THE ULTIMATE MYTH

BAYREUTH REVISITED

It was on Saturday morning, during my second visit to Villa Wahnfried, the house that Wagner built in Bayreuth, with its museum, archives, and gravesite, that I realized I lacked the intensity, the passion, the motivation, of a true Wagnerophile. Several of my colleagues, all of whom had also been here before, went immediately to the Villa for a whole day of total immersion, but there is no way on earth I would miss an opportunity to revisit the Margravian Opera House; I would gladly give up breakfast, even the indulgent Bavarian variety, every morning of my life in order to go there. Many things can be and are said about its marvelous interior, but few, if any, need be; its Baroque beauty is simply breathtaking beyond description.

So I was a bit out of breath when we came in from Wagner’s grave to sit briefly in the drawing room and listen to a short excerpt from an aria sung by an aunt of our tour leader, John, who in her prime, was a Festspielhaus star. Though many decades old by now, the recording more than sufficed to show the power and polish of her performances. I then began the museum tour, as instructed, with a brief look at a section of the main floor, and then it was up and down, around, back and forth, and up again, on a route through the exhibits, that although no doubt designed by rational minds and seemingly regarded by John as perfectly reasonable, seemed to me about as awkward as the freeway route through downtown Seattle.

I enjoyed glancing at the manuscripts, programs, costumes, instruments, model sets of previous Haus productions, and many other related items, but what caught my attention when I was up, I think for the last time, and definitely proved my Wagnerian insincerity, was a note about Parsifal, a production of which the night before had begun our seven-opera, all by Wagner of course, nine-day musical orgy. A modest placard pointed out that Toscanini had required one hour and nine minutes more to conduct this very long opera than had Boulez; these performances are the long and the short of it in the archival record books. Now two nights later, after further preparation with first the Dutchman and then Tristan und Isolde, we faced the beginning of the Ring Cycle itself under the baton of Jimmy Levine from the Met. Many things favorable can be said about Mr. Levine–he has built arguably the best symphonic orchestra in the world, for example–but quickness of beat is most assuredly not one of them; he is in fact a conductive plodder with high resistance to fast tempi. The most encouraging note was that the seemingly interminable heat wave of the summer had finally broken, leaving us to face only the usual Festspielhaus warmth. Patrons had fainted during the preceding two cycles, and individuals kind enough, or so stupidly inconsiderate of the still conscious, to assist them out had been denied re-entry to the auditorium until the succeeding act.

This production of Parsifal, an opera that is at best a serious test of patient listening, was a different production from that I heard here four years earlier. Produced by Wolfgang Wagner himself, who is also the Festspiel Director, the first act was stunning and totally captivating, and its emotional impact was so great I would not have applauded even had I been unaware of that Bayreuth tradition. The cast seemed well matched and balanced; Sinopoli’s direction was captivating; and the production itself, although not particularly unusual–three nights later I would have been grateful to be able to say that–was more than satisfactory. The second act showed off one of Bayreuth’s finest attributes, its superb chorus, which I immensely enjoyed, but by the final act, which always seems to me a rehash of ground already covered more than adequately by the three principals, I was about as lifeless as the lump of white fluff that flopped on the stage quite unexpectedly, symbolizing no doubt an event of great religious or mythological significance. The middle act was highlighted by a riveting performance from Klingsor, evidently a hallmark of Wolfgang’s productions, but Kundry was a bit less successful. Still, it was far better than the first time here when she was fabulously provocative, but Parsifal sang and acted like an uncomprehending adolescent, which could well be exactly what Wagner intended.

The Margravian, with its 510 seats and 81-ft stage, is claimed to be the only remaining original Baroque theater, despite its first curtain having been sent to Vienna by Napoleon. I thoroughly enjoyed the appropriate piece of recorded music we heard during our tour there, but it’s easy to see why Wagner dismissed it as totally unsuited for his works. The Festspielhaus, with its plain wooden interior, three almost immeasurably large stages, and sunken orchestra pit, could scarcely be more different from the Margravian. During our visit to the former later the same morning, sets were being put in place for the evening performance of the Dutchman, and during our subsequent daily wanderings on the grounds, we often saw the inner workings of other productions as well. The organization has upwards of 80 permanent employees, and this number increases tenfold at festival time, essentially the month of August, when 1925 lucky patrons fill the theater’s 1925 hard wooden seats, night after night.

That evening’s performance, conducted by Peter Schneider, was just dandy with me in every way: sets, staging, costumes, and music. Of course I’ve always found Senta’s music in the second act beautifully haunting, and Sabine Hass’ singing in this, the final performance of the production, was especially moving. The next night’s final pre-Ring exercise, Tristan und Isolde, was a luscious performance with magnificently sensual music conducted by Daniel Barenboim, who did the previous Ring I heard here. It was especially pleasing to hear Waltraute Meier and Siegfried Jerusalem sing together again.

