Sounds & Fury

What!? No Nazis Or Leather Trench Coats?

(Our thanks to Slipped Disc for the link.)

White Elephant: The Lepage Ring

What does one do when confronted with a colossal and colossally costly white elephant smack-dab in the middle of one's own house? Ignore it? Resignedly accept it as part of the house's regular furnishings? Or attempt to explain it away by bluff and bluster.

Peter Gelb, General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, has, it seems, chosen the above last course of action. Wrote Mr. Gelb in an article for The Huffington Post this past December and republished in the program book for the debut this past Friday of the Robert Lepage production of Götterdämmerung, the final music-drama of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen and the final installment of Mr. Lepage's production of the Ring tetralogy:

After years of conceptualizing and design work, thousands of hours of construction and stage labor, many tons of fiberglass and steel, risks taken and won, behind-the-scenes dramas, artistic triumphs, and a few inevitable mishaps, our new production of Wagner's Ring looms ready for its final test: the premiere of Götterdämmerung followed by complete cycles in April and May.

[...]

The Ring has become an example of what an opera company can do to change its character from careful to bold. Our new Ring is a symbol of a Met that embraces theatrical invention while honoring the great musical traditions of the past. Of course, because our Ring is revolutionary, not everyone supports it. Some think we should never have abandoned the handsome previous production of Otto Schenk, even though, after more than 20 years, it was time to replace it. Others think a new Ring should be filled with abstract ideas and images, in contrast to the more faithful telling of the story that Lepage has chosen.

I strongly believe in Lepage's literal but imaginative approach. And it's apparent that most of our audience has been stimulated by what they've seen and heard so far....

Yes, stimulated — to loud booing of the production and production team at the final curtain Friday night, and we assure you it was NOT because the production was "revolutionary". The only thing revolutionary about this production is the obscene amount of money spent on the ineffectual, lackluster, fundamentally conceptually flawed (and therefore unfixable) star of the show: Le Machine; a complicated, troublesome, noisy contraption eminently more suited to a Las Vegas dinner theater extravaganza or effects-laden rock show than to the stage of a serious arts institution putting on view one of the most profound and luminous jewels in the crown of Western art. And that audience booing was but prelude to the virtual booing of the music critics who, almost universally, rudely savaged the production — both Götterdämmerung and the entire Lepage Ring — in their print reviews in the following days.

So, given that this Ring production is a fait accompli white elephant, what's Mr. Gelb to do now? Clearly, the bluff and bluster tactic won't serve, and the creature is quite impossible to ignore. It would seem that resignedly accepting it as part of the Met's "regular furnishings" is the only option left Mr. Gelb, especially considering that 2013 marks the bicentenary of Wagner's birth — a bicentenary that will be celebrated by every major opera house worldwide, many of them by mounting a Eurotrash (Konzept) staging of the Ring by one Eurotrash Regie or another — and the Met simply cannot be without its own "revolutionary" Ring, non-Eurotrash though it may be.

But where is it written it has to be the Lepage Ring? How about the Met doing something truly revolutionary in the bicentennial year of Wagner's birth by doing him the honor of mounting his Ring the way he envisioned it in the ideality of his mind's eye as he was creating it, the limning of that ideal vision vouchsafed us in the score (music, text, and stage directions)? Now that would be a genuinely revolutionary Ring for 2013.

If memory serves, the Met has stored away in its warehouse the makings of such a Ring right to hand. Some serious refurbishing and rebuilding would be necessary, of course, along with some technical modernizing, but it's pretty much all there. What would then be necessary is an experienced opera director who knows his Ring and is not part of the Eurotrash crowd and, Voila!, a Ring to do Wagner — and the Met — proud, production-wise, that is. All that would be required to set in motion and accomplish this noble enterprise is that Peter Gelb man-up enough to publicly acknowledge the white elephant, send it packing back to Canada from whence it came, give the order to mount Wagner's Ring as Wagner himself envisioned it, and take the heat for the appallingly costly "bold" misadventure on which he embarked some six long years ago.

That's not terribly much to ask, is it?

Tonight's The Night

[NOTE: This entry has been updated (2) as of 2:34 AM Eastern on 31 Jan. See below.]

Tonight's the night we all find out whether we're in for a splendid future of Wagner performances at the Met or its very opposite, for tonight is when we find out whether the Met's new Principal Conductor and presumptive Music Director Designate, Fabio Luisi, knows his Wagner or not. We praised Maestro Luisi's reading of Siegfried this past October by saying it was "a luminously spirited and beautifully nuanced reading of the score" and declared it "the finest reading of this score of our experience" because it realized near-perfectly the unique scherzo-like quality of this music-drama within the context of the tetralogy. Tonight's Götterdämmerung is when we find out whether Maestro Luisi conducted Siegfried the way he did because he understood its unique character, or whether it's the case that he simply hears Wagner that way generally. If the former, it's a fairly safe bet Maestro Luisi does indeed know his Wagner and, assuming he does Götterdämmerung the same justice in understanding, we're accordingly pretty much home-free Wagner-wise at the Met for the foreseeable future. If the latter, the future prospect at the Met Wagner-wise couldn't be more dismal as, Siegfried excepted, there are few things more distressing or more perverse than Italianate mature-period Wagner.

