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Home , Art and Revolution, Gottfried Semper, Opera and Drama

Anarchism and Hellenism in Richard 's Revolutionary Cultural Politics (1848-52)

The Greek “hearkened to the great story of Necessity told by the tragic poet through the mouths of his gods and heroes on the stage. For in the he found himself again, nay, found the noblest part of his own nature united with the noblest characteristics of the whole nation; and from his inmost soul, as it there unfolded itself to him, proclaimed the Pythian oracle. At once both God and Priest, glorious godlike man, one with the Universal, the Universal summed up in him: it were better to be for half a day a Greek in presence of this tragic Art-work, than to all eternity an―un-Greek God!” (Wagner 1966: 34-35)

Writing in his essay “Religion and in ” (1834) during the emergence of Left Hegelianism, draws a direct connection between philosophical doctrines and revolutionary forces in his native country, warning that the disciples of critique and nature, pantheism and idealism, will one day unleash their fury on humanity: “A play will be performed in Germany, compared to which the French Revolution will seem a mere inoffensive idyll.” The Elbe city of provided a stage for this play fifteen years later, during the wave of democratic revolutions that in 1848-49 swept many European cities including Paris, , Venice, Milan, Parma, , Berlin, , and Prague. In 1848, German principalities are in a state of unrest, as people demand constitutional government. During 's revolt in March, Dresden, its capital, did not play a major role because its public life was not quite politicized. When the people of marched en masse to Dresden in the Spring, the King reformed his cabinet, abolished press censorship, and promised electoral reform. In early April, however, as preparations began for elections of the Frankfurt National Assembly, one of the strongest local political organizations was founded in the city, the “Patriotic Association” (Vaterlandsverein), which had four thousand mostly republican members by the end of the year, half of them journeymen and workers, and dominated the union of all Saxon “Patriotic 2

Associations.” In January 1849 parliamentary controversies in the newly elected Landtag gave another strong impulse to political life in Dresden. Left-wing forces prepared for the anticipated outbreak of a second revolt by collaborating with the central committee of the German democratic alliance as well as Polish and Czech revolutionaries. By Spring, Dresden had become the center of a widespread cooperation with activists of Central and East European countries. A major crisis did indeed erupt when in April 28, 1849, the Saxon King Friedrich August II dissolved the lower house of the Landtag which favored approval of the Reich constitution passed by the Frankfurt parliament. On May 3, the collapsing cabinet requested military assistance from Berlin. The outrage at the King’s refusal to accept the constitution as well as the fear of an intervention by troops dispatched by the Prussian government led to the uprising that broke out in the afternoon of that day. It began when the military opened fire on a crowd of people demanding weapons for the defense of their city. Within a few hours the old town was barricaded. Initially, the government hesitated to suppress the uprising by military means. A committee of public safety made up of democratic deputies prepared for the defense of the town, hoping at the same time that the King would soon adopt the constitution. On May 4 he and his remaining ministers fled to a fortress. A 24-hour armistice allowed the army to bring troops from other parts of the country and to await the arrival of the Prussian soldiers. The insurgents did not use this time to gather their forces, anticipating in vain a possible compromise with the government. Neither did their provisional government succeed in mobilizing the larger population to support the constitution. Here as almost everywhere in the country the liberal bourgeoisie, which had been involved in the earlier, peaceful phase of the constitutional movement, refused to support the provisional government out of fear of radical-democratic and socio-republican tendencies of the uprising. Equally unsuccessful were repeated attempts to draw the Saxon troops to the side of the insurgents. Intensive clashes on May 5 between five thousand Saxon-Prussian government troops and three thousand insurgents supported by irregulars and volunteers from other places of Saxony produced heavy casualties on the side of the insurgents, especially due to the brutal assaults of the military. In the morning of May 9, the revolutionaries gave up the struggle and withdrew. 3

