years of queuing up, I have spent an entirely decadent budget to attend this week's full ring cycle. Though I have an extremely low opinion of critics, it's not just the critics that are stirring the pot: apparently the entire town is abuzz with rumour of a disastrous first cycle.
> 
> As far as parallel storytelling in staging goes, I'll clarify my own position: I am absolutely fine with parallel storytelling in staging. I would be extremely displeased to see operas in period décors and costumes all the time, and that alone is enough for me to leave the opening for the wild stuff one might see today. At the same time, I personally do think the sound of the opera ought not to be touched. No problem with seeing HIP performance in a space age visual here. In fact, sometimes the parallells or contradictions directors can draw out are thought provoking and tittilating!
> 
> I'll report back when I've seen it myself.


But you see, that's what I don't get. I thought the idea behind HIP was to adhere to the composer's intentions. I don't see how that's accomplished through stagings that the composer would find bizarre and alien.


----------



## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Philidor said:


> You are right and my memory was wrong - he wanted to perform it three times at the river of Rhine in a theatre which is built only for this purpose, and after the third performance he wanted to burn the score.


This is a myth born out of Wagner's sense of humor, and him joking about burning the theater to the ground after one "model (perfect) performance" of The Ring.


----------



## Philidor (11 mo ago)

lextune said:


> This is a myth born out of Wagner's sense of humor, and him joking about burning the theater to the ground after one "model (perfect) performance" of The Ring.


Apologies, but I don't think so. There are letters where he wrote this. And it matches his revolutionary mind when conceiving "Siegfrieds Tod".


----------



## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

Yabetz said:


> But you see, that's what I don't get. I thought the idea behind HIP was to adhere to the composer's intentions. I don't see how that's accomplished through stagings that the composer would find bizarre and alien.


There's no reason other than that I just don't care. I like hearing the music unaltered, and feel no need to see knights and dames on stage at the same time.


----------



## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Philidor said:


> Apologies, but I don't think so. There are letters where he wrote this. And it matches his revolutionary mind when conceiving "Siegfrieds Tod".


There is just one. I will dig out the letter in question that Wagner wrote when I get home tonight and post it here.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Rasa said:


> There's no reason other than that I just don't care. I like hearing the music unaltered, and feel no need to see knights and dames on stage at the same time.


But with Wagner there wasn't that dichotomy. If he called for knights and dames then that was inseparable from the music that he wrote. If operas minus knights and dames are desired, then some other composer/conductor/producer should bring one out rather than hijacking an existing work to advance their own vision.

Anyway congrats on being there and I hope you have a great time.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

lextune said:


> Nazis also ate food and drank water.
> (This is historically accurate).


Maybe the Green Guy doesn't.
(Who knows).


----------



## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

Rasa said:


> There's no reason other than that I just don't care. I like hearing the music unaltered, and feel no need to see knights and dames on stage at the same time.


This is probably the reasoning of many. The problem is that it is antithetical to opera as an art form, especially Wagnerian opera, in which the music and drama, including the stage picture, are inseparable. Wagner's stage instructions are in the score. They are part of the music. He cared so much he created a theater so that he could have productions done the way he wanted, using the radical theatrical innovations he made. Puccini spent as much time going around to theaters to oversee productions as he did composing operas, and some scholars credit his immense popularity as much to his establishing a powerful performance tradition as to the wide appeal of his music. These composers cared. We should respect that and present their works in ways that are true to their spirit -- which, I might add, does not mean absolute fidelity to the text, just as interpretation in the spirit of the music does not mean absolute fidelity to note values. Making Minnie a degraded figure is antithetical to the spirit of _La fanciulla del west_, and should not be done. Giving the Indians some dignity, which goes against the letter of the score, would actually be in tune with the spirit of the work, which is about the dignity of all human beings and their capacity for betterment and growth. That's the kind of change that would create a meaningful dissonance between text and staging. If that's the sort of thing this production does, that's one thing. That's not what it looks like to me (one can see Gotterdammmerung on YT: (Gotterdammerung - BAYREUTH 2022 - VIDEO HD - YouTube), though I confess I find it so visually repellant that it's hard for me to judge fairly.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Rasa said:


> As far as parallel storytelling in staging goes, I'll clarify my own position: I would be extremely displeased to see operas in period décors and costumes all the time. I am absolutely fine with parallel storytelling in staging. In fact, sometimes the parallells or contradictions directors can draw out are thought provoking and tittilating!


Sometimes they are. And sometimes they are meaningless, baffling, silly, and conducive to nothing but cognitive dissonance. The chief artistic victim of "experimental" staging tends to be the music, which, particularly in Wagner, is wedded in ways large and small to highly specific dramatic ideas. Looking at many regie productions, one gets the feeling that the director can't even hear music, or doesn't much care for it.

For anyone who actually appreciates Wagner's exceedingly integral artistic vision, the sight of Kundry dressed as a crocodile is not at all thought-provoking - or it's provocative of thoughts most people would rather not pay hundreds of dollars to have forced into their brains. We should not really have to decide between this sort of idiocy and "period décors and costumes," but of course we need directors with intelligence and aesthetic sensitivity to cultivate the vast ground between the extremes.

You are, of course, entitled to enjoy any sort of directorial whimsy without excuse. If performances of the _Ring_ were private affairs commissioned by people of your persuasion, there would be no reason for anyone else to care what is done to the work. But when they are enormously expensive endeavors, subsidized by taxes and attended by people who've scrimped and saved for a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to Wagner's own theater, it's reasonable of these people to expect to see something suggesting that the composer's work has been understood and loved.

As a young Wagner enthusiast, decades ago, I dreamed of going to Bayreuth someday. Nowadays you couldn't pay me to attend a performance there, and were I to visit the town I would spend my time seeing Wahnfried and contemplating the bust of the composer who is fortunate not to know what his descendants have done to him.


----------



## Philidor (11 mo ago)

lextune said:


> There is just one. I will dig out the letter in question that Wagner wrote when I get home tonight and post it here.


I think there were two letters.

The first was sent to Theodor Uhlig on 20 Sep 1850. Wagner wrote that "Siegfrieds Tod" would be played three times in a week, ... "nach der dritten Aufführung wird das Theater eingerissen und meine Partitur verbrannt." (After the third performance the theatre will be broken down and my score will be burned up.)

The second was sent to his niece Clara Brockhaus on 12 Mar 1854. "Die Nibelungen [...] aufführen werde ich sie doch: ich habe mir das als einzige und letzte Lebensaufgabe gestellt. [ ... ] Nach der Aufführung werfe ich mich dann mit der Partitur auf Brünnhildes Scheiterhaufen, ..." (The Nibelungs [...] I will stage them anyway: I assigned this to myself as the only and last life-task. [ ... ] After the performance I will throw myself with the score on Brünnhilde's funeral pyre ...)


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Eugen von Bismarck said:


> That is the biggest political correctness ****** idea ever. It is like banning Christianity because of murderous wars conducted in the name of Christ while too obliterating Islamist because of ISIS


I think my point was missed. After the Nazi regime fell, Denazification of Germany took place. This included anything that was deemed promoting "German nationalism". Wagner's works were deemed as too infected with the proud Germanic spirit that brought about Nazism. This whole affair of Eurotrash really began in the 50s with Wieland Wagner and his productions sanitizing the Germanness out of Wagner's works. Meistersinger obviously presented the biggest difficulties in doing so, and most famous was his 1956 "Meistersinger without Nuremberg" which changed the settings from Wagner's directions and references to Nuremberg (The Nazi's preferred rally place) to more abstract settings. From that point on, the idea was born to change settings and direction from what is specified in the libretto and to insert new settings and direction. If we return to original stagings now, we might re-ignite the flame of Nazism! (I joke).


----------



## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Philidor said:


> I think there were two letters.
> 
> The first was sent to Theodor Uhlig on 20 Sep 1850. Wagner wrote that "Siegfrieds Tod" would be played three times in a week, ... "nach der dritten Aufführung wird das Theater eingerissen und meine Partitur verbrannt." (After the third performance the theatre will be broken down and my score will be burned up.)
> 
> The second was sent to his niece Clara Brockhaus on 12 Mar 1854. "Die Nibelungen [...] aufführen werde ich sie doch: ich habe mir das als einzige und letzte Lebensaufgabe gestellt. [ ... ] Nach der Aufführung werfe ich mich dann mit der Partitur auf Brünnhildes Scheiterhaufen, ..." (The Nibelungs [...] I will stage them anyway: I assigned this to myself as the only and last life-task. [ ... ] After the performance I will throw myself with the score on Brünnhilde's funeral pyre ...)


I know the first letter to Uhlig. I have it here before me, in the book "Richard Wagner's Letters to his Dresden Friends" on page 68, let us not leave out what comes after your selected quote:

"After the third the theater would be pulled down, and my score burnt. To the persons who had been pleased with the thing I should then say 'now do likewise'. Well, do I seem quite mad to you? It may be so (...) but now let us turn from fiction to fact. I do not think that I could seriously set to work at the music of Siegfried this winter."

The second letter (which I do not know) seems quite hyperbolic/theatrical (throwing himself on the funeral pyre), especially given its recipient.

I know/have another letter that contains a similar hyperbolic outburst, this one, from 14 Sept. 1850 to Ernst Benedikt Kietz, I also have it before me now in, "Selected Letters of Richard Wagner by Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington on page 216:

"I am genuinely thinking of setting Siegfried to music, only I cannot reconcile myself with the idea of trusting to luck and having the work performed by the very first theater that comes along."
(He then goes on to explain "having a theater erected here on the spot" [he was in Zurich] finding the best singers, arranging "everything necessary for an outstanding performance", sending out invitations "far and wide" for "free-of course", then having the three performances),
"after which the theater would then be demolished and the whole affair would be over and done with!"

He had not written a note of the music. He had just gone into exile. He was venting in many letters, in many ways, to many people.

And lastly, just months before this, during the 1849 Dresden uprising, we have an event that some have seen as a real life "inspiration" for his fanciful imaginings of destroying a theater.

Wagner, in the midst of a demonstration he had orginized, ("It all felt like a fascinating piece of theater", Wagner says in his autobiography), stood with a banner he had had printed, (“ARE YOU ON OUR SIDE AGAINST THE FOREIGN TROOPS?”) until Prussian troops arrived and started shooting.

At this point Wagner retreated, climbed the Kreuzkirche Tower in the town center, and "kept vigil there all through the night, while the tower’s great bell clanged incessantly, and the Prussian riﬂe shot beat against its walls. The following day, after some particularly violent skirmishes, the old Opera House, the scene for Wagner of so much misery, intrigue, and frustration, went up in ﬂames, which gave him deep satisfaction; the ﬁre seemed to have taste, he noted, because once it had consumed the unlovely Opera House, ("It was an ugly building anyway") it stopped short of the beautiful Natural History Museum and the formidable armory."


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> I think my point was missed. After the Nazi regime fell, Denazification of Germany took place. This included anything that was deemed promoting "German nationalism". Wagner's works were deemed as too infected with the proud Germanic spirit that brought about Nazism. This whole affair of Eurotrash really began in the 50s with Wieland Wagner and his productions sanitizing the Germanness out of Wagner's works. Meistersinger obviously presented the biggest difficulties in doing so, and most famous was his 1956 "Meistersinger without Nuremberg" which changed the settings from Wagner's directions and references to Nuremberg (The Nazi's preferred rally place) to more abstract settings. From that point on, the idea was born to change settings and direction from what is specified in the libretto and to insert new settings and direction.* If we return to original stagings now, we might re-ignite the flame of Nazism! (I joke).*


I gather that even the original Nazis were, by and large, uninterested in Wagner, who was a personal obsession of Hitler. When they were forced to attend performances with him, they just dozed off and looked forward to going out for a beer and picking up a Fraulein.


