Using Wagner as Hitler’s soundtrack is plausible enough (especially when this film was made, so soon after Hitler went into raptures over the famous 1936 Bayreuth Lohengrin production), and any lesser filmmaker would have left it at that. Not Chaplin. The end of the film has the Jewish barber (also Chaplin), mistaken for “der Phooey,” broadcasting a speech on the radio, urging resistance to brutality and promising the dawn of a new era. His girlfriend Hannah (Paulette Goddard) hears the miraculous message and gazes skyward—to the now-swelling strains of the same Lohengrin Prelude. This double-edged use of the same music amounts to a manifesto on the power—and powerlessness—of art. Satan and the angels can be equally inspired toward their divergent ends by the same work (be it music, literature, even Scripture). The individual is responsible for the outcome. Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and countless others have said the same thing, but using Wagner to illustrate this truth was an eloquent statement in 1940, and no less so today.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1996) It’s hard to tell whether the creators of this movie, filmed in the great postmodern tradition of MTV, decided to employ the Liebestod from Tristan for the final tableau of the dead lovers as a bit of tongue-in-cheek sentimentalism or because it remains the best music to depict dead lovers. Buyers of the soundtrack (as opposed to the “Songs from the Movie” recording) are no doubt surprised when they hear several cutting-edge songs by the Butthole Surfers and others followed by this heavy dose of psychoeroticism.
Help! (1965) In this movie, the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin is played while the hooded subcontinental fanatic bad guys raid and trash the Beatles’ ultracool flat—the one with John’s book-lined sunken bed. The producers of the album, Capitol Records, obligingly included this piece of music on the soundtrack album at the end of side one, presumably so those who had no taste for it could lift the needle before it played. Those who heard their first Wagner this way are probably as baffled as the rest of us to learn, on attending an actual performance of Lohengrin, that this is intended to be wedding music.
Apocalypse Now (1979) This is the most famous, influential, and, frankly, overrated use of Wagner’s music in film, showing American helicopters dropping napalm on Vietnam to a tape loop of “The Ride of the Valkyries.” The creators of this movie managed to manipulate a great deal of popular mythos in this scene, using Wagner’s music to associate the American Airborne Cavalry (as in “flying horses”) with the Third Reich and thus make an antiwar statement that has seared itself onto the national subconscious. The odd thing is that it hadn’t been done before. It is also interesting to note that, while Wagner is always accused of overkill, this entire scene takes only three minutes in the opera house, while the movie producers, who aren’t often enough accused of overkill, repeat the music for seven minutes for their purposes. Thanks to this scene, you can count on someone, attempting wit, to make reference to “napalm” and “victory” when you tell them you are attending a performance of Die Walküre.
The Lady Eve (1941) This sophisticated comedy has Barbara Stanwyck as a gold digger and Henry Fonda as her “mark.” She eventually falls for him, and we have the classic confrontation of corrupting versus redeeming love, all with fabulous costumes by Edith Head. In one surreal passage, Fonda gives Stanwyck a half-sincere speech forgiving her supposedly lurid past, while the soundtrack plays the beginning of the Tannhäuser Overture, with its Pilgrims’ Chorus of penitents! Some studio executive amused himself frightfully with this in-joke.