One of the three leaders of the failed May 3-9 revolt is Mikhail Bakunin (1814-76), a veteran of European revolutions. The Russian refugee, who has not become an anarchist yet, combines left republicanism with pan-Slavism, an interest in both socialism and nationalism. He first moved to Dresden in 1842 as an aspiring philosopher to collaborate with Arnold Ruge, the leader of the Young Hegelians, and left a year later, after undergoing a thorough radicalization and publishing the essay “Reaction in Germany” (1842) which introduced the twin ideas of destruction as the necessary first stage in the process of social transformation and of perpetual revolt. During 1848, Bakunin participates in the Paris uprising in February, has his first split with Marx and Engels in Cologne in March (a month after they published the Communist Manifesto), participates in the Prague uprising in June, produces the Appeal to the Slavs (which ended by seeking “the complete overturn of society”) in the Fall, and goes to Dresden again in April of next year to coordinate efforts of the Slavic East with those of Saxon activists. Bakunin relies heavily on an indispensable person on the three-member core of the Dresden conspiratorial group, August Röckel (1814-76), a man of many talents and commitments: he edits the weekly republican magazine Volksblätter (1848-49), giving it its radical-democratic profile; he writes essays and editorials; he composes classical music; and he has been working since 1843 as an assistant conductor (Musikdirektor). Röckel performs at the Hoftheater House, built in Dresden in 1838-41 as part of the building program of the King of Saxony. It is the first masterpiece of another eminent Dresden resident, (1803-79). After traveling to and in 1830- 32, the scholar, theorist, and architect Semper was appointed to the Chair of Architecture at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 1834, a remarkable achievement for a 31-year old with no building record and little teaching experience. At that point his strength was theoretical as he was pioneering a total approach to classical architecture incorporating considerations of color, texture, ornament, and style. In May 1849, Semper uses his architectural expertise to build barricades in the streets of Dresden. Another person who is active in the revolutionary circles and the May barricades is (1813-83), a who became friends with Bakunin through Röckel, his assistant at Semper’s theater. Wagner is a year younger than Bakunin and Röckel, and was born the same year with Kierkegaard, Hebbel, and Büchner. He moved to Dresden 4 after he tried in vain for three calamitous years (1839-42) to find a place in the Parisian music scene. In 1837-40 he composed his third opera, , based on Bulwer-Lytton’s historical novel Rienzi, The Last of the Roman Tribunes (1835, German translation 1836). In the novel, the eponymous tribune of the people in Rome established a republic in 1347, fled after his excommunication, returned from exile seven years later to become a senator, and was eventually assassinated. This monumental opera, Wagner’s longest and most political, has everything – anarchy and revolution, war and peace, mobs and priests, popular victories and aristocratic conspiracies. The tremendously successful premiere was given in 1842 at Hoftheater, the new opera house which Gottfried Semper had just built in Dresden, with Wagner conducting the Royal Court Opera, and it led to the composer’s becoming assistant Kappelmeister at the court of the King of Saxony next year. Although technically second, he was essentially the primary conductor since he assumed most of the duties. With this dramatic improvement in his career, he begins to reconsider extensively the Romantic philosophy of music that he espoused until now. The premieres of The Flying Dutchman (1843) and Tannhäuser (1845) that followed in the same theater are thunderous testimonies to that. By 1845 Wagner is preoccupied with the conditions under which music is produced and disseminated in the court, and submits specific proposals which are rejected next year. In the realm of aesthetics, he begins to search for a holistic conception of art under the influence of Semper’s total approach to classical art, his theatrical understanding of architecture (which he grouped with the performing arts) and his applications of this view to the architect’s own stage designs in his theater. In 1847 he reads as edited by historian and politician Johann Gustav Droysen (1832, 1841), and is inspired both by the surviving Oresteia and by the reconstructed Prometheus trilogy to proclaim their author the greatest tragedian. Moving the peak of Greek civilization from the classical period admired for centuries to the archaic one proved one of his many daring innovations of lasting impact. Politically, Wagner was first exposed to radical ideas in 1834 in his native Leipzig, when he came into contact with the