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Wagner Society in NSW Inc
by Barbara Brady No, that is not an oxymoron! Richard Wagner had numerous friends who recognized his genius and admired and supported him - and many of them were steadfast throughout his lifetime, regardless of his habit of seducing their wallets and wives. Those friends who fell by the wayside were the ones who declined on grounds that Wagner could never understand, to pledge yet further funds. Not all of Wagner's penury in his early career was his own fault. Performance copyright law was rudimentary in Germany before 1870 so opera composers were paid only for the first performance of a run whereas the singers were paid for each performance. The lack of copyright protection also meant that music could be pirated, bringing profit to the publisher but none to the composer. This made it difficult for emerging composers to make a living unless they had other means of support. In Wagner's case those means were massive loans, sometimes set against rights to future operas. Whether the demands he made on his friends served to keep him out of debtors' prison or to sustain a luxurious lifestyle, they were foremost the means to furthering his work, his art. Wagner's attitude was that lenders were quite consciously devoting their money to the artist and his cause. Nothing must stand in his way; he is accused of arrogance, self-centredness, megalomania; but the point is made that had it not been for his driving egotism he may never have found the strength and resilience to realize his artistic ambitions. The creative pursuit of The Ring of the Nibelung over twenty six years must have required super-human perseverance and self-belief. Just as Wagner needed financial patronage, he needed to be approved of and believed in as an artist, and to be loved as a person. His charisma was evidently extraordinary; he was more fond of women than men for the sympathetic devotion they readily gave, and a handful of affairs and liaisons is documented. In the case of Mathilde Wesendonck there is no doubt of Wagner's infatuation while he was writing Tristan und Isolde and calling her his ‘muse'. And yet the unbearable, unresolved yearning portrayed in music of unmatched beauty may never have been possible had Wagner's love for Mathilde been satisfied on the simplest level. Certainly Wagner tried patiently to explain to his wife, Minna, that his relations with Mathilde were purely ideal. This brings us to the quaint vignette of Wagner reading the newly-completed poem (as he called his librettos) of Tristan to an intimate group comprising his wife Minna, the object of his love Mathilde Wesendonck, his future wife Cosima, and their respective husbands. A veritable menage a six . Wagner had a passion for reading the poems of each of his operas aloud to his friends before going ahead with the music, and was so good at it that one story relates how someone actually felt a bit deflated at the performance of the opera Parsifal after first having been so affected by Wagner's magnificent reading of the text. It would be another thing to be one of the group listening to a reading of the entire Ring in one sitting. Soon after finishing the poem of the Ring at the end of 1852, Wagner decided to visit his friends the Willes and read it to the company there. He began one evening with Das Rheingold , continued with Die Walküre until after midnight, carried on with Siegfried the next morning and finished off with Gotterdammerung at night. The Wagner expert, Ernest Newman, adds that the ‘ladies ventured no comment; Wagner attributing their silence to their having been deeply moved.' This brief foray into Wagner the man and his personal friends is in fact a diversion. The real purpose of this piece is to introduce a new fortnightly series of programmes, going to air on 2MBS-FM from (...time and date...) under the title of Wagner and Friends . The word ‘friends' is simply a convenient catch-all for Wagner's contemporaries, or for composers who were earlier and later and spun a thread to and from him. Each programme therefore will include works by composers ranging in time from Beethoven to Richard Strauss, and genres from Singspiel to grand opera, with some symphonic, choral and instrumental music along the way... As for Wagner, what can the listener expect from this series? Perhaps it would be reassuring to know what not to expect: There is no sign of the Norns, all the long narrations have been sacrificed, and this will not be an illustrated lecture series on the development of Wagner's musical style. Instead it is an opportunity to explore a diversity of Wagner's music: the best- known pieces for a start, but also some surprises such as a sweet cavatina here, or a jolly, blokey song, there and a deliberately light touch when it comes to a problematic music drama such as Parsifal ; here, for instance, we skip the long prelude and jump straight into a seductive waltz with the Flower Maidens. But of course there is much more: symphonic passages surging up under lyrical melodies, soaring voices, shimmering strings, and some longer scenes where the listener is enticed into the powerful emotion of the music and the drama. The format is chronological up to the eighth programme, saving the great masterpiece, The Ring of the Nibelung for the final four. Rather than taking one music-drama at a time, we have approached the broad themes that are central to the Ring - Nature , Power and Magic , Love and, finally, Birth, Death and Redemption . No prize for guessing that the last moments of the series will be the glorious finale to Gotterdammerung . If you are wondering how to make sense of the Ring , with its dwarves, gods, demi-gods, dragons and mortals, there are two answers. First the music links the diverse characters, events and places; it was Wagner's genius which devised the network of musical moments ( Lietmotive ) to bring cohesion to the whole. Secondly, please do go and see a Ring cycle. I wouldn't hold my breath for a production in Australia (though the stunning 2004 State Opera of South Australia Ring could just possibly be revived in 2012) but there are several European, American and even Asian cities which pride themselves on their Rings . You will find dates and venues for future Wagner operas around the world up to 2013 on the Wagner Society's website which can be accessed direct at http://wagner-nsw.org.au or by following the links from the 2MBS website. Finally a warning! Beware of Wagner's ‘ear-worms', fragments of music that burrow their way into the brain uninvited and repeat themselves incessantly for days on end. For my part, having been embedded with Wagner's music for a considerable time while compiling these programmes, I am hopelessly infected. I can only appeal to Herr Wagner for release. In the words of Brünnhilde: ‘Ruhe! Ruhe! Du Gott'. [Don't forget, international and interstate Members and readers, that you can also listen to the broadcasts on 2MBS-FM on the Internet at http://www.2mbs.com.au . Editor]
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