We anxiously await the Met's Live Stream audio of Götterdämmerung this evening beginning at 6:00 PM Eastern. We're hopeful, but just a bit fearful nevertheless.

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Update (11:42 PM Eastern on 27 Jan): Rest easy, Wagnerians. In Fabio Luisi's hands we're home-free Wagner-wise at the Met for the foreseeable future. An absolutely first-rate reading of the score tonight. Pure Wagner, musically and rhetorically, with not a trace of the Italianate anywhere within earshot.

We're going to sleep like a baby tonight.

Update 2 (2:34 AM Eastern on 31 Jan): Our eMail (some five at last count) tells us that our above comment on Fabio Luisi's performance in Götterdämmerung has been somewhat misunderstood and we take full blame for that misunderstanding which seems due our comment's too-exuberant language. We meant merely to say (and did say, as a matter of fact) that Maestro Luisi did a fine job in his reading of the score vis-à-vis that reading being "pure Wagner musically and rhetorically" sans any trace of the Italianate. We did NOT mean to suggest that Maestro Luisi's reading was superlative Wagner. It was not. That's a very rare thing indeed and not to be had today in the opera house on a consistent basis except in those cases where Christian Thielemann happens to be on the podium.

The above, just for the record.

The Lepage Staging Of Die Walküre: A Brief Rant

We just had our first extended look at the Robert Lepage staging of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen for the Met via a YouTube video of the complete Met HD film of Die Walküre and it's even worse than we imagined it to be from the manifold verbal descriptions read and production photos viewed. This Die Walküre staging is, in short, the most wooden, most vapid, least evocative, and most utterly empty staging of a Wagner music-drama it's ever been our displeasure to witness, Le Machine accomplishing nothing but constrain the action of the singer-actors (who moved to and fro seemingly willy-nilly along the thin strip of real estate provided them downstage doing vaguely appropriate things most, but by no means all, of the time) and make itself impotently conspicuous merely by its looming, hulking, contribute-nothing presence.

What a colossal and colossally expensive blunder on Peter Gelb's part. We can only hope Mr. Gelb has the courage and nerve to accept the blunder head-on, retire this entire Ring production from the Met's stage forever after this year's complete cycle is concluded, and not attempt to amortize the cost of Le Machine by mounting revivals of the production in future.

What an appalling squandering of time, talent, and money.

Betrayal

[NOTE: This entry has been updated (1) as of 11:43 PM Eastern on 15 Dec. See below.]

Norman Lebrecht of the blog Slipped Disc points to an article in the Neue Musikzeitung wherein Matthias Jena, the Bavarian trades union (DGB) chairman which union represents the workers at the Bayreuther Festspiele, accuses the current Festspiele management and board of directors of forgetting the history of the Festspiele and the ideals of its founder Richard Wagner by limiting the availability of tickets and pricing them out of the reach of the ordinary German working man. "Today's festival management and board of directors have buried the legacy of Richard Wagner on the Green Hill," said Herr Jena.

Indeed they have, and not just in the matter of tickets. They've betrayed the Festspiele's very raison d'être: to present model performances of its founder's stageworks as he conceived them.

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Update (11:43 PM Eastern on 15 Dec): We've had an interesting — and curious — response to our above entry from a member of one of the opera forums to which we posted a link to the entry. Wrote this member:

Not only has the Festival Management remembered its own history, to judge from the recent 'Parsifal' they are trying to come to terms with it. Whatever you might say about the current crop of productions, they are -- with the exception of the dreadfully dull and dreary 'Tristan' -- boldly innovative. If that is not in accordance with the ideals of the founder of the Festival, then I do not know what is.

To which our response was:

"Boldly innovative"(!)? Is that what you call the current _Parsifal_, _Tannhäuser_, and _Lohengrin_?

Well, I'll allow they may indeed be innovative, but they're not, by any stretch, *Wagner's* operas and music-dramas. What they are are Herheim's _Parsifal_, Baumgarten's _Tannhäuser_, and Neuenfels's _Lohengrin_, all using Wagner's hijacked music and text. From what we know of Wagner, do you imagine he would have sanctioned *any* of these using his name, never mind his music and text, were he able today to voice his feelings, not to even speak of considering them in accordance with his ideals?