progressive movement Junges Deutschland which drew political inspiration from French utopian socialism and cultural models from Italian sources. He shared their passion for erotic intoxication, republicanism, and German self- 5 regeneration after the humiliation of the Napoleonic Wars. In Dresden he emerges as a radical democrat in the utopian tradition of the Young Hegelians, especially Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72) and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-64). Feuerbach published all his important books in the 1840s, criticizing Hegelianism for its concealed religious spirit and modern philosophy in general for its theological character, promoting a naturalist humanism of love and liberation, and advocating the “absolute resolution of theology into anthropology.” Widely influential during that period, and respected until the end of his life, his star had set by 1850 as critique took a more emphatic political turn. Wagner encountered his work in Paris but absorbed it in Dresden through The Essence of Christianity (1841), and under the influence of the author’s “philosophy of the future” dedicated to him the essay "The Artwork of the Future" (1849) because it defined the role of art in a Feuerbachian world. Proudhon too rejected the Hegelian reconciliation in the 1840s, developing his philosophy of contradiction that presented dynamic tension as life’s goal. As he declared in The Federal Principle (1863), “contradiction lies at the root of all programs.” Wagner’s friend Bakunin became Proudhon’s greatest disciple. During these years of fermentation Dresden becomes the birthplace of Wagner’s artistic, aesthetic, and political theories. He can see them coalesce into a single anti- capitalist, emancipatory vision. His critique of the role of the performing arts in society develops into a critique of the society which has forces them into such a subservient position. Under the guidance of utopian socialist ideas, he supports the growing democratic-republican movement as he defends a convergence of political, social, and artistic goals in the forthcoming revolution. He believes that the same total work of human creativity will materialize in reformed government, in the nation-state, in the cultural domain, and in art making. Democratization will bring renewal to every domain. He contemplates artistic innovations for the complete work of the future and administrative renovations that will create a truly national theater run by playwrights and . In the imminent socialist state opera as grand Parisian entertainment will disappear, to be succeeded by a musical where the ancient idea of a theater for all people representing the self-realization of unfettered humanity will be reborn. In contrast to his contemporary fellow-German dramatist Hebbel, Wagner is not asking bourgeois tragedy to strengthen the existing social institutions. He wants theater to participate in a revolution 6 that will rejuvenate both art and society. His artistic vision is invigorated by an ideology that restores drama to its ancient centrality. After the three great (Dutchman, Tannhaüser, and ) in the Weberian tradition, Wagner feels he has exhausted the possibilities of German opera and does not compose for more than five years. He finds himself unable to work artistically in the midst of a major artistic and political crisis, and turns to the essay to elaborate on his aesthetics and develop his own theory. Once the composition of Lohengrin ends in April 1848, his “Proposal for the Organization of a German National Theater for the Kingdom of Saxony” (May) incorporates democratic principles into art administration and is also rejected. The composer joins the leading republican group, the “Patriotic Association,” working with agitators like Röckel and Bakunin, and in June he delivers before it a speech that was later also printed, arguing that the monarchy needs to be replaced with a republic. Although in many respects a conciliatory speech urging reform more than revolution, it calls for an end to class distinctions, prejudice, and usury. It also denounces communism as an inadequate solution to social ills since society itself is in dire need of true regeneration. During the same year Wagner works on the drafts of The Nibelungen-Myth (Summer) and The Wibelungen (Winter) where his operatic tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung (1848-76) begins to take on a concrete shape as an allegory of European socio-political unrest. Enthused by socialist ideals, it deals with the struggles of humanity against the rule of gold, telling the story of a hero who destroys the materialist world and establishes a spiritual order. Also in 1848 he completes a called ’s Death (which comes close to the libretto of what became later the last opera of his tetralogy, The Twilight of the Gods). Next