By Rufus Wainwright
(Appears in the magazine Die Zeit, August 21, 2008)
This
is the third time I've written this article. To begin this (hopefully!)
final session I have just put on Das Rheingold, the first opera of
Wagner’s Ring Cycle and by the way things seem to be going I'mjudging
Valhalla should start crumbling at around 3am. To explain toyou the
beginnings of this, MY epic cycle, once upon a time a kind and generous
newspaper called Die Zeit sent me to Bayreuth to see Stefan Herheim’s
controversial production of Parsifal in order to writesomething about
it. And now, comfortably sitting in my bright livingroom in New York
City a week later with a deadline tomorrow I'm facedwith a dilemma: two
approaches have been unsuccessfully tried, bothdiametrically opposed in
terms of culture and era. One is a straight uptry at an old fashion
review (my mom likes this one) and the second ismore of a personalized
blog (my hip and gorgeous boyfriend likes this one). The first attempt
goes, and yes I'm trying to fill up space here,like this:
"The
town of Bayreuth is famous for two theatres.Most people know about the
Festspielhaus, a huge 19th century opera house built by King Ludwig II
of Bavaria to present Wagner’s massive works, which over the years has
been both the glory and bane of Germany's cultural existence. The other
theater, located in the center of town, is much smaller and from a much
more refined period, "a better time" as Evelyn Waugh once said, the
18th century. Let's begin with the big one. I held a pretty sacred
view of the place when two years ago I first went there to see
Christoph Schlingensief incredible production of Parsifal, but this
year on returning to see the newproduction by Stefan Herheim I had
developed a more critical stance towards the Festival. Due mainly to a
book about Winifred Wagner byBrigitte Hamann (suggested reading by a
prominent member of the Wagner family, kudos to them!) I had learned
about the festival's extreme Nazipast and on driving up the "Green
Hill" after visiting Villa Wahnfried,Wagner's old home which is now a
museum, I was a little miffed that inthat "museum" there had not been
one single picture of Adolph Hitler.The reason I bring all this up,
aside from the fact that it shouldalways be pointed out in such a
hallowed place, is that if I had seenany other production of any other
Wagner opera, or ANY opera for that matter, there could not have been a
more important and moving stageshow than the one I saw that evening by
the great director Stefan Herheim."
I think this is pretty
good! And perhaps if I was agreat newspaper critic, of which there are
hardly any, I could havedriven it home. But as the piece continued it
became inflated andpretentious and by the end was something only a
mother could love, andI'm not talking about my mother (she actually
re-wrote the end, which Iwill definitely be trying to put in somewhere
to make things easier onmyself). Anyway, at this point you may be
asking yourself "what thehell is he going on about?" Especially since
I've totally given awaythe fact that I have a tight deadline to stuff
with a lot of words, butlet me assure you, there is a method to this
madness, and in my humbleopinion there is no other subject in the world
more deserving of thescattered, unorthodox and free style examination
that you are goingto get than that of the extreme art and personality
of the greatRichard Wagner.
CLANG!!!!! In my sound system it
seems Wotanhas just struck the rock with his spear, the Rainbow Bridge
hasappeared and Das Rheingold is coming to a close. For good measure
(andto fill space), here's the beginning of the next version I wrote
afterreading my first try and hating it. Let us cross the Rainbow
Bridge byway of "blog" into Valhalla:
"This is the second time
I'vewritten this article. The first was an attempt to encapsulate my
tripto Bayreuth in a succinct and critical fashion with explanations
ofwhat I believed to be deep thoughts on the physical place, its
dubioushistory and the thick rope that binds them. Speaking of ropes,
and notonly in terms of hanging myself, I think I thought I was a Norn
(a Wagnerian mother time creature who lives in the earth in
Gotterdammerung) sifting through the various threads of German
historyfrom the 19th century to today, revealing to my poor readers
strikingsimilarities that can only be viewed through the passage of
years,blind and moaning, cursing the fact that nothing ever changes.
Well, onre-reading what I'd done, I was quite disappointed, well
actually, Jornmy German boyfriend (thanks guys!!!) in true Berlin
fashion wasn'treally that impressed. Basically I sounded like an
American teenagerwriting about his trip to Europe back to mom in the
Mid West whereeveryone is still really excited about NASCAR and having
won World WarII. Don't get me wrong, it's still important to mention
the fact thatin Villa Whanfried, Wagner’s old home which is now a
museum dedicatedto the festival, there is not one single picture of
Adolf Hitler, whoactually back in the day lived next door and tended to
pop over quite abit. Still, speaking of pop, for a pop musician, even a
rathersophisticated pop musician like myself, tackling the Third
Reich'sconnection to Bayreuth is way out of my league and for this
secondattempt I will focus more on my impressions, but don't worry, I
tend toget very impressed."