----------



## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> seeing as how this is Wagner and Bayreuth in 2022, nothing would surprise me - absolutely nothing, except great singing.


This, sadly, but hysterically, sums up my feelings. 

As I begin to push 60, I start to come to grips with the fact that even if I could manage my lifelong dream of a pilgrimage to Bayreuth, I'm no longer sure I would want to.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> I gather that even the original Nazis were, by and large, uninterested in Wagner, who was a personal obsession of Hitler. When they were forced to attend performances with him, they just dozed off and looked forward to going out for a beer and picking up a Fraulein.


The strange thing is that Hitler was a big Nietzsche fan too but yet "the culture" bends over backwards to "exonerate" Nietzsche while tarring Wagner. There's far more justification for Nazism in Nietzsche than in anything by Wagner. In a sense the Ring is about the overthrow and passing of a power structure built on force and fraud and then transformed by love.


----------



## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Yabetz said:


> There's far more justification for Nazism in Nietzsche than in anything by Wagner. In a sense the Ring is about the overthrow and passing of a power structure built on force and fraud and then transformed by love.


Indeed. Also, Wagner despised militarism and political nationalism.

He wrote, and spoke of, the German soul, which is an entirely different thing than the German nation.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Yabetz said:


> "the culture" bends over backwards to "exonerate" Nietzsche


"The German philosopher has been adopted by the alt-right, but he hated antisemitism. He has been misappropriated and misread, argues his biographer"


https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/06/exploding-nietzsche-myths-need-dynamiting


----------



## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

vivalagentenuova said:


> This is probably the reasoning of many. The problem is that it is antithetical to opera as an art form, especially Wagnerian opera, in which the music and drama, including the stage picture, are inseparable. Wagner's stage instructions are in the score. They are part of the music. He cared so much he created a theater so that he could have productions done the way he wanted, using the radical theatrical innovations he made. Puccini spent as much time going around to theaters to oversee productions as he did composing operas, and some scholars credit his immense popularity as much to his establishing a powerful performance tradition as to the wide appeal of his music. These composers cared. We should respect that and present their works in ways that are true to their spirit -- which, I might add, does not mean absolute fidelity to the text, just as interpretation in the spirit of the music does not mean absolute fidelity to note values. Making Minnie a degraded figure is antithetical to the spirit of _La fanciulla del west_, and should not be done. Giving the Indians some dignity, which goes against the letter of the score, would actually be in tune with the spirit of the work, which is about the dignity of all human beings and their capacity for betterment and growth. That's the kind of change that would create a meaningful dissonance between text and staging. If that's the sort of thing this production does, that's one thing. That's not what it looks like to me (one can see Gotterdammmerung on YT: (Gotterdammerung - BAYREUTH 2022 - VIDEO HD - YouTube), though I confess I find it so visually repellant that it's hard for me to judge fairly.


This is truly desperate stuff. As for the singers! There is no law that says human beings should look beautiful but they should at least look human. An awful production with no redeeming features. I echo Woodduck’s sentiments. I too always wanted to visit Bayreuth but now wild horses couldn’t drag me there. The only Bayreuth I want to visit now requires the use of a modified De Lorean and an eccentric inventor. Failing that, a Tardis!


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

hammeredklavier said:


> "The German philosopher has been adopted by the alt-right, but he hated antisemitism. He has been misappropriated and misread, argues his biographer"
> 
> 
> https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/06/exploding-nietzsche-myths-need-dynamiting


Nietzsche was anti-anti-semitic because he thought the Jews should be assimilated, or rather subsumed, beginning with the "nobler" Jewish specimens. That's not much different from what Wagner expressed. Read section 251 of _Beyond Good and Evil. _And also _The Genealogy of Morals._
"That priestly nation which eventually realised that the one method of effecting satisfaction on its enemies and tyrants was by means of a radical transvaluation of values, which was at the same time an act of the _cleverest_ revenge."

_"It was the Jews who, in opposition to the aristocratic equation (good = aristocratic = beautiful = happy = loved by the gods), dared with a terrifying logic to suggest the contrary equation, and indeed to maintain with the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness) this contrary equation, namely, “the wretched are alone the good; the poor, the weak, the lowly, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who are blessed, for them alone is salvation — but you, on the other hand, you aristocrats, you men of power, you are to all eternity the evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiate, the godless; eternally also shall you be the unblessed, the cursed, the damned!"_

When you get to the nub of the matter, sentiments like that are at the root of all antisemitism. Like I said, bending over backward. The step the Nazis took was in saying that the Jews were physically to be eradicated from the planet because they are physically, intrinsically subhuman. As far as I know neither Wagner nor Nietzsche advocated that.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Yabetz said:


> the Jews were physically to be eradicated from the planet. As far as I know neither Wagner nor Nietzsche advocated that.


I don't think Wagner's music has any antisemitic elements in it. But aren't some of the things he said still ideologically 'problematic', for some?
"In 1871, Cosima, his wife, told him about a fire at a theater in a Jewish section of Vienna, during which 416 Jews died. Wagner’s “drastic joke,” as she called it: All Jews should be burned during a performance of “Nathan the Wise.” (Cosima, Liszt’s daughter, like her husband was an obsessional Jew-baiter. “Nathan the Wise,” written in 1779 by Gottfried Ephaim Lessing, was a plea for religious tolerance.)"


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

hammeredklavier said:


> I don't think Wagner's music has any antisemitic elements in it. But aren't some of the things he said still ideologically 'problematic', for some?
> "In 1871, Cosima, his wife, told him about a fire at a theater in a Jewish section of Vienna, during which 416 Jews died. Wagner’s “drastic joke,” as she called it: All Jews should be burned during a performance of “Nathan the Wise.” (Cosima, Liszt’s daughter, like her husband was an obsessional Jew-baiter. “Nathan the Wise,” written in 1779 by Gottfried Ephaim Lessing, was a plea for religious tolerance.)"


Yeah that's pretty bad but it isn't in writing from Wagner and Cosima was even more virulently antisemitic. So who knows. H. L. Mencken said similar and he's generally adored. (By many. I can't stand the guy. At least Wagner was a genius.)


----------



## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Just to get this thread back on track, (I'm as guilty as anyone here in derailing it). I can't even begin to list all the ways these couple of facts about the production completely screw up dialog/plotting throughout the entire saga:

"The (rhine)gold is not a bit of metal, but an actual young boy whose abduction embodies a society curdled by its attempts to outrun death."

"The libretto sets the start of the “Ring” beneath the flowing waters of the Rhine, but Schwarz instead shows us an animated projection of a womb, in which twin fetuses are frozen in a gesture somewhere between love and combat."

"Alberich now isn’t of a different race than Wotan, the king of the gods, but is his less successful brother."

Like I said, it is not even worth my time expounding on the countless ways this nonsense cripples the libretto and renders some of its most beautiful connections moot.

What a bunch of trash.


----------



## Denerah Bathory (6 mo ago)

hammeredklavier said:


> Maybe the Green Guy doesn't.
> (Who knows).


You mean Pepe the frog. Kek


----------



## Denerah Bathory (6 mo ago)

Couchie said:


> I think my point was missed. After the Nazi regime fell, Denazification of Germany took place. This included anything that was deemed promoting "German nationalism". Wagner's works were deemed as too infected with the proud Germanic spirit that brought about Nazism. This whole affair of Eurotrash really began in the 50s with Wieland Wagner and his productions sanitizing the Germanness out of Wagner's works. Meistersinger obviously presented the biggest difficulties in doing so, and most famous was his 1956 "Meistersinger without Nuremberg" which changed the settings from Wagner's directions and references to Nuremberg (The Nazi's preferred rally place) to more abstract settings. From that point on, the idea was born to change settings and direction from what is specified in the libretto and to insert new settings and direction. If we return to original stagings now, we might re-ignite the flame of Nazism! (I joke).


Denazification wound up just being de-germanification or white genocide. There's nothing wrong with being patriotic, Germans are entitled to their culture, and as a proud European descendant of Italian, French and German stock I will not have my heritage, identity, and culture erased. I have no white guilt, and neither should they. Wagner was not a Nazi, he only resented jews for their religion and never saw them as a distinct race. Any Jewish who accepts Christ and converts he would've accepted. Also, as Leni Riefenstahl said "how could we have known?" Really, Germans do not deserve this erasure of their culture, this unjustified great replacement of true ethnic europeans.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Denerah Bathory said:


> You mean


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

lextune said:


> ...
> "The libretto sets the start of the “Ring” beneath the flowing waters of the Rhine, but Schwarz instead shows us an animated projection of a womb, in which twin fetuses are frozen in a gesture somewhere between love and combat."
> ...


Now how in the world do you reconcile that with the flowing Rhine motif which appears and reappears throughout? Including at the end of Götterdämmerung.


----------



## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

You can't.

The production has been rendered completely separate from the music, and the libretto. Making a mockery of all three. 

Utter. Trash.


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> I gather that even the original Nazis were, by and large, uninterested in Wagner, who was a personal obsession of Hitler. When they were forced to attend performances with him, they just dozed off and looked forward to going out for a beer and picking up a Fraulein.


This is true. Goebbels certainly was not a fan and if the matter was left up to him, he probably would have banned Wagner's work entirely, seeing how impossible it is to reconcile with Nazism. But if a propaganda minister can't reconcile that which is irreconcilable, what is he good for?


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Yabetz said:


> The strange thing is that Hitler was a big Nietzsche fan too but yet "the culture" bends over backwards to "exonerate" Nietzsche while tarring Wagner. There's far more justification for Nazism in Nietzsche than in anything by Wagner. In a sense the Ring is about the overthrow and passing of a power structure built on force and fraud and then transformed by love.


There is sadly not much more to it than accusations of racism which are are broadly stamped on things to be cancelled these days, including Wagner and his work. Details like the fact that _Parsifal_ is a 4 hour meditation on compassion don't matter, neither does the fact that Nietszche was clearly a power-obsessed war-mongering psychopath, but he WASN'T racist! So he's ok and surely the Nazi's couldn't have seen themselves as the _ubermensch_. WWII happened because Hitler watched _Rienzi_. Don't you know anything?


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Denerah Bathory said:


> Denazification wound up just being de-germanification or white genocide. There's nothing wrong with being patriotic, Germans are entitled to their culture, and as a proud European descendant of Italian, French and German stock I will not have my heritage, identity, and culture erased. I have no white guilt, and neither should they. Wagner was not a Nazi, he only resented jews for their religion and never saw them as a distinct race. Any Jewish who accepts Christ and converts he would've accepted. Also, as Leni Riefenstahl said "how could we have known?" Really, Germans do not deserve this erasure of their culture, this unjustified great replacement of true ethnic europeans.


I believe you've misunderstood Couchie who, once you see his penchant for irony, you will find quite benign and amusing. He was not recommending "denazification," and certainly not "erasing" anyone's culture. He was merely pointing out that there has been an effort, particularly by Germans and notably by certain Germans named "Wagner," to dissociate Wagner's works from the unpleasant associations they accrued during the Nazi era. At Bayreuth this began with the stripped-down productions of Wieland Wagner. Of course stripping them down is one thing, and filling them with pink and yellow rat people is quite another. If you want to see the erasure of German culture, present-day Bayreuth may be Exhibit A.


