Conquering Wagner.

[Bert Coules]

What I would like to hear is a proper HIP Ring... a properly thought-through interpretation in which old-style instruments are used in a way which matches the documentary evidence we have of what Wagner wanted.

It would be fascinating to hear an approximation of what Wagner himself might have heard, but I'm not sure that you can really call the sound of his own performances "what Wagner wanted", since that always seemed to be something just out of reach. I suspect that given the choice between the Bayreuth band of 1876 and a modern opera house orchestra, Wagner would go for the latter without a moment's hesitation. Singers might be a different matter, though.

On the subject of an HIP Ring, how about a cycle using the original set and costume designs, lit as close to period gas lighting as possible and staged according to contemporary accounts of Wagner's own production? Again, it certainly wouldn't be what Wagner wanted since he was dreadfully dissatisfied with what he achieved, but my word it would be interesting.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The whole argument by hippos is based up an assumption that what they got (by force of circumstances) was what they wanted. Yet most composers embraced the new and "better" instruments as soon as they became available. They were no longer held back by inferior products.

[Bert Coules]

Hippos! I've not encountered that usage before. As I said, I wouldn't mind having some Wagner played on instruments of his time in an attempt to recreate what he might have heard, but no, let's not assume that he was satisfied with what he got and that it somehow would be closer to his actual intentions.

I want to see that period staging though.

[kernelbogey]

Wonder what RW would have made of film?

[Bert Coules]

Well, cinema is probably the closest thing we have to Wagner's ideal of Gesamtkunstwerk - the fusion of all the arts - so he might well have embraced it. He surely would have approved of the sort of budgets that big blockbuster movies can command, of their popular appeal, their spectacular vistas and their special effects, but sung drama isn't exactly a box-office draw at the moment: transplanted to our day and trying to set up a Ring movie tetralogy (or even writing something original for the medium) he might well find it every bit as hard to get funding as he did back in the 1870s.

Mind you, he started his theatrical career as a playwright, not a composer. Maybe he would be perfectly at home with the fusion of spoken-word drama and music that is the norm in most films.

It's a pity that I can't see him being contented with small-scale, limited-appeal movies: the notion of Wagner as almost-underground art-film auteur is an intriguing one.

[kernelbogey]

Well, cinema is probably the closest thing we have to Wagner's ideal of Gesamtkunstwerk - the fusion of all the arts....

That was my thinking too, Bert. Film has the potential to achieve Gesamtkunstwerk status with its ability to go both outside and inside, in various ways. I've often thought that the Ring might lend itself to film treatment (and there have been some, I believe) but of course it would be unlikely to be commercial. The Met's HD transmission of Tristan to cinemas underlined how static the work is as stage drama: the television director resorted to various split-screen effects to enliven it A stage-free film of a Wagner opera would lend itself to all sorts of uses of dream, flashback and fantasy sequences that could work well with the longer monologues, for example - indeed, making more sense of them.

[Pianorak]

Not the Ring - "only" Parsifal. A film by Hans Juergen Syberberg made in 1982. The Financial Times called it "A movie experience no film or opera lover should resist . . . brilliant". Watch it and see if you can resist . . .

[Bert Coules]

There's been a recent discussion about a possible cinematic Ring on the Usenet group humanities.music.composers.wagner: one poster there has a production all mapped out in his mind, design, lighting, camera angles, the lot. Personally, I think I'd rather see a film based on the story of the Ring, using speaking actors not singing ones, with appropriately-arranged Wagner used as incidental music.

[kernelbogey]

Not the Ring - "only" Parsifal. A film by Hans Juergen Syberberg made in 1982. The Financial Times called it "A movie experience no film or opera lover should resist . . . brilliant". Watch it and see if you can resist . . .

Thanks for that information Pianorak. I think I had a slight memory of something about the Fritz Lang Film: according to one reference it has Wagner's music, though edited. Have you seen this?

[Bert Coules]

I saw the Fritz Lang film once with a wonderful live piano accompaniment by one of the resident musicians from the National Film Theatre who happened to be a fervent and very knowledgeable Wagnerian. It was quite an experience, even though the movie is based on the original sagas and legends rather than Wagner's reworking of them. Where the film does include material familiar from the Ring, the combination of Lang's images and Wagner's music was quite splendid. Has the film ever been made available commercially with a Wagnerian soundtrack?

The Syberberg movie is notable for many things, including the fact that the title character is played by three separate people (one of them a woman) and that the action all takes place on a giant version of Wagner's death mask.

[Pianorak]

Thanks for that information Pianorak. I think I had a slight memory of something about the Fritz Lang Film: according to one reference it has Wagner's music, though edited. Have you seen this?

No, haven't seen the Fritz Lang film - in fact, didn't know there was such a film.

[Bert Coules]

The Lang film is visually stunning in places:

One of the Wagnerian highlights is the fight with the dragon (who actually looks less like a giant crocodile than he does in this still):

Paul Richter's Siegfried really looks the part:

(For some reason, every time I revisit this page to read a new post the size of two of these images seems to change. Sorry about that...)

[mercia]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1gZ55mkTsA

[Bert Coules]

I didn't know it was on YouTube. Thanks for the link. Pity the music's not Wagner, though to judge from the bits I just tried, it's still effective.

[Flosshilde]

I've just started reading 'Wagner & the art of the theatre', by Patrick Cernegy (pub. Yale University Press). The first section discusses theatrical & perfromance practices prevalent during Wagner's life, & his own attempts to develop a new style.

It quotes from a letter of 1863 'Anyone lucky enough to have heard an orchestra "through an acoustic sound-wall, purged of every trace of the non-musical sounds which the instrumentalists cannot avoid making in producing their notes" would "realise the advantages for the singer of standing virtually directly in fron of the hearer" and "needs only to deduce how much more easily comprehensible the ennunciatiuon will be, to appreciate to the full the likely success of my accoustic and architectural proposals"' (the actual quotations from the letter are in double quotes)

As far as a modern HIP performance is concerned, I don't see why a performance using instruments of the period can't have a contemporary production. It's the sound-balance that is at issue, not an archaeological exercise. Anyone who remembers the operas produced for the English Bach Festival will remember something that was perhaps interesting, but not terrifically involving.

Gradus - Cosima's diaries have been on my shopping list for a while - they must be fascinating, but not, by all accounts, an accurate record of what Wagner thought. I believe that she was rather fond of writing down what she thought Wagner should have thought