Wagner was ugly and LA is celebrating him.
By Carol Jean Delmar
I was not in the best of moods when I dressed in my rain garb and made my way to the Hammer Museum on Feb. 9 to hear a Ring Festival LA lecture on “Wagner and Anti-Semitism.” After all, the powers that be had tried to silence me. I had no intentions of protesting the festival, just wanted to take in the show to be better prepared for the road ahead of me. But by the end of the two-and-a-half-hour lecture, I felt physically ill because I was seeing the Wagner celebration unfold as members of LA Opera’s elite shook hands with the lecturers who had just painted a bleak portrait of the man being celebrated. And make no mistake: This lecture was the beginning of a celebration. The introductory comments indicated as such, as did an article in the LA Times (Feb. 7) which labeled the festival a “region-wide celebration of all things Wagnerian.” To make matters worse, when I came home, I found that the University of La Verne had promoted its events with a promotional article that began: “Ring Festival LA, a celebration of composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner’s art and philosophy . . .” Celebrating Wagner’s art is one thing, but his philosophy? Which one? The one that explains how the Jews were incapable of creating art? Or maybe the one that calls for the downfall of the Jews.
Add to this the Eurotrash production which is the centerpiece of the festival, and the whole extravaganza is becoming a circus, especially since the characters are no more than zoo animals prancing around the raked stage on a $32 million revolving turntable because there is little else onstage that could have possibly warranted that price tag. And if LA Opera doesn’t pay back its $14 million loan, you and I will be footing the bill.
But back to the lecture: There was a fantastic turnout; the hall was filled to capacity. In fact, since I arrived just minutes before the lecture, I had to sit in an adjoining room and watch it on a video screen. I didn’t take copious notes, though, so I may not be exact in the retelling. What I want you to know is my reactions.
UCLA English Professor Kenneth Reinhard was the moderator. The first to speak was Marc Weiner, a professor of Germanic Studies at Indiana University. He and the other speakers – David J. Levin, a professor at the University of Chicago; and Leon Botstein, president of Bard College and founder of the annual Bard Music Festival — clearly confirmed my previous posts which explained that Wagner’s anti-Semitism can indeed be found in his characterizations and librettos. Beckmesser in “Die Meistersinger” and Mime in the “Ring” were mentioned as the primary examples. Apparently it has been documented that Wagner actually asked his Beckmessers and Mimes to screech so that they sounded like the Jews he’d described in his essays. Levin illustrated the point with a clip of Mime and Siegfried singing in the Patrice Chéreau “Centennial Ring” which premiered in 1976 with Manfred Jung as Siegfried and Heinz Zednik as Mime, with Pierre Boulez conducting. Since screeching involves sound, the anti-Semitism is in the music, which Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslovsky denied when presenting his motion to endorse the festival in July, and which James Conlon denied to me verbally in March 2009 at a concert in Santa Monica. I wonder what LA Opera’s position is now.
I think what bothered me the most was Weiner’s closing comments. He posed a question as to whether it was justifiable to have a Wagner festival at all. I was expecting a long explanation, but his answer was simply that it was time to move on. Botstein later commented that Wagner should be placed in the history books, explaining that there was nothing to remember him for now except his music. These two views were simply rationalizations which have made it feasible for LA Opera to justify the “Ring” festival.
Botstein is one of those Wagnerians who believes that it wasn’t Wagner’s fault that Hitler turned the composer’s music into the defacto soundtrack for the Holocaust. Botstein also believes that many other Europeans were anti-Semitic during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so less attention should be paid to Wagner’s prejudices.
Those other anti-Semites did not write seething essays calling for destruction of the Jews. They didn’t influence Hitler to carry out the “Final Solution” which resulted in the merciless killing of six million Jews. Wagner’s family members were Nazis. One grandson even presided over a concentration camp.
I was never sure how literally to take the final words in “Judaism in Music” when Wagner wishes “Untergang” on the Jews. There have been various translations, and one of the speakers explained that “Going under” (by William Ashton Ellis) wasn’t as accurate as a later translation which labeled the word to mean something closer to “Downfall” or “Destruction.” My father was an Austrian immigrant who learned English in the 1930s and ’40s. I kept his “Junior Classic German Dictionary,” which was published by the Follett Publishing Company, Chicago, in 1932 (revised edition, 1939). In it, “Untergang” was defined as “decline,” “fall,” “ruin” and “destruction.”
Yet Weiner said that in Wagner’s time, the composer probably meant no more than wanting the Jews to go away, as through assimilation. Nevertheless, Wagner’s wife Cosima wrote in her “Diaries” that her husband was “in favor of expelling them entirely.”
According to Botstein, the anti-Semitism was more about redefining what being German meant. He spoke briefly about the Zionism movement, which developed from the Germans’ desire to displace the Jews who were thought to be creatively inept. According to Botstein, Theodor Herzl formulated Zionism after hearing Wagner’s music in Paris while covering the Dreyfus Affair (for the “Neue Freie Presse”). The concept of Zionism developed from Wagner’s sense of community, he said. I choose to believe that Herzl observed the anti-Semitic demonstrations in the streets and concluded that the only way to avoid such bigotry was to establish a Jewish state.
The speakers traded witticisms during the question and answer period. Botstein announced that he really didn’t see the need for more “Ring” productions since they were repetitious and boring. Reinhard bounced back saying that LA Opera’s production would hopefully be different. The purpose of the lecture was no doubt to sell tickets. It also served to fulfill the request by Jewish leaders to expose Wagner with all of his blemishes since they were not willing to stop or change the festival even though some of them had expressed their dismay to me privately.
As the evening progressed, I found myself becoming increasingly more uncomfortable, and when the lecture was finally over, Wagner’s music was broadcast over the loudspeakers. I walked into the main lecture hall and observed LA Opera’s elite shaking hands with the speakers. All I could keep thinking was: “So if Wagner was such a horrendous person, why on earth is LA Opera having a 100-event celebration to honor him? Why are city, county and religious leaders rallying around LA Opera in this very sick endeavor?” Suddenly I no longer wanted to hear Wagner’s music. I wanted the sound to go away.
This reminds me of the Tiger Woods story. In time, I will find nothing wrong with attending a tournament to watch him play golf, but I would not participate in a multi-day sports event that honored him, even if the event included lectures that addressed his infidelities. Stressing his failings would make it exceedingly difficult for me to pay tribute to him even if I had been told that the celebration was solely about his golf.
After the Board of Supervisors approved the $14 million loan to LA Opera, Yaroslavsky wrote on his LA County Web site — which was featured on the Huffington Post — that art had been “poised to triumph over money.” I fear not, Mr. Yaroslavsky. In reality, money has triumphed over art. Better yet, money and power have triumphed over morality.
For a picture of LA Opera’s Eurotrash, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/09/multimillion-dollar-loan-_n_385760.html