he composes some music for it and abandons it. At the same time, Wagner is developing ideas for heroic operas based on Achilles, on the medieval emperor Friedrich Barbarossa, on Jesus of Nazareth as a social revolutionary (influenced by Feuerbach), and on Wieland the Smith, all of them denouncing exploitation and promoting the new religion of humanity. In 1849, following the publication of “Theater Reform” (January) and “Man and Established Society” (February), the Bakuninist piece “The Revolution” appears anonymously in the Volksblätter (April). Wagner is now enraptured with the idea of destruction and no longer advocates reform. Europe is a huge volcano: the old world is 7 crumbling, a new one will rise, a storm is gathering, hosts of heroes march, warlike music sounds, and the destroying and fulfilling, redemptrix and creatrix goddess Revolution is flying and greets mankind in prophetic words proclaiming the emancipation of the naked and the hungry. She will break the fetters of oppression and destroy all dominion of one over another, enabling humanity to create, redeem, celebrate, and fulfill itself. She brings the new gospel of universal happiness: “I will destroy the existing order of things, which parts this one mankind into hostile nations, into powerful and weak, privileged and outcast, rich and poor; for it makes unhappy men of all. I will destroy the order of things that turns millions into slaves of a few, and these few into slaves of their own might, own riches. I will destroy this order of things, that cuts enjoyment off from labor … for I am the Revolution, I am the ever-fashioning Life, I am the only God, to whom each creature testifies …” (1966: 237-38). During the early months of 1849 the 36-year old Wagner does not hesitate to risk his position as Royal Saxon Kapellmeister of the court orchestra for life as well as his emerging reputation as a composer by speaking in public against money and property, or personally circulating inflammatory articles that advocate the overthrow of the aristocracy. During the popular uprising in May, which demanded from the King justice and reform, he supports the insurrectionists. In contrast to fellow composer Robert Schumann (1810-56), who is also living in Dresden at the time and expresses his private sympathy for the revolt by composing Four Marches for piano, op. 76, Wagner is caught up in the revolutionary fervor and fights for its cause since he sees parallels between the political upheavals and the musical ones he hopes to stir. When, following the defeat of the uprising, the police issues on May 9 a warrant seeking his capture for interrogation concerning participation in the revolutionary activities, he flees Dresden that same day, eventually escaping to Zurich in 1850 via Weimar with the financial assistance of his friend . In Zurich, where he stays on neutral Swiss soil till 1858, the experienced revolutionary activist composes with undiminished creativity. The successful world premiere of Lohengrin (1850) at the Weimar Court Theater under Liszt’s direction solidifies his reputation and inspires him to pursue with greater determination The Ring as his own artistic revolution, beginning with its libretto. Meanwhile, he attempts to earn his living as a conductor and a writer, 8 publishing such pioneer essays as "" (June 1849), "The Artwork of the Future" (November 1849), "" (1850), and “A Theater at Zurich “ (1851), which provide the theoretical foundations for his music drama. His revolutionary ideas continue to embrace Feuerbach’s religion of humanity. The existing society of egoism and speculation must be swept away. A better society will be built not on religion, nationality or state but on “common human nature.” The releasing force will be a terrible revolution brought about by the unconscious forces of the “Brotherhood of Man” operating as a natural necessity. Those intuitive forces express the highest morality of history, the communal moral necessity. Perfect Freedom will be attained by genuine Love, not demoniac Money. The existing capitalist culture corrupts humanity with its emphasis on property, so it needs to be destroyed. Paris needs to be burned down for full emancipation to be achieved. The real artwork will be created in a future moral society of natural instincts. Now it can only be prepared by righteous agents of nature and love. In “Art and Revolution,” written just a month after the defeat of the Dresden revolt, Wagner explains why art must be liberated from capitalist considerations so that is can blossom and disclose the aspirations of emancipated humanity. His standpoint is the same with imprisoned Proudhon’s who is writing the Confessions of a Revolutionary (1850) to analyze the revolts of 1848, and proposes that the goal of the revolution is “no more government of man by man.” Wagner’s essay is prompted by