Wagneriana

Endloser Grimm! Ewiger Gram! Spring 2008 Der Traurigste bin ich von Allen! Volume 5, Number 2 —Die Walküre

From the Editor

ven though the much-awaited concert of the Wagner/Liszt piano transcriptions was canceled due to un- avoidable circumstances (the musicians were unable to obtain a visa), the winter and early spring months E brought several stimulating events. On January 19, Vice President Erika Reitshamer gave an audiovisual presentation on Wagner’s early opera Das Liebesverbot. This well-attended event was augmented by photocopies of extended excerpts from the libretto, with frequently amusing commentary by the presenter on Wagner’s influences and foreshadowings of his future operas. February 23 brought the excellent talk by Professor Hans Rudolf Vaget of Smith College. Professor Vaget spoke about Wagner’s English biographer Ernest Newman, whose seminal four-volume book The Life of Richard Wagner has never been surpassed in its thoroughness. In the early part of the twentieth century, the music critic Newman served as a counterbalance to his fellow countryman Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Wagner’s son-in-law and an ardent Nazi. The talk also included aspects of Thomas Mann’s fictional writings on Wagner, as well as the philoso- pher and musician Theodor Adorno and Wagner’s other son-in-law Franz Beidler. On April 19 we learned the extent of Buddhism’s influence on Wagner’s operas thanks to a lecture and book signing by Paul Schofield, author of The Redeemer Reborn: Parsifal as the Fifth Opera of Wagner’s Ring. The audience members were so interested in what Mr. Schofield had to say that they remained seated, asking question after ques- tion, long after the lecture’s expected ending time. Mr. Schofield’s research and ideas divert the Wagnerian scholar- ship away from the conventional Schopenhauerian theories in a surprising, but eminently sensible and satisfying, direction. We are now planning events for the 2008–2009 season. Stay tuned. –Dalia Geffen, President / Founder

Wagner’s Irish Opera

Tristan und Isolde, Metropolitan Opera, March 2008; Isolde: Deborah Voigt and Janice Baird; Tristan: Gary Lehman, Robert Dean Smith, and Ben Heppner; Brangäne: Michelle De Young; Kurwenal: Eike Wilm Schulte; König Marke: Matti Salminen; Melot: Stephen Gaertner; conductor: James Levine; staging: Dieter Dorn