Well, the question is, of course, moot. But from everything we know of Wagner and his ideals (which is considerable), far from sanctioning these grotesque Eurotrash outrages he'd be more than likely to reach for the most damaging weapon at his disposal, his pen, and give these self-involved, self-serving, self-indulgent vandals and hijackers the thrashing of their lives.

Siegfried As Heard Via The Met's Live Stream

Siegfried, the third music-drama of the Ring tetralogy, has, with more than a little justice, been called the scherzo of the Ring and Maestro Fabio Luisi, the Met's Principal Conductor, seems to have taken that designation to heart and turned in a luminously spirited and beautifully nuanced reading of the score, a reading realized to perfection by the superb Met Orchestra, the greatest of the great legacy bequeathed the Met by its longtime Music Director James Levine. This reading of Siegfried was the finest reading of this score of our experience and we wish we could have been in the house to witness it in the flesh so to speak. Unhappily, the same cannot be said for what went on onstage due, for the most part, the inappositeness of the singers's respective instruments.

To put the matter as gently and briefly as possible, let us first say that Gerhard Siegel's Mime was just dandy as was Hans-Peter König's Fafner, and Mojca Erdmann's Waldvogel was delightfully fetching. As for the rest of the cast, Jay Hunter Morris would have made a fine Mime but his instrument lacks altogether what's required to make an even passable Siegfried. Similarly, Bryn Terfel's instrument is far better suited to Alberich than to Wotan (or Wanderer), and Eric Owens's instrument to Wotan (or Wanderer) rather than to Alberich. It's truly jarring when the Alberich comes across sounding more commanding and powerful than the Wotan (or Wanderer) as was the case tonight and as was the case in last season's Das Rheingold. As for the girls, Patricia Bardon's Erda needs, um, some work, and Deborah Voigt simply sounded way off her game. We know she can do better. The Siegfried Brünnhilde should be a tiptoe through the tulips compared with the Walküre and Götterdämmerung Brünnhildes but for some reason Ms. Voigt just didn't (or couldn't) pull it off tonight. Perhaps next performance.

The above notwithstanding, tonight's performance was worth the hearing just to experience the Met Orchestra's perfectly realized performance of Mr. Luisi's splendid reading of this difficult score. We look forward to Götterdämmerung.

An Offer You Can't Refuse

Over the years, we've had occasion to comment on the justly celebrated 1953 Bayreuther Festspiele Ring conducted by the justly celebrated Wagner conductor Clemens Krauss calling it perhaps the greatest Ring of which we've recorded evidence. We've said (and say) this even though the recording was done in mono and our decade-old Gala Records CD pressing suffers from a transfer that muddies and blurs much of the orchestral sound, and even though the original miking presents the singers (perhaps, in toto, the most stellar cast ever assembled for this epic work including Hotter, Varnay, Resnik, Vinay, Windgassen, Greindl, Neidlinger, Stolze, and Kuen, all in their prime) on top and up front with the orchestra under as if it were merely accompaniment as would be appropriate for most Italian opera but is grossly inapposite, even perverse, for Wagnerian music-drama.

Since we purchased our Gala pressing of this performance a couple other small-record labels of which we're aware have come up with remastered pressings of their own and, from what we've heard of them, they're somewhat better than our Gala pressing but a bit pricey and so we declined to lay out the bucks (always in short supply around here these days).

A few months ago, we received an eMail from one William Hong, an engineer and devoted Wagnerian and one of S&F's longtime readers, informing us that, as a labor of love, he was in the process of working on a remastering of the Krauss Ring of his own and asking us whether we would be interested in hearing the results when it was completed. We assured Mr. Hong we would and to please notify us when the files would be available for download.

That notification came last week and we forthwith downloaded the four 320kbps MP3 .zip files (one .zip file per music-drama), and spent some few hours listening through the entire cycle and were blown away. The remastering is first-rate — a HUGE improvement over our Gala pressing in every respect. We asked Mr. Hong whether he had any intention of marketing the set commercially and were informed he had no such intention but would gladly make the set available at no cost to all who wanted a copy for their personal use. He also informed us that he also had available CD-length file formats suitable for burning for those who would prefer to have the cycle on CD.

So, if you're interested in obtaining a copy of this laudable remastering of the Krauss '53 Bayreuth Ring for your own use you may contact Mr. Hong to obtain the links to the files by eMailing him at notungschwert@aol.com and requesting same.

It's an offer you can't (or, rather, shouldn't) refuse.

Trust us.

The Bayreuther Festspiele "Rat" Lohengrin Streams Live Today

[NOTE: This entry has been updated (2) as of 7:57 PM Eastern on 15 Aug. See below.]

