Prelude

Richard Wagner wrote operas for 50 years, and writers have carried on about Wagner for much longer than that – detailed analyses, theories – to exhaustion.  That is too much to read and learn, and not all of us care.

What we need is a quickie overview, to prevent someone from being dragged to The Ring for 15 hours, by their bearded grandfather who insists that this is important for everyone – and no bathroom breaks.

Where’s the short summary, that lets you select only what you will like (namely, Das Liebesverbot - English: “The Lobsterpot”, 1836), and allows you to talk about the rest with a straight face?

Here you have it.

As credentials, I point out that I own a 769-page book about Wagner, although I have not opened it -- except, obviously, to see how many pages are in there.

Enough of the highbrow; as a public service, we now review Wagner’s life and contributions, going backwards.

Death and Destruction

Finally, he finished it all off with the masterpiece Parsifal, and this is the name of Lohengrin’s father, so there is a connection there with an opera I will write about later.  (You can see the keen benefit of writing backwards here.)

I will not even try to watch Parsifal, because I know the depths into which Wagner had sunk in the late stages of his life, and it’s not simply that he was about to die. By then, he was consistently writing operas that sounded like the young Richard Strauss, so enough about that.

Just to tie in opera’s transition into the 20th century, Strauss did all that “stand and chirp” stagework shortly after Wagner, but no one knows why.  Especially Puccini did not know, but he ran with it -- a losing concept if there ever was one.  Opera off the rails.

Descent into Car-horns and Weird Yelping

After he was famous and finally able to pay the bills, Wagner slipped in two oddballs, Die Meistersinger and Tristan und Isolde late in life. 

-       Die Meistersinger: “The Busy Little Sewing Machine”

-       Tristan und Isolde: “Night Lady and Her Whips”

What I know about this important era comes from trying hard to watch Meistersinger one evening. It is really tough, and I only managed about 15 minutes before I got too jumpy.  My popcorn was still pretty hot, when I gave up.

Not to repeat myself, but that “sing anyway, although you could just talk” content, the hallmark of most of R. Strauss, feels like a waste of time.  Stop singing about Nürnberg, there, Polenzani-man, and hit me with the story. 

Probably you could get ahold of the Cliff Notes version, and it would be clear enough, and easier on the ears.  I will not mention it again.

The Big Famous Epics

In spite of the fact that R Wagner was broke and dashing from country to country to find work and escape creditors, he nevertheless sat down and wrote a set of four grandiose operas, together called the Ring.

The tetralogy are, in order:

1.    Das Rheingold (“The Dry Beer”)

2.    Die Walküre (“The Sony Walkman”)

3.    Siegfried (“Bavarian Rotisserie Snail”)

4.    Götterdämmerung (“Somebody Else Answer the Phone This Time”)

I am way too intimidated by the bulk of this thing to try to watch it all.  Also, like most of us, I am already booked up for the next 15 hours.

I did see the Met’s Rheingold, and it has an astonishing stage set, plus Lisette Oropesa (flirting again!) and a few shots of Tamara Mumford (the Pilgrim boat-guy from Saariaho’s water opera) with a fish-tail.

The best part of the Met’s production is after the end, where they show out-takes of our gal Liz, trying out the body hoists, and getting accustomed to being lofted high into the air on a rope.  She’s got the spunk, for sure.

Here we mention that the Mad King Ludwig (not mad, per se, but probably autistic) not only built that fancy castle outside of Munich, but also funded Wagner’s dream of building his own opera house.

It is supposed to be remarkable, autistically, with a reverberation time of 1.55 seconds, but really, if you are in there all day long, why would 1½ seconds matter?

It is called the Bayreuth Festspielhaus (not pronounceable in English), and I know a guy who said that it is still in its original form, with incredibly uncomfortable wooden seats.

Fifteen hours in that kind of chair – where’s Domenico Cimarosa with his Il Maestro di Cappella (“Mister Hatmaker”, 22 minutes, start to finish)?  Dead, unfortunately, for centuries.

