{"id":8934,"date":"2025-07-10T19:41:52","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T17:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=8934"},"modified":"2025-07-13T01:42:59","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T23:42:59","slug":"be-this-house-named-wahnfried","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/?p=8934","title":{"rendered":"Be This House Named Wahnfried"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been almost ten years and I still feel that one of the most inspiring projects I have encountered in my career as a critic was Wagner\u2019s Ring <\/em>in Karlsruhe \u2013 produced on the initiative of Peter Spuhler, the then director of the Badisches Staatstheater, by four directors, one for each part of the cycle, and complemented by a new opera, Wahnfried<\/em>, commissioned especially for the occasion from the Israeli-American composer Avner Dorman. I wrote at the time that the theatre in Hermann-Levi-Platz \u2013 named after a descendant of a famous rabbinical family, Kapellmeister<\/em> of the Karslruhe court opera and a great admirer of Wagner, who after many twists and turns entrusted him with the premiere of his Parsifal <\/em>\u2013 would pave the theatrical way to Bayreuth for the four directors. And indeed: of the four \u201cyoung and talented\u201d, three have already reached the Green Hill, with Yuval Sharon\u2019s Lohengrin <\/em>enjoying an unprecedented return to the Festspielhaus stage this season.<\/p>\n

There could hardly be better confirmation of the need to separate the work from its creator than the legacy of Spuhler\u2019s directorship in Karlsruhe. His tenure \u2013 exceptionally successful in artistic terms \u2013 had a premature and turbulent ending following violent protests against his authoritarian managerial methods.\u00a0Nevertheless, the four-director Ring <\/em>made history and great reviews followed the premiere Wahnfried \u2013<\/em> its smallest detail honed by all the members of the creative team and artists involved, from the composer and authors of the Anglo-German libretto, Lutz H\u00fcbner and Sarah Nemitz; the conductor Justin Brown and the carefully selected cast, who included several soloists from the Ring <\/em>he conducted; to the production team headed by Keith Warner.<\/p>\n

The title of Dorman\u2019s opera refers to the villa in Bayreuth in which Wagner spent the last years of his life and which he named Wahnfried \u2013 much to the delight of the town\u2019s residents, who associated the word \u201cWahn\u201d mainly with madness and delusion. Yet what the composer had in mind was the Schopenhauerian creative frenzy as well as refuge providing a respite from it. He probably did not anticipate that Haus Wahnfried would be transformed into a ghastly mausoleum, the seat of a degenerate cult of his person and oeuvre, a cult created by his grieving widow Cosima and her increasingly bizarre acolytes, including Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a man uprooted from his own culture, advocate of Arthur de Gobineau\u2019s racist thought and ardent promoter of the v\u00f6lkisch ideology, which many believe had a fundamental impact on the development of the Nazi doctrine.<\/p>\n

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Mark Le Brocq (Houston Stewart Chamberlain). Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis<\/p>\n

Chamberlain is the protagonist of Dorman\u2019s opera \u2013 in line with the intentions of the co-producers of the venture, which came at a time of historical reckoning for the Bayreuth clan, begun a few years before the bicentennial of the composer\u2019s birth.\u00a0Wahnfried <\/em>was intended as something of a divertissement <\/em>between the successive presentations of the Ring <\/em>in Karlsruhe: a creative impression on the \u201cdangerous liaisons\u201d of the Wagner family, parallel to many educational initiatives at the time, like the famous \u201cVerstummte Stimmen\u201d exhibition, a part of which is still available on the Green Hill, and the documentary Wagner & Me<\/em>, featuring the British actor, writer and Wagnerite Stephen Fry.<\/p>\n

Wahnfried <\/em>turned out to be an impression made all the more interesting by the fact that it was filtered through the experiences and sensibilities of a forty-year-old artist raised in Israel, where Wagner\u2019s music still remains a taboo that cannot be broken even by prominent Jewish artists. This may be the reason why Dorman did not fall into the trap of Wagnerian pastiche, writing his first opera in the spirit of postmodern eclecticism \u2013 with numerous references to forms and genres of the past, a work seemingly comprising two acts, but in fact composed of a dozen separate episodes, juxtaposed to create an almost cinematic contrast of musical planes. Dorman is a very skilful polystylist. He builds the sound climate of his work \u2013 based on expressive melodic structures, and ostinato rhythms as if straight from Shostakovich \u2013 from references to jazz, salon waltzes, military marches, Weimar cabaret, individual leitmotifs from Wagner\u2019s operas, klezmer music, and snippets of Protestant chorales. The solo parts oscillate between a declamatory style and poignant lyricism (Siegfried Wagner\u2019s magnificent monologue at the beginning of Act Two), merging perfectly in the group scenes with the sound of the chorus and the colourful orchestral layer.<\/p>\n

