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Tag: Wagner

Wagner’s Vision Amplified by Cinema

More than any other medium, the movies come closest to fulfilling Richard Wagner’s vision of Gesamtkunstwerk – a total work of art – the all-encompassing synthesis of artistic elements into a kind of “artwork of the future.”

Modern technology has made possible a total immersion of the senses of a sort that Wagner could only have dreamed of. In the right hands, the tools of cinema can handily eclipse the stagecraft the composer worked so hard to achieve at his specially-constructed Bayreuth Festspielhaus, conceived to present works like “The Ring of the Nibelung.” Wagner would have been amazed and delighted at the potential of film, and horrified by its frequent vulgarization.

One thing’s for certain: the Wagnerian concept of the leitmotif – of establishing associations in music between certain themes or thematic cells with onscreen characters, objects, and ideas – was a lesson not lost on film composers. Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and others shepherded the technique from the opera house to the silver screen, and the tradition has been kept alive by composers like John Williams and Howard Shore.

Of course, there have been many times when Wagner’s music was simply lifted or adapted for use in film, from at least Joseph Carl Breil’s appropriation of “Ride of the Valkyries” for the Klansmen in D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” in 1915.

The power of cinema, with its synthesis of images, editing, sound, and music, can overwhelm the senses. Herbert von Karajan claimed that when he saw “Apocalypse Now” he was so caught up in the helicopter sequence that he didn’t even realize in the moment that he was listening to “Ride of the Valkyries,” a work he had conducted countless times.

Wagner’s legacy is a complicated one. Some filmmakers play to his more disturbing associations. Others poke fun at the grandiosity and portentousness of his music. Others still look past the shortcomings of the man to embrace the transcendence of his creations. Leonard Bernstein summed it up nicely, when he said, “I hate Wagner… but I hate him on my knees.”

Wagner may not have lived to see the movies, but the movies certainly “saw” him, and they carried his vision to undreamed of lengths. But for all that, few of them have been able to achieve his resonance.

Happy birthday, Richard Wagner.

Klansmen ride to “Rienzi” and “Ride of the Valkyries” in “The Birth of a Nation”

Charlie Chaplin’s balletic dream of world domination in “The Great Dictator”

Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in “What’s Opera, Doc?”

“Ride of the Valkyries” in Fellini’s “8 ½”

Ken Russell’s eyebrow-raising “Lisztomania”

Schwarzenegger outruns Teutonic stereotype in “Running Man”

Trek to the vampire’s castle in Herzog’s “Nosferatu”

Lending gravitas to “Excalibur”

Brought to “The New World” by Terrence Malick

Illinois Nazis fall for “The Blues Brothers”

May 22, 2023
Loving the Tedious: “Parsifal” and Art’s Slow Burn

Is there an opera, or even a movie, that you find boring as hell, and yet somehow you also love it?

For me, it’s Wagner’s “Parsifal.” A music drama steeped in Christian symbolism involving the Knights of the Grail and their redeemer (a “pure fool, enlightened by compassion”), the opera can be ponderous in the extreme. But it took a cinematic genius like Hans-Jürgen Syberberg to turn it into, at times, an even more tedious 4-hour-plus movie (short by Syberberg standards) in 1982. I finally sat down to revisit the film on Saturday for the first time in 40 years. You can read all about my first viewing, in the early ‘80s, here:

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1074150483504014&set=a.883855802533484

In Syberberg’s telling, Act I is especially stagnant, at nearly two hours (the length of a movie in itself), for most of it Gurnemanz supplying his prolix exposition while seated on a boulder. Amusingly – and I didn’t pick up on this when I was a teenager – the long-suffering Amfortas, afflicted with a wound that will not heal, is played by the conductor, Armin Jordan – an interesting casting choice, with a subtext (intended?) of martyrdom for one’s art.

Most of the singers on the soundtrack are doubled by actors, who lip-sync. A fresh performance was recorded for the film, since Syberberg managed to alienate descendants of the Bayreuth Circle with his earlier, five-hour documentary about unabashed Hitler-sympathizer Winifred Wagner (the composer’s daughter-in-law, who confided things like “For us, he was not the Führer; just a wonderful family friend”).