The Bayreuther Festspiele is streaming live on the Web its Hans Neuenfels Eurotrash staging of Lohengrin today. Ticket price: about $21 US. No, we haven't seen this staging nor do we intend forking over some $21 for the privilege of doing so but would back with our last bippy our judgment — a judgment based ultimately on a detailed description of the physical staging along with numerous production photos — that it's Eurotrash (see this July 2010 S&F entry for our commentary on this staging). If, unlike us, you've a taste for such things, the stream goes online at 9:45 AM Eastern, and curtain-up is 10:00 AM.

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Update (11:05 AM Eastern on 15 Aug): Missed the live webcast did you? Here's the whole thing, albeit in serial videos.

Lord preserve us!

Update 2 (7:57 PM Eastern on 15 Aug): Someone on a venerable opera forum in which we participate felt compelled to express the following about this staging:

Does the concept of the transformation of the citizens and knights of Brabant into rodents work on a symbolic and theoretical level? Was the use of rats as a topos for this production carefully considered by Neuenfels and costume designer Reinhard von der Thannen, or was it merely a clever almost adolescent attention-getting device guaranteed to foment controversy and therefore become memorable?

Rats? What points of reference might the opera-goer have for these creatures? What allusions might the rats evoke in his mind? Robert Browning's 'Pied Piper'? Camus' absurdist novel _The Plague_? Lovecraft famous horror story 'Rats in the Walls'?--all with of images of revulsion and repugnance? One has to wonder if Neuenfels, van der Thannen, and conceptual collaborator Susanne Øglænd were not aware of the iconic images of rats in Fritz Hippler's jarring film 'Der Ewige Jude' and their profound connotations.

Are the rats merely a clever bit of novelty in a sometimes tired opera? Is the symbolism just a bit too transparent? Or is Neuenfels in fact forcing us to re-examine the opera in an entirely innovative way through his use of the [Brechtian] technique of 'defamiliarization'?

To which our response was:

That's all entirely beside the point.

No matter what the answers to your several rhetorical questions, the fact remains that Neuenfels's rats and Konzept have NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with *Wagner's* Konzept and his opera _Lohengrin_ except, perhaps, as a commentary on or deconstruction of that Konzept and that opera, and that makes Neuenfels's Konzept and its staging a virtual definition of what it means to be Eurotrash — Eurotrash of the most contemptible and loathsome sort.

And *that's* the point.

And indeed it is.

A Metaphor For A Metaphor (Or, Tit For Tat)

As just about all know by now, Konzept Regietheater (aka Eurotrash) is very big on metaphor the rationale and justification most frequently given being that it's desirable, even necessary, in order to make whatever non-contemporary operatic masterpiece is targeted more "relevant" to our 21st-century Zeitgeist and sensibilities. In that same spirit we herewith offer our metaphor for Konzept Regietheater itself (sorry to have to use a link but embedding of this item is not permitted). After all, turnabout is fair play.

2011 Bayreuther Festspiele Tannhäuser

[NOTE: This entry has been updated (1) as of 2:34 AM Eastern on 31 Jul. See below.]

The 2011 Bayreuther Festspiele opened yesterday with a new production of Tannhäuser by Brechtian Regie Sebastian Baumgarten.

And what was the Konzept underlying this Regietheater Tannhäuser? Why, ecology, of course. Got to make this fussy old German Romantic opera "relevant", y'know. And what did this "relevant" Tannhäuser look like? Here's Bloomberg's Catherine Hickley:

[Baumgarten's] staging transposes Wartburg castle to an organic waste recycling plant and features a pregnant Venus living in a cage with giant tadpoles and furry, ape-like nymphs. The recycling-plant set, designed by Joep van Lieshout, remains largely unchanged through the opera’s three acts. It comprises a big green tank of nutrition (we’re told it’s a celery product), a blue tank of biogas (made from human excrement) and a long red storage cylinder of alcohol (distilled celery juice.) The program notes contain a detailed diagram explaining how this represents the full energy cycle from food and alcohol, through digestion and waste back to gas and energy.

Sounds like the proper setting for Eurotrash.

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Update (2:34 AM Eastern on 31 Jul): The three-act set (yes, the graphics are part of the set):

Director Chosen For The Bayreuth Bicentennial Ring

Katharina Wagner, co-director of the Bayreuther Festspiele, confirmed her choice of director for the Festspiele's 2013 bicentennial production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen today, 2013 being the bicentennial of Wagner's birth.

And who might that director be? Frank Castorf. And who might Frank Castorf be? A German theater director who, since the early '90s, is also the artistic director of Berlin's Volksbühne theater, Germany's second largest state-owned theater, that's who. And just what sort of director might Herr Castorf be? This from The New York Times, c. 2007:

Under his direction, actors ignored huge portions of the classical texts they performed, stripped naked, screamed their lines for the duration of five-hour productions, got drunk onstage, dropped out of character, conducted private fights, tossed paint at their public, saw a third of the audience walk out as they spoke two lines at an excruciatingly slow pace, may or may not have induced a theatergoer to drink urine, threw potato salad, immersed themselves in water, recited newspaper reports of Hitler’s last peacetime birthday party, told bad jokes, called the audience East German sellouts and appeared to but did not kill a mouse [onstage].

