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July 23, 2010
Music lovers get a summer treat
Asher Fisch conducts Seattle Opera’s production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.
DANA SCHLANGER
If there is one thing that you will do for your opera-loving soul this summer, hop in the car and go to Seattle for their production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.
Even after closing an outstanding season at the Vancouver Opera, our easy proximity to Seattle means that we don’t have to give up on opera over the summer. Moreover, it means that we have access to their world-renowned summer season of Wagner operas, a musical luxury that not every city enjoys – for those who have never seen one, it may just be a life-altering experience. Add to this the presence of Seattle Opera’s principal guest conductor, Israeli-born maestro Asher Fisch, who is now one of the foremost Wagner specialists in the world, and you’ve got enough reasons to head south of the border for an evening of opera.
It’s hard to imagine, nowadays, the towering cultural stature Wagner enjoyed during his lifetime and certainly after his death, or, for that matter, the personal charisma of this almost dwarfish man with a huge ego. He was venerated by artists and treated as an equal by rulers of the world, while also leaving a trail of unpaid bills and wrecked homes in his wake: he was a poet, composer, philosopher, conductor, theatre director, a genius beyond any doubt, but also a self-aggrandizing demagogue, whose theoretical writings, especially the famous antisemitic tractate Jewishness in Music (first published in 1850), cannot and should not, perhaps, be taken too much out of context.
Wagner died in 1883 – his cult only grew after his death and, by the turn of the 20th century, he had become a cultural colossus, whose influence was felt not only in music, but in literature, theatre and painting. Sophisticated youths memorized his librettos as college students in a later age would recite Bob Dylan, and almost every political and esthetic movement of the century claimed him as their personal prophet, reading into his music or his writings whatever they chose in order to support their beliefs.
“Theodor Herzl was a huge fan of Wagner,” Fisch told the Independent and, apparently, “the inspiration to write his seminal work, The Jewish State, came after attending a performance of Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser. They also played the Tannhäuser overture at the festive opening of the First Jewish Congress in Basel in 1897.”
Unfortunately, what is much better known is Wagner’s adoption by the Nazi movement – although he lived decades before the birth of Nazism, his influence on national socialism, especially on Hitler himself was enormous. Hitler saw in Wagner’s operas an embodiment of his own vision of the German nation – both in the idea of the “subversive power of Jewry, which stands in contrast to the German psyche,” as Wagner himself professed at some stage, but also in the whole “gallery” of purely German heroes represented in the four operas of the Ring of the Nibelung cycle, Wagner’s own nationalistic credo.
In the world of classical music, there are few issues that polarize people more than the Wagner debate – and the question of the relevance of Wagner’s “theoretical” antisemitism on his music dramas. The debate is still raging in Israel, where Wagner’s music cannot be played publicly and where attempts to break this ban have been met with high emotion.
According to Fisch, many Israeli musicians feel that it’s time to lift this ban, especially since its emotional baggage is no longer relevant. “I think the opposition to playing Wagner has become worse in Israel now,” he said, “because the ignorance is deeper and people are working only with a notion, a concept, and not with information. Israel is so radical in everything that is political that you can’t convince anybody. I think there’s more objection now than when the whole Holocaust generation was still alive.”
This is clearly a subject that touches a very sensitive nerve, Fisch said. “From Jewish history, from all the antisemitism we’ve experienced, the only thing you can’t do in Israel is play Wagner. One has to realize that Jewish musicians admired Wagner’s music and played it in Germany all the way until 1935, when Jewish musicians were just not allowed to play anymore. For Jews at the beginning of the 20th century, being surrounded by antisemitism was a very normal thing in central Europe. That’s why they didn’t have any reservations about playing Wagner’s music – they separated between the man and his music.”
Asher hopes and plans to bring about change in Israel where Wagner is concerned. “I do a lot of Wagner and I’m son to a family of Holocaust survivors [and] I’m an Israeli. Nobody can blame me for being on the wrong side of the fence. It’s a matter of principle. The ban has to be lifted, because it doesn’t make any sense, because it’s undemocratic. I will go back to it – I have a plan and hope to be the first to conduct Wagner in Israel.”
Fisch is passionate about Seattle Opera’s production of Tristan and Isolde. “It will change your life! If you would look for the one most influential piece in the history of music, this is the one.”
He compares the “Tristan chord” that opens the prelude to the opera to Albert Einstein’s E=mc2 formula that revolutionized science. He said that nothing in music has ever been the same after the harmonic language of Tristan and Isolde (which Wagner finished in 1859). This tale of tragic passion, unfolding in the surge and palpitation of nearly unbearably intense music has been touted as the greatest setting of a love story for the lyric stage, and also the beginning of modern music.
Fisch describes his process with the new and upcoming Wagnerian singers featured in this production as coming from the text: “We work a lot from the language point of view. I realize that to perform Wagner well, you have to come from the language, because he, himself, wrote the text. To me, the most important thing in the vocal execution is to find a way to sing in legato, which is associated more with Italian style of singing, but at the same time giving extreme priority to the text.”
However, the essence of the drama also comes from the orchestra, which personifies the unconscious of the characters. Wagner defined his dramas as “deeds of music made visible” and his mastery of orchestral writing brings them forth.
Seattle Opera says: “Sweeping orchestrations, opulent harmonies and a climax of cosmic joy await those who drink in Wagner’s enchanted potion and surrender to opera’s ultimate love story.” The use of melodic sequences – brief phrases repeating at successively higher pitches – establishes a palpable feeling of erotic longing, while the composer’s consistent avoidance of conventional harmonic resolutions propels the music restlessly forward.
Central to Tristan and Isolde is the notion of insatiable love intimately linked with death, for the couple’s desire is so intense, so all-consuming, that it can be fulfilled only by casting off the restraints of the material world. In the trance-like, erotically charged atmosphere of the opera, one feels that Wagner predicted Freud, 50 years ahead. In the words of a music historian, “Freud is simply Wagner in prose – the whole Freudian revolution is inconceivable without the hothouse atmosphere of turn-of-the-20th century Vienna which was in thrall to Wagner.”
The last words of the opera are “Utmost rapture!” This is also the essence of the Tristan experience.
Tristan and Isolde is at the Seattle Opera July 31-Aug.21. Visit seattleopera.org for details and tickets.
Dana Schlanger is a freelance writer and director of the Dena Wosk School of Performing Arts at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.
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