The music of Wahnfried<\/em> \u2013 sophisticated yet accessible \u2013 has something irresistibly \u201cAmerican\u201d about it. To many critics it brings to mind John Adams; to me it is associated more with John Corigliano and the fusion of styles typical of his oeuvre: not devoid of the grotesque and black humour, manoeuvring between realism and the world of delusion, effectively shattering convention, like in the now somewhat forgotten opera The Ghosts of Versailles<\/em>. However, Dorman and his librettists too often resort to stereotypes: Chamberlain became an ardent Wagnerite as early as in the 1870s; his first visit to Wahnfried did not come until 1888, five years after the death of his beloved composer; only then did he join the Bayreuther Kreis, in which the seeds of v\u00f6lkisch nationalism and a new, racist strand of anti-Semitism had already been sown by Baron Hans von Wolzogen, whom Wagner himself had invited to edit the Bayreuther Bl\u00e4tter<\/em> monthly, a decision he soon came to regret bitterly. The story of Isolde, the first fruit of Cosima and Richard\u2019s love, who was denied her share of Wagner\u2019s legacy, is much more tragic and multifaceted: Cosima herself lived with the stigma of being Liszt\u2019s illegitimate child; matters were further \u201ccomplicated\u201d by her then husband Hans von B\u00fclow, who acknowledged his paternity of Isolde. Isolde\u2019s rejection by her mother was also influenced by the conventions of the day, which stigmatised marriages supported by the wife \u2013 and this was the case of Isolde, who married the penniless conductor Fritz Beidler. Chamberlain himself made advances to Isolde: his subsequent marriage to Eva von B\u00fclow, Wagner\u2019s second daughter, was the result of cold calculation. Cosima learned of Isolde\u2019s untimely death by chance ten years after the fact \u2013 less than a year before her own death. Most importantly, however, both Cosima and Houston Stewart Chamberlain died before Hitler came to power, and the main culprit behind the dictator\u2019s later association with Bayreuth was the naive and not very intelligent Winifred, whose actions deserve a separate opera.<\/p>\n

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Mark Le Brocq and Oskar McCarthy (Wagner-D\u00e4mon). Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis<\/p>\n

The narrative oversimplifications and lack of psychological depth in Wahnfried <\/em>were counterbalanced in Karlsruhe by singers who brought to mind the complex characters of the Ring<\/em>. Wagner\u2019s spectre haunting Chamberlain was played by the singer portraying the equally ambiguous character of Alberich. Hermann Levi, a man torn between his love for the composer and having to put up with his anti-Semitic taunts, was portrayed by the singer playing Wotan in the Karslruhe staging.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Polly Graham, the director of the Longborough production, followed a different path: she engaged in a dialogue with Keith Warner\u2019s concept of the premiere, alternately arguing with it and refining the British director\u2019s ideas. She deliberately juxtaposed Chamberlain\u2019s grotesque figure with reality \u2013 Mark Le Brocq is much closer to the historical character than Matthias Wohlbrecht, who sang the role in Karlsruhe. Graham has preserved the vaudeville-cabaret feel of some of the episodes by casting the accomplished dancer and circus artist Tamzen Moulding as Acrobat. Wagner-D\u00e4mon \u2013 in Warner\u2019s concept bringing to mind Jack Napier from Burton\u2019s Batman \u2013<\/em> has been transformed into a green jester, a joker pulled from the deck in successive deals of history\u2019s cards. The Master\u2019s Disciple (Hitler) \u2013 made to look by the director of the premiere as the dictator from Chaplin\u2019s film \u2013 is brought on stage as a Great War veteran, wearing a uniform decorated with a clown\u2019s pompoms. Together with the set designer Max Johns and costume designer Anisha Fields, Graham has convincingly conveyed the ghastly atmosphere of the Bayreuth clan \u2013 manipulators controlled by Cosima, who distorted the composer\u2019s ideas, controversial in any case from today\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n

