However, the Jesus of Wagner’s imagination is very different from the one familiar through Christianity. Wagner’s Jesus was an individual who was godlike because of a perfect compassion, quite unique in essence and not specific to a historical setting. In other words, Wagner had to disconnect Jesus from Judaism. For all his admiration for Jesus, or whoever he imagined Jesus to be, Wagner could not accept any Jewish identity of Jesus, and felt that Christianity would be flawless if limited to the Gospels. While many modern Christians feel more comfortable with the voice of the Gospels than that of, say, the warlike Book of Joshua, Wagner was letting his prejudice overpower his intellect. He didn’t know the Old Testament, nor did he want to. Cosima’s Diaries record that Wagner’s entire study of the Old Testament amounted to two days of cursory reading, after which he pronounced the whole work as worthless. Parsifal succeeds Amfortas, who is weak from having “screwed around” with Judaism in the form of Kundry. The community to be renewed is Christianity itself, and the renewal is based on a blind disregard for history and context that borders chillingly on genocide. This particular interpretation of Parsifal as a plea for the purging of Judaism from Christianity (an undertaking that is like purging water from the ocean) can be and has been supported by various citations of Wagner’s writings, and there may well be some truth in it.
Yet it is an insufficient summary of the work. If Wagner had wanted us to see the work in this way, it seems likely that he would have said so explicitly in one of his many writings. And if this be the “message” of Parsifal, then we may be thankful that Wagner’s thoughts on the subject were incomplete and ambivalent enough to be shrouded in a symbology that is so open to other interpretations. Nor was this interpretation enough to make Parsifal acceptable to the ideologues of the Third Reich, who banned the work anyway.
Besides the racial theories that people have seen in Parsifal, there is also a sexual reading of it that won’t go away. Charles Osborne thought the work was possibly “a celebration of high-minded homosexuality.” It’s hard to know how he and others who agree with him arrive at this conclusion, unless it’s because Parsifal does not perform the conventional tenorial function of screwing the prima donna when he has the chance in Act II. More likely, those who suspect a latent homosexuality of Parsifal are thinking of the closed, all-male world of the knights. Certainly Parsifal is guilty of misogyny (as is every other opera—bar none!), but to equate misogyny with homosexuality is pernicious, ignorant, and at least fifty years out of style. One must also ask why Wagner, of all people, would glorify homosexuality. One hopes these scholars are not basing this on the composer’s weakness for pink satin. No, the likelier explanation is that Wagner was despicable, so he must have been homosexual also. Well, he wasn’t. Yet the otherwise lucid Robert Gutman is able to see a connection between the monastic knights and “the fellowship of Ernst Röhm’s troopers,” referring to the Nazi Brownshirts. Such are the dangers of reading history backward.
Yet Parsifal, as has been stated, is pleasing to people of various religious backgrounds, including no religious background whatsoever. What is it that Wagner has hit upon with his piece that gives it such universality? One answer is in the myth behind the story, and in Wagner’s treatment of it.
It is an ancient and universal belief that the virility of the sacred king is directly related to the fertility of the land. If the king is impotent or sterile—that is, if he is incapable of insemination—the land itself will be barren. This is a theme of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.
The regeneration of the land is echoed in the heavens as well. One of the most universal and primal fears is the fear that the sun won’t rise. This is merely the fear of darkness, felt by everyone at one time or another, projected to the cosmic level. To ensure the daily regeneration of the sun, societies instituted sacrifices. Performing the sacrifice guarantees regeneration of the sun. Each sunrise and each springtime awakening of the land is an analogue and promise of resurrection. In Tenochtitlán, Aztec priests performed human sacrifices before sunrise to sate the serpent god Quetzalcoatl so he would not feed off Huitzlipochtli the sun god and so diminish the sun’s life-giving power just when it is about to rise again.