----------



## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

lextune said:


> Just to get this thread back on track, (I'm as guilty as anyone here in derailing it). I can't even begin to list all the ways these couple of facts about the production completely screw up dialog/plotting throughout the entire saga:
> 
> "The (rhine)gold is not a bit of metal, but an actual young boy whose abduction embodies a society curdled by its attempts to outrun death."
> 
> ...


If it wasn't such a wasted opportunity to have great performances on a historic stage uniquely suited to the works being played, it would just be very funny at how 'beyond parody' this has gotten. I mean, "an actual young boy whose abduction embodies a society curdled by its attempts to outrun death" is actually something you might expect from a postmodern nonsense generator.


----------



## Tarneem (Jan 3, 2022)

This topic is an eye opener... some people need to understand that if something is not broken, there is no need to fix it


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Temporarily closed for repairs.


----------



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

This thread has a number of political comments. Political comments are prohibited everywhere on the forum except in the "Politics and Religion in Classical Music" subforum and only when the comment is substantially related to classical music. We do occasionally move threads to that forum when the thread is started with political considerations, but we prefer to keep threads in the subforum in which they were created.

Please refrain from political comments and focus on the thread OP. 

The thread is now open.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Is this the one the article is talking about? Do you hear booing in this? I mostly hear applause from the audience.




Gotterdammerung - BAYREUTH 2022 - VIDEO HD
7,928 views Streamed live on Aug 5, 2022


----------



## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

The applaud the singers, but boo the director et al vociferously


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> Is this the one the article is talking about? Do you hear booing in this? I mostly hear applause from the audience.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Quite substantial booing when the curtain falls, which is the main indicator for how the performance as a whole was received. The singers are usually applauded when they do their curtain calls.

When I went in 2014, the Gotterdammerung was unenthusiastically applauded. However, Siegfried... I have never heard an audience that enraged. It was a little scary. I don't deny I threw in a few boos myself!


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Denerah Bathory said:


> Denazification wound up just being de-germanification or white genocide. There's nothing wrong with being patriotic, Germans are entitled to their culture, and as a proud European descendant of Italian, French and German stock I will not have my heritage, identity, and culture erased. I have no white guilt, and neither should they. Wagner was not a Nazi, he only resented jews for their religion and never saw them as a distinct race. Any Jewish who accepts Christ and converts he would've accepted. Also, as Leni Riefenstahl said "how could we have known?" Really, Germans do not deserve this erasure of their culture, this unjustified great replacement of true ethnic europeans.


While I agree with you in principle, I think the temporary "De-germanification" was necessary in the wake of WWII to stamp out National Socialism. Had the Nazis won, they would have done a lot more to eradicate a lot more cultures. But since then we have had the _Wirtschaftswunder_, and Bernstein's legendary performance of the 9th Symphony when the wall fell has restored a unified Germany's national pride. Today, it is the Germans themselves that are doing the most to destroy their own culture, as Woodduck points out in Bayreuth's case. If it was up to me, ownership of Bayreuth would be transferred to the government and the site treated as a museum with historically informed performances following Wagner's stage directions. There is still room for innovation, such as the many difficult scene transitions Wagner specifies could today actually be accomplished with modern stage technology like giant projection screens, but the days of hiring trendy _enfant terrible_ Stage Directors to desecrate the works would be over. They are still free to do that in any other opera house in Europe.


----------



## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

The only "period" staging I've seen was semi-amateur and was performed only once. 
No barocco or classicist opera I've seen live, despite of HIP, was staged traditionally, unfortunately. And recordings and broadcasts are the same, period productions are extremely rare. There are good modern productions, indeed, but I wish I would see Mozart's operas with powdered wigs and court plasters. I even can't imagine Gluck's operas in a period production.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Couchie said:


> ...If it was up to me, ownership of Bayreuth would be transferred to the government and the site treated as a museum with historically informed performances following Wagner's stage directions. There is still room for innovation, such as the many difficult scene transitions Wagner specifies could today actually be accomplished with modern stage technology like giant projection screens, but the days of hiring trendy _enfant terrible_ Stage Directors to desecrate the works would be over. They are still free to do that in any other opera house in Europe.


I'm not really being political here, but I'm afraid that if the government took over the whole concern you'd just continue to see what's already happening, only on steroids. It would probably require some ultrarich private donor who would be committed to following Wagner's scores.


----------



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

The last attempt to do a staging which followed Wagner's scores was the 1983 Peter Hall/William Dudley/Georg Solti production, which had more than its own fair share of problems, and which probably spooked some directors from trying that approach.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Becca said:


> The last attempt to do a staging which followed Wagner's scores was the 1983 Peter Hall/William Dudley/Georg Solti production, which had more than its own fair share of problems, and which probably spooked some directors from trying that approach.


And how many before that? I don't see the rationale behind "wow that is _tough_ to pull off. To heck with it, let's just make it about child abduction and say Wotan and Alberich are actually brothers..."


hammeredklavier said:


> Is this the one the article is talking about? Do you hear booing in this? I mostly hear applause from the audience.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Oh I hear immediate boos and a blast of them at 2:31:11.


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Yabetz said:


> I'm not really being political here, but I'm afraid that if the government took over the whole concern you'd just continue to see what's already happening, only on steroids. It would probably require some ultrarich private donor who would be committed to following Wagner's scores.


Oh when I become a billionaire, the first thing I'm buying is Bayreuth, and evicting all the Wagners.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Couchie said:


> Oh when I become a billionaire, the first thing I'm buying is Bayreuth, and evicting all the Wagners.


----------



## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

Ignore...


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> If it was up to me, ownership of Bayreuth would be transferred to the government and the site treated as a museum with historically informed performances following Wagner's stage directions. There is still room for innovation, such as the many difficult scene transitions Wagner specifies could today actually be accomplished with modern stage technology like giant projection screens, but the days of hiring trendy _enfant terrible_ Stage Directors to desecrate the works would be over. They are still free to do that in any other opera house in Europe.


This is exactly what should be done. Wagner built Bayreuth for the specific purpose of presenting his works in a way that would do justice to his vision, and he went to great lengths to design a new kind of opera house in which nothing would distract from that. The present use of the theater as a place in which to "experiment" and "innovate" has been justified on the grounds that Wagner himself was an innovator, but that reasoning is a thin veneer over rotten wood. Bayreuth should be the place of all places where nothing is spared in bringing the full resources of modern theatrical technology and the very best artistic talent available to the task of revealing and illuminating what is actually in the operas, as opposed to making them "meaningful" for a hypothetical "modern audience" which is assumed to be limited in its imagination by the cultural memes of the moment. This doesn't imply an attempt to replicate the stagings of 1876. Anyone who thinks that respect for the works requires tinfoil breastplates and stuffed swans has a sadly atrophied imagination.


----------



## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Changing to time of an opera set in the past to the present in a production is not necessarily objectionable, but this just doesn't work with Wagner on the whole . It isn't objectionable with Der Fliegende Hollander , but Tannhauer and Lohengrin , which are set in specific eras and locations , such as medieval Germany with Tannhauser with the German Minnesanger , and Lohengrin , which tales place in a region now part of Belgium in the 10th century , usually seem ridiculous if transported to the present day , or with one recent Bayreuth production of Tannhauser, in a kind of. dystopian future , 
Die Meistersinger takes place in 16th century Nuremberg , so setting in the present day with the masters using cell phones in the first act is truly preposterous and there haven't been Mastersingers in Germany or anywhere else for centuries . Setting the Ring partially in the Republic of Azerbaijan in the Caucasus , in the capitol Baku a. Turkish speaking former Republic of the defunct Soviet Union is beyond ludicrous . And on and on and on at Bayreuth and elsewhere in Germany today . 
But today, no matter how preposterous a Wagner production is in Europe, the critics will take it seriously and. print all kinds of pseudo intellectual gobbledygook praising it . Go figure .


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

superhorn said:


> Changing to time of an opera set in the past to the present in a production is not necessarily objectionable, but this just doesn't work with Wagner on the whole . It isn't objectionable with Der Fliegende Hollander , but Tannhauer and Lohengrin , which are set in specific eras and locations , such as medieval Germany with Tannhauser with the German Minnesanger , and Lohengrin , which tales place in a region now part of Belgium in the 10th century , usually seem ridiculous if transported to the present day , or with one recent Bayreuth production of Tannhauser, in a kind of. dystopian future ,
> Die Meistersinger takes place in 16th century Nuremberg , so setting in the present day with the masters using cell phones in the first act is truly preposterous and there haven't been Mastersingers in Germany or anywhere else for centuries . Setting the Ring partially in the Republic of Azerbaijan in the Caucasus , in the capitol Baku a. Turkish speaking former Republic of the defunct Soviet Union is beyond ludicrous . And on and on and on at Bayreuth and elsewhere in Germany today .
> But today, no matter how preposterous a Wagner production is in Europe, the critics will take it seriously and. print all kinds of pseudo intellectual gobbledygook praising it . Go figure .


Changing the settings of operas to different times and places often seems done just for the sake of doing it. There are usually references in the libretto to particular locales or historical things, and even when there aren't the characters tend to speak and act in time- and place-specific ways, expressing thoughts and observing customs that would be incongruous in other settings. 

Wagner's mythical and legendary stories generally don't refer to specific historical events and so are tempting to directorial anachronists, but his settings are often more specific than they seem at first glance. _Dutchman_ doesn't have to take place in Norway, and the lives of seamen have been similar from place to place and century to century, but the dark turbulence in the score is highly suggestive of a northern locale. _Tristan_'s locales are mentioned a number of times, the social structures essential to the story are medieval, and so the opera can't be removed from the British Isles in medieval times without loss of coherence. The _Ring _is clearly set in pre-Christian Europe - the Gibichungs still honor the pagan gods, the end of whose reign is fundamental to the work. _Parsifal's _Grail kingdom is set in northern Spain, across the Pyrenees from southwestern France where the castles of the Cathars still keep watch over the Dordogne, and Klingsor is associated with "Oriental" (Moorish) Spain. There are at least poetic resonances inherent in the settings of Wagner's operas which are sacrificed when the operas are moved to alien times and places.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

With reference to the locale of The Flying Dutchman, Daland is a Norwegian surname and Erik is spelt in Scandinavian fashion. That nails it for me, anyway. Theoretically it could be shifted to Iceland or Greenland as both were colonised by the Norse but that seems as pointless as basing it somewhere even less credible.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

elgar's ghost said:


> With reference to the locale of The Flying Dutchman, Daland is a Norwegian surname and Erik is spelt in Scandinavian fashion. That nails it for me, anyway. Theoretically it could be shifted to Iceland or Greenland as both were colonised by the Norse but that seems as pointless as basing it somewhere even less credible.


True that the names are Scandinavian, though nothing essential would be changed in the opera - there would be no dramatic contradictions - if Erik and Daland were named Malcolm and Angus. But even though we don't see anything particularly Norwegian happen onstage, changing the locale to Scotland, Portugal or Nova Scotia would serve no purpose. I'm not aware that the libretto specifies any century, so there's certainly latitude there, and all that's necessary is that the legend of the Dutchman and Senta's obsession with him be made credible.


----------



## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

Das Rheingold was a competent showing. The staging is simply what one would expect in any opera house anno 2022. Were this staged with the costumes and décores one can enjoy at that small but pleasant Wagner museum, I too might consider a small snub at the director. I'm sure many Wagner acolytes can't stand modern opera practice, but frankly... I don't give a damn. It's a tedious discussion.

