Re: [Marxism] NYT: Wagner Gets a Touch of Marx

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Sam B wrote:
> May 16, 2009
> 
> MUSIC REVIEW | 'SIEGFRIED'
> 
> In This ‘Ring,’ Wagner Gets a Touch of Marx
> 

Well, this is not exactly a novel interpretation:

George Bernard Shaw, "Wagner as Revolutionist"

And now, attentive Reader, we have reached the point at which
some foolish person is sure to interrupt us by declaring that The
Rhine Gold is what they call "a work of art" pure and simple, and
that Wagner never dreamt of shareholders, tall hats, whitelead
factories, and industrial and political questions looked at from
the socialistic and humanitarian points of view. We need not
discuss these impertinences: it is easier to silence them with
the facts of Wagner's life. In 1843 he obtained the position of
conductor of the Opera at Dresden at a salary of L225 a year,
with a pension. This was a first-rate permanent appointment in
the service of the Saxon State, carrying an assured professional
position and livelihood with it In 1848, the year of revolutions,
the discontented middle class, unable to rouse the
Churchand-State governments of the day from their bondage to
custom, caste, and law by appeals to morality or constitutional
agitation for Liberal reforms, made common cause with the
starving wage-working class, and resorted to armed rebellion,
which reached Dresden in 1849. Had Wagner been the mere musical
epicure and political mugwump that the term "artist" seems to
suggest to so many critics and amateurs--that is, a creature in
their own lazy likeness--he need have taken no more part in the
political struggles of his day than Bishop took in the English
Reform agitation of 1832, or Sterndale Bennett in the Chartist or
Free Trade movements. What he did do was first to make a
desperate appeal to the King to cast off his bonds and answer the
need of the time by taking true Kingship on himself and leading
his people to the redress of their intolerable wrongs (fancy the
poor monarch's feelings!), and then, when the crash came, to take
his side with the right and the poor against the rich and the
wrong. When the insurrection was defeated, three leaders of it
were especially marked down for vengeance: August Roeckel, an old
friend of Wagner's to whom he wrote a well-known series of
letters; Michael Bakoonin, afterwards a famous apostle of
revolutionary Anarchism; and Wagner himself. Wagner escaped to
Switzerland: Roeckel and Bakoonin suffered long terms of
imprisonment. Wagner was of course utterly ruined, pecuniarily
and socially (to his own intense relief and satisfaction); and
his exile lasted twelve years. His first idea was to get his
Tannhauser produced in Paris. With the notion of explaining
himself to the Parisians he wrote a pamphlet entitled Art and
Revolution, a glance through which will show how thoroughly the
socialistic side of the revolution had his sympathy, and how
completely he had got free from the influence of the established
Churches of his day. For three years he kept pouring forth
pamphlets--some of them elaborate treatises in size and
intellectual rank, but still essentially the pamphlets and
manifestoes of a born agitator--on social evolution, religion,
life, art and the influence of riches. In 1853 the poem of The
Ring was privately printed; and in 1854, five years after the
Dresden insurrection, The Rhine Gold score was completed to the
last drum tap.

full: 
http://www.online-literature.com/george_bernard_shaw/perfect-wagnerite/4/

---

Musically, it's [i.e., the Boulez/Chéreau production from 1976-80 at 
Bayreuth] unidiomatic. Dramatically, it's interesting, but it introduces 
a political content that may or may not be present in Wagner's 
conception of the Ring.

Boulez flies through the cycle and clarifies the orchestral architecture 
to the point where every sinew and nerve, so to speak, of the piece is 
visible. Let me put it this way, imagine putting a magician or an 
illusionist in a white room, surrounded by bright lights and cameras, 
and then asking him to show you his tricks. There would be no illusion 
to it, because you can see every nuance of every move. Clarifying and 
simplifying Wagner's orchestration does just that. The illusion to be 
created by Wagner's orchestration is lost. Also, I might note that 
Richard Wagner was a composer of no mean talent: if he wanted skeletal 
renderings, then he would have arranged for them.

The cast is about as good as one could expect for 1976-1980. That's not 
saying a whole lot, though. Gwyneth Jones was in her Wagnerian best for 
Karl Böhm in the 1968 Bayreuth Meistersinger.

Chéreau's staging is unabashedly Marxist, though it doesn't go for 
Stalinist socialist realism. Indeed, the allegory to be found in 
Chéreau's Konzept is trivially obvious. If one takes a teleological view 
of the Ring, then the pursuit of wealth and capitalist excess, in 
Chéreau's view, will lead to the end of the world. Only the labors of 
proletarian heroes like Siegmund and Siegfried, despite their divine 
lineage, will bring things back to order. I'm sure that there are far 
better explanations offered by Chéreau and others, but the symbolism is 
so trivially obvious that it forces similarly obvious interpretations.

full: 
http://wagnerite.blogspot.com/2008/12/reconsidering-boulezchreau-ring.html

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