Yes indeed. Herr Castorf sounds just about right as Katharina's choice.

And the beat goes on and the hits just keep on comin'.

Mark Twain At Bayreuth

We've been to Bayreuth only once (a guest of one of our father's business associates): in the late '50s where we saw part of the Wieland Ring (his original staging). We really couldn't appreciate what we were seeing then as at that time in our life we thought Wagner a vulgarian, his operas (that's what we called all his stageworks at that time making no distinction between his operas and his music-dramas) even more contemptible than Italian opera. From that experience we can attest to the following by Mark Twain (c. 1891), perhaps the most perfect, the most poetic description we've ever read of the experience of the "old" Bayreuth (i.e., "old" as opposed to the Bayreuth of the 21st century):

All the lights were turned low, so low that the congregation sat in a deep and solemn gloom. The funereal rustling of dresses and the low buzz of conversation began to die swiftly down, and presently not the ghost of a sound was left. This profound and increasingly impressive stillness endured for some time — the best preparation for music, spectacle, or speech conceivable.

[...]

Finally, out of darkness and distance and mystery soft rich notes rose upon the stillness, and from his grave the dead magician began to weave his spells about his disciples and steep their souls in his enchantments. There was something strangely impressive in the fancy which kept intruding itself that the composer was conscious in his grave of what was going on here, and that these divine sounds were the clothing of thoughts which were at this moment passing through his brain, and not recognized and familiar ones which had issued from it at some former time.

[...]

Yesterday the opera was "Tristan and Isolde." I have seen all sorts of audiences — at theaters, operas, concerts, lectures, sermons, funerals — but none which was twin to the Wagner audience of Bayreuth for fixed and reverential attention, absolute attention and petrified retention to the end of an act of the attitude assumed at the beginning of it. You detect no movement in the solid mass of heads and shoulders. You seem to sit with the dead in the gloom of a tomb. You know that they are being stirred to their profoundest depths; that there are times when they want to rise and wave handkerchiefs and shout their approbation, and times when tears are running down their faces, and it would be a relief to free their pent emotions in sobs or screams; yet you hear not one utterance till the curtain swings together and the closing strains have slowly faded out and died; then the dead rise with one impulse and shake the building with their applause. Every seat is full in the first act; there is not a vacant one in the last. If a man would be conspicuous, let him come here and retire from the house in the midst of an act. It would make him celebrated.

[...]

This opera of "Tristan and Isolde" last night broke the hearts of all witnesses who were of the faith, and I know of some who have heard of many who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. I feel strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the sane person in a community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven. But by no means do I ever overlook or minify the fact that this is one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. I have never seen anything like this before. I have never seen anything so great and fine and real as this devotion.

Bayreuth, Take Note

Since forever, the bare-bones seats of the Bayreuther Festspielhaus have been both a source of perverse pride and a test of audience endurance. It needn't be either. Time for a rethink and a redoing.

Bayreuth, take note.

A Thoroughly Delightful Meistersinger

[NOTE: This entry has been updated (1) as of 1:49 PM Eastern on 27 Jun. See below.]

We watched the Web streaming of Wagner's Die Meistersinger live from Glyndebourne today (God bless the Internet!) and what a thoroughly delightful if unexceptional Meistersinger it was (we missed Act I due the stupidity of both the Guardian's and Glyndebourne's Web staff, but will catch it on Monday on the replay*), including a fine Sachs (Gerald Finley) even though he looked far too young for the part and should have been helped a bit by some expert makeup judiciously applied, and a superlative Beckmesser (Johannes-Martin Kränzle).

This was our first look at Glyndebourne and its stage appears too small by half (at least) to accommodate Wagner's staging requirements for this work (which requirements were adhered to with utmost fidelity whenever and wherever possible; not so much as a hint of Eurotrash perversity anywhere in evidence in this production either in the settings or the "concept" which remained Wagner's own) and as a result the staging of Act II was a compromise that looked just a bit ridiculous and simply didn't work. But the staging of Act III, also a compromise, was a marvel and a paragon of what can be done given a director and set designer of genuine creative imagination both of whom are devoted to remaining faithful to the creator's intentions as made manifest in the score (music, text, and stage directions).

We would have loved to have seen and heard how this production looked and sounded in this alluringly intimate opera house; an opera house that seems more suited to the works of Mozart rather than Wagner. One of these days we'll get over there the universe permitting.

