Anticipating Götterdämmerung

Here's a first-rate piece for the Brit The Independent by music journalist and blogger Jessica Duchen of Jessica Duchen's Classical Music Blog on the upcoming concert production of Götterdämmerung at the Proms.

What is so special about this stuff [Wagner's Ring operas]? Well, if it were a drug, it would probably be banned. It's the closest thing opera offers to an acid trip. Wagner can force the listener into a kind of superconsciousness – a relationship with time, space and sound that's far removed from everyday experience. He weaves a spell of uninterrupted musical intensity so overwhelming that, for those who surrender to it – and it's hard not to – it can become almost addictive. Nothing else matches its impact: therefore you simply have to go back for more.

[...]

But it is Wagner's anti-Semitism that has dominated views of him ever since Hitler's enthusiasm made his music synonymous with Nazi ideology. Some still refuse to attend the Ring operas because of this, and tomes have been written about whether or not anti-Semitism permeates the symbolism of the cycle. Wagner's diatribe "Judaism in Music" has been considered a forerunner to the ghastly tracts of the Third Reich; and Hitler himself frequented Bayreuth from the mid-1920s, where Wagner's Welsh daughter-in-law, Winifred, wife of the homosexual Siegfried Wagner, used to welcome him with open arms.

[...]

Commentators have written endlessly about the necessity of separating an artist's work from his personality. Still, everyone has to decide for themselves whether they're willing to comply with that in Wagner's undoubtedly rather extreme case. I used to avoid Wagner myself – until a colleague dragged me along to Götterdämmerung. We floated out afterwards, consciousness duly bent.

Richard Wagner might not be my first choice for a dinner date, but to deny the thrills of his music began to seem self-defeating. Why should Hitler have all the fun?

A worthwhile read.