the universal outcry of artists against damage they suffered from the Revolution since traditional sources of their support are threatened. With industry at a standstill, how can art survive? His goal is to discover the meaning of Art as a factor in the life of the State, and consequently to present Art as a social product. To that effect, he conducts a survey of the worldly place of art from antiquity to the present. His model are the Greeks who developed a democratic State, procreated Art, gathered in the theater to probe its tragic depth, and established the popular assembly as its judge. Speaking of the individuals attending such performances in the amphitheater he exclaims that “it were better to be for half a day a Greek in presence of this tragic Art-work, than to all eternity an―un-Greek God!” Drama, the perfect work of art, was the abstract and epitome of all that was expressible in Greek society. Athenian State and Tragedy developed together, and hand in hand marched to their downfall. “As the spirit of Community split itself along a thousand lines of egoistic cleavage 9

…; and, at the bitter end, every impulse of Art stood still before Philosophy, who read with gloomy mien her homilies upon the fleeting stay of human strength and beauty. To Philosophy and not to Art, belong the two thousand years which, since the decadence of Grecian Tragedy, have passed till our own day” (34). Art may have served various abstract ideas and conventions but never more was she the free expression of a free community since there has been no such community. “With the subsequent downfall of Tragedy, Art became less and less the expression of the public conscience. The Drama separated into its component parts; rhetoric, sculpture, painting, music, &c., forsook the ranks in which they had moved in unison before; each one to take its own way, and in lonely self-sufficiency to pursue its own development. And thus it was that at the Renaissance of Art we lit first upon these isolated Grecian arts, which had sprung from the wreck of Tragedy. The great unitarian Art-work of Greece could not at once reveal itself to our bewildered, wandering, piecemeal minds in all its fullness; for how could we have understood it” (52) Thus we reach the contemporary quandary. Modern art is the docile handmaid of Mercury, Roman god of commerce: its ethics is profit, its essence industry, its purpose the entertainment of a shallow audience. If we compare the public art of modern Europe with that of Greece, which reached its zenith in their Tragedy, we will see that the latter “was the expression of the deepest and the noblest principles of the people's consciousness: with us the deepest and noblest of man's consciousness is the direct opposite of this, namely the denunciation of our public art. … The Greeks sought the instruments of their art in the products of the highest associate culture: we seek ours in the deepest social barbarism” (47). Beauty and Strength were attributes of public life and sources of Art. Wagner “understood the problems of art as being the problems of public life, and explained the decline of Greek tragedy with the dissolution of the Greek polis; … He depicts the original and broken relationship between art and public life in terms that are taken literally from the Hegelian school – it would be possible to isolate the individual notions which derive from Hegel and Marx. … The of Aeschylus and Sophocles were ‘the product of ’ – the modern theater is ‘a blossom in the morass of the modern bourgeoisie.’ Genuine art of the present must of necessity be revolutionary, because it can only exist at all in opposition to the existing order” (Löwith: From Hegel to Nietzsche, 1991: 184-85). 10

Art needs to turn revolutionary so that its perfect artwork, Tragedy, will be born anew. “But only Revolution, not slavish Restoration, can give us back that highest Art- work. … If the Grecian Art-work embraced the spirit of a fair and noble nation, the Art-work of the Future must embrace the spirit of a free mankind, delivered from every shackle of hampering nationality” (Wagner 53-54). It is for Art, and Art above all else, to teach this social impulse its noblest meaning, and guide it toward its true direction. And only on the shoulders of this great social movement can true Art lift itself from its present state of civilized barbarianism, and take its place of honor. Revolution and Art share a goal, and they can only reach it when they recognize it jointly. This goal is the strong fair Man, to whom Revolution shall give his Strength, and Art his Beauty! As for the stage as moral institution, “so long as we look upon a theatrical institution as a mere means for the circulation of money and the production of interest upon capital, it is only logical that we should hand over its direction, i.e., its exploitation, to those