.png)
6 hours ago
11
When Glyndebourne opened its doors for the archetypal clip successful 1934, the enactment connected the programme was Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Mozart was the lone euphony performed passim Glyndebourne’s archetypal 4 seasons, and helium is inactive the composer with whom Britain’s archetypal and best-known “country house” opera festival is astir associated.
It was connected a precise antithetic composer, however, that the regard of the festival’s founder, John Christie, was initially trained. Christie was a Germanophile and obsessed with the enactment of Richard Wagner. “He was ever hankering to bash Parsifal astatine Glyndebourne arsenic an Easter festival,” recalled his son, Sir George, who ran the Sussex festival aft John’s death, until his ain son, Gus, took implicit successful crook astatine the commencement of the millennium. “He was lone unopen up by my mother.”
Ninety-one years aft the festival’s founding, John Christie volition yet get his privation arsenic Wagner’s “stage consecration play” (as the composer himself designated it) is performed astatine Glyndebourne for the archetypal time. But if it had been near up to Wagner’s widow, Cosima, neither Glyndebourne nor so immoderate different theatre would ever person been allowed anyplace adjacent Parsifal, her husband’s last masterpiece.
Cosima came from a glittering creator lineage: her begetter was Franz Liszt, her parent the celebrated writer Marie d’Agoult. When Cosima and Wagner began their scandalous affair, producing 3 children retired of wedlock, she was joined to Hans von Bülow, 1 of Germany’s starring conductors. She outlived her 2nd hubby by astir fractional a period (he was 24 years her senior), dying conscionable 4 years earlier Christie and his woman Audrey Mildmay archetypal welcomed the nationalist to their caller theatre connected their Sussex estate.
Wagner himself died successful Venice successful February 1883, hardly six months aft the triumphant premiere of Parsifal, the lone 1 of his 13 operas conceived with an knowing of however the innovative auditorium and orchestral pit of his festival theatre successful Bayreuth would really function.
Cosima’s grief initially took the signifier of paralysis: friends virtually had to prise her distant from her husband’s corpse. But she soon applied herself with bonzer tenacity to ensuring that the Bayreuth festival, inaugurated 7 years earlier with the archetypal performances of Wagner’s four-part Ring cycle, would stay nether the family’s control. She planned to enactment arsenic regent until the couple’s lone lad – the auspiciously named Siegfried, conscionable 13 erstwhile his begetter died – was aged capable to instrumentality charge. Securing Bayreuth’s aboriginal required governmental dexterity: Cosima deftly cultivated Bavarian rulers and German kaisers, emphasising the festival’s value to kingdom and empire alike.
The Ring and Parsifal were the lone works that Wagner himself ever saw successful Bayreuth. Cosima broadened the repertoire to see Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger. But Parsifal remained by acold the festival’s astir often performed work: of the 194 festival performances betwixt Wagner’s decease and 1900, 91 were of Parsifal. Ironically, fixed the composer’s well-deserved estimation for antisemitism, the lone conductor to marque a existent occurrence of his last enactment was Hermann Levi, a rabbi’s lad who weathered maltreatment from Cosima and her coterie of antisemites to instrumentality for festival aft festival.
Cosima was acutely alert of Bayreuth’s unsocial selling point: Parsifal was the lone enactment that could beryllium seen solely astatine the festival. This was what Wagner had ever intended: “There unsocial whitethorn Parsifal beryllium presented, present and always,” helium wrote to King Ludwig II of Bavaria. He was horrified to deliberation that his Knights of the Grail, their wounded king (Amfortas), the sorcerer who threatens them (Klingsor) and the knight who redeems them (Parsifal) mightiness beryllium represented “in immoderate different theatre arsenic a specified amusement for its audience”.
For his family, Wagner’s decree carried an implicit and everlasting motivation force. In the eyes of the remainder of the world, it had nary ineligible standing. Wagner’s euphony would autumn retired of copyright successful 1913, meaning that opera houses crossed the satellite would beryllium capable to equine Parsifal – and so immoderate of his works – without seeking the family’s support oregon paying immoderate royalties.
If Cosima wanted to forestall Parsifal from entering the nationalist domain, she needed to beryllium decisive. In 1901, erstwhile the Reichstag debated extending copyright from 30 to 50 years from an writer oregon composer’s death, Cosima lobbied vigorously. She wrote to each parliamentarian, extolling Wagner’s bequest to the German federation but the connection was rejected.
Two years later, successful 1903, Cosima received a devastating stroke erstwhile the incoming manager of the Metropolitan Opera, Heinrich Conried, launched his tenure successful spectacular benignant by announcing a accumulation of Parsifal. She was outraged – but legally powerless. The US had not signed the Berne copyright convention, meaning that the restrictions connected Wagner performances that inactive applied successful astir of Europe did not hindrance the Met, and Siegfried had carelessly sanctioned a miniature people from which copyists made perfectly ineligible handwritten parts. The accumulation was a sensation, but, for Cosima, it desecrated her husband’s astir ineffable work.
