TwilighT of The TickeTs Robert Turnbull investigates upheaval at wagner societies worldwide t’s vital that you help us expand our horizons in Africa. This was the mission Richard wagner’s grandson wolfgang bequeathed to herbert glöckner, a south African who ihad worked for the international Air Transport Association in geneva but in retirement had returned to cape Town in 1992. glöckner had been a regular visitor to the Bayreuth festival during wolfgang’s long regime as its director. ‘it wasn’t as if i really had a choice,’ he recalls. The previous secretary of the small south African wagner society had died, so it seemed ‘logical’ to accept. Attached was a little sweetener: an allocation of 20 tickets to the festival. with this carrot, membership jumped from 24 to 80 within a few months. Twenty years on, glöckner runs a flourishing society with 160 members from as far afield as Mozambique, Morocco and Namibia. Another instance of wolfgang’s particular interest in expanding wagner’s global reach comes from Thailand. hearing that somtow sucharitkul was planning the first ever Ring cycle in southeast Asia in Bangkok, wolfgang invited the Thai conductor to Bayreuth. During the interval of Die Walküre , wolfgang suggested somtow create the first wagner society in southeast Asia. somtow cordially offered wolfgang reciprocal hospitality: in 2003, at the age of 83, he and his wife gudrun were put up in the Bangkok sheraton. They attended a concert that included bleeding chunks of wagner before officially inaugurating the society. for over a century, a network of wagner societies around the world has furthered the Meister’s cult and provided a focus for his devotees. As the examples above suggest, Bayreuth took these societies seriously. Now, suddenly, it has turned its back on them—with a letter sent out on ■ Wolfgang Wagner in Bangkok in November 2003 at the inauguraion of the first Wagner society in December 14 last year with - southeast Asia, with HRH Princess Galyani drawing one of their time- Vadhana, patroness of Bangkok Opera honoured privileges: tickets, the wagner-lover’s longed-for gold. This issue has created deep divisions and put the very existence of the societies at risk. so what’s going on? some background is neces - sary here. There are currently approximately 23,000 members of 135 wagner societies world - wide. even Asia, historically resistant to wagner’s power, has caught the bug, with two branches in Japan and one taking shape in shanghai. Are there comparable numbers of Mozart and shakespeare 916 Opera, August 2012 ■ The green hill in Bayreuth, place of pilgrimage for Wagnerians societies? it’s doubtful. Most outings to salzburg or stratford-upon-Avon are little more than obligatory stops on a tourist agenda, but for many wagnerians a trip to Bayreuth represents the operatic equivalent of the haj, an expensive pilgrimage and often a once-in- a-lifetime experience. shakespeare and Mozart embody, arguably, a rational humanism. wagner, on the other hand, deals in walls of fire, magic swords and forest dragons. But for all the fantasy, there is also a didactic element that aims to seduce and persuade. wagner is cabbalistic, waiting to be decoded but open to multiple interpretations. when people talk of being ‘initiated’ into wagner, the societies provide them with parish church, priest and congregation. The first wagner society was launched in Munich in 1871, one year after the premiere of Die Walküre . wagner was initially unenthusiastic, finally warming to the idea much later as his vision for Bayreuth expanded. But it was only once the festival had been passed to wagner’s widow, cosima, that the societies proliferated, and the first one with any fundraising potential was set up in 1909 in leipzig. who joins? The popular notion that wagner societies are bastions of (in the words of one Berlin-based journalist) ‘right- wing nutters’, has a lot to do with one of the composer’s most notorious fans—Adolf hitler. if wagner societies generally err on the side of conservatism, it is perhaps more the result of age than ideology. This is not something for the facebook generation: wagner societies are greying societies. An average of 75 per cent of Us members are seniors. every year the wagner society of Northern california loses ‘two to three dozen due to attrition’. The societies struggle to escape being branded as a ‘cult’, or even worse, ‘elitist’. humbler, low-income, self-educated wagnerites seem to outnumber the middle-class intellectuals; but as in any operatic institution there are personality clashes, power struggles and old-fashioned snobberies. And, as in every ‘religion’, there is a sacred text. To be a fully-committed wagnerite in some people’s books, one must know one’s cosima’s Diaries, and it isn’t good enough have read only the abridged version. Taking london as an example there is certainly