I was highly surprised and turned off by the incredible disrespect shown by the audience, who boo'ed half the cast _and_ the conductor. I would like to know where these orcs have their year-through opera subscription. It must be a god-tier opera house_ that doesn't exist_. 

The second showing of Die Walküre gave me some better insight as to why performances here become the stuff of legends. The first act was a perfect mini-opera by itself. Launched into orbit by Klaus Florian Voght who is a vibrator-free tenor that one can actually understand without subtitles (I damn these conservatives and their disdain for subtitling), the act was then launched inter-galactically by the hurrican that is Lise Davidsen. Slightly vibrato driven, but with a clear tone core and colour, one can feel her sing when she unleashes at the appropriate times.

Wotan, the stronger voice in Rheingold, then delivered a model Wagnerian bass performance in acts 2 and 3. I was very impressed by a bass singer who is able to convey clear tone height even in his lowest registers. I haven't had the pleasure of hearing such control on more than a few occasions, notwithstanding my long time opera attendance at home.

There was one problem. One catch that kept the entire opera from being entirely orbital: Daniela Köhler did not sound up to the task of bringing Bünnhilde. Vibrato-driven, but without core and colour, it seemed to me her physical apparatus was simply not capable of providing the necessary counterweight to Wotan's performance. In my opinion, she is miscast in the role (or perhaps she ought not have accepted).

The staging was again, competent. I fail to see why it would generate such a scancal, if not for my now entrenched perception that the Bayreuth audience is a collection of rude reactionaries, who seem to confuse the price of their ticket with subject matter expertise (especially when it comes to the musical aspect) and who seem to consider said admission price a free pass to being unnecessarily rude. None of the singers or the conductor deserve boos. They're only booing their own classiness void.

Do I find the orchestral playing riveting and inspired? Quite honestly no. But it is more than competent and adequate. At worst, don't clap the conductor. If the man to my front-right boos the conductor again during Siegfried, it may be I who will cause a scandal at Bayreuth.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Rasa said:


> ...
> I was highly surprised and turned off by the incredible disrespect shown by the audience, who boo'ed half the cast _and_ the conductor. I would like to know where these orcs have their year-through opera subscription. It must be a god-tier opera house_ that doesn't exist_.
> ...


Those that were booing might've been highly surprised and turned off by what they were seeing and hearing. I guess one could just walk out. Anyway I think producers/directors/conductors should flex their non-reactionary visions within their _own_ work, rather than piggybacking on someone else's. I watched a little bit of the videos and it just looks totally incoherent to me. But if you liked it, great.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

I was fortunate enough to have the choice between seeing this season's Bayreuth Ring or next season's Berlin Ring (most likely Barenboim's last). I didn't hesitate to choose the Berlin Ring. And no, it wasn't due to the stagings. Berlin's cast and conductor was superior to the Bavarian offering.

I will go and see the Ring at Bayreuth again. Yes, we are unlikely to see a great staging there in our lifetimes, but it's like that phrase about the past being a foreign country, "They do things differently there." Bayreuth is a foreign country, Wagner sounds different there. And that's how it's meant to sound (or Wagner didn't know what he was doing.) If you have issues with the staging you can always close your eyes...

N.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The Conte said:


> Yes, we are unlikely to see a great staging there in our lifetimes, but it's like that phrase about the past being a foreign country, "They do things differently there." Bayreuth is a foreign country, Wagner sounds different there. And that's how it's meant to sound (or Wagner didn't know what he was doing.) If you have issues with the staging you can always close your eyes...
> 
> N.


You seem to be saying that it's the acoustic that matters most in a performance of a Wagner opera, or at least that it matters more than the staging.

Remember that the only opera he wrote with the acoustics of Bayreuth in mind is _Parsifal. _The way the other operas sound there is _not_ the way they were meant to sound. Many feel that the artistic gain resulting from hiding the orchestra and muting its power relative to the singers is offset by a loss of orchestral presence and color.

Congratulations on having the wherewithall to gamble on the artistic crapshoot which is Bayreuth today. Many of us don't have the privilege of making expensive journeys to take in stage shows with our eyes closed, even when the singing is better than what is often heard at Bayreuth (or anywhere else, for that matter). Of course we can always close both our ears and our eyes and savor the luxurious wooden seats...


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Rasa said:


> None of the singers or the conductor deserve boos. They're only booing their own classiness void.


"The booers would disagree, but I found much of interest in this production. The Nibelheim scene, the killing of Fafner and the ending of _Götterdämmerung_ all work well in dramatic terms, and in each case, the additions and changes that Schwarz has made bring new and valuable perspectives." -Gavin Nixon








theartsdesk at the Bayreuth Festival Ring 2022 - a jumbled mess of ideas, some of them compelling


It is mid-way through the new Ring cycle, and we are taking lunch outside the old town hall on the high street in Bayreuth. Discussion at neighbouring tables is intense: “The Ring is a child!”, “Why does Wotan have no spear?”, “The pyramid in the box – what is that all about?”




theartsdesk.com


----------



## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

Rasa said:


> The second showing of Die Walküre gave me some better insight as to why performances here become the stuff of legends. The first act was a perfect mini-opera by itself. Launched into orbit by Klaus Florian Voght who is a vibrator-free tenor that one can actually understand without subtitles (I damn these conservatives and their disdain for subtitling), the act was then launched inter-galactically by the hurrican that is Lise Davidsen. Slightly vibrato driven, but with a clear tone core and colour, one can feel her sing when she unleashes at the appropriate times.


Many who love Wagnerian opera have dramatically (pun intended ;-) different views than yourself. For example, the fact that you consider Voght's heldentenor as a plus in a _Die Walkure_ performance, tells me that there are some rather stark differences between what we consider great Wagnerian singers.

I also think you are confusing an overly wide and unattractive vibrato (something that is a borderline wobble) with the technique itself. There is nothing wrong with using lots of vibrato, in fact there is good historical evidence that this is what Wagner would have expected, but many singers today have an overly prominent and slow vibrato action.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> You seem to be saying that it's the acoustic that matters most in a performance of a Wagner opera, or at least that it matters more than the staging.


No, not at all. I DO think that some of the comments here about Bayreuth stagings are exaggerated. I've enjoyed about 50% of the productions I've seen there and their last Parsifal and Lohengrin weren't anymore 'wacky' than what gets served up at the ROH or La Scala. It's all relative, of course, and you could quite rightly point out that comparing production values there with other houses today misses the point that the productions aren't as good as they were in the past (whether at Bayreuth or elsewhere).

I was actually thinking about the Ring and how that sounds at Bayreuth and I agree that other than the Tetralogy and Parsifal there's no need to go to Bayreuth. (Wagner was formulating his theories about his ideal opera house when writing at least parts of the Ring and its music suits that space.) I would also go so far to say that if you haven't heard Parsifal at Bayreuth, then you haven't heard it at all. I was lucky enough to see a definitive Parsifal in Berlin before seeing it at Bayreuth, but there was still something very special about hearing the opera properly even if the performance and production weren't first rate.

People are, of course, constrained by budgets and I'm not suggesting that people go to Bayreuth every year. However, most people can afford to go once (even if only to see a single Parsifal) and I think it worth it even if the performance isn't as good as you might find in Berlin, Munich or at the Met.

N.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The Conte said:


> No, not at all. I DO think that some of the comments here about Bayreuth stagings are exaggerated. I've enjoyed about 50% of the productions I've seen there and their last Parsifal and Lohengrin weren't anymore 'wacky' than what gets served up at the ROH or La Scala. It's all relative, of course, and you could quite rightly point out that comparing production values there with other houses today misses the point that the productions aren't as good as they were in the past (whether at Bayreuth or elsewhere).
> 
> I was actually thinking about the Ring and how that sounds at Bayreuth and I agree that other than the Tetralogy and Parsifal there's no need to go to Bayreuth. (Wagner was formulating his theories about his ideal opera house when writing at least parts of the Ring and its music suits that space.) I would also go so far to say that if you haven't heard Parsifal at Bayreuth, then you haven't heard it at all. I was lucky enough to see a definitive Parsifal in Berlin before seeing it at Bayreuth, but there was still something very special about hearing the opera properly even if the performance and production weren't first rate.
> 
> ...


Wieland Wagner's famous _Parsifal,_ which played at Bayreuth from 1951 to the mid-1960s (I forget the year it closed) is the one Bayreuth production I deeply regret having missed. If it were still in the repertoire and Knappersbusch and some of those wonderful casts were still around to perform it, I would save up my shekels and make the pilgrimage. We're fortunate to have recordings from many of those years, and even on recordings (especially the 1962 stereo recording) you can hear how the covered pit and the acoustics of the house enhance the velvety blends of Wagner's orchestration, so different in character from the bolder colors of the _Ring. _The magic of the place really comes through in that opera. In the other operas I prefer the more vivid, distinct, up-close colors of studio recordings, although the dark, blended sonorities of _Tristan_ fare pretty well.


----------



## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

Rasa said:


> I'm sure many Wagner acolytes can't stand modern opera practice, but frankly... I don't give a damn. It's a tedious discussion.


No, what's tedious is the trick of entering a discussion, making points that should be backed up with arguments, not doing so, ignoring all the actual arguments against your position, and then dismissing anyone who disagrees with you with an ad hominem and saying that the discussion doesn't matter anyway. You obviously _do_ give a damn about this issue or you wouldn't need to describe the people who disagree as "reactionaries" and wouldn't have said that a traditional staging would have earned a "small snub" from you.



Rasa said:


> a collection of rude reactionaries, who seem to confuse the price of their ticket with subject matter expertise


You make positive and negative critical judgments yourself. Are you an expert? Personally, I don't care as I think weight should be given to evidence and argument, not credentials. But if you're going to discount the right of anyone who disagrees with you to do so on the basis of not having them, you'd better have them.

On the substance, why is it reactionary to want staging that fits the spirit of the text and story, but not reactionary to want the music to be unaltered, as you've said you prefer? You've offered no conceptual distinction between staging and music that makes it reasonable to say that altering one is good and necessary and altering the other is not. Wanting to _hear_ Wagner makes perfect sense but wanting to _see _Wagner is silly. Why? How is playing such old pieces of music at all not "reactionary"?



Rasa said:


> Were this staged with the costumes and décores one can enjoy at that small but pleasant Wagner museum


Nobody here is claiming that the costumes from the original production must be used. We are saying that the staging should complement the music and be true to the _spirit _of the original text and dramatic situation. As Woodduck said:


Woodduck said:


> This doesn't imply an attempt to replicate the stagings of 1876. Anyone who thinks that respect for the works requires tinfoil breastplates and stuffed swans has a sadly atrophied imagination.


As I said:


vivalagentenuova said:


> We should respect that and present their works in ways that are true to their spirit -- which, I might add, does not mean absolute fidelity to the text, just as interpretation in the spirit of the music does not mean absolute fidelity to note values.





Rasa said:


> It must be a god-tier opera house_ that doesn't exist_.


Not anymore.

If this is discussion is going to go anywhere, you should address the substantive points made by others:
-- Wagner's music and staging cannot be easily separated because they were explicitly conceived as a unity
-- Changing the staging often makes the text, dramatic situation, and music incoherent, which robs them of expressive power
-- Those who want to see something more in line with what Wagner conceived are shut out because this is never done at Bayreuth (and almost everywhere else)


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> ...Of course we can always close both our ears and our eyes and savor the luxurious wooden seats...


Honestly just being in the venue itself is probably the only reason I'd go now. And even then it'd have to be a free trip. I don't know if I'd boo or not, but I imagine it would be extremely painful to have to sit through one of these reimaginings.


