Dresden Eng 05
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Music City Dresden Program # 5 Beginnings and Endings: Richard Wagner in Dresden Hello and welcome to another edition in the series “Music City Dresden“ from Deutsche Welle Radio. This is Michael Rothe. For the first time on these programs, a native son of Saxony is our subject. His musical career had a meteoric rise in Dresden, but at a later point he fled the city as persona non grata. In this half hour we’ll see how the wheel of fortune made a full turn in just seven years for Richard Wagner. Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Rienzi: Overture (conclusion) 2:40 Vienna Philharmonic Cond: Christian Thielemann LC 00173, Deutsche Grammophon 00289 474 5022, track 7 Quote: There was a commotion in the city, practically a revolution! Four times they created a tumult calling for me. People assure me that the success that Meyerbeer had here with his ‘Huguenots’ was nothing in comparison to what I’m enjoying here with my ‘Rienzi’. It was an unheard-of triumph that Richard Wagner scored when his opera Rienzi premiered on October 20, 1842, at Dresden’s new opera house built by Gottfried Semper. Thus the boast in the letter we quoted, which he sent to Paris – where a year or so before he’d been scratching out a meager existence with occasional jobs and no hope of getting the operas he’d already written performed. Misery had been a constant companion for the young man of thirty. But his return to his homeland brought quite a change of fortune. It was the expectation of finally getting his operas staged that drew him back to Saxony in April of 1842. The director of the Dresden opera, Baron von Lüttichau, had held out the prospect of putting on his Rienzi there, and Berlin expressed an interest in The Flying Dutchman. The homecoming for Wagner and his wife Minna came after peripatetic years taking them from Würzburg to Magdeburg and Riga and finally to Paris, always just a step ahead of the creditors; a time of more failures than successes. The huge hit that Rienzi turned out to be in Dresden, as directed by Court Kapellmeister Karl Gottlieb Reissiger, took even Wagner by surprise. More than once during rehearsals he’d cast a worried eye at his watch; in fact the production wound up lasting a full six hours. But the audience stayed with him to the tragic end of the Roman tribune’s dramatic story, and then – after -2- some moments of stunned silence – broke out into loud and lengthy ovations. Wagner himself wanted to make some severe cuts in the interest of shortening the opera, but the public and particularly his star singer in the title role, Josef Tichatchek, would have none of it. “Not a single note!” proclaimed the tenor, saying, “It is too heavenly!“ Tichatchek and the equally famous soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient contributed substantially to Wagner’s first great success. In later years, Frau Schröder-Devrient was not only a frequent and loyal Wagner collaborator, but also something of a financial savior. She also sang the role of Senta at the premiere of The Flying Dutchman. That, too, was in Dresden, in January 1843, after plans for a Berlin production fell through. It was specifically for her that Wagner transposed downward a central scene in the opera, Senta’s Ballad. Richard Wagner Der fliegende Holländer: Senta’s Ballad (beginning) 1:35 Anja Silja (soprano) BBC Chorus Philharmonia Orchestra Cond: Otto Klemperer LC 00110, Angel 763 344 2, (CD 2 Track 2) Rienzi’s huge success was not repeated with The Flying Dutchman. The Dresden public didn’t take as easily to the story with its dark Nordic elements, a story about a modern eternal wanderer who can be saved from his earthly ordeal only through a woman’s unconditional love. But Wagner’s lot had improved significantly nonetheless. After being named Court Kapellmeister in February 1843, he assumed daily duties at the court. For the first time in his life, he found himself in a position of financial security. It was his to keep or to lose. Wagner’s seven years in Dresden are a high point in the city’s musical history. He reached the goal that had been denied to his predecessor Carl Maria von Weber: ending the primacy of Italian opera there, and by extension, in all of Germany. And while Rienzi had been in the tradition of French grand opera, with the other works of his Dresden period, Wagner created a new genre of German Romantic opera. The innovative power and significance of The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin gradually came to be recognized by the opera world far beyond Saxony. Wagner helped his own cause with his charismatic personality. He knew how to convince the best singers and musicians to work for him, and at the highest degree