Two of the singers actually do appear in the film: Robert Lloyd as Gurnemanz, elder knight of the Grail, and Aage Hauglund as the magician Klingsor, who castrates himself because of his inability to stay chaste. Act II is full of hilarious phallic imagery. Also, some of the action is carried by marionettes (brought back from the opera’s Prelude).

Edith Clever is excellent, the most intense and invested of the onscreen actors, even as she mouths Yvonne Minton’s vocals, as Kundry. But it is Karin Krick who truly mesmerizes, when she takes over the title role, midway into Act II, lip-syncing to the unmistakably male tenor voice of Rainer Goldberg. Syberberg has his reasons, I’m sure, but I notice she appears at the moment that Parsifal experiences the epiphany that awakens him to compassion. Is compassion then, to be considered a feminine trait? In a work of art that’s built on the iconography of Jesus’ sacrifice, it’s a peculiar observation. Perhaps in his denial of Kundry, sidestepping the snare that claimed Amfortas, the character attains a kind of androgyny. Or perhaps the director was aiming for some sort of statement about Parsifal’s universality?

Whatever Syberberg’s rationale for the gender-swap, Krick is superb. I find her riveting in a way her male counterpart in the role (Michael Kutter) is not – even though they both portray the character as a kind of disembodied dreamer – and I am very curious to know what became of her. Numerous Google searches yield nothing beyond her participation in this film. If she’s still alive, she couldn’t be any older than about 60.

The mystery remains unresolved, even as Syberberg’s Mystery has run its course. It took me six hours, but once again I managed to get through his vision of “Parsifal.” Now I can set the opera aside for another year. Since the last act is set on Good Friday, and the legacy of Christ infuses the entire work, understandably I associate it with Easter.

Of course, art exists outside of time. Part of what makes it so frustrating to be trapped in a world of texting and soundbites is their incompatibility with a spirit of reflection. Art requires space to breathe. Equally, one needs space in order to prepare oneself to enter into an alternate reality that reflects and yet somehow transcends our own. The noise, pace, and distractions of contemporary life are totally at odds with the needs of the spirit.

I think of the current state of our classical music stations, many of which no longer play complete works over a certain length, except occasionally perhaps, if they happen to be the most famous. As if music is nothing more than a string of pretty tunes. There’s no opportunity to get lost in the imagination, the fantasy, or even the logic of the music. You’re drawn into the first movement of a symphony and then, bam, you’re yanked back into the prosaic world by some inanity being spouted by the announcer. What about the rest of the piece? When I was in a position to do so, I fought this trend for a long, long time.

For me, “Parsifal” is like a narcotic. Undoubtedly there are some who believe I should enter a 12-step program. But the high is too good, even if it sometimes puts me through hell to get to heaven.

I’m curious, are there any works of art, in whatever medium, that affect you like that? If so, I would be curious to hear about them. Don’t just sit there. That’s what the comments are for!

PHOTO: The duality of Parsifal – Karin Krick and Michael Kutter – presented before Wagner’s death mask

April 17, 2023
Syberberg’s Parsifal A Hilarious Opera Odyssey

It was sometime around 1983 or ’84 that my best buddy from high school and I determined to catch a screening of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s “Parsifal” at Lehigh University. Neither of us knew much about the opera at that point, but we both loved the film “Excalibur” and were at the very least familiar with the mystical prelude Wagner had composed.

As my friend climbed into the car, he enthused, “I think we’re in for a real treat. Listen to this!” Then he read to me the synopsis from Milton Cross’ “Complete Stories of the Great Operas.” When he reached the part where Parsifal snatches Klingsor’s spear out of midair, destroying his power, we were both like, “Whoaaa.” We were primed for some serious action!

When we arrived, we learned that the film was being presented in an auditorium with a raked floor. I remember it was raked, because at some point during the screening, an empty bottle of spirits rolled past our feet, clanking against the chair legs.

The film was shown the old-fashioned way, employing a 1970s-style high school movie projector, so that periodically the tail leader would run out and the lights would have to be switched on, so that the reels could be changed. Along the way, there were also a few technical difficulties, significantly padding the film’s already four-hour-plus running time.