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Yabetz said:


> Sorry to quote myself, but here's an even better example of the phenomenon described in the blog post I cited. The music here sounds acceptably HIP...but that staging...why oh why?


I have a recording taken from these Glyndebourne performances and it is absolutely sublime, although I didn't see the production. A friend of mine, who adores Handel, did see it and she says it was one of the most moving things she has ever seen in the theatre. Taking one scene out of context is hardly fair.

Here's another clip from the same production. 



.

I fnd it both moving and beautiful.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Tsaraslondon said:


> I have a recording taken from these Glyndebourne performances and it is absolutely sublime, although I didn't see the production. A friend of mine, who adores Handel, did see it and she says it was one of the most moving things she has ever seen in the theatre. Taking one scene out of context is hardly fair.
> 
> Here's another clip from the same production.
> 
> ...


To each his own. I find it distracting and an unnecessary imposition of modern sensibilities on an older work. I think an unstaged presentation would be better, and then if someone needs to visualize it as a lethal injection scene for it to have any relevance, then they can do so. And keep it to themselves.

I think a lot of the problem is idiosyncratic individual subtexts and perceptions being put forward in a performance as THE text since all such texts are equally valid. I think this is why the venerable old works can't be left alone but have to be reinterpreted or reimagined. The very odd thing being, again, how in musical terms the original intentions are paramount. Maybe it stems from that handful of post-WWII French philosophers. Not being a philosophy expert, I don't know. Anyway it has produced an incoherent artistic mess, for the most part. In my opinion, of course.


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Yabetz said:


> To each his own. I find it distracting and an unnecessary imposition of modern sensibilities on an older work. I think an unstaged presentation would be better, and then if someone needs to visualize it as a lethal injection scene for it to have any relevance, then they can do so. And keep it to themselves.


Had I just seen the scene you posted, I might well have thought it weird, but in the context of the whole performance it evidenty worked very well. The production was universally acclaimed, even by the usually quite conservative Glyndebourne audiences, unlike the Bayreuth production which was discussed at the beginning of this thread. It is also on video, and this too has had fantastic reviews pretty much across the board.


----------



## Hoffmann (Jun 10, 2013)

The Conte said:


> I was fortunate enough to have the choice between seeing this season's Bayreuth Ring or next season's Berlin Ring (most likely Barenboim's last). I didn't hesitate to choose the Berlin Ring. And no, it wasn't due to the stagings. Berlin's cast and conductor was superior to the Bavarian offering.
> 
> I will go and see the Ring at Bayreuth again. Yes, we are unlikely to see a great staging there in our lifetimes, but it's like that phrase about the past being a foreign country, "They do things differently there." Bayreuth is a foreign country, Wagner sounds different there. And that's how it's meant to sound (or Wagner didn't know what he was doing.) If you have issues with the staging you can always close your eyes...
> 
> N.


I, too, have tickets to the Berlin Ring this fall. I've seen this Ring twice before - first at the Schillertheater (in 2013 during the Staatsoper's renovation) and then in 2018 at the Staatsoper on Unter den Linden. 

I don't much like the production - I think the Rheingold is a mess, what with their flooding the stage and having the singers splash around in the dark. Oh, and then there's the Ring of Fire, when Brunnhilde is lying on a catafalque and red lamps drop from the flies: she looks like an entree at Denny's. There are some fine moments here and there, but I'm really am not a fan of Barenboim's conducting - it sounds like he's phoning it in, with the final moments of Götterdämmerung, which should have me on my feet, instead a big yawn when that plaster-like tableau of (presumably) gods and goddesses descends. 

Why am I doing a third time? I am invited to join a friend, I love Berlin, it is The Ring... and I've gone 2 1/2 years without live opera.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Tsaraslondon said:


> Had I just seen the scene you posted, I might well have thought it weird, but in the context of the whole performance it evidenty worked very well. The production was universally acclaimed, even by the usually quite conservative Glyndebourne audiences, unlike the Bayreuth production which was discussed at the beginning of this thread. It is also on video, and this too has had fantastic reviews pretty much across the board.


Well rave reviews aside, I still have to ask "what's the point?" The storyline of _Theodora -- _which after all is an oratorio and not an opera -- is not so impossibly remote to us moderns that it requires scenes from a Texas execution from last week. In fact to me it's fatally (no pun) incongruous.

As for Bayreuth, the storyline of the Ring as Wagner conceived it is bonkers, although still rooted in Norse myth and eschatology. But Wagner creates something of incredible depth and resonance from it. What modern productions are doing is increasing the bonkers factor a hundredfold while essentially destroying the depth and resonance. After a while I have to wonder if the whole point isn't to deface a famous work of art while still making bank on the name and fame of the artist.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Yabetz said:


> After a while I have to wonder if the whole point isn't to deface a famous work of art while still making bank on the name and fame of the artist.


It's kind of like








Georg Friedrich Haas argues Schubert's Erlkönig...


https://van-magazine.com/mag/schubert-erlkonig/




www.talkclassical.com


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Yabetz said:


> Those that were booing might've been highly surprised and turned off by what they were seeing and hearing. I guess one could just walk out. Anyway I think producers/directors/conductors should flex their non-reactionary visions within their _own_ work, rather than piggybacking on someone else's. I watched a little bit of the videos and it just looks totally incoherent to me. But if you liked it, great.


You can't actually walk out at Bayreuth, they not only lock you in the auditorium, but make a show of doing so, sending a very strong message. Due to the seating arrangement you might also have to crawl over several dozen people. It's just not done. Hell, you'll get hissed at if you shift your weight in your seat and the seat creaks.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Couchie said:


> You can't actually walk out at Bayreuth, they not only lock you in the auditorium, but make a show of doing so, sending a very strong message. Due to the seating arrangement you might also have to crawl over several dozen people. It's just not done. Hell, you'll get hissed at if you shift your weight in your seat and the seat creaks.


Wagner didn't want ANYone walking out.


----------



## Ulrich (5 mo ago)

The thing with today’s directors is that they can’t manage to produce a good performance, so the best they can do is produce a scandal, just so that everybody writes and reads and talks about it.
I‘m not generally opposed to modern performance practice. I’m just opposed to changing a piece in a way that completely ignores the original intent, making it unrecognizable.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Couchie said:


> You can't actually walk out at Bayreuth, they not only lock you in the auditorium, but make a show of doing so, sending a very strong message.


So you're locked in there for this much amount of time-


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Just wait til Maximianno Cobra takes the baton at Bayreuth. 

Anyway, this is how you do it:


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

By the way...

"The first chairs at Bayreuth looked like this:"
Maaaaan...


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Yabetz said:


> Just wait til Maximianno Cobra takes the baton at Bayreuth.
> 
> Anyway, this is how you do it:
> View attachment 172699


What is the stagehand at the front of each vehicle holding?


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Yabetz said:


> Just wait til Maximianno Cobra takes the baton at Bayreuth.


_ Meistersinger_ will be about nine hours long.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> What is the stagehand at the front of each vehicle holding?


I was wondering if it's a steering bar, although it looks like two of them are about to collide, which wouldn't be too pleasant for the Rhine maidens perched above. By the way those images are from wagneropera.net. I also wonder if those chairs were for the orchestra or audience or both.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Yabetz said:


> "The first chairs at Bayreuth looked like this:"
> Maaaaan...


There weren't _thorns_ on them?



Yabetz said:


> it's a steering bar,


with the legendary Rhine maidens providing the electric power, and the two guys at the back of each vehicle trying to control it,




_"Welcome to Bayreuth Amusement Park."_



Woodduck said:


> _ Meistersinger_ will be about nine hours long.


_"You said we were going to have fun!"
"'Die Meistersinger' is a comedy. The longer the better."_


----------



## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Rasa said:


> The staging was again, competent. I fail to see why it would generate such a scancal


It renders about 90+% of the libretto into nonsense.

Forcing the singers to sing about people, races, places, things, and plot lines, that are in no way, shape, manner, or form, represented in the staging.

This is not difficult to understand.


----------



## Ulrich (5 mo ago)

lextune said:


> It renders about 90+% of the libretto into nonsense.
> 
> Forcing the singers to sing about people, races, places, things, and plot lines, that are in no way, shape, manner, or form, represented in the staging.
> 
> This is not difficult to understand.


It leaves one to wonder why such productions are even allowed to be called _Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner_, or whatever work it pretends to be.
In my experience this is even worse in drama theater, where you don’t even have the music to make the piece at least remotely recognizable. If you weren’t holding a ticket to, let’s say, Macbeth in your hands you would hardly know what it is that they play.
There is however an exception to this. I’m normally not a huge musical fan, but I recently went to the Phantom of the Opera and Cats with my wife. I was impressed how everything about the plot, costumes, and even makeup, was followed to the letter. Maybe that’s because Webber is still alive and he would just sue everyone who did otherwise.
Such a shame that Wagner’s family is going along with everything that’s being done to his work.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Ulrich said:


> It leaves one to wonder why such productions are even allowed to be called _Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner_, or whatever work it pretends to be.
> ...


Partly the deconstructionist soup we live in, partly $$$$$$$$$$$$$. Productions and artistic visions like that will not put butts in seats without a famous name attached.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Yabetz said:


> $$$$$$$$$$$$$


What will convince them that's not the way to go about doing business?
If the sight of a bunch of spectators crying, booing, and demanding refunds won't.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

hammeredklavier said:


> What will convince them that's not the way to go about doing business?
> If the sight of a bunch of spectators crying, booing, and demanding refunds won't.


People not going, I guess. No more $$$$$$$$$$. As long as there's enough of an audience it will continue.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

lextune said:


> It renders about 90+% of the libretto into nonsense.


It turns the stuff into a comedy, in other words. You know though, there is an old saying "tragedy+time=comedy".


----------



## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Another review that describes in some detail the painful disconnect between the libretto and the production. 








A Ring at Bayreuth that goes nowhere | TheArticle


The new production of Wagner’s Ring cycle at Bayreuth never quite settles down. My review of Rheingold and Die Walkür...




www.thearticle.com


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

lextune said:


> Another review that describes in some detail the painful disconnect between the libretto and the production.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


From that review:

*Brünnhilde’s horse Grane is a man in a three piece suit, a sort of chaperone who gets into conflict with Siegfried in the third opera when he approaches Brünnhilde. She stands, shrouded, in sunglasses, her face wrapped in bandages.

Then, in the final opera, Hagen’s half-brother, the hapless Gunther, wears a T-shirt emblazoned (in English) with the question: “Who the f*** is Grane?” Yet Brünnhilde’s horse, her faithful companion, is no longer there for her immolation in a funeral pyre that doesn’t exist. Despite her demand for its preparation, no one did anything.*

Wagner's descendents should be arrested, tried for cultural vandalism, and imprisoned. _Gotterdammerung_ all of them.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Seems to me that the idea of giving the people what they might actually want to see is anathema at Bayreuth. Productions such as this amount to nothing more than treating the public - the PAYING public - with utter contempt. Surely some of the cast must have been inwardly crippled with embarrassment when they realised how it was going to presented?


----------



## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

elgar's ghost said:


> Surely some of the cast must have been inwardly crippled with embarrassment when they realised how it was going to presented?


Without a doubt. 

Imagine working your whole life on the art of singing.

Through tireless effort, and the grace of your talent, you reach the peak of the profession.

Then you stand there, on one of the most hallowed stages the world has ever known, singing with all the passion and conviction you can manage...

...to your steed, ...that isn't there.

In heart wrenching song you greet your faithful (nonexistent) friend, singing to nothing. Then bid the empty space a loving farewell.