hanks to the ever-expanding outreach of the Metropolitan Opera through the Internet and its clever exploitation by the T Met’s resourceful general manager, Peter Gelb, many Wag- nerians—not only those who can attend performances at Lincoln Center, but also those worldwide—had eagerly awaited the run of six performances of what, in retrospect, should be forever called Wagner’s Irish Opera. Much anticipation had built up over the sup- posed dream team of Deborah Voigt and Ben Heppner as the two reigning artists, with the result that all six performances had long been sold out. Those who could not be in the house would at least enjoy the experience vicariously through the Saturday worldwide satellite transmission to over 600 movie theaters or hear the traditional radio broadcast. The bizarre and unexpected changes in casting over the entire run brought an altogether new auditory experience for the final performance; the Met chose to simulcast it gratis via the Internet using RealPlayer. This long-time devotee of Wagner’s Irish Opera had the good fortune to experience the work not only in the house (during the third performance) but also at the movie-theater rebroadcast on March 23, as well as the March 28 Internet transmission of what turned out to be the one and only performance with the supposedly legendary Voigt-Heppner duo. The one abiding aural pleasure in all the performances was the superlative playing of the phenomenal Met or- chestra under the magisterial leadership of Maestro James Levine. This conductor’s mastery of the music is tran- scendental in that Levine continues to find new details in the score and inspires ever greater playing, not only over the course of the run but also during his many years of experience with this exhausting and inexhaustible score. From the first yearning notes of the celli (marked schmachtend by the composer) to the final B-major chord (the best- scored and most satisfying chord in all of opera), the orchestra and Mr. Levine produced miracles of beauty and subtlety, of appropriate power when needed, as well as some incredibly delicate chamber music of almost embar- rassing intimacy. Experiencing just this orchestral section alone would have been enough. The vagaries of fortune when it comes to artists’ health, particularly in wintertime in New York, as well as some unexpected technical problems throughout the run of Wagner’s Irish Opera, are too well known to merit repeti- tion here. The cell phone and the Internet have provided Wagnerians the world over with instantaneous reports of events. After the performance when Gary Lehman, the second Tristan cover, slid into the prompter’s box (I hope she ducked in time), it was not surprising that the Met’s technical department modified the placement of the “rug” that Robert Dean Smith, the third Tristan cover, lay on at the beginning of Act 3. The visual experience of this work in the house was quite different from the Heldentenor Gary Lehman telecast. In the house, one has a general and fixed view of the entire stage at all times. Audience members are free to look at whatever singer they want at any time. An appreciation of the inten- sity of “acting” correlates directly with one’s proximity to the stage. The telecasts, however, are created by an array of robotic cameras that capture a huge amount of the visual elements. The movements of these cameras can be, at least initially, distracting for the in-house audience. Previous television directors favored much more close-up work, which enhanced the singers’ acting. I wonder just how much of the director’s and singers’ work is planned for or altered by these multiple cameras. In this production not only was there the usual multiple camera work, but it was all in the service of providing the viewer with a central, general overall stage picture coupled with a virtually nonstop flow of simultaneous close-ups of most, if not all, the singers. At times there were even competing images of the same singer from different angles! One was free to choose what to watch from this menu of images. This new approach to televising an opera apparently won no fervent supporters. While the concept is not bad, in this particu- lar instance the decisions as to which cameras to use for which singers and how long a particular view was to re- main on the screen were poorly carried out. These decisions are not made on the spot. The performance I saw in house was actually a rehearsal for the telecast, with the distracting presence of the robotic cameras and apparently adjusted lighting levels. (The Met no longer apologizes for brighter lighting levels in season brochures or program booklets, so the in-house audience is perhaps not getting what it has paid for.) While the concept of a split-screen technique found some favor with me, at times the choice of camera placement and picture was not terribly well thought out. For much of the “Liebestod,” there was only one image: a long shot that very slowly and belatedly turned into the eventual (and needed) close-up. The 1999 Dieter Dorn production is modern for the Met; and yet it in no way approaches the latest perverted kink of the Eurotrash Regietheater that so many Americans loathe. While the lighting levels may have been slightly boosted for the telecast, the production retained the same absurdities of blocking of live characters (excessive pro- file views) and the disposal of dead ones. (Melot and Kurwenal really did fall off the steeply raked acting area onto a real floor and remained there until the end of the opera. I am surprised there have been no complaints by the American Guild of Musical Artists over such physical dangers.) Once again, the stage director showed not the slightest respect or consideration for the health, well-being, and tonal production of the singers when they were asked to sing while climbing up or down a ladder. (I still remember the ill-fated Richard Versalle, who fell to his death in the 1996 Makropoulos Case.) I saw Ms. Voigt in the house and in the movie theater and heard her on the Internet transmission. While I have great admiration for her artistry in most roles, I cannot say with much enthusiasm that Isolde is a role she should continue to sing. In the house she sounded perpetually angry and unhappy. The “Liebestod,” despite the superla- tive conducting of Levine and the magnificent orchestra, was not the catharsis it needed to be. How could it when 2 she failed to ride over the orchestral crest and never once sang the final note (the F# on the word “Lust”) in tune? Voigt’s commitment to the score and her attractive and slimmer physical presence were undeniable. She had suc- cess in the Narrative and Curse, and the two lightning-high Cs were spot-on. But taken as a whole, the hochdrama- tische Sopran part of Isolde is not for her. (And neither is Brünnhilde, a fact of which the Met is now aware; she is not listed in the 2009 final Schenk Ring outing.) Having heard three different tenors in the title role over a span of about 10 days, I can happily report that Gary Lehman more than saved the day (and performance) with his interpretation of the title role. I was very impressed with the fine singing and the intensity of his acting in Acts 1 and 2, and I was even more impressed that he could finish the opera as well as he did following the unexpected rug problems and the resulting stoppage of the per- formance. It was a shame that the Met administration did not choose to reward his noble and fine efforts by letting him sing in the telecast. Robert Dean Smith acquitted himself very well in the telecast, which is why he seems to be the Tristan du jour, at least in Europe. Both Smith and Lehman offered an additional bonus in that they are not physically large. In his one and only performance in the current run, Ben Heppner was his usual self, having recov- ered from a serious illness. (He sounded even better when he replaced Johan Botha at the Boston Symphony Or- chestra’s Levine-led performances of Das Lied von der Erde. This can only bode well for his upcoming performances in the title role of Siegfried at the Aix-en-Provence festival this summer.) Matti Salminen’s Marke was splendidly sonorous and powerful. It may have lacked the elegance and sheer to- nal beauty of René Pape, but his performance was certainly on a par with any of the various Tristans and Isoldes this time around. (Pape sings only the first two performances of Wagner’s Irish Opera next season; make haste and secure your tickets well in advance, regardless of who is singing the title roles—he is the only Marke I have ever seen to steal the entire opera away from the two leads.) Michelle De Young’s beautiful singing made me wish that she was singing Isolde. Her “Ruf” was ravishing. She made for a very sympathetic and subservient Brangäne. Eike Wilm Schulte’s Kurwenal was just fine. Like Telramund, this is not a particularly ingratiating role, but he makes the most of it. One does not attend any performance of this work to hear Kurwenal, so the fact that his singing and character were secure and everything that was needed only enhanced the experience of Wagner’s Irish Opera. –Jeffrey Brody Jeffrey Brody, the Music Adviser of the Boston Wagner Society, is a composer, conductor, vocal coach, pianist, and organist.