In ancient, Egypt, a culture plainly obsessed with the afterlife, the festival of Opet was celebrated by the Pharaoh and his consort in the spring, when they entered the precincts of the Temple of Amon-Ra at Luxor, and the consort masturbated the Pharaoh, spilling his sacred seed on the grounds of the inner sanctum to ensure the fertility of the land. Note that this was done in the Temple of Amon-Ra, the sun god. The continuum was obvious to the Egyptians: the sustained virility of the king—the regeneration of the land—the daily rising of the sun—and the resurrection of the body.
This association of phenomena is only slightly less obvious in the Christian tradition. The implicitly sexual language used in the Roman Catholic liturgy, including the word “resurrection” itself, bears witness to the ancient and persisting fears about darkness, barrenness, and the death from which there is no sequel. The mystery of faith, intoned by the congregation, assures that “rising, You restored our life,” or, alternately, “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” Christ is the “sacrifice” whose blood has “conquered darkness.” The blood sacrifice that ensures the sunrise and the life-giving virility of the sacred king are both united in the person of Christ. For the faithful who seek resurrection for themselves, the “Sacrifice” (so it is called three times in the Catholic liturgy of the word) of the Eucharist must be performed repeatedly.
In Parsifal, Amfortas the sacred king is impotent in his own person (he has lost the Spear, for starters) and is furthermore incapable of performing the sacrifice of the Eucharist for the benefit of the community. In Act I, Titurel commands Amfortas to perform the office of the love feast because he himself is too feeble (“schwach”) to do it. By Act III, the situation is critical. Titurel is dead, the land is barren, there is no chance of resurrection for the knights or the land, and the Great Hall is dark. The knights, in near-panic, command Amfortas to perform the service “for the last time.” The stage directions inform us at this point that Amfortas can only “raise himself a little” (“ein wenig aufrichtend”). The terror depicted in the music, with near-atonality and the bells pealing with finality, is not the mere terror of personal death, much less annoyance at Amfortas for failing his duty. It is the all-encompassing fear that the sun won’t come up.
Parsifal, a type of Christ (which he clearly is, no matter what waffling Wagner did on the subject), restores the community by returning the sacred Spear. A transformed suffering motif is then heard. The suffering motif is developed out of the first theme heard in the Prelude (which Wagner called “faith”) and one continually associated with Amfortas and the barrenness of the land. It is a progression up a minor scale for six notes, “falling” back down several notes before it can resolve itself in the climactic seventh note, which would complete the scale. At the point in the opera when Parsifal returns with the upheld sacred Spear, the motif continues to rise up the scale and breaks through, so to speak, to the climactic seventh note, which the orchestra then celebrates with the shimmering cascade figures of a pure faith motif. It is an elegant orgasm in slow motion.
It is also a great deal more. The libretto specifies that Parsifal’s ability to perform the sacrifice causes the Great Hall to be suffused with brilliant light shining from above. The continuation of life is assured. The sun will rise again. By addressing these issues of eternal significance to people, and by doing so in a musical idiom that had never been previously employed and that has not been equaled since, and by daring, in our modern era, to present a picture of hope and fulfillment, Parsifal can be an experience unlike any other in the performing arts.
ENDNOTE: WHEN TO APPLAUD
A very wise friend once gave the following advice to a person attending her first performance of Parsifal. “Oh, it’s easy,” he said. “All you need to know is don’t applaud after t
he first act and don’t laugh if the Spear trick doesn’t work.” Setting aside flippancy for the moment, the issue of applause in this work is important because it gets to the nature of the work itself. What, exactly, is Parsifal and what is the most plausible response to this most unusual piece?
The standard custom is to allow the curtain to fall on Act I in silence. In New York, the conductor approaches the podium in total darkness before the Prelude and is not greeted by an ovation. (In Bayreuth, the conductor is never greeted by the audience for the simple reason that he is not visible in the covered pit.) Both subsequent acts are treated conventionally. The conductor is greeted by an ovation upon entering the pit, the orchestra rises, and there are the standard curtain calls after the acts are finished.
How did this all come about?
Wagner felt the first act, with its Hall of the Grail scene, was too sacred to be applauded. Moreover, he did not intend to part the curtain for bows at the end of Act I. This was interpreted by his devotees to mean that there would be no applause at all in Parsifal, which was never his intention. Whatever the many defects of the man’s character, he was often generous in his praise of the singers who went to such lengths to create his music dramas. Parsifal, with its extraordinary length, assuredly warranted applause.