As 1913 approached, Cosima’s acolytes made 1 last propulsion to beforehand a peculiar instrumentality – Lex Parsifal, arsenic it was dubbed – to support the family’s rights successful perpetuity. Resigned to the remainder of Wagner’s works entering the nationalist domain, the household sought alternatively to unafraid for Parsifal an unprecedented ineligible status: performances would stay forbidden anyplace different than Bayreuth, successful designation of the unsocial taste bequest Wagner had bestowed connected Germany and the satellite with his last work.
The instigator of this last and somewhat hopeless determination was Houston Stewart Chamberlain, English-born writer of infamous racist tracts and son-in-law of Cosima, who enlisted supporters including Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner. Their program foundered, but a decennary later, connected his archetypal sojourn to Wahnfried, the Wagner location successful Bayreuth, Adolf Hitler undertook that “if I should ever win successful exerting immoderate power connected Germany’s destiny, I volition spot that Parsifal is fixed backmost to Bayreuth”. Despite his notorious intimacy with Siegfried Wagner’s widow, Winifred, and sons Wieland and Wolfgang, his committedness was not kept.
Cosima’s efforts were motivated not conscionable by fiscal considerations, but besides by a sincere if misplaced tendency to sphere what she perceived arsenic Parsifal’s unsocial character. In a missive to Kaiser Wilhelm II, she likened the enactment to a ineffable relic unveiled to pilgrims lone connected a fewer peculiar occasions. The productions she supervised retained each item of Wagner’s progressively dated staging and question directions; critics began to picture Bayreuth arsenic a mausoleum.
Cosima’s enactment formed a agelong shadiness implicit consequent interpretations. The inclination to dainty Parsifal much similar a spiritual ceremonial than a portion of theatre endured good beyond her death. Even successful 2020, Roger Scruton defended the normal of refraining from applause aft Act I connected the grounds that “it shows the incorporation into the Eucharist of a existent sacrificial victim”. Many caller productions, however, person distanced the assemblage from the ceremonies depicted. Ruth Berghaus’s 1982 centenary accumulation for Frankfurt characterised the Grail assemblage arsenic decaying and misogynistic. Stefan Herheim’s 2008 Bayreuth Parsifal linked its communicative to the festival’s past and that of 20th-century Germany, staging the enactment successful Wahnfried.
The conjunction of Parsifal and Glyndebourne is simply a fascinating prospect. A comparatively tiny theatre tin contiguous it arsenic an intimate quality play alternatively than a monumental, ceremonial work. In a presumption resonating intriguingly with existent debates, director Jetske Mijnssen interprets its characters arsenic susceptible quality beings, describing Amfortas arsenic incapable to dice and Parsifal arsenic idiosyncratic who tin springiness him “the acquisition of dying”. Even without Bayreuth’s unsocial covered pit, meanwhile, Parsifal’s sumptuous people – described by that ambivalent Wagnerian Claude Debussy arsenic “one of the loveliest monuments of dependable ever raised to the serene glory of music” – volition surely beryllium heard to large vantage successful Glyndebourne’s famously lukewarm acoustic.
Ten days aft Glyndebourne’s Parsifal opens, Cosima herself volition look connected the signifier of different of Britain’s starring state location opera festivals, on with Hermann Levi, Siegfried Wagner, Houston Stewart Chamberlain and respective different friends and household members. Longborough – founded successful 1991, and the brainchild of different passionate Wagnerian, Martin Graham, is often described arsenic the English Bayreuth, acknowledgment some to its Wagnerian way grounds and to resemblances betwixt the buildings. The Cotswolds festival is simply a singularly due venue for the UK premiere of Avner Dorman’s Wahnfried. In Dorman’s telling, the sanction Wahnfried (“free from delusion”) proves ironic: not lone are the house’s inhabitants themselves deluded, they unit their delusions connected others.
In non-linear and sometimes surreal fashion, and with euphony that is often comic and lone occasionally sounds similar Wagner (the sound-world is person to Weill, Shostakovich, Adams and klezmer), Dorman exposes the thread linking Cosima’s cult of Wagner to the horrors of the Third Reich. The formed includes a quality identifiable arsenic Hitler, whose euphony Dorman evolved by transcribing 1 of the Führer’s speeches into philharmonic notation, “so that it would dependable similar him, and besides truthful I didn’t person to constitute euphony for him – I conscionable couldn’t bash that”. But nevertheless baleful Dorman shows Wagner’s bequest to be, his opera does not demonise the composer – though it does Daemon-ise him. Wagner is represented connected signifier by a “Daemon” (following Philip Pullman’s spelling and example) who evokes “perhaps the shade of Wagner, possibly what is near of him, erstwhile escaped of the antisemitic bile”.
Dorman, whose opera premiered successful 2016, was attempting to reconcile his fascinated admiration for Wagner with his cognition of the cult’s consequences: penning the opera was portion of this process, but helium admits that “it hasn’t solved the problem”. As a instrumentalist raised successful Israel, wherever Wagner is efficaciously banned, and the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, Dorman has much crushed than astir to consciousness equivocal. But the situation helium faces is communal to each who question to construe Wagner: to abstracted what is beauteous and humane successful his enactment from the ideology surrounding it. Disentangling Wagner from the cult his widow inspired is some hard and essential.
English (US) ·