The Los Angeles Tristan

Tristan und Isolde, Los Angeles Opera, February 6, 2008; Tristan: John Treleaven; Isolde: Linda Watson; König Marke: Erik Halfvarson; Kurwenal: Juha Uusitalo; Brangäne: Lioba Brown; conductor: James Conlon; designer: David Hockney

os Angeles Opera is in downtown LA—somewhat of an oxymoron--next to the enchanting Disney Hall de- signed by Frank Gehry. These are gorgeous buildings, but you have to scour the neighborhood for a cup of L coffee and the snack supper you will need to eat at 5:30 to see you through the evening. We pass up the $140 seven-course menu at Paradis, ending up at the Colburn School cafeteria. Every student seems to carry an instru- ment case. While climbing a staircase into the opera hall plaza, it strikes us that the space seems a little unaccus- tomed to being approached on foot; you really are expected to arrive in a limo. Once you’re there, however, you find nice open space and a fountain. Warming up the crowd of 150, our lecturer, Michael Hackett, describes how Wagner transformed the audience experience by dimming the house lights and democratizing the seating. He also invented the steam curtain. Our conductor, James Conlon, arrives to be “interviewed” for the preconcert lecture. His lively, information- laden remarks turn out mostly to reiterate his welcoming letter in the program notes, but he keeps people on the edge of their seats by talking right up to the warning bell at 6:46. When asked what got him interested in opera, he says a Met production of La Traviata he at- tended at the age of 12. He emphasizes how opera appeals to adolescent passion, making Tristan the ultimate expe- rience. At that age, “it’s not love if it doesn’t hurt.” He makes a good case for how Wagner’s operas are a good ex- ercise for the audience, donors, production, conductor, and singers to stretch their abilities and resources. After that, everything else seems easy. Angelinos dote on designer David Hockney, as he reflects them in an admiring British mirror. His sets consist of primary colors, a bit of nursery-school whimsy. However, these sets trivialize and diminish the actors, making them look like dolls in a dollhouse, undercutting the emotional seriousness of the opera. They would suit Ruslan