On the day the Ring cycle itself began, the 12th version beginning with Wagner’s original in 1876, we left fairly early in the morning to visit Waldsassen, in particular its Baroque Basilica that commemorates St. Ursula and the Virgins. Just when Ursula led all those young women to their martyrdom, why she was canonized for an act of such dubious achievement, and what implications the Vatican’s recent decision to rescind her sainthood will have on the building feminist movement within the Church, I do not know, but the ten mummified skeletons, six standing, four reclining, and several with golden wine goblets, that line the Basilica’s aisles, attest to the historicity of the original massacre. The beautiful wooden choir, and the blue marble around the organ contrasting with the decidedly pink setting of the altar, gave the sanctuary a very harmonious feeling for me. Unhappily, not even John could negotiate our way into the wood-carved Bibliothek, whose floors were being waxed that day.

The chapel in nearby Kappel is an unusual, three-domed structure whose exterior entrance doors and halls are very plain, but whose Baroque interior is delightfully light and airy and conveys an overall impression of pink marble and white stucco. The domes above the three separate altars depict the reconciliation of the Pope and the Emperor, the Resurrection, and a scene restored in the 1940s showing Nazi soldiers treating French prisoners-of-war humanely. The three domes are not quite identical in the way they intersect one another, but I was unable to read anything of religious or political significance into this broken symmetry.

To my total surprise, the most enjoyable of the Ring operas, at least up to the third and final day of the Festival as Wagner timed it, was Siegfried, previous performances of which have more often than not put me to sleep. But this one, except for the final scene, was stimulating. Criticisms of the rest amount to little more than minor cavils: the first-act bear appeared as a person-filled, giant teddy bear that entered on a long metal-ladder swing, totally out of keeping with the nonrealistic presentation of all other animals in this Ring, and as often happens, the desk representing the anvil opened at the end of the act well before Notung, itself looking more like a saw made from a triangular section of a giant cheese grater than any sword I’ve ever seen, descended to split it. And in our after-performance discussions, no one had a clue as to the implications of one of Mime’s shoes being a bright green.

I thought the prelude to Act II featured tympani tuned slightly flat on the upper tone and even flatter on the lower, but a conductor of Bayreuth stature would surely have corrected that, particularly since these tones are sounded again and again, so it was just another example of poor memory; Ilboru was not the best of places for reviewing this music. The sets were spectacular in their appealingly stark simplicity, emphasizing metals and fabrics of many textures that were illuminated most imaginatively. I didn’t at all mind the grocery shopping carts that filled the right half of Mime’s cave nor the green umbrellas that covered the entire sky above Fafner’s lair; that second-act set was particularly effective. The horn solo was perfect, something [until quite recently] unheard of in Seattle, and Siegfried bested Fafner in a symbolic duel, but, mortally wounded, the latter appeared in his giant guise to die, a representation I think mandatory.

Erda was beautifully sung by a sterling young Swede, and that scene, to start Siegfried’s ultimate act, simply scintillated. To me it suggested blue glacial ice calving onto the Antarctic Ocean portending the world’s demise as we heard the gloomy, almost ghastly tones of Wotan’s dialogue with Erda. The Wanderer was at last appropriately attired with an eye patch and a wide-brimmed hat instead of the form-fitting metal helmet that covered his entire head but for one eye, the nose, and the mouth in the previous operas. That must have been uncomfortable as well as restrictive; he had sighed with obvious relief as he peeled it off for his curtain calls the first two nights.

The final scene again illustrated the weakest components of the four-night production, the direction, sets, and costumes, done by Alfred Kirchner and Rosalie (pronounced Rose-AL-yuh). Although many of the sets were effective and appropriate to Wagner’s prose, particularly in the middle two operas and the first and last scenes of Rheingold, there was no apparent theme or cohesion to them collectively. The simplest ones worked best because of the spectacular lighting effects that allowed the observer to imagine whatever seemed appropriate.

But it was the costumes that were mainly unacceptable. They were generally inappropriate, oftentimes very distracting to the viewer, and frequently an impediment to the movement, and possibly the singing, of the wearer. Brünnhilde, for example, could not let her arms hang freely nor could Siegfried get anywhere near her during their concluding love duet because the width of her costume was too great. The designer put them on opposite sides of the stage and facing away from each other, as well they might under the circumstances.