a scholarly aspect to its activities. lectures from academic authorities complement a published Wagner News . But much of Opera, August 2012 917 what goes on is purely convivial. Among the many dinners, award ceremonies and symposiums, seasoned wagnerians take long trips down memory lane, and even celebrities who’ve caught the bug, like stephen fry, can impress members by dropping choice names from one of knappertsbusch’s star-studded Parsifal s. it has become more interesting with the emergence of factionalism and philosophical fault-lines. once in a while members lose their cool, with large doses of venom reserved for conceptual productions which some see as desecrating the master’s texts. in london, the stage director Richard Jones was verbally attacked during an interview after his Royal opera house Ring proved too much for at least one individual. Protests also went beyond the meeting hall when society members disrupted a hamburg production of Tannhäuser at Barcelona’s gran Teatre del liceu with catcalls and whistles. what isn’t always recognized, though, is that wagner societies work hard to further the composer’s cause with little or no financial reward. Many contribute to Bayreuth’s Stipendienstiftung , where selected artists and technicians convene at Bayreuth for three performances at the festspielhaus and a series of lectures and tours. The idea was created by wagner himself, but it has been left to individual societies around the world to hold the bursary competition and fork out for tickets, accommodation and travelling expenses. it costs the wagner society of great Britain well over £1,000 to send a scholar. This is not to mention live performances. london manages a series of concerts and recitals. The south African society has staged four operas in five years. A wagner society created last year in israel by the son of an Auschwitz survivor, the lawyer Jonathan livny, is even planning a Ring for Tel Aviv in 2013 (although a recent spat with the University there makes this seem unlikely). The organization linking these societies is the Richard-wagner-Verband international, under its president, the Munich-based Professor eva Märtson. each member of an affiliated wagner society donates €2 towards administrative costs and an annual congress. setting ■ Party faithful: the audience at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth up a society could not be easier—all you need is a chairperson and an accountant, and, says Märtson touchingly, ‘a real love of wagner’. But the more mater ial reason for joining wagner societies is tickets. it’s notoriously difficult to get into Bayreuth. of the 300,000 applications for tickets every year, only a fraction succeed, some people having to wait eight or nine years on a crowded waiting list. it wasn’t always that way. in the ’50s, when the festival was re-established after its disgraceful collusion with hitler, only the Ring sold out; Tristan , Meistersinger and Parsifal performances were rarely full, despite exemplary casts. Being a member of a wagner society can cut that time by many years or, in some cases, remove the wait altogether. of the 55,000 of tickets available for 60 performances last year, between 1,500 and 1,600 were allocated to wagner societies. Non-european societies benefited most; it was hardly necessary to include german societies in wolfgang’s global network. But all societies are entitled to an allocation for their bursary winners. They can also augment the number of tickets they receive by joining the gesellschaft der freunde, a powerful 5,400-strong group that over 20 years has contributed more than €30m towards the festival, mostly to fund technical improvements to the festspielhaus. A membership fee of €205 for the gesellschaft will get you nearer the front of the queue. As for the criteria for all this, only Bayreuth can tell you—and it won’t. The sole artistic director between 1966 and his death in 2010 was wolfgang wagner, but his relationship with his beneficiaries was sometimes whimsical and always informal. what they received didn’t necessarily relate to either the number of members or to the age of the societies. with over 900 members, the prestigious wagner society of New York enjoyed a large allocation and offered in return an english-language lecture series at Bayreuth, with proceeds going to the gesellschaft. Yet there were years when scotland’s 320-strong society received double the allocation received by london, which is twice its size. individual societies had their own methods of distribution. when, typically, southern california received around 12 sets of tickets annually, it prioritized first-timers to Bayreuth. Northern california, on the other hand, favoured the oldest members. london put all its tickets, including the chair’s allocation, into a ballot. Members had a roughly one-in-ten chance of winning one.