Stephen Fry’s Wagner And Me is a wonderful film. Check out the trailer.
It’s not just for committed Wagnerians as suggested by one reviewer, though it is hard me to say – given I am just such a one. And while there is plenty of swoon (another criticism) – that is the whole point. As it says in the title; this is all about Stephen’s reactions: to the music, to aspects of the life, to the central conundrum which was Wagner’s own expressed antisemitism and then Hitler’s use of the music and the myth.
This is not a biography – it touches on a few key events that might not fully make sense to someone not familiar with the full life. But those bits are quite interesting by themselves. A tiny bit about having to flee Dresden due to his revolutionary leanings in the 1840s. His affair with Mathilde Wesendonck allows Stephen to stroll around her beautiful garden and sit on her stairs. Reference to his rescue from creditors and penury by the gloriously mad Ludwig II of Bavaria is an excuse for Stephen to wander through the amazing Starnberg castle. Cosima Wagner hardly gets a mention. With the Swiss Alps illustrating the power and majesty of the work this is a great homage to Wagner’s music.
I loved the playful explanation of the famous Tristan chord on a piano used by the great man himself. There are lots of shots of Stephen going in and out of doors – I’m sure much harder to make look so seamless and uncontrived than it looks. Stephen watching rehearsals and rummaging through wardrobes, talking to artisans preparing costumes and scenery. Lots of behind the scenes at Bayreuth – including high up above the creaking scenery pulleys. Lots of snippets of the glorious music itself. But frustratingly no shots of the productions that we saw being prepared – especially the one in Russia.
And in amongst the short sharp interviews about the man and his music the perennial question – is it okay to love this music that was written by an anti-semite and loved, and used, by Hitler. Horrible footage of Nuremberg during the war and now with tourists taking photos from Hitler’s podium. Stephen unable to stand there. Hitler striding into Bayreuth with the wretched Winifred simpering alongside; crowds outside giving Nazi salutes. More compelling the conversation with the camp survivor. “Why do you want to go?” she asks, and won’t clear the way for him.
It’s the scale of the atrocities that make this an issue, but the reality is the Nazis misused the myth. After all in The Ring Cycle love triumphs over all, the gold is returned to its rightful owners and loses its power for evil, Wotan and his Heros are defeated and in one of the great mysteries, black Alberich is one of the few characters to survive alive. And that is just a superficial reading of a work of immense moral and philosophical complexity that encompasses the whole human condition.
The person who told me that The Ring Cycle was the greatest operatic work ever was a tiny Jewish man who ran a private lending library in Williamstown, Mr Tersch. He had escaped from his country of birth, where he was trained as a court lawyer just before the war. He came every year to the chemist shop where I worked to buy perfume for the woman who as his ” wife” had helped him escape the horror. He was emphatic: Carmenwas the best short opera and no question The Ring– he spread his small arms wide- was the greatest undertaking by an artist of all time. And so it is. And Stephen’s film celebrates it.
Here is my bust of the author:
And for those wanting to learn more about the man and his music after watching Wagner And Me here are some suggestions:
Michael Tanner, Wagner, Flamingo, 1997.
Brian Magee, Wagner And Philosophy, Penguin, 2000; and Aspects of Wagner , Oxford University Press, 1988.
Thomas Mann, Pro And Contra Wagner , Faber & Faber, trans. 1985.
Robert Donington, Wagner’s Ring And It’s Symbols , Faber & Faber, 1963.
M Owen Lee, Wagner’s Ring: Turning the Sky Round ,Limelight Editions, 1994.
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