3 and Ludmilla, a fantasy opera, but they make Tristan und Isolde look cartoonish. The steeply raked stage handicaps the actors as they clamber up, stagger down, and limp across. The costumes flatter the full-figured soprano, Linda Watson, more than Met designs do, however. King Mark’s costume seems too long for him, and so he has to gather it to walk. All trains drag and snag in Act 3’s patchy sur- face underfoot. Some oddities: In Act 1 the last chorus is offstage, dulling its impact. In Act 2 the principals of the protracted philosophical discussion about night and day are like two stoned teenagers. In Act 3 Tristan seems to have been given very little stage direction. He crawls around aimlessly and rolls down the raked incline. The voices, headed by Linda Watson and John Treleaven, are superb. As at Bayreuth, sometimes it is easier to just close your eyes and listen. –Margaret Shepherd Margaret Shepherd is a member of the Boston Wagner Society.

Little-Known Wagnerian Artifacts in Europe

Reuter Villa and Richard Wagner Museum at the Foot of Wartburg Castle n the former East German Republic, nestled in the Thuringian Forest, the Wartburg Castle rises majes- I tically 400 meters above the city of Eisenach. Leaving the Autobahn and passing the hills of the Hőrselberg Mountains, one can’t help but think of the sagas and fairy tales associated with the castle. So here was the home of Frau Holda, and Tannhäuser was tempted by Venus! Venus’s Grotto is in the Groβe Hőrselberg. At the hotel a brochure titled Am Bachhaus suggested many ways to experience the ambience of Eisenach and, much to my surprise, listed a Richard Wagner museum in the Reuter Villa. I knew that Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach in 1685, and I had seen a photo- graph of President Bill Clinton touching the keys of an organ in the Bach Museum in 1999. Also, Martin Luther took refuge in the Wartburg Castle in 1521, after he was excommunicated by the pope for undermining Catholic doctrine with his 95 Theses. But I had never heard of the German poet Fritz Reuter or his Romanesque villa built in 1868, which is home to a Richard Wagner museum. It turned out that Fritz Reuter was a popular Low German (dialect) writer who had spent the autumn of his life in Eisenach. He bought a parcel of land at the foot of Wartburg Castle, built his beautiful white villa, and lived there until his death in 1874. Reuter’s widow bequeathed the villa to the Schiller Foundation. A year later, the city of Eisenach purchased the building and transformed the second floor into a museum in memory of Fritz Reuter and used the first floor to house an extensive collection of Richard Wagner memorabilia.

Top: Reuter Villa; bottom left: the Richard Wagner The history of the Richard Wagner collection at the Oesterlein Collection; bottom right: poster advertising a Reuter Villa begins in Austria. The collector Nicolaus train to Bayreuth Oesterlein belonged to a group of idolaters of the Master of Bayreuth. He believed in the future of Wagner’s art and amassed pictures, busts, letters and writings, theater bills, and a library of around 5,000 volumes with the greatest enthusiasm during Wagner’s lifetime. In 1887 Oesterlein opened a private museum in Vienna, but soon after he was forced to sell his collection of circa 20,000 objects. Villa Wahnfried and Bayreuth were not interested in buying it. Consequently, a group of Eisenach residents, under Professor Josef Kürschner, a well-known publisher of liter- ary catalogues and enyclopedias, persuaded the city of Eisenach to purchase the extensive Oesterlein Collection and open the Reuter-Wagner Museum in the Reuter Villa in 1897. 4 When I arrived there, a framed poster advertising a special train for members of the Vienna Wagner Society to attend Parsifal at Bayreuth caught my eye immediately. It was scheduled to leave Vienna at 6:25 a.m. and arrive in Bayreuth at 8:00 p.m. on the same day! What an accomplishment!

Reuter Villa, Reuterweg 2, 99817 Eisenach, Germany; phone: +49 (0) 3691 743 294.