You sing of the stolen gold, (that never was), forged into a ring (that isn't there), and bid the ravens (that aren't there) to "tell your lords the tidings that here on the Rhine ye have learned!" (You aren't at the Rhine, you never were, [despite singing about hundreds of times in the last 15 hours or so] and none of the things "learned" have ever been represented on stage)

Finally you call for a funeral pyre to immolate yourself, and the nonexistent ring and steed. And everyone stands around looking at you. Doing nothing. 

And on and on the nonsense goes.

You could literally open the libretto anywhere and do this sort of commentary.

If the singers have even an ounce of artistic integrity, and were free to speak the truth in their heart's, they would admit to despising the director of this pile of trash.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

elgar's ghost said:


> Seems to me that the idea of giving the people what they might actually want to see is anathema at Bayreuth. Productions such as this amount to nothing more than treating the public - the PAYING public - with utter contempt. Surely some of the cast must have been inwardly crippled with embarrassment when they realised how it was going to presented?


I always wonder what singers think of the productions they appear in. With new productions they can't know until they begin rehearsals what they'll be asked to do, and then they have to be discreet about speaking their minds. Occasionally someone has the courage to speak up, or even withdraw from a production, but they can't afford to do too much of that.


----------



## Ulrich (5 mo ago)

lextune said:


> If the singers have even an ounce of artistic integrity, and were free to speak the truth in their heart's, they would admit to despising the director of this pile of trash.


Are you sure? I thoroughly doubt that the singers are any better than the directors or the conductors who participate in such nonsense. Whenever I hear an interview with a singer, they talk a lot about how they feel about a piece and what it means to them, not so much what it might actually mean or what the composer meant. I get the sense that they are part of a very inwardly looking community who constantly tell themselves how great they are doing, until they actually believe it. What we get to see is simply the result of a narcissistic attitude that it’s all about themselves.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Ulrich said:


> Are you sure? I thoroughly doubt that the singers are any better than the directors or the conductors who participate in such nonsense. Whenever I hear an interview with a singer, they talk a lot about how they feel about a piece and what it means to them, not so much what it might actually mean or what the composer meant. I get the sense that they are part of a very inwardly looking community who constantly tell themselves how great they are doing, until they actually believe it. What we get to see is simply the result of a narcissistic attitude that it’s all about themselves.


I agree. Unfortunately I imagine most if not all that cast (and probably the orchestra as well) was quite pleased with the production and would probably throw the word "visionary" in there somewhere to describe it.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> _Gotterdammerung_ all of them.











*"GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG SIE ALLE!"*


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Don't be too hard on the singers. If a singer is going to take part in a production he has to "look on the bright side" and convince himself of the production's value in order to give his best to the audience.


----------



## Ulrich (5 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> I always wonder what singers think of the productions they appear in. With new productions they can't know until they begin rehearsals what they'll be asked to do, and then they have to be discreet about speaking their minds. Occasionally someone has the courage to speak up, or even withdraw from a production, but they can't afford to do too much of that.


Not too long ago I watched a broadcast on Austrian TV with Jonas Kaufmann, where he talked about a Parsifal production he appeared in. The whole piece was set in prison and all the characters where inmates. In short, it was complete nonsense. The way Kaufmann tried to explain how this actually made complete sense made me cringe almost as much as the actual staging.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

..............................


----------



## Ulrich (5 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> Don't be too hard on the singers. If a singer is going to take part in a production he has to "look on the bright side" and convince himself of the production's value in order to give his best to the audience.


That’s true. But after everything is said and done, when they’re sitting in a studio talking about the production, they could at least express some desire to once in while sing in a production of the actual piece instead of a travesty of it, couldn’t they?


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Ulrich said:


> That’s true. But after everything is said and done, when they’re sitting in a studio talking about the production, they could at least express some desire to once in while sing in a production of the actual piece instead of a travesty of it, couldn’t they?


Theoretically... Unless they're just resigned to living in the Decline of the West.


----------



## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> I always wonder what singers think of the productions they appear in. With new productions they can't know until they begin rehearsals what they'll be asked to do, and then they have to be discreet about speaking their minds. Occasionally someone has the courage to speak up, or even withdraw from a production, but they can't afford to do too much of that.


They must pay the rent at least. 
Those who can just go away or retort are in minority.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

I think it's artistic insensitivity and ignorance. It reminds me a little of that stupid film version of Beowulf in which Hrothgar and Grendel's mother were lovers who together produced the monster. In the first place trying to make a film of Beowulf destroys one of the things that makes the poem so great, and that is that the poet leaves it to the reader to visualize what Grendel and his mother look like. Very few visual details are ever given. And second it's an elegy and not an epic. It's like trying to make a film out of "Lycidas". Just stupidity and lazy glomming.


----------



## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

You can’t really blame the singers. It’s their means to make a living. The ones to blame are those that agree to the half-baked ideas that directors come up with. I personally would insist that whoever I appoint to direct a new production of anything should give me a clear outline of what they intend to do and a total justification for every crazy idea they have. If it’s set in a spaceship then they had better have a cast iron reason for it and how it relates to the libretto which has it set somewhere else. If they can’t justify their conception then they will be chased out of the theatre. Reactionary I know, but it makes me mad!


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

I feel the only way things change is if the singers, especially the ones capable of singing Wotan, Brunnhilde and Siegfried (there are only a handful of them in the world) band together as a sort of union and insist on better "working conditions", writing a strongly-worded letter to Bayreuth that they will not perform there until more traditional stagings (or just less stupid ones) are performed. I believe Waltraud Meier blacklisted Bayreuth in the 90s after she did not like the staging instructions for Tristan und Isolde. More singers need to take a stand and do this!


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> I feel the only way things change is if the singers, especially the ones capable of singing Wotan, Brunnhilde and Siegfried (there are only a handful of them in the world) band together as a sort of union and insist on better "working conditions", writing a strongly-worded letter to Bayreuth that they will not perform there until more traditional stagings (or just less stupid ones) are performed. I believe Waltraud Meier blacklisted Bayreuth after she did not like the staging instructions for Tristan und Isolde. More singers need to take a stand and do this!


Good going, Waltraud. I don't know how you're spending your retirement years, but maybe you could spearhead a Wagner Reformation and nail a New 95 Theses (or at least a Few Theses) to the door of the Festspielhaus. I'm not sure who the Wagner Pope is now, but he needs to get more blowback when he issues his papal bull.


----------



## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

With the emphasis on the ‘bull’!


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Barbebleu said:


> With the emphasis on the ‘bull’!


Precisely. That's why the word is at the end of the sentence. (I guess I could have said papal bull****, but that might cross a line too obviously and get me some unwanted attention.)


----------



## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Precisely. That's why the word is at the end of the sentence. (I guess I could have said papal bull****, but that might cross a line too obviously and get me some unwanted attention.)


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

A rationale often given for this kind of production is that it makes it more accessible to "modern audiences". But 1. was the storyline of the Ring (or of Handel's _Theodora_ for that matter) ever immediately accessible to contemporary audiences? and 2. are "modern audiences" so stupid that everything has to be adjusted to the "now"? If someone reads Tolkien, do they have to imagine it as taking place in NYC last week for it to make sense? Rhetorical question of course.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Yabetz said:


> _A rationale often given for this kind of production is that it makes it more accessible to "modern audiences"_. But 1. was the storyline of the Ring (or of Handel's _Theodora_ for that matter) ever immediately accessible to contemporary audiences? and 2. are "modern audiences" so stupid that everything has to be adjusted to the "now"? If someone reads Tolkien, do they have to imagine it as taking place in NYC last week for it to make sense? Rhetorical question of course.


Therein lies a large part of the problem, I think. I imagine "modern audiences" are never actually lobbied to see what kind of staging they would actually favour - it's just a condescending way of saying "we're gonna do it this way and if you don't like it, then tough..."


----------



## marlow (11 mo ago)

As long as people are stupid and gullible enough to go and pay good money to see these idiotic productions, idiots will still make them. If people would just put their brain in gear and realise that the Emperor had no clothes and boycott the nonsense then we would see considerably less of it.


----------



## Ulrich (5 mo ago)

marlow said:


> As long as people are stupid and gullible enough to go and pay good money to see these idiotic productions, idiots will still make them. If people would just put their brain in gear and realise that the Emperor had no clothes and boycott the nonsense then we would see considerably less of it.


Of course, but there’s no practical solution to this from my point of view. Most people who posted here won’t go. But that has little to no effect. After all, the people in charge of those productions don’t need to convince a majority of the public. They don’t even need a qualified minority. They need just enough people to fill the theater. The only thing you can really do as an individual is to not send your kids to art schools that teach this nonsense. Because that’s where it starts. But I fear we are already at a point of no return. As it has already been hinted here before, we live in the decline of the West.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

elgar's ghost said:


> Therein lies a large part of the problem, I think. I imagine "modern audiences" are never actually lobbied to see what kind of staging they would actually favour - it's just a condescending way of saying "we're gonna do it this way and if you don't like it, then tough..."


Ha, yeah, or "if you don't like it then you're just a hopeless reactionary and you're betraying that trailblazing Wagnerian spirit..."


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Yabetz said:


> "if you don't like it then you're just a hopeless reactionary and you're betraying that trailblazing Wagnerian spirit..."


"You don't like _denazifying_ Wagner?"


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> "You don't like _denazifying_ Wagner?"


You're way behind the times. Wieland Wagner did that in 1951.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> You're way behind the times. Wieland Wagner did that in 1951.


I mean their attitude- isn't it like _"If you don't like it then you're a Nazi!"_


Couchie said:


> If we return to original stagings now, we might re-ignite the flame of Nazism! (I joke).


----------



## marlow (11 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> You're way behind the times. Wieland Wagner did that in 1951.


Ironic really as he was the one who gained the most from his relationship with Hitler during the Nazi years!


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

marlow said:


> Ironic really as he was the one who gained the most from his relationship with Hitler during the Nazi years!


Not ironic that he'd want to put that behind him.


----------



## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

And here we go again! Is it impossible to have a Wagner thread where the word nazi does not appear? It seems so.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Barbebleu said:


> And here we go again! Is it impossible to have a Wagner thread where the word nazi does not appear? It seems so.


Probably, and the whole Wagner-as-proto-Hitler thing probably does figure into these bizarre manglings, although how anybody can get a pro-Nazi message out of the Ring as written mystifies me. It's the opposite of Nazi. As for Wieland Wagner and Hitler, neither of my late grandfathers are responsible for what I do, so it's irrelevant.


----------



## annaw (May 4, 2019)

Barbebleu said:


> And here we go again! Is it impossible to have a Wagner thread where the word nazi does not appear? It seems so.


I see that nothing much has changed since the last time I was more active here .

I think a mention of Nazis should be considered a potential identifier of proper Wagner threads!


----------



## Ulrich (5 mo ago)

I do not believe the Wagner-Nazi association is warranted. It is however not without reason.
1. there’s Wagners own antisemitic views he expressed. 2. Hitler was in a way inspired by Wagner‘s work. 3. there were indeed personal ties between the Wagner family and Hitler, especially Winifred Wagner.
None of this has anything to do with the _Ring_ or any other work by Wagner of course. But people in Germany and Austria make a great deal out of everything the Nazis did or liked in their personal life and want to distance themselves from it as far as they can. Some here even believe eating Hitler‘s favorite meal is an expression of Nazism. I’m not kidding.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Ulrich said:


> I do not believe the Wagner-Nazi association is warranted. It is however not without reason.
> 1. there’s Wagners own antisemitic views he expressed. 2. Hitler was in a way inspired by Wagner‘s work. 3. there were indeed personal ties between the Wagner family and Hitler, especially Winifred Wagner.
> None of this has anything to do with the _Ring_ or any other work by Wagner of course. But people in Germany and Austria make a great deal out of everything the Nazis did or liked in their personal life and want to distance themselves from it as far as they can. *Some here even believe eating Hitler‘s favorite meal is an expression of Nazism. I’m not kidding.*


That's amazing. I don't expect to live long enough to see German culture get over this. Younger people may have that to look forward to. Meanwhile we can only discuss Wagner's works in terms of what he actually put into them and ask people who perform them to respect their manifest content. Alas, I don't expect to live long enough...