Excalibur (1981) The soundtrack to this movie is almost entirely snippets of Wagner hits. Not a bad idea, especially for a movie about knights, fayre laydies, and evil sorcerers, but the problem is that the music takes over the story at a certain point, and becomes something of a story of its own. Confusion arises because of a too-facile association between the legends of King Arthur and Wagner’s myths. The two are certainly related in many cases, but this movie attempts to conflate them all together, as if the one or the other weren’t confusing enough on its own. Starting from the formula that Arthur = the Holy Grail = Parsifal, the whole Wagnerian canon is eventually employed to tell the familiar story of Lancelot and Guinevere. Arthur is abandoned by Guinevere and becomes impotent. Parsifal music abounds while the camera pans images of devastation. Excalibur being a sword, we must naturally have the sword motif from the Ring at every chance. This theme is very convenient, since it is used in the Funeral March from Götterdämmerung, whose two insistent chords are played whenever the director wants your total attention. When the sword is cast into the lake by the repentent Lancelot, we get the Rhinemaidens’ music because, well, it is water. Lancelot stabs himself (à la Klingsor—more music). When Guinevere joins him to die at his side, you earn no extra credit points for guessing that the musical accompaniment is the Liebestod. Perceval (the Arthurian forerunner of Parsifal) rides in to save the day, and so on and so forth. This is a movie, so we can never have more than a few seconds of this great music at a time, and the Wagner fan will leave this movie teased to distraction as well as confused by too much reference. Too bad. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable movie on its own merits.
The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938) This extravaganza from a very bygone era features a flimsy plot meant only to frame a cavalcade of star performances, including one you have to see to believe. Bob Hope is emceeing an elegant shipboard cabaret, and introduces Kirsten Flagstad to sing an “aria” (!) from “The Valkyrie” (accent on the second syllable, “Vahl-KEE-ree”). The curtain opens, and voilà! There she is, replete in winged helmet and shield (costumes by Edith Head) and working that spear like a professional baton twirler. The singing performance is equally fascinating. Flagstad sings Brünnhilde’s brief scene at the beginning of the second act, with all the “Hojotoho’s.” The trill is wanting, the high C’s are not held, and yet she makes it totally convincing, further evidence that Wagner expected variations and perhaps wildness in this moment. This clip is interesting and utterly bizarre, explaining once and for all why Wagner has never replaced Cole Porter on the cabaret circuit. The scene directly following features W. C. Fields.
Aria (1987) This movie featured segments by ten different famous directors, each choosing an aria or operatic segment and filming a story to go with it. The music itself provides almost all of the sound. Interesting idea, with varying results. The film was quite popular when it came out, especially with those arty types who like to be up on things but would never be caught dead in an opera house, since it provided a Reader’s Digest approach to opera with a terminally hip sensibility. The Wagner segment, featuring the Liebestod (of course), was directed by Franc Roddam. Bridget Fonda made her film debut with James Mathers as—now this is a real stretch here—a pair of young lovers. They drive to Las Vegas, find a motel room, get naked, make love (he enters her at the moment of the key change; good editing), land in the bathtub, and slice their veins open. There is a cut to an exterior shot at the moment of Isolde’s final octave leap. Finally, we see (or think we see, since it’s all very vague) the lovers driving back across the desert, so, gosh, maybe it was all a fantasy and maybe all of us die a little every time we make love. People get paid for this? Leontyne Price sings beautifully, but everybody already knows that.
The Damned (1971) If you think Luchino Visconti could have filmed this intense analysis of National Socialism’s psychosexual pathology without at least one reference to Tristan, you haven’t been paying attention. You’ll never hear the Liebestod sung worse than here, where actor René Koldehof plays an SA commander at a rally of the Brownshirts. While his fellow carousers lie in poses of drunken debauch, festooned with swastika armbands and black fishnet stockings, Koldehof rasps his way through just enough of the score to send a “message” to the savvies in the audience. As dawn arrives (read daylight—someone did their homework), so do the storm troopers with machine guns, and all the naked brownshirts are vividly massacred in an orgy of bloody male flesh. Brief but unforgettable, this sequence may be filmdom’s most horrific use o
f Wagner’s music, reinforcing the verdict of Nietzsche and others that this music was “diseased,” “decadent,” and ultimately fatal.
The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (1946) Shirley Temple daydreams about her knight in shining armor and hallucinates Cary Grant in full armorial drag while the Prelude to Lohengrin plays. Funny in-joke.
The Silver Chalice (1954) Paul Newman’s film debut was in this overblown biblical saga, where he played a silversmith who makes–yes—that chalice. When it is held aloft and glowing, the soundtrack plays the “Dresden Amen.” I guess they couldn’t resist. Now, of course, Wagner didn’t write the “Dresden Amen” himself, but it’s used here because of its chalice-associated role in Parsifal, not because Mendelssohn also used it in his Reformation Symphony.