Wartburg Castle Wartburg Castle is one of the most beautiful and best-preserved castles in Germany. It was founded in 1067 by Duke Ludwig of Thuringia, and was often renovated throughout the ages, especially during the Romantic pe- riod. Much to my surprise, I learned that from 1952 to 1966, the entire cas- tle was restored by the East German government, giving it the appearance of a 16th-century castle. I visited Martin Luther’s Room, where Luther translated the New Testament from Latin into German, giving the German people a uniform written language, which in its basic form is still being used today, as well as access to the religion that would be a large part of German culture. The Great Hall, where the minstrels of the High Middle Ages held their competition, had inspired Richard Wagner to compose Tannhäuser (1843). Wagner was the first to merge the Tannhäuser legend Wartburg Castle in the Thuringian Forest with the Wartburg Sängerkrieg. It has been said that he also treated the legend of Saint Elisabeth with poetic license. Whether the contest was purely legendary or had some basis in an actual event has been debated since the Middle Ages. The artist Mortiz von Schwind painted frescoes in several parts of the castle between 1854 and 1856. The Min- strels’ Contest is the largest of them; it is so vivid that the viewer has the impression of actually witnessing the event. Heinrich von Öfterdingen (Tannhäuser), Walther von der Vogelweide, and Wolfram von Eschenbach parti- cipate in the competition. The inscription reads: “In this hall the singers’ contest was held on the 7th of July 1207, for the birthday of Saint Elisabeth.” Elisabeth of Hungary, later of Thuringia, spent her life as consort to Prince Louis IV (1211–1228). She tended the sick and poor, although her family was opposed to this. When she was stopped on her way to looking after the sick and poor, the food she was carrying miraculously turned into roses.

Wartburg Castle, above Eisenach, Germany; phone: +49 (0) 3691 2500.

Kyffhäuser Mountain in Thuringia After Eisenach, our journey took us north to the smallest but nicest mountain range of Thuringia, the Kyffhäuser. A gigantic monument on top is dedicated to Emperor Wilhelm I, who created the German Reich after the French- German war. I was interested not in Wilhelm I but in Emperor Fredrick I of Hohen- staufen, also called Barbarossa. I grew up in the region of Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany, near the Imperial Castle Trifels of the Hohenstaufen emperors, and always knew the legend of Friedrich I, called Barbarossa, who reportedly has been asleep for hundreds of years. He had set out on the Third Crusade with Richard the Lion Hearted and drowned in the river Saleph in Turkey in 1190. Soon after, a legend arose that he is not rally dead but only asleep and will return someday to rule the land in peace and harmony once more. But where does Barbarossa sleep? In the Kyffhäuser Hills! There he sits slumbering on a chair made of ivory at a great round marble table, surrounded by his treasure, his head supported by his hands. His red beard glows like fire. It has grown through the table down to his feet. It is said that every 100 years, the emperor awakens from his sleep, moves his head, and blinks his eyes. Then he motions to his faithful servant, the dwarf Alberich, and begs Barbarossa motions to him to check if the ravens are crowing and still circling the mountain. If this is the case, the dwarf Alberich the emperor becomes sad and murmurs into his beard that he will have to wait another 100 years before he can return to rule the empire. Only when his beard has grown so long that it surrounds the table completely will the long wait come to an end. An eagle will soar into the air and drive away the ravens. The emperor and his faithful servants will awaken once more and live in his Kaiserpfalz Castle and rule again with peace and justice.

The Town of Wolframs-Eschenbach I did not stop at Bayreuth, but continued south to the Middle Franconia region and the city of Ansbach, where the Bach Festival takes place every other year. With our good friends from Ansbach, we drove not only along the Ro-

5 mantic Road, but also to the hometown of the poet and Minnesinger Wolfram von Eschenbach. He was born before 1200 and died sometime after 1217. Wolfram left three epic works, Parzival, Willehalm, and Titurel, which estab- lished his reputation as the greatest epicist of the Middle Ages. The town of Wolframs-Eschenbach is situated 14 kilometers southeast of Ansbach, and 36 kilometers southwest of Nuremberg. Not far from Wolframs-Eschenbach is the town of Tannhausen, perhaps home of the Minnesinger Tannhäuser. A good meal at the Inn Zum Tannhäuser rounded out the day. –Erika Reitshamer Erika Reitshamer is the Vice President of the Boston Wagner Society and frequently travels to Europe.