I'm not sure if anything you've
read sofar has anything to do with anything. At least it disseminates
someinformation. But for classical form, let us turn to the Master
himselffor inspiration, specifically Das Rheingold, and like the opera
DasRheingold let’s consider everything you've read so far merely
aprologue, and that at least I've created some kind of atmosphere. Or
asJudy Garland once said: "I don't know if anyone's interested, BUT I
AM!"
The
amazing opening string line of Die Walkure is blasting through my
speakers and like that opera's mandate, it's time to get down to
business. I first really got into Wagner after going to rehab, and the
opera I most became fixated on was Tannhauser. I strongly related to
the tale of the errant knight who had tasted the forbidden pleasures of
Venusberg and like him was trying desperately to live a good clean
life, despite, like him, an ego the size of Everest. I actually
envisioned my drug cravings in the form of nymphs and fauns dancing
around naked in an Arcadian paradise just under the sidewalk. That's
what is so fascinating about Wagner, unlike Puccini, Strauss, Mozart
and Verdi (who I must note is still my favorite, I will always be a
child of papa Verdi) Wagner’s characters are always mythological
archetypes who represent not so much people or Gods, but different
philosophies in motion. And on going to Bayreuth this time to see
Parsifal there were several philosophies I had in motion. One was my
love of the work, the other was my amazement/ disgust after reading the
Hermann book on Winifred Wagner, and thirdly was the fact that my
mother has cancer. This was my second trip to the festspielhaus, my
first had been to see the incredibly moving and abstract Parsifal by
Christoph Schlingensief and at that time my mother was in the hospital
undergoing exploratory surgery which later revealed a malignant lesion
on her liver. It was the hardest time of my life, especially since I
was working in Europe and she was in Canada, I felt horribly guilty
about not being with her and until those first miraculous strains of
the Parsifal overture began, nothing on earth could compare with the
depth of my sorrow. By the end of the opera I was completely riveted,
and would at this point like to thank Christoph for aiding me through
this difficult period with his beautiful work. At that time the story
of Parsifal, the other errant knight, or actually more specifically the
story of Kundry, the Mary Magdalene figure who is doomed to live for
500 years for laughing at Jesus on the cross and aches for death, was a
perfect legend to focus on when faced with serious illness: the message
I got was that in the end, death is but a beautiful release. Well, my
mother didn’t die and judging by her present state she's sticking
around for a while. (I have to note that at this point in the Ring
Cycle Brunhilde has appeared on the wings of the majestic valkyrie
theme, of course! Basically, Brunhilde is my mom). So, with this
experience under my belt, this time going to Bayreuth I was outwardly
prepared to write a gloomy article about finally bringing my mother
there as the end of a kind of quest where together we watched the opera
and broke down simultaneously as the final strains musically revealed
the cosmos. This didn't happen for three reasons. One was that Die Zeit
only gave me one ticket and I couldn't sit with her (kindly Stefan
Herheim the director gave us a couple of comps, so she sat with my
boyfriend in much better seats). The other was that Herheim’s
production had nothing to do with death but more with the recent
history of Germany and thirdly was that the dark horse whose ghost
still haunts the town of Bayreuth; Winifred Wagner was lurking in my
thoughts.
On
sitting down this time to see Parsifal with high intensions of writing
about the purifying power of Wagner’s music when faced with death,
Winifred's voice was in the back of my head saying about the murder of
four Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics, and I quote: "we've
often tried to imagine how Adolf would have dealt with the killers....
as it is, they did only half the job all eight of them should have been
shot." I really had to change my line of approach.
The stereo
beckons: the mischievous Brunhilde is being chastised by her father
Wotan and will soon be put to sleep and made a mere mortal and in this
story, my cycle, revue, blog, WHATEVER, a conversation about Stefan
Herheim’s amazing production of Parsifal is warranted. And by the way,
I'm never going to say anything bad about people's work in my reviews
because I know how bad it feels to read it.