who are well-skilled in such transactions; … if the Theatre is at all to answer to its natural lofty mission, it must be completely freed from the necessity of industrial speculation” (61-62). Furthermore, its priority over all other artistic institutions in this emancipation must be acknowledged, given its wide reach, weighty influence, and lofty mission. The enfranchisement of public art would be a first step. The State and the Community ought to adjust their means to this end so that the Theatre, freed from the fetters of commercial speculation, can obey only its higher and true calling. The judge of its performance will be “the free public. Yet, to make this public fully free and independent when face to face with Art, one further step must be taken along this road: the public must have unbought admission to the theatrical representations” (63-64). The ultimate ideal we pursue is one of perfect union: as we unite under the inevitable conditions of the approaching revolution, art and education will merge and we will become artists. And as we join together in free service for Art, its institutions will announce the standard for all future communal institutions. The noble human faculties will give our future social bearing its true artistic nature. Classical ideas about Hellenism and romantic ideals about the reunification of the arts come together in this theory. This became obvious in the next essay too, “The Artwork of the Future,” which described the participation of all arts in the production of the “total 11 artwork” modeled after Greek drama where aesthetic criteria take priority over social norms and community over individuality. The originality of the theory lies more in its synthetic vision than its individual elements. But it also lies even more in its historical grounding. Wagner distinguishes four ages and four corresponding kinds of plays: tragedy in the age of Community, theater in the age of Philosophy, entertainment in the age of Commerce, and drama in the post-Revolution age. This sequence considers art and state together, marking Philosophy as a moment of decline and Politics as a state of fragmentation. Thus the modern quest for tragedy is defined as a revolutionary one that requires the reconstitution of community. The little pamphlet where Wagner’s essay appeared bore the motto: "When Art erst held her peace, State-wisdom and Philosophy began: when now both Statesman and Philosopher have breathed their last, let the Artist's voice again be heard." In effect, the composer’s socialist convictions reintroduce to the dramaturgical problematic the ethico-political questions first raised by Schiller during his republican years. Wagner returns explicitly to the project of his Romantic predecessor in his book Opera and Drama (1852), where he shows that the dramatic creativeness of Schiller is swaying between the perfect form of Greek drama and History and Romance, trying to afford a halfway-house between ancient and modern understanding. Germany has had a Luther but not a Shakespeare. Schiller began by working on domestic and political Romance but later aspired to turn drama to naked History and in the end tried myth as well but could not decide between the two. His impasse still defines the options of German theater. “Thus Schiller stayed hovering between heaven and earth; and in this hovering hangs, after him, our whole dramatic poetry. That heaven, however, is really nothing but the antique art-Form, and that earth, the practical Romance of modern times. The newest school of dramatic poetry – which, as art, lives only on the attempts of Goethe and Schiller, now turned to literary monuments – has developed the aforesaid hovering between opposite tendencies into a positive reeling” (Wagner: Opera and Drama, 1995: 147-48). So long as this is unresolved, “we have no Drama, and can have no Drama” (150-51). Historical Romance develops mechanically from without inwards while Drama grows organically from within outwards. Historical Drama forged by modern Romance shows that History is unsuitable for Drama. Today, Romance has turned into Journalism, 12 and poetry has become political appeals to the people. These developments reflect the modern predicament: politics is our fate, poeticizing is politicizing. The Poet will not be able to work on Drama again till there is no more Politics. His present task is to present the struggle through which individuals attempt to free themselves from religious Dogma and the political State. In addition to Drama proper, we lack the real enabler of the performance, the Public, since the advancing degradation of the audience has passed the rule of taste to the Philistines. But the artist of the present can see and announce the unborn life of the future. That life will emerge from the self-realization of Society’s belief in its purely human essence, and