Wagner Is Hard:
Hard to perform, hard to understand, hard to endure.
Even great musical minds like Stravinsky found him so. His personal life doesn’t make things any easier for the novitiate. He was a liar, a cheat, and a thief, and he made no effort to disguise his flaws.
The taint of Nazism isn’t one of them, though it’s chalked up as one of his sins almost as if he were a member of the Party. The facts that he was Hitler’s favorite composer and that Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was given an exalted place in Nazi culture are not of Wagner’s doing. Wagner had already been dead for six years by the time Hitler was born.
It’s easy to forget though, especially with the magpie nature of Nazi propaganda. So skillfully and completely did Hitler and the Nazis appropriate Wagner’s ideology that Hans Sachs’ closing song, though written in 1862, reads almost verbatim like a passage from Mein Kampf:
And it is not by accident that Wagner’s only great comic opera is set in Nuremberg. There were Meistersingers in loads of cities, but Nuremberg was the unofficial seat of the Holy Roman Empire. Like King Arthur, the once and future king, Nuremberg had a sacred place in German nationalism as the once and future capital. (The Second Reich would begin less than a decade after Die Meistersinger’s premiere, and Wagner endured 12 years of exile because of his agitating on behalf of a unified Germany.)
Hitler was merely following a well-worn script when he founded the Third Reich at Nuremberg in 1933, accompanied by (what else?) an official performance of Die Meistersinger. And, in what Oprah would call a ‘full-circle moment’, the city that had played host to one of the Rintfleisch-Pogroms in 1298, which brutally cleared the town center of its Jewish population, was where the ‘Nuremberg Laws’ were adopted in 1935, officially stripping Jews of their German citizenship.
Nuremberg’s historical significance is why the Allies bombed the city beyond necessity (90% of it was destroyed), and it was no small part of the rationale for holding the post-war trials there, in an effort to complete the humiliation of the Germans.
None of this has anything to do with the opera. If it did, it wouldn’t be the great piece of art that it is. However, the stench of these extra-musical associations is so overpowering that the opera still feels as though it’s locked in the death grip of a regime that was obliterated 60 years ago.
Katharina Wagner’s (pictured above with Merkel) new staging of Die Meistersinger attempts to wrest the work from its post-war legacy chiefly by inverting the dramatic arc of the libretto. Walther and Hans Sachs, the opera’s heroes, begin the production as rogues wearing sneakers and chain-smoking (left). Though Sachs is a guardian of the old order as a Meistersinger, he recognizes the incipient genius of Walther’s rule-breaking approach to the art. Whereas Sixtus Beckmesser cannot abide any challenge to the rules of the guild, Sixtus is shown initially with slicked-back hair and proper dress, a paragon of order, the opposite of everything Walther/Hans.
In the traditional narrative, Beckmesser tries his hand at Walther/Sachs’ new style and fails miserably. The death of the Old Guard begins, quite literally, in the Second Act when Beckmesser is beaten savagely in a riot that erupts after he attempts a serenade (This is the most widely cited moment of anti-Semitism in the opera, aside from the ending. Beckmesser is supposed to be a Jewish caricature getting his comeuppance, etc.). It is a hobbled and tenderized Beckmesser who attempts to sing Hans Sachs’ song in the final act. He cannot make sense of its new style, and he is laughed offstage. The freewheeling Walther then sings the Prize Song, breaking ever more guild rules as he does, and the New Guard is triumphant, earning Walther a bride and leg up in the social order.
By inverting the traditional presentation, making the New Guard’s ascent concomitant with the adoption of the Old Guard’s formality, and vice verse, Katharina subverts the ultimate triumph by pointing out that, though Walther and Sachs appear to be agents of change, they are actually aspiring to the status quo. Sachs tutors Walther in how to conform just enough to rig the system for personal gain, and rather than the sentimental coda of its usual guise, Sachs’ final song is transformed into a jeremiad against power for power’s sake.
Whether Katharina succeeded in liberating Die Meistersinger from its noxious associations is hard to tell (in true Wagnerian form). Critical reaction is never straightforward, and the chorus of boos that met the final curtain gave way to sustained applause. Even full-time critics heard wildly different things (One heard Amanda Mace going flat in Act III, leading to a ‘queasy quintet’; while another wrote of the same performance that ‘her pitch and intonation were flawless’).
As to what was seen, not many have discussed the production in depth, but the assessment that it ‘tries to do far too many things at once’ sounds about right. After all, is the point made any sounder by dressing Sachs up as Hitler for his final song? Do dick puppets and nudity really help illustrate the depravity of power?
Wagner’s legacy is a hard thing to sort out. The Nazi association is unfortunate and should be irrelevant. As important as it is in understanding the Nazis, it is of no help in understanding Wagner. One production is not going to fix things up (Remember, this bit’s already been tried with Wieland Wagner's legendary 1956 production ), but changing the way we look at Hans Sachs and Sixtus Beckmesser is an awfully intriguing approach.
Even great musical minds like Stravinsky found him so. His personal life doesn’t make things any easier for the novitiate. He was a liar, a cheat, and a thief, and he made no effort to disguise his flaws.
The taint of Nazism isn’t one of them, though it’s chalked up as one of his sins almost as if he were a member of the Party. The facts that he was Hitler’s favorite composer and that Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was given an exalted place in Nazi culture are not of Wagner’s doing. Wagner had already been dead for six years by the time Hitler was born.