The cycle had begun as it’s supposed to with the orchestra in its concealed pit, nothing on stage, and the audience in a totally darkened house. That is the only way the deep primordial E flat from the basses can depict the origin of time and space. To start otherwise is to suppose that something predates the beginning, a dubious notion that only priests and particle physicists find tolerable. The tempo was slow and the orchestra well controlled, sure signs that Levine was indeed in the pit. He showed his skill and attentiveness early on when, as Wotan choked on a note, the baton stopped just long enough for the soloist to recover and then moved on; a casual listener would not have noticed.

The Rheinmaidens were costumed acceptably and gifted with unusually good voices for these roles, and the amusement-park machine on which they rotated provided a very good vehicle for their continuous tormenting of Alberich. At the crucial moment the Rheingold failed to gleam, but a switch beside it allowed one of them to turn it on in time for him to steal it. The best idea for the second scene, I thought, was to mount a huge shield on the shoulders of each giant, but why these were painted with African faces, I never did guess. Still, when it came time in the final scene for Fafner to murder Fasolt, he really rattled his cage with three stout blows to the “head.” In the third scene Nibelheim was poorly defined, its residents only pathetic reminders of the Nibelungen I’ve encountered previously, and the portrayal of the tarnhelm and its powers very disappointing. The evening ended positively, however, as the gods walked across a decidedly real rainbow bridge into Valhalla, and we walked next door to the Festival Restaurant for a dinner buffet before boarding our bus for the thirty-minute ride with Hidi back to our resort hotel near Bischofsgrün.

We went early to the grounds on the First Day of the Festival for an interview, autographs, and photos with Wolfgang Wagner, who turned out to be surprisingly cordial and friendly. As an added bonus we twice saw James Levine leaning out of his dressing room window; he flashed a friendly smile, gave us a wave of the hand, and wished us a good time that evening, which indeed we had. That bizarreness of dress, particularly for the women, was the order of the week became totally clear in the final scene of Walküre. To be sure I had thoroughly enjoyed seeing Freia the night before in a bright green costume with a Christmas tree ornament on her head; that she looked more like a pine than a person perhaps suggested her role as the giver of the magical golden apples. In this evening’s second act I thought Fricka’s blue costume made her look more like a fashion model than the guardian of the hearth. Her dialogue with Wotan occurred on a long, narrow, metal plate, hardly the Rainbow Bridge to Valhalla, that could be raised and lowered; at its highest it seemed almost at eye level with my 26th-row seat. She totally destroyed him in their domestic debate, a scene I always find especially painful, but happily the singing by both of them really matched the mood, and at last this Ring had some passion and fire.

It’s the Walküre themselves, however, who are the focus of any discussion on the costuming and staging for this opera. The first to appear on stage is Brünnhilde, and in some ways her costume was conventional, with helmet, breastplate, shield, and spear, but her garb was a totally ugly contrast of red and black. When the other eight arrived, each was in rather similar dress, although their headpieces looked more appropriate for Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado than for Wagner, and each was in motion, not on a horse, but in an open-fronted metallic cylinder. Although these tubes did go up, down, and sideways, their motions conveyed to me all the excitement of an elevator ride, perhaps in one of those outside jobs I first encountered over two decades ago in San Francisco’s revamped St. Francis Hotel.

The image I still see when recalling these Walküre is that of the goalie in ice hockey, a sport that used to be played professionally in North America. Brünnhilde’s helmet was not unlike a goalie’s mask when pushed back atop his head during timeouts, and they all wore what looked very much like shoulder pads, without covering jerseys, and the very exaggerated, to use a modest term, breastplates that by now we realized were de rigeur for all goddesses in this production. What was most amazing and also fit the goalie image so well were their leg coverings, pants in a loose sense. They looked rather like wicker baskets, one meter long and a half-meter wide, one for each leg, into which the women had been dropped. Most were black or red, but a few were gray; the colors were mixed in various combinations. A goalie with pads that wide would doubtless stop every shot. But, of all the attributes needed by a typical Wagnerian soprano, at least in their customary caricatures, more hip width stands dead last even on a very detailed list.

Proper enjoyment of a Ring cycle requires six full days, unlimited patience, and a well-padded posterior; the quiet days are scheduled before and after Siegfried. We spent the first on a full-day excursion to Leipzig, which is the only time I’ve been east of the late and unlamented Iron Curtain. The difference between East and West is still staggering, although John claimed it’s much less now than just before the Wall crumbled. What struck me most were the drabness of the houses, the poor state of the roads, and the almost total absence of flowers, all in such sharp contrast to the West we had left only a few miles behind. It was only in the near vicinity of the old town square that reconstruction had reached completion, and the city resembled modern Germany. Unemployment remains at 20%, however, and one could guess from their expressions that typical residents could not afford the luxury goods they admired in storefront windows.