Stephanie Blythe Is the Star at the Metropolitan’s Walküre

Die Walküre, Metropolitan Opera, January 7, 2008; Sieglinde: Adrienne Pieczconka; Siegmund: Clifton Forbis; Hunding: Mikhail Petrenko; Wotan: James Morris; Fricka: Stephanie Blythe; Brünnhilde: Lisa Gasteen; conductor: Lorin Maazel; pro- duction: Otto Schenk

he first performance of Die Walküre in early January was the venue for the return of Lorin Maazel to the Met- ropolitan Opera pit. For a work so strongly associated with James Levine, it must have taken some courage T on Mr. Maazel’s part to step in—although he is not a person to shrink from challenges. Maazel’s performance with the excellent Met orchestra was muscular and propulsive. It lacked some of the sensuality and lyricism of Levine’s interpretation, but was well organized and dramatic. The singing of the first act was excellent, with Adrianne Pieczonka a fine Sieglinde, Clifton Forbis a musical and earnest Siegmund, and the young Mikhail Petrenko strong as Hunding (if a bit Slavic in his German pronunciation). Pieczonka may not erase memories of the greatest Sieglindes of recent times (Rysanek, Meier, Nilsson, and Voigt), but she sang very well and infused the part with intensity through all three acts. Forbis has a handsome voice with a good ring. In both acts he sang with- out forcing—clearly one of the better Siegmunds of recent times. The absolute star of the show was Stephanie Blythe as Fricka—hardly a sympathique role! Blythe’s substantial size made her quite a presence onstage, and she handled it very well. Her voice and performance were nuanced, with brilliant singing and spectacular sensitivity to the words and their meaning. Only Waltraud Meier comes close to the remarkable performance that Blythe provided in this role. James Morris remains a powerful Wotan, although his voice at times lacked the roundness and projection of 15–20 years ago. Nevertheless, he can still bring depth of feeling and beauty of sound to the third-act farewell. Lisa Gasteen as Brünnhilde offered a serviceable perform- ance—good singing in a number of places (the final scenes with Wotan) but hardly a memorable performance. The Met’s production of Die Walküre remains solid and traditional. Offering few innovations or novel interpre- tations, it provides a vehicle for good singers and the excellent Met orchestra. The quite lovely ending of the Magic Fire still pales in comparison with the end of Götterdämmerung in this production, with its multiple large pieces of Styrofoam dropping onstage to portray the destruction of the world. –James Perrin James Perrin is a member of the Boston Wagner Society.

The Influence of Feuerbach on the Libretto of Parsifal

This essay is an expanded version of a talk that Paul Heise delivered to the Boston Wagner Society on May 30, 2007. Due to its length, it is being serialized in several issues of Wagneriana. This is part 3.

Religion Lives on as Art (cont.) agner could condense a vast array of related experiences into succinct and memorable combinations of melody, rhythm, harmony, and orchestration, by associating such motifs and their subtle variations with W particular characters, decisive events, symbols, and concepts within the drama, so that in the course of the drama particular motifs, and entire families of related motifs, carry a treasury of meaning acquired by associa- tion with various aspects of the drama. Needless to say a motif has a range of meaning generally subsumed under a guiding theme, rather than a simple meaning. For this reason motifs tend to be too ambiguous to be reducible to simple formulas. Wagner says he achieves this “Wonder” through the condensation of the most varied and ex- tended phenomena,

where many members harmonize to produce one, single, definite effect; the perspicuous presentation of such a harmony, which to us remains unseizable without the deepest research and widest experience, and fills us with amazement when beheld, -- in art, . . . this is to be obtained 6 through nothing save the miraculous [i.e., the “Wonder”]. Here in poetic fiction the tremendous chain of connection embracing the most heterogeneous phenomena is condensed to an easily-surveyed bond of fewer links [i.e., symbolized by a small number of easily identifiable musical motifs], yet the force and might of the whole great chain is put into these few: and in art this might is miracle. (Notes for “Artisthood of the Future” [unfinished], in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, 8 vols., 2nd ed., trans. William Ashton Ellis [rept., St. Claire Shores, MI: Scholarly Press, 1972], 8:371)