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Ulrich said:


> I do not believe the Wagner-Nazi association is warranted. It is however not without reason.
> 1. there’s Wagners own antisemitic views he expressed. 2. Hitler was in a way inspired by Wagner‘s work. 3. there were indeed personal ties between the Wagner family and Hitler, especially Winifred Wagner.
> None of this has anything to do with the _Ring_ or any other work by Wagner of course. But people in Germany and Austria make a great deal out of everything the Nazis did or liked in their personal life and want to distance themselves from it as far as they can. Some here even believe eating Hitler‘s favorite meal is an expression of Nazism. I’m not kidding.


As I said Nietzsche should be regarded the same way. After all Nietzsche's sister was pretty close to the Nazis. It's opening a can of worms but I don't know why Stalin apologists of the 30s-50s get a free pass. The bottom line is Wagner expressed antisemitic views, and antisemitism and racism are the only unpardonable sins left. My own personal feeling is that Wagner expressed reprehensible views. He may have been a complete **** as a human being, but I have a hard time believing that someone that could produce the art that he did was absolute evil.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Yabetz said:


> As I said Nietzsche should be regarded the same way. After all Nietzsche's sister was pretty close to the Nazis. It's opening a can of worms but I don't know why Stalin apologists of the 30s-50s get a free pass. The bottom line is Wagner expressed antisemitic views, and antisemitism and racism are the only unpardonable sins left. My own personal feeling is that Wagner expressed reprehensible views. *He may have been a complete **** as a human being, but I have a hard time believing that someone that could produce the art that he did was absolute evil.*


Of course he wasn't. One of the most startling documents pertaining to the question is the letter that Hermann Levi, Wagner's conductor for the premiere of _Parsifal_, wrote to his rabbi father about his notoriously antisemitic employer. He wrote:

_"You certainly could and you should like Wagner. He is the best and noblest of men. Of course our contemporaries misunderstand and slander him. It is the duty of the world to darken those who shine. Goethe did not fare any better. That he bears no petty antisemitism like a country squire or a protestant bigot is seen by the way he treats me, Rubinstein, the late Tausig whom he loved dearly…Even his fight against what he calls „Jewishness“ in music and modern literature springs from the noblest of motives. I am convinced that posterity will learn what we who are close to him know already: that in him we had just as great man as a musician. I consider myself very lucky to be working with such a man and I thank God for it every day.“_

We tend to think of people, especially people in history, in terms of their most dramatic characteristics - the things that make a good story. Wagner was a dramatic individual who lived a dramatic life, and subsequent historical events dramatized him even further. Wagner, as a person we might know and relate to, disappears behind a comic book character, and too often his work does too. We don't have to agree that he was "the best and noblest of men," but he was certainly far richer and more interesting than what popular culture has made of him.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Yabetz said:


> As I said Nietzsche should be regarded the same way. After all Nietzsche's sister was pretty close to the Nazis. It's opening a can of worms _but I don't know why Stalin apologists of the 30s-50s get a free pass_.


Being an ally on the winning side probably has much to do with it, even though the USSR probably didn't give a stuff about the fate of any country in Western Europe under the Nazis before the initial onslaught of Operation Barbarossa gave them the most brutal of wake-up calls. Surprising what can be overlooked after all this time when the "yes, but the USSR helped to defeat Fascism" card emerges from the sleeve. Even today when the Communist Party of Britain and other Red factions march in London some banners bearing Stalin's image are still in evidence.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

The Hitlers and Stalins of the world are dead inside. Whatever his faults, Wagner wasn't.


----------



## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Of course he wasn't. One of the most startling documents pertaining to the question is the letter that Hermann Levi, Wagner's conductor for the premiere of _Parsifal_, wrote to his rabbi father about his notoriously antisemitic employer. He wrote:
> 
> _"You certainly could and you should like Wagner. He is the best and noblest of men. Of course our contemporaries misunderstand and slander him. It is the duty of the world to darken those who shine. Goethe did not fare any better. That he bears no petty antisemitism like a country squire or a protestant bigot is seen by the way he treats me, Rubinstein, the late Tausig whom he loved dearly…Even his fight against what he calls „Jewishness“ in music and modern literature springs from the noblest of motives. I am convinced that posterity will learn what we who are close to him know already: that in him we had just as great man as a musician. I consider myself very lucky to be working with such a man and I thank God for it every day.“_
> 
> We tend to think of people, especially people in history, in terms of their most dramatic characteristics - the things that make a good story. Wagner was a dramatic individual who lived a dramatic life, and subsequent historical events dramatized him even further. Wagner, as a person we might know and relate to, disappears behind a comic book character, and too often his work does too. We don't have to agree that he was "the best and noblest of men," but he was certainly far richer and more interesting than what popular culture has made of him.


The "friendship" of Wagner and Levi is an interesting case. Levi stayed in Wagner's apartment as a house guest several times, and Wagner displayed an enormous amount of trust in Levi musically.

For his part, Levi adored Wagner, and he seemed to react to Wagner's occasionally rancid outbursts of anti-semitism towards him with a "there-he-goes-again" humorous attitude. On at least one occasion Wagner went on a rant which "embarrassed everyone, including himself".

None of this absolves Wagner of his often virulant anti-semitism of course. But inviting Jewish "friends" to stay in his home, and in Levi's case, attempting to convince him to convert to Christianity, speaks to what Wagner thought "should" be 'done' about Judaism.

Around the same time as the Parsifal premier, Wagner said to Cosima: "if I were ever to write about the Jews again, I would say that I had nothing against them; the trouble is that they approached us Germans prematurely, when we were not sufficiently able to assimilate this element." Again, not exactly noble, but his feeling is one of conversion/assimilation. (To be fair, he never stopped his tirades against the Jews even after saying this to Cosima though.)

As Woodduck says, we don't have to agree that he was "the best and noblest of men," as Levi wrote, but neither should we completely discount the feelings and words of a brilliant man and musician (Levi) who knew Wagner very well, and was a literal victim of Wagner's anti-semitism.


----------



## RuggiràIntornoATe! (5 mo ago)

Ulrich said:


> I do not believe the Wagner-Nazi association is warranted. It is however not without reason.
> 1. there’s Wagners own antisemitic views he expressed. 2. Hitler was in a way inspired by Wagner‘s work. 3. there were indeed personal ties between the Wagner family and Hitler, especially Winifred Wagner.
> None of this has anything to do with the _Ring_ or any other work by Wagner of course. But people in Germany and Austria make a great deal out of everything the Nazis did or liked in their personal life and want to distance themselves from it as far as they can. Some here even believe eating Hitler‘s favorite meal is an expression of Nazism. I’m not kidding.











Austrian cop gets 10-month sentence for posting photo of Hitler's favourite meal


The post was shared on Hitler's birthday




nationalpost.com





There is so much freedom of expression in Austria... Wow


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

A glowing review of the seemingly less bizarre _Tristan und Isolde _production (sorry if somebody already brought this up):









Bayreuth Festival 2022 Review: Tristan und Isolde - OperaWire


While taking in a divisive production of “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” it was quite refreshing to take in the August 12 performance of “Tristan und Isolde” and come away hearing deserved bravos and cheers. While most productions are usually planned years in advance, director Roland Schwab was only...




operawire.com


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

lextune said:


> None of this absolves Wagner of his often virulant anti-semitism of course. But inviting Jewish "friends" to stay in his home, and in Levi's case, attempting to convince him to convert to Christianity, speaks to what Wagner thought "should" be 'done' about Judaism.


Should be noted Wagner hated Catholicism and had very odd ideas about Christianity. His ideas about it seem closer to Gnosticism, though I can't find a ton of information on that connection, other than esoterics past and present being rather obsessed with _Parsifal_. The Nag Hammadi library was not discovered until 1945. Wagner, through his attempted reconciliation between Christianity and Indian religion, happened upon something very similar to Gnostic thought.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Yabetz said:


> A glowing review of the seemingly less bizarre _Tristan und Isolde _production (sorry if somebody already brought this up):
> 
> 
> 
> ...


This reviewer relates an entirely different experience:









Is This What You Wanted?


“Is this what you wanted,” Leonard Cohen asks in the refrain of his eponymous song, “to live in a house that is haunted by the ghost of you and me?” With the Bayreuth Festival traditionally opening the house for each performance by having members of the orchestra’s brass section play an...




van-magazine.com





We can listen on YouTube and judge the musical side for ourselves.






For anyone curious as to how Catherine Foster, the Isolde, stacks up against the historical singers offered in Seattleoperafan's recent contest, Isolde's narrative from Act One begins at 29:12. If you want to see how well she holds up through the entire opera, the Liebestod begins at 3:53:50. I'm not urging anyone to listen, though, and please don't hold me responsible for what happens to your state of mind if you do.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> ...
> For anyone curious as to how Catherine Foster, the Isolde, stacks up against the historical singers offered in Seattleoperafan's recent contest, Isolde's narrative from Act One begins at 29:12. If you want to see how well she holds up through the entire opera, the Liebestod begins at 3:53:50. I'm not urging anyone to listen, though, and please don't hold me responsible for what happens to your state of mind if you do.


Well the age of the great Wagnerian singer appears to be long gone. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that for decades the words "Wagner", "antisemitism", "controversial" and "Nazi" have been in close proximity.

PS...the vibrato she applies is unbearably wide and wobbly. That style reminds me of a beginning string player.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Yabetz said:


> Well the age of the great Wagnerian singer appears to be long gone. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that for decades the words "Wagner", "antisemitism", "controversial" and "Nazi" have been in close proximity.


I don't think so. It's just the decline in singing. People with loud wobbly voices know they'd be horribly exposed doing Bellini and think they're safe doing Wagner.



> ...the vibrato she applies is unbearably wide and wobbly. That style reminds me of a beginning string player.


"Applies" and "style" imply choice. These people just can't do any better.


----------



## Ulrich (5 mo ago)

I think it has indeed something to do with the fact that Wagner is no longer as popular as he once was. At the beginning of the 20th century, Wagner was still relatively new and revolutionary. Everyone wanted to sing Wagner. So you got the best singers available to do it. This has held up to about mid 20th century. From there on there’s a steady decline. 

Of course talent may have something to do with it. But if the best singers are not interested and not willing to sing Wagner, you simply have to do with what is left.

Let’s take the Hong Kong Ring by van Zweden for example. Now I think the recording overall is overrated. But who really stands out for me is Matthias Goerne as Wotan. And as far as I know he never before even bothered with the role. I’m certain there are much more great voices going to waste because they’re just not willing to deal with Wagner.


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Well Wagner might be less popular but taking on his music must be extremely daunting and requires loads of talent to pull off successfully. There's a lot of such recorded talent from the last century but it doesn't seem to be there much anymore.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Ulrich said:


> I think it has indeed something to do with the fact that Wagner is no longer as popular as he once was. At the beginning of the 20th century, Wagner was still relatively new and revolutionary. Everyone wanted to sing Wagner. So you got the best singers available to do it. This has held up to about mid 20th century. From there on there’s a steady decline.