We came to visit the St. Thomas Church, where Bach is buried, and the J. S. Bach Museum and Archives. I also enjoyed the market square with its adjacent modern shops and arcades, the Dom zu Merseburg, the beautifully restored exterior of the Renaissance City Hall, and the amazing interior of the Nikolauskirche. Somewhere I saw a plaque alleging that Luther preached here on “2.4.6 Aug 1545,” and I thought the continuing use of electric streetcars was fun, although I didn’t ride one. We passed by an interesting looking Ukrainian church, near the Battle of Nations Monument, whose interior stairs I climbed to the top, that celebrates Napoleon’s defeat in 1813; begun in 1879, it was not completed until 1912. Our first “day of rest” concluded with a fine dinner in the most interesting Auerbachkeller and a near-midnight arrival at our hotel; clearly, John was beginning to hit his stride.

The day after Siegfried was spent in Bamberg, which is indeed the beautiful medieval city advertised. I had seen it four years earlier, but it was as fresh and exciting this time as then. On the way we stopped first in Bauman, I think it was, to view the stupendous Pilgrim Church of Fourteen Saints and then moved on to Banz for a tour of its monastery; regrettably the kloster was closed, although we were allowed to look through the metal gateway guarding its entrance. Somewhere between these two sites I marveled at the timbered buildings in the small town of Staffelfein. “Lissome and featherlight describe the decorative style which developed during the final phase of the rococo period,” begins the guidebook description of the interior of Fourteen Saints. The golden yellows, blues, and grays against the sheer white background; the ceiling frescoes; the altars and other furnishings; all must be seen to be believed. And according to the 1990 tour schedule, I had been equally incredulous once before. This was a day during which quite a few unusual and interesting topics occupied travel time on the bus: the 10% of national taxes used in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria to maintain churches, and “the German way of mathematics” developed by Adam Riese are the two most needy of further study.

After leaving the bus near the impressive four-star Hotel Residenzschloss beside the river, we headed up the hill to the terrace of St. Michael’s for a mandatory glass or two of smoked beer, a thirst for which one need quench no more frequently than one can afford a trip to Bayreuth. Now John is a man of unlimited interest, experience, enthusiasm, energy, and I rather suspect even a vice or two, but one thing he does not do is schedule lunch breaks on outings that include dinner; with him, breakfast aside, it’s one arranged meal per day. To be sure, and his girth certainly attests to this, he does manage to grab a couple of sausages and a beer for himself when he thinks no one is watching. On this free day, however, a little bit more experienced by now, we collectively put our feet down, or perhaps I should say bottoms, and insisted on food, right then and there on the terrace. In fact a little later, after we had walked a short way down the hill to a lovely rose garden overlooking the river, two of our members elected to spend the remaining hours there, drinking coffee and enjoying the warm sunshine and beautiful flowers. St. Michael’s itself was quite interesting, with paintings of local plants and herbs on the ceiling, the tomb of King Otto, a fine pulpit, and an organ on which someone was warming up; we realized why when we met a bridal party coming up the hill to the church just as we started for town.

Those of us who got past the rose garden continued on to the Cathedral with its fabulous Riefsnyder woodcarving and the famous Bamberg Horseman statue, among other superlatives, and ended the formal part of our day with a tour of the Bishop’s Palace. And so we came to the center of town, which on this gorgeous afternoon was filled with residents, German visitors, and foreign tourists, all thoroughly enjoying a festival day, or a market day, or just being alive; it mattered not. After taking us to the fabulous old City Hall floating on an island in the middle of the river, and pointing the way upstream–or was it downstream?–to the bus, John immediately extended our visit time by an hour, to the ultimate distress of those who, unknowingly, followed the original timetable, a price one pays for deserting one’s leader. The rest of us happily dispersed into the crowd and miraculously all found our way to the bus in time for an interesting and pleasant venison dinner at a nearby country inn.