will have no Dogma and only one universal Religion, the common conscience vindicating true human nature. Greek fate was the inner Nature- necessity while ours is the outer necessity of the arbitrary political State. This State lives on the vices of society, trying to equalize its imperfections. But the imposition of such a general norm works against human individuality from which virtues are solely derived. Society should instead be organized on the basis of such free individuality whose essence is natural necessity so that the self-determining individual will become its source. The State, which has denied humans such freedom, should be annulled. Wagner spends eleven years in political exile as a wanted man. During the early years 1849-52, he keeps hoping that revolution will break out again in Germany, that major political and cultural reforms are imminent. Since he has lost his conducting post, he focuses on his essays, further elaborating his aesthetic theories. As he writes, he associates with other political refugees but remains under surveillance from the Dresden police while appeals for clemency made to the new King of Saxony on his behalf are rejected and he faces the prospect of permanent exile. His comrades suffer worse. Röckel is spending thirteen years in prison, Bakunin ten in prison and four in Siberian exile. Semper too has been forced into exile after the revolt. Wagner helps him take up the position of Professor at the Zurich Polytechnic in 1855. During the period of the great theoretical texts (1849-51) he plans the tetralogy, gradually extending it backward and drafting the four libretti in reverse chronological order. Between April 1848, when he finishes Lohengrin, and November 1853, when he starts composing The Rhinegold, he writes no operatic music except the discarded drafts for Siegfried’s Death. When he returns to The Ring, he is able to incorporate his philosophical 13 education from his early days as a Young German till his more recent ones as a wanted one. In 1854, at age 42, he has composed all the music for The Rhinegold and is working on The Valkyrie when he encounters The World as Will and as Representation (1818). As he becomes despondent over the future of the movement and contemplates suicide, in Fall 1854 Wagner discovers with much relief Schopenhauer’s ideas about the ethic of renunciation and release of suffering which turned him to the pessimism and fatalism manifest in Tristan and Isolde (1865), the first work he presented on the stage fifteen years after Lohengrin. Following his despair over politics and depression over his future as an artist (especially as the composer of The Ring), Wagner found a philosopher who advocated disillusionment with the world and renunciation of social values. “Schopenhauer’s historical effect began when the German intelligentsia had been prepared for it by the failure of the revolution. Feuerbach’s letters, A. Herzen’s reminiscences, and R. Wagner’s autobiography furnish a clear picture of the degree of resignation suddenly provoked by Schopenhauer’s success” (Löwith 1991: 182). By the time his request for full amnesty was granted by the King of Saxony in 1862, Wagner had turned his attention from the royal court of Dresden to that of the new King of in Munich, the eighteen-year old Ludwig II whose patronage he acquired two years later. The last time he saw Gottfried Semper was when he attended the first Festival in 1876 at Wagner’s invitation. Thirty-five years after their first meeting, the composer and the architect were both living monuments to their hugely successful ambitions. The Festival Theater was strongly influenced by Semper's earlier plans for a new type of opera house for Wagner in the same way The Birth of Tragedy had taken up ideas from Semper's Dionysian concepts for decoration. Nietzsche was at the Festspielhaus too, attending the world premiere of the entire The Ring of the Nibelung, first conceived in Dresden in April 1848. Writing the year of the premiere in the untimely meditation “Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,” he observed: “What we see depicted in the tragic art-work of Bayreuth is the struggle of the individual against everything that opposes him as apparently invincible necessity, with power, law, tradition, compact and the whole prevailing order of things” (1983: 212). “Nietzsche’s fascination with Greek drama brought to a conclusion an interest in theatricality that Semper himself had started in the 1830s: 14 one that he had shared with Wagner in the 1840s, and one that was handed down from Wagner to Nietzsche in 1869” (Mallgrave: Gottfried Semper, 1996: 351). The anarchist ideal will emerge in Bayreuth many years later, in the self-governing community of Nuremberg where craftsmen dominate and the arts are public.

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