Seven Beauties (1975) Lina Wertmüller’s harrowing film of one man’s will to survive uses “The Ride of the Valkyries” as background music to our first views of life inside a German concentration camp. While this is not the most strikingly obscure choice of music (and, really, what other music could she have used?), Wertmüller deserves credit for this scene’s directorial deftness. Expect shots of suffering, hopelessness, and no shortage of naked, mangled bodies, both dead and alive, all seen as if through the unforgettable eyes of Giancarlo Giannini. Wertmüller also should be praised for being able to make her unforgettable statement without having to repeat herself, or the music, ad infinitum.
Un chien andalou (1928) What student has not seen this eighteen-minute silent classic, directed by Luis Buñuel with Salvador Dalì as his co-screenwriter? Who can forget the opening sequence, where the woman’s eye is sliced open by the barber’s razor? And what music could accompany all this depravity and dismemberment other than the Liebestod? Actually, Buñuel cuts between our favorite Tristan music and a perky tango to make his statement on the pointlessness of everything (I think). The soundtrack was not added until 1960. The end of the film features a corpse carried out of a beautiful springtime park, while the Liebestod mercifully concludes (after much teasing). For some reason, David Bowie showed this movie in lieu of an opening band during his 1976 American tour, creating yet another unusual venue where people heard Wagner’s music.
Making the Hadj:
An Insider’s Guide
to Bayreuth
The Wagner Festival at Bayreuth is elitist, expensive, difficult to get tickets for, hard to get to, and uncomfortable when you finally arrive. Why would anyone in their right mind go to it?
Because it is the ultimate operatic experience. The festival offers interesting productions given in a civilized format inside a unique theater for people who take this stuff very seriously. Five or six cycles are given between late July and the end of August, with each cycle usually consisting of a performance of the Ring, Parsifal, and two other Wagner operas. One production is new every year.
TICKETS
Tickets to the festival are expensive, but at this point they’re less than opera tickets in London and scarcely more than the Met. The problem is not the price, it’s the availability. Hundreds of thousands of people every year send away for them, and the house only seats about 1,800. Everyone will tell you there’s no possibility of getting in, and that the waiting list is about fifteen years.
Not entirely true. Tour packages are one way to manage it. Contacting your local Wagner Society is another. Post on the Internet. Use your imagination. If worse comes to worst, there are always a few people standing in front of the Festival House waiting to buy any no-show tickets that may appear. Get a piece of cardboard and write “Ich suche Karte” on it.
GETTING THERE
Once you scare up your tickets, you will need to get yourself to Bayreuth. Remember that Wagner chose this town specifically because of its inconvenient location. He didn’t want anybody “dropping by” his festival on their way to other activities. Most people outside of Germany fly into Frankfurt, take a train to Nuremberg, and transfer to the train to Bayreuth. The same can be done from Munich. On the map, Prague appears to be the closest major city. So it is, if you are a bird, but if you are counting on trains, Frankfurt or Munich are much better options.
ACCOMMODATIONS
Good luck! The hotel situation has hardly improved since the first festival in 1876. Make sure you have reservations, and a year is not too far in advance to book them.
If you haven’t been invited to stay at the nearby Palace of Regensburg with the Thurn-und-Taxis crowd (you really should have sent them a Christmas card), the Bayerischer Hof is the best address in town. You’ll be competing for rooms with the conductors and stars of the festival, so book early. It’s also remarkably convenient to the train station (next door, in fact). The Goldener Hirsch and the Hotel Königshof across the street are almost as good. All three of these hotels by the train station are good spots for people-watching late at night since most of the festival crowd will pass by them on their way home from performances. The Treff Hotel Rheingold is the schmaltziest choice inside the attractive older part of town.