The production
essentially solved my dilemma. As mentioned above SOMEWHERE, we had
visited Villa Wahnfried earlier that day and instead of medieval Spain
where the opera is supposed to take place, the whole piece was set on
the grounds of the Wagner family estate, and was packed with references
both to the family and Germany as a whole. The whole experience was
frightfully eerie. All of the issues I had been struggling with after
reading the Winifred Wagner biography were being grappled with on
stage. For example, the third act was the bombed out mansion and the
destroyed areas of the set were the very same spots our tour guide had
shown us many moments before by pointing out the different stone work
after reconstruction. The large circular fountain I had admired earlier
suddenly became first a Knight's round table and then amusingly an
Ester Williams (yes! I've always wanted to mention her in something)
swimming pool for Kundry's sexy ladies in waiting. The prompter's box
could have possibly been Wagner's tomb but that I think would have been
a bit too literal (the Master prompting the singers what to do from the
grave!). But for me most importantly, due to my aforementioned state of
mind, huge Nazi flags descended during the famous spear catching moment
and momentarily, just long enough to really sear the retina, stayed
there and then suddenly tumbled to the ground while an audible gasp was
heard and felt by the entire audience.
No uptight Bavarian dare boo after that ending of Act Two, and in terms
of looking for some kind of purification ritual to face facts, it
really hit the spot. All the nasty thorns in such a beautiful artistic
bed of roses that is Bayreuth were not quite being removed but were
definitely being pointed out. Of course it was no answer to my queries,
but definitely a large blaring question mark and as everyone knows, you
can't have the former without the later. And here's the kicker: by the
end, not only was I sitting with my mom and boyfriend due to the
miraculous appearance of an empty seat right in front of them, but the
three of us witnessed in my opinion one of the great theatrical
experiences of all time. The stage, which was no longer Wahnfried but a
replica of the German Parliament dramatically became a huge rotating
mirror in the shape of the earth (and practically the size of it!), and
to the exquisite last strains of the opera movingly revealed to us, yes
US! The audience basked in light from a single white dove at the top of
the theater. I know it sounds really corny, but hell, it really worked.
OK, at this point in the Ring Cycle I'm somewhere near the end of
Siegfried and I don't know what the hell is going on. I'm going to
start Gotterdammerung and hopefully I won't have lost my eyesight by
writing this article. You guys, The Ring is like (insert electric shock
here) 16 hours long. And wait a second.... oh my God! Here come the
fucking Norns!
Around the first time I first mentioned the
fucking Norns I also mentioned a delicate little 18th century theater
we saw that day before the opera. The Markgrafliches Theater, located
in the center of town, is the last remaining painted baroque wooden
theater left in Germany. It is hauntingly beautiful. That day our guide
had given an adequate and enthusiastic tour of Wagner’s home, but once
inside this little gem you could immediately tell where her passions
and expertise lay. Her eyes immediately lit up as she began to explain
its meaning: It was built by the aristocracy to give the court a type
of Arcadia, a paradise on earth far from the everyday world were no
windows or clocks existed bothering one with a sense of time and the
privileged could just lounge about not thinking a bit of the outside
world and its harsh realities. Though the inside is wooden the outside
is stone, as if to represent a shell like protection of one's fantasies
and both the stage and the audience face the King and Queen, thus
making THEM the focal point and thanking them for creating such a
glorious and elite form of escapism. This concept of what a theater
once represented really struck me after seeing Herheim’s production of
Parsifal. My mother, Jorn and I were staying in the fantastic Pflaums
Posthotel Pegnitz Hotel where every room was a freaky testament to west
Germany's finest hour, the '80s. Be it weird angular sculptures
clashing with airbrushed posters of naked women with bad hair, or day
glow shag carpet mixed with absurd countryside wooden rocking chairs,
this place makes the New York Chelsea Hotel look minimalist. The night
before the opera we had the most delicious 4 course meal there
(ironically called the Gotterdammerung dinner, not gonna finish the
Ring Cycle folks, thank God!) For the whopping cost of about 500
Euros, yikes!!! I get paid in American dollars. And the next day was
spent in a villa, then at the opera and finally driving home in a
rented black Mercedes Benz. How things have changed. Before the theater
was a place to escape from the real world and bury your worries in make
believe and luxury, now we try to bury ourselves in make believe and
luxury and go to the theater to understand the real world. I don't know
if this is a good or bad thing, but at least in our time, unlike that
of Winifred Wagner’s, one of those elements is trying to tell the
truth.
All right, here's what my mother wrote:
Meanwhile,
over on the other side of town, built in brick, that building material
which through man's cleverness lies somewhere between stone and wood,
i.e., between the schloss and the chaumiere, between the prince and the
peasant...Wagnerian opera was in full swing and, judging by the
production I saw of Parsifal that night and the burgers who were
present, the aristocracy is indeed over and the "common man" is very
much with us, to be interpreted and reinterpreted however one sees fit:
long live Wagner's Bayreuth.
RUFI'S ORIGINAL CHOCOLATE COVERED PARSIFAL...
I think the last phrase is a reference to Easter.