In fact, Wagner was so impressed with the singing of his Flower Maidens at the first performance that he shouted a lusty “Bravo!” People in the audience turned to shush the Philistine who would so desecrate this sacred experience, unaware that it was Wagner himself!
Wagner was not the last person to get hissed for making inappropriate noise at Parsifal. It often happens that some poor suckers who didn’t do their homework begin applauding as the curtain descends, only to be quelled by the control freaks around them who end up making a lot more noise shushing than the applauders themselves would have made. Occasionally, there is someone who likes expressing disapproval of the silence tradition by shouting “Bravo!” at the top of his lungs, whether the performance warranted it or not. Then there are the no-nonsense people of Houston and a few other places, who happily applaud every curtain and every entrance of the conductor and don’t give a second thought to silly old taboos.
At Bayreuth, as you may well imagine, there is never any need for anyone to shush an applauder at the end of Act I. The silence is profound and all-encompassing. Nobody seems to breathe, much less applaud. The audience floats out to intermission in pious stillness as if transfigured.
The tradition has fluctuated at Bayreuth over the years. After Wagner attempted to clarify the situation, the festival audiences held their applause at the end of the first act, but then applauded at the end of Acts II and III. In the 1920s and 1930s, there was no applause whatsoever. (The “no applause at all” rule was traditional in New York in the first three decades of the century. Perhaps Met audiences felt a tinge of guilt over their “pirated” production.) No one was sure what to do through the 1950s, until finally the program for the 1967 Bayreuth festival printed an outline of what was expected. The original “first act, silence; everything else, standard” policy became the norm there as well as in Vienna, London, New York, and other cities, which had also fluctuated.
Many people understandably find all this tradition and reverence ridiculous. Why should such foolishness be reserved for this opera (whatever else it may be), alone among all those written since 1597? If it is so sacred, they say, then let it be sung in a church and let Holy Communion be extended to the audience at the appropriate moments in the score. After all, they rightly point out, overtly sacred music is applauded after it is performed, sometimes even in religious buildings.
Once again, one must fall back on the excuse that this line of reasoning is based on logic, which does not often apply in the opera house. The experience of attending an opera—any opera—is drenched in traditions and customs that are in no way necessary to the appreciation of the work itself, as is the experience of attending a baseball game or a rock concert, for that matter. The reverent silence at the end of Act I of Parsifal is of the same order.
Furthermore, it works, or it never would have become a tradition in the first place. The Grail scene is quite otherworldly, with its long silences, eerie lighting, and unseen choirs and bells. Applause at the end would feel superfluous and unnatural. It’s a better idea to save your excitement for the beginning of Act II, when the conductor and orchestra are usually greeted with a stirring ovation (unless, of course, it’s Bayreuth), which is wholly in keeping with the very earthy ambience of the following act.
If Act I is too ethereal for conventional methods of appreciation, why then does the audience applaud after Act III, which is, if anything, even farther removed from mundane reality than the first act? Apparently, silence was practiced in New York for a while at midcentury, but it simply didn’t work. For one thing, the audience wants to show its appreciation for the artists on stage and in the pit, who have at the very least been working hard for six solid hours. More important is the need to break the spell, so to speak, of the final scene. While something approaching an out-of-body experience may be delightful in the opera house itself, one must prepare to reenter the real world. Whatever Wagner’s lofty goals may have been, we are the people who must face the hazards of driving home, taking a city bus or subway, or even walking down the treacherous Green Hill of Bayreuth after the performance. A gut-level “Bravo!” or two shouted from your seat in the house is a good way to get ready for life after Parsifal.
PART THREE
EXPLORING
WAGNER
Wagner Issues:
Vegetarianism, Antivivisectionism,
and Anti-Semitism
The personality of any other artist may or may not be relevant to a full appreciation, but with Wagner, there is no getting around the issue. His life and his thought are all over his art. Knowing something about him is crucial to the experience of his work.
