The road to Bayreuth (2014)
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What can you say more about a sunset besides that it is beautiful? You can play a piece of music while watching. Perhaps it becomes even more beautiful. Perhaps it changes the way you’ve looked at it before.
It was movie soundtracks that brought me into contact with the music of Richard Wagner. It was music that was connected with the soundtracks of Star Wars and Apocalypse Now. It was “The Lord of The Rings” in an opera. It was the first classical music that I could feel. Could feel like I felt the blues-based pop and rock music I grew up with. It did not manage to do so by the bombast it is very often associated with but by means of subtlety and musical richness. With dialogues set on music that liberated the opera from its typical classical arias and supplied me with an answer to the question why one rather would sing than talk in a theater play. Singing gave the words more meaning. Singing made you connect with the persons and their motives more. In trying to find the best version of Wagner’s “Ring des Nibelungen” a fascination (by times obsession) was born. How could there be so much difference between all those recordings? Wasn’t the score the same for all orchestras and conductors? My search resulted in various complete Ring cycles. From Bayreuth (Clemens Krauss from 1953 became my favorite) to the studio (Solti is the most famous one here but I never liked his Ring, I prefer Janowski from 1982). A decade ago, there was little else I was listening to. After the symphonic rock from the 80s, the funk rock, heavy metal and grunge from the 90s I had found a new musical love. |
This year this fascination brought me to Bayreuth. From the moment Wagner’s Unendliche Melodie got me hooked this trip to the Festspielhaus was inevitable. And the attendance of Lohengrin on August 9 was the pinnacle of that trip. The music of Richard Wagner might have come to me as a superior kind of film music for Germans it’s more than just a soundtrack and a bunch of good tunes. Bismarck made Germany into one nation, Wagner provided the people in that nation a mirror in which they could recognize their own being, see their own soul. That may sound like melancholy in overdrive and pompous but in Germany culture is a serious matter. This kind of contemplations can be found in programs that accompany the performance of a Wagner opera. Art is not just there for entertainment purposes. It must be able to answer life’s questions. Art as therapy. You can not take this light hearted. It’s the opposite of Oscar Wilde’s “Life is far too important to be taken seriously”. Wagner, his ideas about theater, his legacy. They are like a rock that still lies in the landscape of German culture. He can’t be denied. And although Wagner and Nazism are separated by time, he was a source of inspiration for national-socialism. It causes unease until this day. A memorial site for Jewish musicians who worked in Bayreuth from the 1880s till the 1930s is erected in Bayreuth. Plates, placed like tomb stones in a graveyard, tell their story. Sad stories in which Cosima (Wagner’s widow) plays a highly questionable role. After Germany’s defeat in WW1 nationalism deteriorates into national-socialism and fascism and Bayreuth becomes a magnet for ultra-right-wing visitors (among them Adolf Hitler). If there is a direct line that connects Wagner (who died in 1883) with Hitler, that line is Cosima (who died in 1930). That gives directors and artists that want to stage a Wagner opera in Germany, especially in Bayreuth, an extra responsibility. Their intentions have to be above any moral doubt. In Amsterdam (where we are totally spoiled with high-quality Wagner performances) and the United States the situation is less complicated. For Wagner in naturalistic scenery you better try your luck in America where a helmet is still a helmet and a spear still a spear. In the US performances like this year’s Lohengrin, with rats instead of soldiers in the choir, are called Eurotrash.
Another place where they learned Wagner’s lesson about music and drama well is Hollywood. No movie soundtrack is without debt to the sorcerer of Bayreuth who, had he be granted another life as composer, would spend his days writing film scores in Beverly Hills.
I arrived the day before the performance in Bayreuth. That gave me the opportunity to visit the Franz Liszt museum and Wagner’s grave at Wahnfried. In the Franz Liszt museum, the house where Liszt stayed and died during his visit to the Festspiele in 1886, is the piano on which Wagner composed Parsifal. Standing there I hesitate. Music notes come to mind: F, B, D#, G#. The Tristan chord. Would I dare to play it here? Like a try-before-you-die? I let the moment pass and don’t. Guess I have to save that one for the next time. Visiting Bayreuth is having an appointment with history. With all I have read about Liszt and Wagner and all the music I’ve heard from them the place provides me with a very rich experience. I feel like a kid in a candy store.