Musically, the Longborough Wahnfried <\/em>was on a par with the Karlsruhe production. Special credit should go to Le Brocq for his phenomenal portrayal of Chamberlain, going far beyond the original framework of a character role. It is impossible to forget the chilling interpretation of Cosima by the seasoned Wagnerian Susan Bullock, who, approaching the end of her career, managed to turn her inevitable weaknesses into assets worthy of the world\u2019s best stages; the superb technique of Alexandra Lowe, a singer blessed with a soprano of great beauty, expressive and secure intonation-wise, which was evident in the dual roles of Isolde and Winifred; and the touching portrayal of Siegfried Wagner by Andrew Watts, who sang the role in Karlsruhe \u2013 although his countertenor has since become dull and lost some of its harmonics, it has definitely gained in strength of expression. Excellent performances also came from the soprano Meeta Raval (as Anna and Eva, Chamberlain\u2019s wives); Adrian Dwyer, a memorable Mime from the Ring <\/em>conducted by Negus, this time in the sinister role of the Master\u2019s Disciple; the baritone Edmund Danon, making his LFO debut (as the living and dead Hermann Levi); and Oskar McCarthy, coming from a slightly different order, in the baritone part of Wagner-D\u00e4mon. McCarthy, a versatile singer, actor and performer, more than made up for some shortcomings in his vocal technique with his theatrical craftsmanship. Another singer deserving a favourable mention is the Cuban-French bass-baritone Antoin Herrera-L\u00f3pez Kessel as Kaiser Wilhelm II and the anarchist Bakunin. I was not disappointed either by the chorus, larger than usual for this company, augmented by members of the Longborough Community Chorus. The whole thing was conducted by Justin Brown, repeating his Karlsruhe success and once again showing the LFO regulars that he is not only an effective conductor, but primarily a very sensitive musician.<\/p>\n

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Adrian Dwyer (Master’s Disciple). Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis<\/p>\n

The British premiere of Wahnfried<\/em>, which was met with favourable reception from both the critics and the audience, despite the work\u2019s shortcomings, proved to be an important and necessary venture. All the more important given that it was undertaken by LFO, a company established out of pure and disinterested love for Wagner, demonstrating again and again that it cares for his legacy more wisely than his Bayreuth heirs, who often go astray. That is why I am surprised by some voices claiming that staging Dorman\u2019s opera in the \u201cEnglish Bayreuth\u201d was a reckless act, an initiative fraught with the risk of undermining the achievements of the rural opera company from Gloucestershire. That is why I was alarmed by the essay included in the programme, the author of which, Michael Spitzer \u2013 perhaps with the best of intentions \u2013 engaged in manipulation in the other direction. The world is once again plunging into the hell of hypocrisy; ideologies that were supposed to be gone forever after Hitler\u2019s defeat are on the rise again. So it is better not to repeat the long-discredited legend about the porcelain monkeys of Moses Mendelssohn, grandfather of the composer Felix \u2013 a humiliating purchase the philosopher had to make to be granted permission to marry. Spitzer repeats the hackneyed clich\u00e9 that the figurines in Mendelssohn\u2019s collection are an example of the so-called Judenporzellan<\/em>, items purchased by Jews under duress in exchange for the right to start a family and have legitimate offspring.\u00a0True, Frederick the Great did promulgate this disgraceful decree \u2013 one of many intended to boost sales of products from his Berlin manufactory \u2013 but not until 1769, when Moses had long been married. Not only that \u2013 six years earlier the same Frederick had granted Moses the Schutzjude<\/em> status, protecting the scholar from the persecution that indeed affected his poorer and less privileged brethren, that is, practically most of the Jewish community in Prussia. However hideous the figures in the Mendelssohn collection may seem today, in Moses\u2019 times they were regarded as a symbol of luxury and affluence. Therefore, Felix could have not treated the heirlooms inherited from his grandfather as a \u201cracist memento mori<\/em>\u201d. The whole story is an anachronistic construct rejected by researchers almost half a century ago.<\/p>\n

This does not mean that there was no anti-Semitism in Germany in Wagner\u2019s days. This does not mean that Wagner was not an anti-Semite. Finally, this does not mean that Chamberlain did not pour racist poison into this leaven \u2013 with disastrous consequences, as we increasingly tend to forget. History must not be manipulated to introduce audiences to Dorman\u2019s work. It is necessary to seek the truth and truth does not lie in the middle at all. \u201cThe truth lies where it lies\u201d, as W\u0142adys\u0142aw Bartoszewski, a member of the \u017begota presidium and a Righteous Among the Nations, used to say. He was a man who understood perfectly the meaning of the phrase \u201cto do more harm than good\u201d.<\/p>\n

Translated by: Anna Kijak<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been almost ten years and I still feel that one of the most inspiring projects I have encountered in my career as a critic was Wagner\u2019s Ring in Karlsruhe \u2013 produced on the initiative of Peter Spuhler, the then director of the Badisches Staatstheater, by four directors, one for each part of the cycle, … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-mangusta","4":"post-8934","6":"format-standard","7":"category-posts-in-english","8":"category-wedrowki-operowe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8934"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8939,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8934\/revisions\/8939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}