By all accounts, Wagner was an impossible human being. Even his devotees acknowledge this, although they allow him his defects as attributes of one who was too great to be judged by mortal standards. In the popular imagination, Wagner has been judged guilty of every sin known. People who know little about his music can tell you that he had an uncontrollable libido (not true), that he used everyone in his path (somewhat true, although most were begging to be used), and that he felt entitled to whatever he desired (absolutely true).
There is a problem in dismissing Wagner as pathologically antisocial; he was much more interesting than that. His virulent anti-Semitism, his prodigality, and his genius for alienating people, for example, are rendered even more twisted, and much more fascinating, by his obsessive relationships with Jewish people, his financial generosity, and his ability to charm people. He was a complicated and deeply disturbed individual.
Books have been written on the subject. Besides the biographies, there are scores of character analyses by psychologists and others who have tried to come to terms with his personality. The reader will find some of these outlined in the “Wagner in Print” chapter. What follows here is the barest summary of various aspects of Wagner as a person. It is not going to be pretty.
NATIONALISM
Wagner wrote constantly about the meaning of being German, contradicting himself several times along the way. German identity has always been a puzzle, especially before there was any actual country by that name. What is Germany? More specifically, where is Germany? This issue remains on the front pages of newspapers today.
As a kind of parlor game, Wagner and Cosima were in the habit of discussing the greats of art and history, and debating who was greater than whom. Was Shakespeare greater than Dante? How did Calderón and Lope de Vega stack up? And what about in music? Who’s on top, Gluck or Weber? The Diaries are filled with this stuff. You might ask, Who cares? Well, they cared a great deal. They appeared to be quite incapable of appreciating various artists for their diverse accomplishments. Everything had to be understood as part of a hierarchy, they we
re only interested in “the greatest.”
This comes through in their “ranking” of races and nations. The historic problem with German nationalism always lies in the fact that the homeland must be praised at the expense of other nations. In other words, the loudest German patriots have only rarely been able to glorify their own nation and leave it at that. This is not unique to Wagner. Nietzsche, Goethe, Luther, and countless others have indulged in the same vice. Gutenberg’s Bible proclaims on its frontispiece that it was printed in Germany, the land that God has graced “above all others” in art and learning. This problem goes way back.
For Wagner, the issue was one of culture rather than pure politics. His obsessive nationalism was founded on one idea—that the Italians and the French had developed true cultures whereas the Germans had been thwarted from fulfilling their cultural destiny by slavish imitation of Italian and French models. His next notion was that Germans in his time were being further retarded by the influence of the Jews, whose infiltration into German society was stunting “true” German culture before it had any chance to develop.
Wagner was not imagining German cultural debasement. The Germany into which he was born was in many ways a cultural colony of France and Italy. Throughout the eighteenth century, German courts spoke French, ate French food (when possible), and lived in buildings intended to be, in some sense, French. The problem was that it was never very convincing. Anyone who has toured the Neue Schloss at Potsdam or Schloss Charlottenburg in Berlin can concur that there is nothing quite so bizarre as Prussians imitating the French. Those German buildings never quite soar the way their French models do. The right spirit is missing.
Then there are the Italians. While the Italians did not present the military threat to Germany that the French did, their cultural supremacy was at least as great. First, there was the question of religion. Wagner was zealously anti-Catholic, but not because he was any model Protestant. His gripe was that Catholicism was inherently Latin and therefore fundamentally un-German. For an Italian to pray in the Latin language was an affirmation of heritage, while for a German to do so he perceived as a rejection of heritage. Consider the kingdom of Saxony, where Wagner was born. Due to the bizarre edicts of the various peace treaties concluded by the European powers over the years, the king of Saxony and his court were Catholic, while the Saxon people were entirely Lutheran. It was an insane situation. Then there was the elegant Saxon capital of Dresden, where Wagner was in charge of music at the theater as well as at the court (Catholic) chapel. Dresden was famed for its collection of Italian art, its Italian-designed palaces, and its largely Italian opera company. All this on the banks of the Elbe River!
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