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* Beginning Monday, a replay of this Webcast of Meistersinger can be seen each day for the next seven days at this Guardian site or this Glyndebourne site. The Guardian gives the starting time as "from around midday"(!). We suppose that means noon BST which translates to 7:00 AM EDT. Glyndebourne is more precise. It gives the starting time of its replay as 14:45 BST which translates to 9:45 AM EDT.

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Update (1:49 PM Eastern on 27 Jun): We've just finished watching Act I of the Glyndebourne Meistersinger which act we missed yesterday on Glyndebourne's live Web streaming of the music-drama, and in its setting by designer Vicki Mortimer, and in its staging, singing, and acting, it was as well nigh spot-on an Act I as one could wish for, including a superb David as realized by singer-actor Topi Lehtipuu. Especially impressive was the acting even by the bit players who may not have had so much as a note to sing. Much of the credit for all this must go to the gifted director David McVicar who clearly understands what the work of an honest, truly conscientious opera director entails: making as vivid as possible the concept and vision of the opera's creator (which is to say, the composer) as made manifest in the score (music, text, and stage directions).

Die Meistersinger is perhaps Wagner's most well-made and accomplished creation; a paradigm of what genuine opera is all about: not a showcase for songbirds but dramma per musica through and through and from top to bottom.

This production of Die Meistersinger puts to ignominious shame the grotesque burlesque now sullying the stage of the Bayreuther Festspiele, the work of Wagner's no-talent great-granddaughter Katharina Wagner, making a mockery of everything Wagner intended the Festspiele to be. Someone in authority should take notice and do something to put a halt to it.

The Future Is Now

The entire four-opera set of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen in a package so small you can put it in your shirt pocket or dangle it from a string around your neck?

Yes indeed. Right here. (No, we do not recommend this particular set on musical grounds. Merely its method of storage and delivery.)

Sometimes it's a great world out there.

(Our thanks to the blog Superconductor for the heads-up.)

The Biographical Is Key To The Creative

Our most recent entry which concerned the after-the-fact authority of the original sources consulted by Wagner vis-à-vis his Der Ring des Nibelungen has, in short order, brought to the fore a cognate matter which we here quote in extenso and verbatim:

Your various articles on Wagner and his works convince me that you have a defective understanding of Wagner's music dramas, the intentions that lie behind them and the intellectual context in which they were written. While it's true that works of art take on a life of their own once the artist has delivered them into the world, this does not mean that the art-work can be or should be detached from the ordinary and intellectual life of the artist who created them. I reject the romantic [sic] view that the artist is merely the channel of some sort of divine inspiration. Wagner's works are his works, and those works are inseparable from Wagner the ordinary man and cannot be properly understood without placing them within the context of his ordinary and intellectual life at the time of the works' creation.

The above idea concerning the output of creative artists is neither novel nor atypical and is, in fact, a bedrock assumption of perhaps the majority of arts criticism, both today and in the past. While we have no argument with that assumption when concerned with the output of creative artists of ordinary gift (which ordinary gift can indeed be substantial), we take strong exception to it when the output concerned is the product of a creative artist of transcendent gift such as Richard Wagner. As the great T.S. Eliot put it: "[T]he more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates."

In our not-so-humble opinion, the kind of thinking that proclaims that even in the case of a transcendent creative genius such as Wagner the created artworks cannot be separated from the ordinary man and can be understood properly only in the context of the ordinary and intellectual life of their creator serves only to lead one ineluctably into all sorts of false byways and into drawing false if authoritative-sounding conclusions concerning those artworks. Ultimately, such thinking results in producing what are essentially irrelevant intellectual maunderings regarding the artworks themselves, clever as those maunderings may be. As we've asserted here on S&F more than once, all Wagner's music-dramas are entirely self-contained works and require no scholarly biographical commentary of any sort whatsoever for one to comprehend them fully. Where genuine works of art are concerned, the facts of the ordinary and intellectual life of their creator, if he be a creator of transcendent genius, count directly for nothing in the artworks the aesthetic and affective core of each of which is always the product of mostly unconscious transformative processes which processes are as much a mystery to the creator as they are to us. Nor can those transformative processes be "reverse engineered" after the fact to better understand them and the works of art they produced — not even by the creator himself, much less ordinary folk such as us, no matter how deep or probing the scholarship or how convinced one may be that the results of such scholarship lead to a deeper understanding of the artworks in question. Such a conviction can be nothing more or other than a self-serving justification of the research time and labor expended. Which is not to say that such scholarship has no worth or value in itself. It most surely can be both worthwhile and valuable. It simply has no worth or value in gaining a deeper understanding of the artworks themselves in the case of artworks which are the product of transcendent creative genius.