And in the following passages Wagner describes how in this way his musical motifs not only solve the problem of dramatic unity of time and space—since the sounding of a musical motif calls to mind, at least subliminally, all those characters, events, symbols, and ideas with which it has been or will be associated in the course of the music drama—but in so doing effectively offer the secular person a substitute for what otherwise religious faith promises. What Christian faith promises is the miraculous, in which a person’s wishes, which normally could not be fulfilled in the real world bound by time, space, and the laws of nature, can be satisfied by transcending the limits of time, space, and natural causality. Hence Wagner tells us that through his musical motifs,

In the singlest Space and the most compact Time one may spread out an Action as completely discordant and disconnected as you please. . . . On the contrary, the Unity of an Action consists in its intelligible connexion; and only through one thing can this reveal itself intelligibly,-- which thing is neither Time nor Space, but the Expression [i.e., his musical motifs]. . . . The limitations of Space and Time, which arose from lack of this Expression, are upheaved at once by its acquirement; both Time and Space are annihilated, through the actuality of the Drama. (Opera and Drama, in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works 2:350)

And in our next extract Wagner makes the crucial link between his musical motifs’ capacity to make all the past, future, and present and all that is distant in space present here before us, and the religious concept of the miracle which transcends the limits of time, space, and natural law:

The Wonder in the Poet’s [i.e., Wagner the music dramatist’s] work is distinguished from the Wonder in religious Dogma by this: that it does not, like the latter, upheave the nature of things [i.e., does not appeal to the supernatural, or the religious notion of the miraculous], but that rather makes it comprehensible to the Feeling [through musical motifs]. The Judaeo-Christian Wonder tore the connexion of natural pheno- mena asunder, to allow the Divine Will to appear as standing over Nature. In it a broad connexus of things was by no means condensed in favour of their understanding by the instinctive Feeling [i.e., through Wagner’s musical motifs], but this Wonder was employed entirely for its own sake alone; people demanded it, as the proof of a suprahuman power, from him who gave himself for divine, and in whom they refused to believe till before the bodily eyes of men he had shown himself the lord of Nature, i.e. the arbitrary subverter of the natural order of things [as in Christ’s public performance of miracles, or in God’s creation of the cosmos]. . . . A fundamental denial of the Understanding [i.e., censorship of intellectual inquiry, or science] was therefore the thing hypothecated in advance . . . : whereas an absolute Faith was the thing demanded by the wonder-doer, and granted by the wonder-getter. Now, for the operation of its message, the poetizing intellect has absolutely no concern with Faith, but only with an understanding through the Feeling. It wants to display a great connexus of natural phenomena in an image swiftly understandable. (Opera and Drama 2:213–14)