of enthusiasm. Wagner’s conducting style was quite personal as well. It wasn’t simply a matter of beating time with a stick. He’d use the gamut of facial expressions and gestures to draw wondrous sounds from his “magic harp,“ which is what he called the orchestra that still exists today as the Staatskapelle Dresden. With his hands and baton, he’d “draw“ musical themes like pictures, often singing individual lines, and wouldn’t hesitate to make extreme deviations from the tempi in the score to fit the mood he was seeking. These habits -3- and techniques put immense pressure on the performers. They didn’t always react kindly to the challenge. And Wagner was determined to make radical changes in the whole musical apparatus of the Dresden court. That had a way of splitting the public into opposing camps. Wagner’s legacy continues to polarize to this very day. Tannhäuser was his first opera composed in and destined for Dresden. The story of the Song Contest at the Wartburg Castle premiered in October 1845. With its medieval pageantry and Christian-Catholic aura, the opera played right into the sensibilities of the Catholic Saxon court at Dresden but took some time to get a friendly reception from local audiences. For Wagner himself, the crux of the matter lay in a certain inadequacy of voices. The public wanted beautiful ones, but Wagner wanted something more. Quote: My own conception tended toward the opposite: above all, I demanded an actor, and a singer who would only be an aid to the actor. Of course, this also required a public who would demand the same along with me. With Tannhäuser the composer was far ahead of his public. In this key scene, the title character sings the praises of sensual love and earns the scorn of the “virtuous” society assembled at the Wartburg. Richard Wagner Tannhäuser: Act 2, Scene 4 3:34 Klaus König Bernd Weikl Other soloists Bavarian Radio Chorus Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra Cond: Bernard Haitink LC 00542 EMI, CDS 7 47296 8 (D 2, Track 5) Wagner’s work in Dresden went beyond creating and producing his own operas. Though he neglected his other official duty of supplying music for church services, he made a good name for himself as an interpreter of other composers’ operas, namely those of Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Spohr and Spontini. Performing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which – incredibly – had been a bust at its previous performance in Dresden, tied in with Wagner’s ambitious ideas about a pedagogy of art and public education. For the concert he mustered a well-rehearsed orchestra and a chorus of three hundred. With the public it was a great success and for Wagner, a personal triumph. It was the beginning of the era of the star conductor. As director of the male choral society called the Dresdner Liedertafel, literally the “Dresden Song Banquet,“ Wagner also had a hand in Dresden’s civic music life. He created a -4- monumental choral work for a choir festival held in 1843 in Dresden’s Frauenkirche, the Church of Our Lady – that symbol of Dresden’s cultural revival in our own time. For the performance of this work, “Love Feast of the Apostles,“ Wagner called for no less than twelve hundred singers and an orchestra of one hundred, brilliantly exploiting the reverberant acoustics of the fabled church’s dome. To this day, Wagnerians are wont to overlook this half-hour choral work that he set to a religious text of his own; Wagner himself seemed to dismiss it at one point, calling it his “passion play.“ To give you a more complete picture of Wagner’s Dresden years, here’s a portion of that musical step-child, Liebesmahl der Apostel. Richard Wagner Das Liebesmahl der Apostel (conclusion) 4:55 Dresden Philharmonic Chorus Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra Cond: Michel Plasson LC 06646, EMI CLASSICS 556 358-2, (Track 6) The final chapter of Wagner’s Dresden years has more to do with politics than with music. 1848 was a year of revolution in much of Europe, Germany included. Wagner enthusiastically joined the democratic opposition and published articles calling for “the fight against ruling society.“ As a result, he was persona non grata in courtly circles and was dismissed from his official post. Initially, revolutionary forces seemed to gain the upper hand. Representatives from all parts of Germany convened in Frankfurt to form the “Parliament of St. Paul’s Church.“ Saxony’s legislature gave a yes-vote to the liberal constitution hammered out there. But the euphoria was short-lived. Throughout Europe, the reformist factions were beaten back, not without bloodshed. In Saxony, King Frederic Augustus II dissolved the state legislature and installed supporters of the monarchy in positions of power.