The Romantic Operas

Here are three solid and entertaining operas you should see, not just talk about.

You have your Flying Dutchman, your Tannhäuser, and your Lohengrin, and they are all completely worth it.

The three have these features in common, all positives:

1.The music is huge and heavy; Wagner really went to town on every sheet of music, whomping away with the bass drums, the trombones and the flügelhorns.

He included some pretty little ditties with flutes and oboes, but for the rest (cellos, string basses, etc.) it seems that he wanted people to use those items as battle axes, not instruments.

2. The lead tenors are each in absurd situations, challenging to relate to.

• One’s morose and insane because he sails around the world by himself all the time looking for love.  (I didn’t think that was going to work for him, either).

• Another spends his time boffing none other than Venus the God of Love herself, but he asks politely to leave.  Not credible, Dick W.

• The third isn’t really a person, I guess, but sort of “god with a sword”.  This other guy Telramund argues with him anyway, with predictable, bloody results.

3. The lead sopranos are even harder to grasp.

• One lady falls completely in love with the ugly Dutchling, although the Dutch fellow is sad beyond comprehension, and she does not know him very well.  Red flags, maybe.

• Another takes in Mr. Tannhäuser even though he has just spent his youth doing unwholesome things with Venus, and he claims that he “cannot quite remember” where he was all those years.

• The third agrees to marry young Lohengrin, whom she does not know at all (and agrees never to ask about his family), probably because Peter Hofmann has terrific hair.  One of those people who pretty obviously spends 90 minutes each morning working on their hairdo, and I guess that worked for him.  I might give it a try.

4. No one ever laughs or smiles.  These shows are dead serious, with weighty stories involving fate, love, war, religion, sacred commitments, and eternity.

The stern king looks like Richard Wagner himself, for chrissakes, and the Dutchman looks like Boris Gudonov.  They don’t have disobedient pets; they don’t cook oddball stuff for fun; no anecdotes about lawn mowers or plumbing problems.  This is the opposite of Vivaldi.  It is grim.

In particular, there are no drinking songs allowed here.  In Tannhäuser, they go for a pleasant “song contest”, and right away it turns into a swordfight, with one guy destined for the fires of hell.  Good lord.

• The single exception is that Peter Mattei plays one of the key roles, and he still looks like the mischievous Barber of Seville to me.  Kind of laughing, there, as the characters around him stumble their way into eternal damnation.   Ha ha!

5. According to one sensitive reviewer, the themes and characters are all staunchly conservative, although I could not detect a whiff of that.  Chime in here, David.

Incidentally, we all know that Ludwig’s fancy castle outside of Munich is named “Neuschwanstein”, but a jarring fact is that the “schwan” in there refers to Lohengrin, the Swan Knight.  (After arranging his hair, he travels by Swan, incredibly.  Jon once suggested that we use those things to run the lower Ammonoosuc; I digress.)

Early Years: the Dawn of a Controversial Anti-Semite

Wagner started, as we all do, sketching out some simpler four-act operas, many of which were not completed.  But he got going with Rienzi, yet I can’t find a video of that with English subtitles.  Could be good – they say it fits right in there with the 1840-50 operas that I like.

But the big deal here is Wagner’s Das Liebesverbot (“The Chicken Boat”), and it is a comedy.  (Naïve beginner!) 

This one is a must-see, and here is why.  You can read this on Wikipedia.

Poorly attended and with a lead singer who forgot the words and had to improvise, it was a resounding flop.  The tenor who played Luzio slipped into sections of Fra Diavolo and Zampa when his memory failed him.

The audience had little understanding of what was going on before them and at the end of the opera, they departed in bewilderment.

Its second performance had to be cancelled after a fist fight between the prima donna's husband and the lead tenor broke out backstage before the curtain had even risen; only three people were in the audience. 

It must be terrific, and I suggest we mount our own production soon.  We can just improvise, and fist fight.  We will be better than Wagner.