Many have found themselves homeless for the festival by assuming that there will be accommodations at the local university, since the festival is in summer and school is out. Big mistake. The University of Bayreuth hosts several summer programs, and their dorms are full. Nice try.
If you’re doing the backpack-and-hitchhike thing to the festival (and, yes, there are those), don’t expect to camp out in the park or the bus terminal. This is Bavaria, you know.
THE PERFORMANCES
Wagner intended the Festival House to present perfect performances of his works. By about twenty minutes into the first night of Das Rheingold, he had to admit that there are no perfect performances in live theater—not even at his Bayreuth! This house has no monopoly on singers. The soloists you will hear at Bayreuth are basically as good, or as bad, as those you would hear in any other major opera house. One difference, however, is that you will hear them better at Bayreuth. The acoustics of the Festival House are nothing less than a miracle. The famous covered orchestra pit, the wooden structure, and the shape of the raked auditorium all contribute to this. That tenor you heard choking on Tannhäuser in New York or London might just blow your socks off at Bayreuth.
The chorus at Bayreuth will certainly have this effect on you. The festival has always boasted a truly great chorus, and the particular acoustics of the house make their sound unlike anything you’ve ever heard. For some, the chorus alone is reason enough to make the trek. The scale progression from basses to boy sopranos in the first act of Parsifal is absolutely hallucinogenic in this house.
Performances at the Festival House begin at 4:00 p.m., except for Das Rheingold, which begins at 6:00 p.m. Intermissions last between an hour and an hour and a half. It is ideal. All those problems of eating, running to the restroom, and dashing across town to make the curtain in time simply disappear, allowing you to focus on the music and the theatrical experience.
THE SCENE ON “THE HILL”
Bayreuth attracts a diverse assortment of people these days. Germans remain the largest contingent, with local Bavarians well represented. There are also a good many British and Americans, followed in number by French, Japanese, Italians, Spaniards, and South Americans. People from all parts of the globe are to be seen there, with the local, university’s Center for African Studies increasing the number of visitors from that continent as well.
The crowd at Bayreuth is made up of business people and artists, politicians and notables, students, celebrities, and, yes, various nobles and royalty, displaced or otherwise. Yet no one is there simply to “make the scene.” All are intensely focused on the works being given. (The programs do not include synopses. The idea is that you already know every note and word of the work in question if you are there.) Although the Bayreuth festival is expensive and has a certain glamour, there are much easier places to be chic than the Green Hill.
Because, you see, one should not expect comfort at the Festival House. The seats are unupholstered wood, and there are no
arm rests. It takes the body quite a bit of shifting to find a way to sit through the long operas without doing permanent damage to yourself. And the seats are the least of it. The inside of the house is famously hot and airless. Ventilation is out of the question—the acoustics could be disturbed, and what is more important? (Airplanes are rerouted away from the skies over Bayreuth during the festival.) Heavy velvet drapes are drawn across the doors to the auditorium to prevent any sound (or air) from entering. The beauty of this is that total silence—the famous Bayreuth hush—reigns. The music truly emerges from quiet. The extremely serious audience never utters a sound, a cough, or a sneeze. It just doesn’t happen.
That’s the upside. The downside is that you can pass out. It happens all the time. Just make sure you pass out quietly.
So what does one wear to such a marathon? What else but black tie or evening gowns? Yes, formal attire is more popular than ever these days. White tie is not unheard of. The idea is that anybody could wrench their back, sweat, and pass out in a T-shirt and jeans, but to do it in evening wear—well, that shows devotion! Of course there are the dress-down types in early Grateful Dead ensembles, and yes, a simple suit will do, but why bother? You wouldn’t be comfortable in the infernal Festival House even if you went bare-butt naked, so why not dress up a bit? And don’t worry about overdressing. It’s almost impossible.
If your tickets are for the first cycle of performances, the opening night will be a regular gala. White tie, decorations, even swords will be seen. Bring your camera. Everyone else does.
Wagner Without Fear Page 45