The world always ends on Saturday night. The Seventh Day Adventist Church has the day right, but I fear it anticipates the wrong event. I got both the day and the event right, but unfortunately I had peaked too early, with Siegfried, on Thursday. On Friday I just relaxed and enjoyed myself and didn’t worry about Saturday. Now opera is most definitely a spectator sport, and like their physical counterparts of the diamonds, gridirons, and arenas, its performers too respond to their audience. Identifying a mechanism for this in Bayreuth is problematical, because there one is ejected for even breathing too heavily, but perhaps the singers somehow anticipate what will follow the final curtain. And in New York? I have no ideas about that either; I’ve always enjoyed the Met, but I’ve never tried to figure it out. But now in Seattle, where I grew up, it’s a different matter. When the Ring is on there, it’s a matter of civic pride, and the whole town vibrates. Wait staff, taxi drivers, the monorail conductor, everyone, break into smiles, and sometimes, regrettably, even into song, when they realize that one’s tuxedo implies yet another night with Wagner. I wouldn’t think of attending Götterdämmerung there without being hungry, tense, expectant, and fully psyched up. I know I’ll cry at the end, and it helps a lot to have a friendly hand to grab as that final shimmering chord very gradually fades away into a few seconds of total silence before the audience literally explodes into a storm of applause. I’ve always helped before, but this time the world ended without my participation. Perhaps seven operas in nine days plus some aggressive sightseeing were more than my Africa-dominated life could accommodate, or maybe I just got lazy, I’ll never know.

The Festival orchestra is often reputed to be superb, which it certainly is. The acoustics of the Festpielhaus, the size of the orchestra, and the nature of the music all contribute to this notion, but there must be quite a few others, whose members play together the year round, of even greater quality. I thought they were at their utmost best in this year’s first act of Parsifal, which to my ear features sublime orchestration. What seems truly awesome at Bayreuth is the chorus; I’ve certainly never encountered better. The key to the high quality of both groups is that their members are chosen as the best from the many opera companies in Germany, who practice and perform here during the summer off-season. Both groups contain many talented artists, and it is totally fitting that they all come on stage during the final curtain calls. It was also totally fitting that, when she finally dared show her face after the world ended, Rosalie was booed strenuously as only angry Wagnerites at Bayreuth can do it. Although I don’t join in such boorish demonstrations, I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Another possible reason for my demise at the final conflagration and flood was that John was allowing us only a few minutes to prepare for the rebirth and even more exacting pace of our musical life, phase two, the Festival at Salzburg. We were expected to arise sometime shortly after 4:00, pack our bags, vacate our rooms, take our customary breakfast, and board the bus by 5:00, and all of this on a Sunday morning. What still amazes me is that we all did, and without complaining; even more amazing is that the hotel staff set out almost the entire panoply of usual breakfast items, depriving John only of his customary four-minute egg. The countryside was beautiful, when it became light enough to see it, and I could hardly believe the extent of the hop fields through which we drove; those in the Yakima Valley, the most extensive in the US, are minute by comparison, as is, I suppose, the beer production. Everything proceeded smoothly until we reached, I should say almost reached, the border; here the lineup of vehicles was so long that John, employing that same power of positive pessimism that has served me so well through the decades, mouthed the magic words, “We’re not going to get there in time.” Our concert was to start at 11:00. But, just as quickly the line advanced, Hidi bounced out of the bus, mouthed her sweetest smile, and we made it to our seats fifteen minutes early.

If anything the short three-day stay in Salzburg excited me even more than the ten days in Bayreuth. From the sparkling matinee concert by the Mozart Festival Orchestra, under Hans Graf in the Mozarteum’s Grand Concert Hall, featuring a Mozart violin concerto performed by Leonidas Kavakos, to the concluding performance of the Vienna Philharmonic under Sir George Solti, whose conducting of Till Eulenspiegel’s Lustige Streiche was astounding; from our late Sunday afternoon walk about the old city to the final glorious day in the mountains and across Lake St. Wolfgang for lunch at the White Horse Inn; from our fabulous, ample, much-needed Sunday brunch at the Sheraton to our elegant farewell dinner after the fourth and final concert; life was nonstop enjoyment. Perhaps my pleasure here was so intense because I had not heard orchestras live, except in operas, for four or five years, and these were the world’s best, but I suspect it was really because two rather long years were about over; I would soon be home.

The next morning was another very early one–my planning this time–and I don’t recall that much food was available, not that any was really needed after the previous night. John had very sensibly said his auf Wiedersehen to me before we retired, but he had equally thoughtfully left a Bon Voyage gift, a box of Echte Salzburger Mozartkugeln, which I soon enjoyed on my side of the Atlantic. He planned to take a day off before preparing for a vacation trip to Albania, his 146th country, I think he said, and then getting ready to lead a small group to yet another Ring Cycle, this one in Frankfurt. Next August he will no doubt return to Bayreuth to see if Rosalie has reformed, which I doubt, but it hardly matters. It’s the myth and the music that matter. Do go sometime.

For me next August the action will be in Seattle where the horses really do fly; as General Director Speight Jenkins says, perhaps a little too often, “They’ll be great shows, don’t miss ‘em.”

W. Vance Johnson

31 Aug 94