The next day is Festspielhaus-day and there are butterflies in my belly. I am that kid again that went, back in 1988, to a concert of his teenage idols: symphonic rock band Rush. I am ready to enter Walhalla.
The performance of Lohengrin is impressive. After attending a few less than successful stagings in the past (Peter Konwitschny’s Salomé and Martin Kusej’s Fliegende Holländer to name a couple of them) I had my doubts about Regietheater but Hans Neuenfels staging made a good case for it. The staging and Personenregie, as far away from a Teutonic calling for arms as you can imagine, worked well. The added extra layers, with rats in the choir and rats in a video (showing three possible storylines of what might have really happened), are not always understood by me but at least they don’t take anything away from the main storyline. Even better, it shows me that a modern, avant-garde production can be both thought-provoking and highly entertaining. In the Festspielhaus there is no climate control so by the end of the second act I’m in for some high quality Bikram opera.
In Wagner’s ideas for theater words are as important as music. The orchestra is placed under the stage so the singers are unlikely to get drowned by the sound of the instruments. As for that sound, the famous acoustics in the Festspielhaus, it means that the brass, placed in the back of the pit, has to play their guts out. Sometimes beyond salvation. Concerning the singers: Klaus Florian Vogt is perhaps the best Lohengrin at this moment. He is fabulous. The public reaction is euphoric. Clapping and shouting in a 20-minute long ovation after the final curtain. “That was like a football match”, I tell the man next to me on the way out. “Yes”, he replies, “ and Klaus Florian is Messi”.
Another place where they learned Wagner’s lesson about music and drama well is Hollywood. No movie soundtrack is without debt to the sorcerer of Bayreuth who, had he be granted another life as composer, would spend his days writing film scores in Beverly Hills.
I arrived the day before the performance in Bayreuth. That gave me the opportunity to visit the Franz Liszt museum and Wagner’s grave at Wahnfried. In the Franz Liszt museum, the house where Liszt stayed and died during his visit to the Festspiele in 1886, is the piano on which Wagner composed Parsifal. Standing there I hesitate. Music notes come to mind: F, B, D#, G#. The Tristan chord. Would I dare to play it here? Like a try-before-you-die? I let the moment pass and don’t. Guess I have to save that one for the next time. Visiting Bayreuth is having an appointment with history. With all I have read about Liszt and Wagner and all the music I’ve heard from them the place provides me with a very rich experience. I feel like a kid in a candy store.
The next day is Festspielhaus-day and there are butterflies in my belly. I am that kid again that went, back in 1988, to a concert of his teenage idols: symphonic rock band Rush. I am ready to enter Walhalla.
The performance of Lohengrin is impressive. After attending a few less than successful stagings in the past (Peter Konwitschny’s Salomé and Martin Kusej’s Fliegende Holländer to name a couple of them) I had my doubts about Regietheater but Hans Neuenfels staging made a good case for it. The staging and Personenregie, as far away from a Teutonic calling for arms as you can imagine, worked well. The added extra layers, with rats in the choir and rats in a video (showing three possible storylines of what might have really happened), are not always understood by me but at least they don’t take anything away from the main storyline. Even better, it shows me that a modern, avant-garde production can be both thought-provoking and highly entertaining. In the Festspielhaus there is no climate control so by the end of the second act I’m in for some high quality Bikram opera.
In Wagner’s ideas for theater words are as important as music. The orchestra is placed under the stage so the singers are unlikely to get drowned by the sound of the instruments. As for that sound, the famous acoustics in the Festspielhaus, it means that the brass, placed in the back of the pit, has to play their guts out. Sometimes beyond salvation. Concerning the singers: Klaus Florian Vogt is perhaps the best Lohengrin at this moment. He is fabulous. The public reaction is euphoric. Clapping and shouting in a 20-minute long ovation after the final curtain. “That was like a football match”, I tell the man next to me on the way out. “Yes”, he replies, “ and Klaus Florian is Messi”.