It’s easy to forget though, especially with the magpie nature of Nazi propaganda. So skillfully and completely did Hitler and the Nazis appropriate Wagner’s ideology that Hans Sachs’ closing song, though written in 1862, reads almost verbatim like a passage from Mein Kampf:
Beware! Evil tricks threaten us:All the dramaturgy for the Nazi regime is right there: The threat of foreign influence, the sanctifying power of German heritage, the fixation on the Holy Roman Empire.
if the German people and kingdom should one day decay,
under a false, foreign rule
soon no prince would understand his people;
and foreign mists with foreign vanities
they would plant in our German land;
what is German and true none would know,
if it did not live in the honour of German Masters.
Therefore I say to you:
honour your German Masters,
then you will conjure up good spirits!
And if you favour their endeavours,
even if the Holy Roman Empire
should dissolve in mist,
for us there would yet remain
holy German Art! – Hans Sachs, Act Three, Scene V
And it is not by accident that Wagner’s only great comic opera is set in Nuremberg. There were Meistersingers in loads of cities, but Nuremberg was the unofficial seat of the Holy Roman Empire. Like King Arthur, the once and future king, Nuremberg had a sacred place in German nationalism as the once and future capital. (The Second Reich would begin less than a decade after Die Meistersinger’s premiere, and Wagner endured 12 years of exile because of his agitating on behalf of a unified Germany.)
Hitler was merely following a well-worn script when he founded the Third Reich at Nuremberg in 1933, accompanied by (what else?) an official performance of Die Meistersinger. And, in what Oprah would call a ‘full-circle moment’, the city that had played host to one of the Rintfleisch-Pogroms in 1298, which brutally cleared the town center of its Jewish population, was where the ‘Nuremberg Laws’ were adopted in 1935, officially stripping Jews of their German citizenship.
Nuremberg’s historical significance is why the Allies bombed the city beyond necessity (90% of it was destroyed), and it was no small part of the rationale for holding the post-war trials there, in an effort to complete the humiliation of the Germans.None of this has anything to do with the opera. If it did, it wouldn’t be the great piece of art that it is. However, the stench of these extra-musical associations is so overpowering that the opera still feels as though it’s locked in the death grip of a regime that was obliterated 60 years ago.
Katharina Wagner’s (pictured above with Merkel) new staging of Die Meistersinger attempts to wrest the work from its post-war legacy chiefly by inverting the dramatic arc of the libretto. Walther and Hans Sachs, the opera’s heroes, begin the production as rogues wearing sneakers and chain-smoking (left). Though Sachs is a guardian of the old order as a Meistersinger, he recognizes the incipient genius of Walther’s rule-breaking approach to the art. Whereas Sixtus Beckmesser cannot abide any challenge to the rules of the guild, Sixtus is shown initially with slicked-back hair and proper dress, a paragon of order, the opposite of everything Walther/Hans.In the traditional narrative, Beckmesser tries his hand at Walther/Sachs’ new style and fails miserably. The death of the Old Guard begins, quite literally, in the Second Act when Beckmesser is beaten savagely in a riot that erupts after he attempts a serenade (This is the most widely cited moment of anti-Semitism in the opera, aside from the ending. Beckmesser is supposed to be a Jewish caricature getting his comeuppance, etc.). It is a hobbled and tenderized Beckmesser who attempts to sing Hans Sachs’ song in the final act. He cannot make sense of its new style, and he is laughed offstage. The freewheeling Walther then sings the Prize Song, breaking ever more guild rules as he does, and the New Guard is triumphant, earning Walther a bride and leg up in the social order. By inverting the traditional presentation, making the New Guard’s ascent concomitant with the adoption of the Old Guard’s formality, and vice verse, Katharina subverts the ultimate triumph by pointing out that, though Walther and Sachs appear to be agents of change, they are actually aspiring to the status quo. Sachs tutors Walther in how to conform just enough to rig the system for personal gain, and rather than the sentimental coda of its usual guise, Sachs’ final song is transformed into a jeremiad against power for power’s sake.
Whether Katharina succeeded in liberating Die Meistersinger from its noxious associations is hard to tell (in true Wagnerian form). Critical reaction is never straightforward, and the chorus of boos that met the final curtain gave way to sustained applause. Even full-time critics heard wildly different things (One heard Amanda Mace going flat in Act III, leading to a ‘queasy quintet’; while another wrote of the same performance that ‘her pitch and intonation were flawless’).
As to what was seen, not many have discussed the production in depth, but the assessment that it ‘tries to do far too many things at once’ sounds about right. After all, is the point made any sounder by dressing Sachs up as Hitler for his final song? Do dick puppets and nudity really help illustrate the depravity of power?
Wagner’s legacy is a hard thing to sort out. The Nazi association is unfortunate and should be irrelevant. As important as it is in understanding the Nazis, it is of no help in understanding Wagner. One production is not going to fix things up (Remember, this bit’s already been tried with Wieland Wagner's legendary 1956 production ), but changing the way we look at Hans Sachs and Sixtus Beckmesser is an awfully intriguing approach.
 Beckmesser |  Eva & Sachs |  Magdalene & Eva |
 Magdalene & Eva |  The Meister Musters |  Walther |
Labels: jodru, Meistersinger, Wagner
posted by jodru at 12:44
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