We might add, if somewhat ungenerously, that the products of such scholarly researches in the case of Wagner's music-dramas are too often used by writers, especially if they're critics or academics, to make their discourse on the music-dramas seem wonderfully erudite and objectively verifiable, that last a great (if false) comfort to both the writer and his readers. While we can sympathize with that feeling of comfort, that comfort is always misplaced. As with all genuine works of art, not only ones produced by creators of transcendent genius, once one goes beyond questions of craft and process there's no objectively verifiable anything except, perhaps, place and date of creation. One might even say that's a hallmark and necessary condition of all genuine works of art and a principal source of their affective power and resonant nature.

Wagner's Business, Not Ours

[NOTE: This entry has been updated (1) as of 12:50 AM Eastern on 14 Jun. See below.]

At some point in the early 20th century (we're guessing at the dating here; we've never actually traced the history of this nonsense) there emerged the pernicious notion that in order for one to understand Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen properly one must have at least a basic knowledge of the content of Wagner's original sources for the tetralogy as Wagner expected his audiences to be in possession of such knowledge.

The notion is, of course, thoroughly preposterous, but that hasn't prevented it from taking hold in some quarters of the Wagnerian world, mostly among those of scholarly bent and also among those academics desperate for fodder for the fulfilling of the imperative of their publish-or-perish mandate. The notion would be harmless enough in itself (as opposed to its effect on potential audiences for the Ring) were it not for the tendency to treat such knowledge as the final authority on all matters pertaining to the Ring, and, worse, to use such knowledge in a misguided attempt to clarify ambiguities in Wagner's text or fill-in what seem blanks or elisions in that text. Such thinking and such attempts almost always mislead at best and often produce outright misunderstanding.

To give a simple example of the latter, we recently came across an otherwise Wagner-knowledgeable individual of scholarly bent who insisted that the giants, Fasolt and Fafner, should never be portrayed onstage as giant-sized creatures as they more properly should be "more or less compatible in size with the gods" as, according to this individual, that's how they're portrayed in the original sources. We felt constrained to point out to this individual that — quite apart from the fact that it makes no bloody difference how the giants are portrayed in the original sources as the original sources count for nothing in the Ring after the fact and Wagner's music and text everything — Wagner clearly did NOT intend HIS giants to be "more or less compatible in size with the gods" as his stage directions specifically and unambiguously describe Fasolt and Fafner as being of "riesiger Gestalt" (gigantic or colossal form or shape). Even in the face of such irrefutable evidence, this individual would have none of it so committed was he to the notion that Wagner's original sources are the final authority on all matters pertaining to the Ring as they're, well, original sources.

That's sad enough all by itself. But sadder still is the pernicious effect such a notion regarding Wagner's sources has on potential new audiences for the Ring. "What's that?" they rightly will say. "You expect us to take a course in Norse and Germanic mythology and legend before we enter the opera house to hear the Ring?"

No one, of course, except, perhaps, misguided souls of the sort referred to above, expects or requires them to do anything of the kind, least of all Wagner himself. Nor does the work itself expect or require it of them. The fact of the matter is that Wagner, being a man of the theater to the very core, had no expectation that his audiences would have even minimal knowledge of the content of the sources he consulted in his creation of the Ring. He knew full well that through his music and text he would provide everything necessary for an audience's understanding of his epic drama. All he and the work would require of them is that they give their close and undivided attention to the work put before them. That would be entirely sufficient and all that would be necessary, no knowledge of the content of the original sources required.

And such, of course, is the case. As always in the matter of understanding any of Wagner's music-dramas, his original sources are his business exclusively and none of ours (plural ours).

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Update (12:50 AM Eastern on 14 Jun): A reader takes exception both to our, "[Wagner's] original sources count for nothing in the Ring...," and to our guiding premise that, "in the matter of understanding any of Wagner's music-dramas, his original sources are his business exclusively and none of ours (plural ours)."

How can you say that Wagner's sources count for nothing, and that they're his business and not ours? Without those sources there would be no Ring as The Ring is just Wagner's retelling of what's written in those sources which he then set to music.

This is so common a misconception that we really ought to address it in some detail in a separate entry. We might do just that in future, but for now we'll simply remark that it's always well to remember that the epic myth/saga that's Wagner's Ring is no "retelling" of anything as it's nowhere to be found in the ancient sources that Wagner consulted in creating the tetralogy, nor anywhere else for that matter. That epic is almost wholly Wagner's original creation. What he did was consult those ancient sources both for inspiration and general tone, and mine them for incident useful to his concept (you should pardon the expression) which incident he then distilled, transformed, and recombined to suit his purpose. That's why we asserted that "[Wagner's] original sources count for nothing in the Ring after the fact [emphasis added] and Wagner's music and text everything," for after the fact of Wagner's work on the Ring, the myth/saga created was entirely Wagner's own — story, plot, and characters — and bears relation to Wagner's sources vis-à-vis certain characters and incident only in the most diffuse of outlines and in the most general way. That's true of all Wagner's music-dramas, actually, and precisely why "in the matter of understanding any of Wagner's music-dramas, his original sources are his business exclusively and none of ours (plural ours)."

