TOFs And Wagner

In keeping with this Wagner time of year, an extension of the remarks made in my last post.

Responding to an eMail of mine on a Wagner list wherein, with the exception of Das Rheingold, I declared the Karajan recording of Wagner's Ring a "perverse joke" because of Karajan's bizarre conceit that Wagner — even mature Wagner — should be made to sound as intimate and lyrical as Verdi, a TOF (True Opera Fan; like a teenage movie fan, only worse — much worse) lodged objection, and went on to cite his reasons, all of which had to do with the singers involved.

How did I know the responder was a TOF? He went on, and on, and interminably on about the singers and the singing, that's how. The principal (but not sole) distinguishing hallmark of the TOF is that he's convinced opera means Italian-form opera, and is therefore about one thing and one thing only: the singers and the singing. Whenever one encounters a critique of a performance of a mature Wagner work (i.e., those works post-Lohengrin) that dwells interminably on the singers and the singing, one can be certain one is dealing with a TOF, and safely dismiss the critique as being near-worthless. TOFs imagine that the works of the mature Wagner are nothing more than Italian opera writ large and sung in German; a bit like saying the noble elephant is merely a piddling rock hyrax, only bigger and with a trunk.

The mature Wagner operas (more correctly called music-dramas) are, of course, nothing of the sort. They're animals of a different order altogether from Italian and Italian-form opera, and share with them only the technical apparatus of performance: an orchestra and conductor, singers, a sung text (libretto), an orchestral score, and mise en scène. Beyond that they've nothing in common.

If one were pressed to choose the principal element of a Wagner performance — that element on which the success or failure of the realization of the work most depends — the choice, hands down, would have to be the orchestra. Without a first-rate orchestra with a first-rate Wagner conductor on the podium, not merely a first-rate conductor, nothing — and I do mean nothing — can save the performance from being second-rate at best; not even were all the sopranos Nilssons, all the tenors Melchiors, and all the bass-baritones, Papes. By contrast, a performance of an Italian opera with a merely competent orchestra with even a mere accurate time-beater on the podium would prove just dandy if less than ideal so long as all the voices were superb.

Why it that so? It's so because Wagner's music-dramas are about the drama, the core of which resides within the orchestra, while the typical Italian opera is about the singers, the "songs," and the singing almost exclusively, everything else being at bottom mere pretext and platform.

Perhaps you doubt my word on this (as I'm fairly certain you will). If so, may I suggest to you the following little thought experiment.

Imagine a first performance (first so that one could not mentally fill in anything missing) of, say, Verdi's grandest grand opera, Aida, done in a house with an almost non-existent budget; so much non-existent that all it can afford beside the singers' fees are a piano and piano-player. The singers, however, are the very best; superb voices all.

Despite the absence of all the normal operatic accouterments (i.e., the "platform") it would still be experienced as a coherent, comprehensible, even an almost satisfying performance notwithstanding its being way less than ideal, wouldn't it?

You betcha it would as the core Italian-form opera elements (i.e., the "songs," and superb voices singing them) would remain intact, and the musical and dramatic coherence and sense of the work, such as it is, largely preserved.

Now imagine a first performance of, say, Walküre, or worse, Siegfried, under the same set of constraints.

What's that? You can't?

Neither can I.

I remember a particularly revealing discussion I once had with a knowledgeable TOF — in my experience, one of the most knowledgeable, and an opera professional to boot — concerning the long period of silence and out-of-spotlight time a certain famous soprano would have to endure as Isolde in the last part of Act II of Tristan und Isolde (i.e., subsequent to the so-called Liebesnacht episode), having but a few lines to sing near the act's very end. The discussion turned on how difficult that must be for a performer, but, I suggested, Isolde must never do anything during that time to detract or divert attention from the important business going on around her.

The TOF fairly bristled at the suggestion. I mean, you could almost see the hair rise all spikey-like on his head so incensed was he. I paraphrase his retort as best I can remember it: "That's ridiculous!" he huffed. "Even when she has little to do or sing, do you expect a singer of _____'s stature to just sit there and be self-effacing? She must be permitted to display the temperament and star dramatic qualities for which she's world-famous!"

I at first thought the man was making some sort of ironic joke. A perverse joke, to be sure, but a joke nevertheless. Turned out, no such thing. He actually intended that idiot remark in earnest, and not only saw nothing amiss with it, but thought it perfectly obvious.

And that's the point, actually. To a TOF it would be perfectly obvious, and nothing about it at all amiss. And the TOF would be right if the opera concerned were, say, Traviata and not Tristan, Wagner's most densely organic and metaphysical music-drama.

What's most astonishing to me some 120 years after Wagner's death, and some thousands of performances of his mature works worldwide, is that presumably knowledgeable opera-goers, even opera professionals who ought to know better, still don't get the distinction. For them a rock hyrax is always a rock hyrax, even when it's an elephant.

And that about says it all where TOFs and Wagner are concerned, and really all that need be said.