I'd need to see some facts and figures on these statements. I'm not sure that any of them are true. If Wagner is really less popular than formerly, isn't is as plausible to think that he'd be more popular if Flagstad and Melchior - or Nilsson and Vickers - were around to sing him? Heck, I'd even consider putting out the money to fly to New York for them.



> Of course talent may have something to do with it. But if the best singers are not interested and not willing to sing Wagner, you simply have to do with what is left.


What are the best singers singing? Apparently they aren't singing Verdi, whose operas are now considered difficult to cast satisfactorily. And they certainly aren't singing Meyerbeer. No one is. If they're singing Handel and Mozart, they're most likely not avoiding Wagner because they don't like him but because they don't have voices of the necessary size.



> Let’s take the Hong Kong Ring by van Zweden for example. Now I think the recording overall is overrated. But who really stands out for me is Matthias Goerne as Wotan. And as far as I know he never before even bothered with the role. I’m certain there are much more great voices going to waste because they’re just not willing to deal with Wagner.


Whose great voices are going to waste? Got any names? Birgit Nilsson retired over forty years ago, and while there have been a few decent Isoldes since then we're still waiting for someone to inherit the _hochdramatische sopran_ mantle. Meanwhile we're lucky to have a Brunnhilde as mediocre as Voigt or Goerke singing in major houses and being touted as a leading dramatic soprano. I wish I had some reason to share your confidence that the next Frida Leider is lurking in the chorus.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I'd need to see some facts and figures on these statements. I'm not sure that any of them are true. If Wagner is really less popular than formerly, isn't is as plausible to think that he'd be more popular if Flagstad and Melchior - or Nilsson and Vickers - were around to sing him? Heck, I'd even consider putting out the money to fly to New York for them.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yes, this! The comments you were responding to were somewhat absurd.

N.


----------



## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> This reviewer relates an entirely different experience:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Well, that is some god****l singing. Not one of them could carry a tune in a bucket. Yikes, my poor ears. Even Zeppenfeld, who I usually have a lot of time for, is wehwalt in this. Who knew that the sixties was actually the last golden age of Wagnerian singing!


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Ulrich said:


> Of course talent may have something to do with it. But if the best singers are not interested and not willing to sing Wagner, you simply have to do with what is left.


You don't choose to sing Wagner... Wagner chooses you. It's a calling. Like being called to become a monk or nun. If there are a lack of Wagnerian singers, it is because the current zeitgeist is unworthy to receive them. Art is a mirror held up to society, and our society reflects the vocal stylings of Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, not Flagstad.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Barbebleu said:


> Well, that is some god****l singing. Not one of them could carry a tune in a bucket. Yikes, my poor ears. Even Zeppenfeld, who I usually have a lot of time for, is wehwalt in this. Who knew that the sixties was actually the last golden age of Wagnerian singing!


I sure didn't know it at the time, and maybe the '60s were more silver than gold, but that really was the twilight of the gods. Look at some of the leading singers on Wagner recordings made during the two decades following WWII, in the recording studios and in the theater: Frick, Weber, Neidlinger, Uhde, Hotter, London, Vickers, Thomas, King, Klose, Ludwig, Flagstad, Nilsson, Varnay, Grummer... Powerful, unforgettable voices, utterly individual in timbre, that met the demands of the music and drama with style, confidence and authority. We can find still greater Wagner singing if we look back beyond WWII, but enough singers from that period were still around and still singing well enough to make important recordings in the LP era.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Couchie said:


> You don't choose to sing Wagner... Wagner chooses you.


Is this a reference to Harry Potter ("The wand chooses the wizard"), or 


Couchie said:


> Wagner resided in the shadows waiting for me, until I was ready.


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> Couchie said:
> Wagner resided in the shadows waiting for me, until I was ready.


Do you have a catalog of my old posts somewhere? I'm always amazed at your ability to pull skeletons out of my closet. 🥴


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Couchie said:


> Do you have a catalog of my old posts somewhere? I'm always amazed at your ability to pull skeletons out of my closet. 🥴


Seriously how could I forget its _adorableness_..


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

hammeredklavier said:


> Seriously how could I forget its _adorableness_..


Adorable?  For a second I thought I was the next Oscar Wilde...


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Couchie said:


> Do you have a catalog of my old posts somewhere? I'm always amazed at your ability to pull skeletons out of my closet. 🥴


Hammeredklavier keeps files on all the best members. He knows everything we've ever said. If you think you can get away with anything around here, think again.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Hammeredklavier keeps files on all the best members. He knows everything we've ever said. If you think you can get away with anything around here, think again.


I don't believe he has ever quoted me! Should I feel insulted? As Couchie (in his role as the next Oscar Wilde) might say, there's only one thing worse than having your old posts quoted on TC...

N.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The Conte said:


> I don't believe he has ever quoted me! Should I feel insulted? As Couchie (in his role as the next Oscar Wilde) might say, there's only one thing worse than having your old posts quoted on TC...
> 
> N.


Fear not. It's just a matter of time. The wheels of the gods grind slow.


----------



## Ulrich (5 mo ago)

Woodduck said:


> I'd need to see some facts and figures on these statements. I'm not sure that any of them are true. If Wagner is really less popular than formerly, isn't is as plausible to think that he'd be more popular if Flagstad and Melchior - or Nilsson and Vickers - were around to sing him? Heck, I'd even consider putting out the money to fly to New York for them.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I‘m sorry, I was under the impression that this is a rather casual discussion. I didn’t realize that every claim made needs to be immediately substantiated by scientific evidence. If we hold each other accountable to such high standards, the debates will become somewhat difficult to say the least.
So in short, no i cannot provide you with any concrete data. I based my conclusions rather on anecdotal evidence - as most people, who are not scientists, do in their daily lives. Of all the people I know, only about a dozen of them are interested in classical music, and of those only one other person is interested in Wagner. Now I simply imagine this must have been very different in the 1920s and 1930s, even still in the 50s and 60s. This is based on my experience, that in classical and romantic literature and even in early modern literature of the 20th century the topic of classical music in general rather comes up quite frequently, while this seems not so much the case in more recent literature. Again, I have no hard data for this, just personal experience.
Given the fact, that human biology has, to my knowledge, not dramatically changed during the past 60 or so years, it seems to logically follow, that human beings who would be capable to sing Wagner must exist. I cannot name any of those people. I don’t know if they sing Verdi or Mozart or anything at all. It is just my logical conclusion that if talented singers must exist but are not found, it is probably because they are not interested in Wagner and not willing to train their voices to sing his operas.

Now with all that being said it is entirely possible that I am wrong. And if you have any facts and figures for believing so, you are free to share them, since you apparently think that such a thing is necessary in this debate.
But I must say that an argument like _„You don’t choose to sing Wagner… Wagner chooses you“_, which you seem to support, seems rather superficial to me, and not at all facts based.


----------



## Andrew Kenneth (Feb 17, 2018)

Where Have The Great Big Wagner Voices Gone?
=> https://www.princeton.edu/~amoravcs/library/Final Chapter Moravcsik v2 Comments.pdf

Worth reading.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Ulrich said:


> I‘m sorry, I was under the impression that this is a rather casual discussion. I didn’t realize that every claim made needs to be immediately substantiated by scientific evidence. If we hold each other accountable to such high standards, the debates will become somewhat difficult to say the least.


"Casual" may mean different things to different people. I'm not demanding proof of anything. You made a few strong statements, one of which began with "I'm certain." When others are certain of things I find questionable, I might ask them to support their views. Seems perfectly natural to me.



> Given the fact, that human biology has, to my knowledge, not dramatically changed during the past 60 or so years, it seems to logically follow, that human beings who would be capable to sing Wagner must exist. I cannot name any of those people. I don’t know if they sing Verdi or Mozart or anything at all. It is just my logical conclusion that if talented singers must exist but are not found, it is probably because they are not interested in Wagner and not willing to train their voices to sing his operas.


I would agree that there must be people capable, by natural endowment, of singing Wagner well. But natural endowment needs proper training, else we don't get a heldentenor or a dramatic soprano. The real question might be why the great voices being born every day don't end up capable of singing Siegfried.



> But I must say that an argument like _„You don’t choose to sing Wagner… Wagner chooses you“_, which you seem to support, seems rather superficial to me, and not at all facts based.


Couchie's charming aphorism was hardly an "argument," and my liking for it was not in support of any argument.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Andrew Kenneth said:


> Where Have The Great Big Wagner Voices Gone?
> => https://www.princeton.edu/~amoravcs/library/Final Chapter Moravcsik v2 Comments.pdf
> 
> Worth reading.


I'm not finished reading this yet, but I think it deserves a thread of its own, where it might be seen by more people.


----------



## lextune (Nov 25, 2016)

theartsdesk at the Bayreuth Festival Ring 2022 - a jumbled mess of ideas, some of them compelling


It is mid-way through the new Ring cycle, and we are taking lunch outside the old town hall on the high street in Bayreuth. Discussion at neighbouring tables is intense: “The Ring is a child!”, “Why does Wotan have no spear?”, “The pyramid in the box – what is that all about?”




theartsdesk.com





Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse or more ridiculous. 

"One further revelation here: the abducted boy who represented the ring, is now an adult, and the (mute) role is credited as the young Hagen. So Schwarz has combined the ring, the bearer of the curse, with Hagen, who plays out its effects in the final part. Again, it is a huge indulgence, and much of the text from here on bears little relation to what we see on the stage. Combining the ring with Hagen poses particular problems in the final opera, Götterdämmerung, because both play important and distinct roles in the drama. Schwarz’s solution to the problem he has created for himself is to introduce another child, a daughter to Brünnhilde and Siegfried, over whom the protagonists can fight."


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

> the abducted boy who represented the ring, is now an adult, and the (mute) role is credited as the young Hagen.


So I guess in Götterdämmerung Alberich tells Hagen in his sleep to steal Hagen. Oh and in Das Rheingold Alberich steals Hagen who later becomes Hagen whom Alberich urges to steal Hagen.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Yabetz said:


> So I guess in Götterdämmerung Alberich tells Hagen in his sleep to steal Hagen. Oh and in Das Rheingold Alberich steals Hagen who later becomes Hagen whom Alberich urges to steal Hagen.


And furthermore, when Hagen reaches out toward the body of Siegfried to remove Hagen from the dead hero's finger, Siegfried's hand is raised and Hagen recoils from Hagen in fear. Finally, at the end of the story, Hagen plunges into the rising waters of the Rhine to grab Hagen, crying "Get away from Hagen!", and the Rhinemaidens pull Hagen under and drown him while holding Hagen triumphantly aloft. A muscular breed, those Wagnerian sopranos.

Isn't it nice, this feeling that at last we understand what Wagner is trying to tell us?


----------



## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> And furthermore, when Hagen reaches out toward the body of Siegfried to remove Hagen from the dead hero's finger, Siegfried's hand is raised and Hagen recoils from Hagen in fear. Finally, at the end of the story, Hagen plunges into the rising waters of the Rhine to grab Hagen, crying "Get away from Hagen!", and the Rhinemaidens pull Hagen under and drown him while holding Hagen triumphantly aloft. A muscular breed, those Wagnerian sopranos.
> 
> Isn't it nice, this feeling that at last we understand what Wagner is trying to tell us?


A dramatic Möbius strip, and at the end we discover that Hagen is Keyser Soze.


----------