Anyway, it was excruciating – which is to say, we enjoyed ourselves immensely. There was so much to laugh at and groan through. The actor who played Klingsor was totally out of shape. When he raised his spear, he must have had an aneurysm or something, because instead of hurling it like a javelin, as described by Milton Cross, he simply tumbled into a ravine. We were especially amused by the revelation toward the end that the entire production was supposed to have taken place inside a gigantic bust of Wagner. Or more accurately, his death mask.

Otherwise, Syberberg’s was a fairly straightforward interpretation, though curiously he chose to have actors stand in for the singers on the film’s soundtrack, a decision I can’t say made it any less silly. Oh yeah, there was also a passage, just before the death mask revelation, that had knights processing down a long stone hallway, lined with swastika flags (???). Obviously, this was a work of genius.

By the time it finally ended, and someone switched on the lights for probably the sixth or seventh time, we staggered out of the building, wearing conspiratorial grins, only to discover a fog had rolled in. It was now ludicrously late. Driving back on Route 22 was like crossing the North Sea in a dragon boat.

I arrived home around 2:00 in the morning, and my mother was on pins and needles. What happened? What had we gotten up to? I shared a mercifully abridged account of our Wagnerian adventure. We were not dead in a ditch. Nor were we rotting in a jail cell. We were watching “Parsifal.”

I think of this every year on Good Friday, since the Good Friday Spell of Act III is one of the high points of the opera and frequently excerpted. Naturally, this entails a Google search to see if the film has been posted online. In previous years, I’ve come up with only a stray clip, but this year the angels are with me, as I find someone has posted the entire film on YouTube in two parts.

Of course, last year, I finally broke down and purchased the rare, out-of-print DVD from eBay.

This Good Friday is very good indeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZSlOFjgjwk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLNShPJdTYQ

April 7, 2023
Three Kings Music Mystery Wagner Liszt

January 6. Feast of the Epiphany. The Three Kings are here to make sure you’re taking down your Christmas decorations!

Part One (i.e. the Christmas portion) of Franz Liszt’s ambitious, three-hour oratorio “Christus” contains two purely orchestral movements, which together comprise roughly half an hour. The concluding “March of the Three Holy Kings” is a corker.

It’s interesting to note that one of the movement’s main themes is nearly identical to the motif for Valhalla, castle of the gods, from the Ring Cycle, composed by Liszt’s son-in-law, Richard Wagner. Which came first? Both “Christus” and “Das Rheingold” were written around the same time.

I imagine Liszt and Wagner showing up at the office holiday party wearing identical sweaters. AWK-ward!!

Three Kings

Valhalla

January 6, 2023
Wagner’s Parsifal Good Friday Soundtracks

I mean no disrespect in saying that, for me, Good Friday is made better by Wagner’s “Parsifal.” I try to listen to it every year, whether I need it or not.

Here’s my annual posting of Leopold Stokowski’s transcendent Houston recording of the “Good Friday Spell” from Act III.

Also, a fascinating 1927 recording of the Transformation Music and Grail Scene from Act I, set down at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. The recording employs the original bells designed by Wagner, which were later melted down by the Nazis for ammunition during World War II. A rare opportunity to experience “Parsifal” as Wagner actually knew it. (The bells begin at 5:57.)

The conductor, Karl Muck, was associated with the Bayreuth Festival since 1892. He became its principal conductor in 1903. Between 1901 and 1930, he conducted “Parsifal” at Bayreuth 14 times.

Another conductor who was a pillar at Bayreuth was Hans Knappertsbusch. Of Kna’s 95 appearances there, 55 were conducting “Parsifal,” for which he was especially renowned.

I was going to post a link to one of his performances of the Prelude to Act I , but then I couldn’t help it. Here’s the whole blessed thing – all four hours of it – from 1962. The live recording is regarded as the benchmark by many, rivaled only by Kna’s performances from the 1950s.

Sacrifice, compassion, healing, and rebirth. Every Friday is good, but Good Friday with “Parsifal” is subime.

The metal canisters used to produce Bayreuth bell sounds from the 1880s to about 1929:

https://www.monsalvat.no/parsifal-bells.htm

IMAGE: Set design by Paul von Joukowsky for the 1882 Bayreuth debut of “Parsifal”

April 15, 2022

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