Nazi, Schmazi. His Heart Is In The Right Place.

Filmmaker Lars von Trier may be a self-described Nazi if only in (tasteless) jest, but his directorial heart and thinking are very much in the right place on the question of staging opera. Here is von Trier's thinking on the matter as it relates to his self-aborted attempt to stage Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen for the 2006 Bayreuther Festspiele which thinking will sound more than just a little familiar to regular readers of S&F:

Siegfried, Wotan, Fafner, Brünnhilde and the rest of them are real and alive and inhabit a real world. First and foremost they are NOT symbols or illustrations or decorations or abstractions. They all have their psychologies, and via them the conflicts and thereby the empathy and emotions of the audience arise.

[...]

It may be fine to make Wagner’s amazingly human Gods populate English industrialism or the Third Reich, but it doesn’t improve things. We don’t need parallels! Actually, parallels are directly confusing! Leave parallels and interpretations to the audience! As the recently deceased opera buff Gerhard Schepelern so persistently reminded me, “The director must not try to be cleverer than the work!” No, he must be the servant of the original intentions he finds in the words and music, and the harder the task, the more persistent he must be. If Fafner is meant to inspire terror, the director is firmly obliged to apply all his abilities to invoking terror. If Siegfried is a hero (however psychologically complicated) he must be presented as such, no matter how unfashionable, ungrateful and politically incorrect it may seem. If the Ring contained and contains humour, it is this humour that the production must bring out and not the prejudiced wit of a casual director.

If we want Wagner, we want Wagner. And that’s that. Anything else is pusillanimous.

Indeed.

RTWT here.

(Our thanks to Opera-L member Rich Lowenthal for the link.)

There Oughta Be A Law

In response to our cutting comments contained in this S&F entry regarding Francesca Zambello's Eurotrash staging of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen for the San Francisco Opera, a longtime member of an opera eMail list in which we participate — a member who also happens to be an officer of the Wagner Society of Northern California — had this to say:

I have no intention to take the bait and navigate to a site featuring endless fulminations from a self-proclaimed oracle [i.e., yours truly] who has séance with Wagner. I've seen 3 of the 4 parts of this Ring production, here in San Francisco, directed by Francesca Zambello — American born, btw. I find it engaging, energetic, thought-provoking and frankly — very very good. Now, if you think that everything has to be "as Richard wrote in his stage directions" or some variant, well that's fine. But until you witness it in person, I welcome you to shut your pie hole (corn pone hole , Spam hole, Green Jell-O Hole - pick your food of choice).

[...]

But please feel free to sit in your Barcalounger in some remote locale Solti Ring whirring away on your 8-Track, to get there turn left at the Diary Queen and take the third right turn to nowhereville — criticize until your heart's content.

Uh, yes, well....

As we read that, um, impassioned defense, we couldn't help noting that both the writer and the writer's defense of Ms. Zambello's staging rather miss the point the point being that no matter how "engaging, energetic, thought-provoking and frankly — very very good" the writer found the production to be, it is NOT a staging of Wagner's Ring. It is, instead, a staging of Ms. Zambello's Ring using the hijacked music and text of Wagner's cosmic tetralogy.

That may seem but an academic-pedantic objection, but it goes to the very heart of what makes such Eurotrash stagings so loathsome. The idea that a midget such as Ms. Zambello (and all stage directors are but midgets compared to Wagner) could improve on or make more pertinent the work of a transcendent giant such as Wagner is simply preposterous. If this Eurotrash production of Wagner's Ring were not promoted and billed as Wagner's Ring but were instead promoted and billed for what it is — viz., The Ring of The Nibelung by Francesca Zambello, based on Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner and Using His Text and Music — then the thing would not be Eurotrash and could be judged on its own merits, whatever they might be, and the attempt itself not at all objectionable no matter how impertinent, presumptuous, and overreaching that attempt. But then, we suspect the SFO wouldn't sell many tickets to a production promoted and billed in that way and so, ultimately, would have to abandon that promotion and billing and fall back on the standard opera-house bait-and-switch tactic when mounting a Eurotrash staging of the Ring and promote and bill the production as a staging of Wagner's Ring.

There oughta be a law — literally.

Lucky Thing

In 2001 the Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier was engaged by Wolfgang Wagner to stage the Bayreuther Festspiele's 2006 presentation of Der Ring des Nibelungen. In 2004 von Trier bolted the engagement declaring that the Ring "exceed[ed] his powers" and that he felt incompetent to fulfill his obligation.

Turns out, lucky thing for the Festspiele. Witnesseth this latest from von Trier:

RTWT here.

Can you imagine the inevitable reverberations had von Trier actually fulfilled his engagement at the Festspiele?