It is clear from these extensive extracts from Wagner’s theoretical writings I have assembled, that for him his musical motifs are a secular substitute for faith in the supernatural. The motifs’ musico-dramatic power, its ability to carry a potent meaning of great scope and depth, and therefore to make the audience feel as if it transcends time and space and is therefore experiencing the miraculous, only becomes fully evident with multiple experiences of the complete Wagnerian music drama in performance. This may well be the basis for Gurnemanz’s peculiar re- 7 sponse when Parsifal observes, as they are walking toward the Grail Temple in Act 1: “I hardly move, yet far I seem to have come.” Gurnemanz explains: “You see, my son, time changes here to space,” perhaps a poetic fore- shadowing of Einstein’s theory of relativity. This is of course also a poetic paraphrase of Schopenhauer’s concept of the ideality of time, space, and causality, the Kantian notion that time, space, and causality are not inherent to the real, objective world (Kant’s “Thing-in- itself”), but are subjective concepts imported into our experience of the world through a person’s a priori knowl- edge, without which a person cannot grasp the experience of the world to navigate around in it. The divine, in ef- fect, is the “thing-in-itself” (which Schopenhauer called the will), that is, what the world is in itself when freed from man’s a priori knowledge, freed from conscious reason. Schopenhauer identified this “Will” with music, and there- fore with feeling and instinct (as opposed to thinking), and noted that it links us with all of nature, disclosing to us the unity hidden behind the apparent diversity and multiplicity of our experience of the world in time and space. Even prior to his first known acquaintance with Schopenhauer, Wagner expressed his belief that music restores our feeling of oneness with the external world. Music gives us this feeling of wholeness, unity, harmony, and infinity, without the burden of religious dogma and belief that stakes a claim to truth. –Paul Heise Paul Heise is an independent Wagnerian scholar and a research consultant for the Wagner Society of Florida.

Historical Singers: Paul Schöffler

aul Schöffler was one of the outstanding bass-baritones of his generation. He was admired in the Italian repertoire, but was lauded in the German, and P particularly Wagnerian, roles as equal to such giants as Friedrich Schorr and Hans Hotter. He was born on September 15, 1897, in Dresden, Germany. As a young man, he received vocal instruction from Waldemar Stägemann in his home city. Later he studied with Mario Sammarco in Italy. In 1926 he made his stage debut at the Dresden State Opera as the Herald in Lohengrin. He was associated with that company until 1939. In the same year Schöffler was engaged by the Vienna State Opera. He remained there until the age of 73. His Covent Garden debut came as Donner in a 1934 Beecham-conducted Rheingold. Although he concentrated on the German repertoire during most of his career, he won wide acclaim in Mozart as Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Don Alfonso, and in main- stream Italian roles like Scarpia, Iago, and the Grand Inquisitor. Besides his roles in the standard operatic canon, Schöffler created the title role in Gottfried von Einem’s Dantons Tod in Salzburg in 1947. He was Jupiter in the first stage performance of Strauss’s Die Liebe von Danae in 1952. He also sang in Hindemith’s Cardillac and Mathis der Maler. Schöffler made his American debut at the Metropolitan Opera on January 26, 1950, as Jochanaan in Strauss’s Salome. Olin Downs, in the New York Times, hailed Schöffler’s first apearance with the company as “a magnificent accomplishment. . . . Schoeffler’s Jochanaan was the best representation of this part that we have seen.” He went on to appear with the Met until December 11, 1964, for a total of 106 performances. Among his many roles there were Don Giovanni, Scarpia, Pizarro, Orest, Kurwenal, Gunther, the Holländer, Amfortas, and Hans Sachs. Many who were fortunate enough to experience his Sachs in the theater feel that they have never heard or seen anything comparable since that time. His voice was warm and truly baritonal. There was not a hint of harshness, and no dif- ficulty with either the vocal requirements or the colossal stamina that this role demands. Interpretively, his Sachs exuded compassion and wisdom. In Boston, we were fortunate to see and hear Schöffler as Sachs not only on Metropolitan Opera tours, but also with Sarah Caldwell’s company. On March 14 and 16, 1962, he was her Sachs in a Meistersinger that for sheer chutzpah astounded Boston’s operatic community. At the time, the company was only five years old, and these performances made Boston sit up and take notice. Schöffler continued singing into his seventies in such roles as the Music Master in Ariadne auf Naxos and Anto- nio in Le nozze di Figaro. He died on November 21, 1977, in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, England. –Angelo Mammano Angelo Mammano, a Boston opera lecturer, is the Assistant Editor of Wagneriana.

Wagneriana is a publication of the Boston Wagner Society, copyright © The Boston Wagner Society, Inc. Logo design by Sasha Geffen. Printing by Paul Geffen.

Contact information: 617-323-6088; [email protected]; P.O. Box 320033, Boston, MA 02132-0001, U.S.A.; www.bostonwagnersociety.org.

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