from the editor - the boston wagner...

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Lasst mich in Ruh’! Fall/Winter 2010–2011 Den Reif geb’ ich nicht! Volume 7, Number 4 –Das Rheingold Volume 8, Number 1

From the Editor

n this issue, we have numerous fascinating reviews and articles, including a review of the first installment of the new Ring at the Metropolitan Opera (page 7) and a terrific essay on Tristan und Isolde (page 5). There is also an excellent review of Götterdämmerung in Hamburg by Professor Hans Rudolf Vaget (page 4). The 2010–2011 season began auspiciously, with James Levine back in action and the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s

opening-night all-Wagner concert, with Bryn Terfel (for a review, see page 3). We also enjoyed a Borodin and Wagner concert by the all-volunteer Longwood Symphony, with soprano Joanna Porackova singing the Immolation Scene. Members of the Boston Wagner Society and their guests had the benefit of learning more about how Wagner promoted him-

self, thanks to an October 16 lecture by Professor Nicholas Vazsonyi, which was superb. His book, Richard Wagner: Promotion, which is a joy to read, is available from the Wagner Society of New York and Cambridge University Press. On November 13 musician and filmmaker Hilan Warshaw gave a fascinating lecture titled “From Bayreuth to Hollywood: Richard Wagner and the Art of Cinema,” with clips from several films. Because many members could not attend this event due to the Met’s HD broadcast of Don Pasquale, this program will be repeated in the next season at a better venue. We are currently working to bring you a lecture/concert of Parsifal

(February 12). The lecturer and pianist will be Maestro Rainer Armbrust, who for several years was assistant conductor at the Bayreuth Festival. Soprano Joanna Porackova and Heldentenor Alan Schneider will sing

excerpts from Acts 2 and 3. On February 27 Vice President Erika Reitshamer will present a retrospective on Wagnerian soprano Hildegard Behrens. And on March 27, Maestro Jeffrey Brody will give a talk on Wagner and Mahler. This program will include Wagner and Mahler lieder performed by Soprano Andrea Matthews, with Maestro Brody at the piano. Details of all of these events are on page 8. Our fund-raising drive was a wonderful success. Thank you to all of you who generously gave to the Boston Wagner Soci-ety. Your donations make a tremendous difference to the quality of the programs we bring you. For a list of donors, see pages 7–8.

–Dalia Geffen

Peter Hofmann (1944–2010): Heldentenor and Rock Star

erman tenor Peter Hofmann, who became famous primarily for his performances of Wagnerian heldentenor roles, died at age 66 on November 29 of complications from pneumonia and Parkinson’s disease. The Rheinische Post quoted his brother Fritz Hofmann as saying that he died at a hospital in Wunsiedel in Bavaria.

Hofmann made his name performing at the annual Bayreuth Festival from 1976 to 1989. He also performed across the globe for many prestigious opera companies throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Upon retiring from opera, he continued his singing career in pop music and musical theater until his final retirement from the stage in 1999. Hofmann made his operatic debut in 1972 as Tamino in Mozart’s Magic Flute with the Lübeck Opera; his international breakthrough came at Bayreuth in 1976, when he performed as Siegmund in Patrice Chéreau’s staging of the Die Walküre. At

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Musician and filmmaker Hilan Warshaw lecturing

to the BWS on November 13

Professor Nicholas Vazsonyi at the October 16 talk

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Bayreuth he also sang Parsifal, Lohengrin, Tristan, and Walther. Other significant venues in which he appeared included Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera in New York (29 performances as Lohengrin, Parsifal, and Siegmund), and San Francisco Opera. He recorded Erik in Der fliegende Holländer and Parsifal with the Berlin Philharmonic and Herbert von Karajan, and performed the latter role with the same forces at the Salzburg Easter Festival in 1981. He sang in semi-staged performances of Tristan und Isolde opposite Hildegard Behrens in Munich, with Leonard Bernstein conducting (a recording was subsequently released by Phillips). Hofmann’s performances that were preserved on film and video include Siegmund (Bayreuth 1980) and two Lohengrins (Bayreuth from 1982 and the Metropolitan Opera from 1986). He also appeared as Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld (the first Tristan when the opera was premiered in 1862) in Tony Palmer's 1983 film Wagner. Other recordings include Tamino opposite Kiri Te Kanawa (1978), a Fidelio under Solti (1979), Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (1982), and live recordings of Lohengrin (Bayreuth 1982) and Parsifal (Bayreuth 1985). Upon retiring from the opera stage in 1990, he gave 300 performances in the title role of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Phantom

of the Opera in Hamburg. He also recorded a number of pop and rock albums for Sony in the 1980s and 1990s, including selections from West Side Story with his then wife, soprano Deborah Sasson (who is originally from Newton, Massachusetts).

Hofmann founded the Peter Hofmann Parkinson Project and published his autobiography in 2001. He is survived by his wife and three children.

Engagements in Bayreuth:

Year Opera Role

1976 Parsifal Parsifal

1976 Die Walküre Siegmund




1979 Lohengrin Lohengrin









1986 Tristan und Isolde Tristan

1987 Tristan und Isolde Tristan


1988 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg Walther von Stolzing



–Brian Reasoner Brian Reasoner teaches chamber music and orchestra at Buckingham, Browne and Nichols School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

An autographed photograph of Heldentenor Peter Hofmann

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Terfel and Levine Thrill Their Boston Audience

All-Wagner concert, October 2, 2010; Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Prelude to Act 1 and Sachs’s Act 2 Monologue; Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries, Wotan’s Farewell, and Magic Fire Music: Der fliegende Holländer: Overture and the Dutchman’s Monologue; bass-baritone Bryn Terfel with the Boston Symphony Orchestra; conductor: James Levine

robably no concert in recent or even distant memory had been so eagerly anticipated as the opening night of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 2010–2011 season. This was an all-Wagner program conducted by the redoubtable James Levine, with the added frisson—de rigueur for any opening—of Bryn Terfel, one of the world’s preeminent Wagnerian singers. One would have to be a five-toed sloth under a rock not to know of the maestro’s various physical problems these

past few years. The big question in the minds of not a few people, including the great cognoscenti at the editorial board of the Boston Globe, was whether he should simply retire from one or both institutions he serves. Indeed, the critics at the Globe’s parent company seemed to enjoy taking potshots at Levine during his extended recovery time. They never lost an opportunity to bash him, even if the opera or concert in question was not being conducted by him. However, this listener can report that after hearing the opening four bars of the prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, not only does Levine remain a complete and towering master of the podium and the art of conducting, but the health of the BSO’s music-making is once again of the very highest caliber. Levine has shed a few pounds, and although he walks with a cane, at least for the moment, there is no disputing that not only does his music-making remain the joy and delight it has al-ways been, but also the BSO is back to its accustomed level of orchestral supremacy. It is extremely rare that this listener leaves a concert with a feeling of gratitude for being alive and for being able to witness a performance such as this one. My elation over this concert was already in the making when I heard the Met’s new, opening-night Rheingold and was struck by the uncharacteristically fleet tempi, the stunning perfection of the orchestral playing, and the fact that there was not one weak link in the vocal ensemble. One could not ask for a better musical performance of Das Rhein-gold. (A sensible and rational discussion of the new Lepage staging is for another day. And such a discussion is complicated by the fact that what one sees in the house is a different experience from what one sees in the movie theater.) The BSO’s all-Wagner concert was performed in reverse order from what was originally announced; it also lacked the promised “Siegfried Idyll.” Perhaps the order was revised to make things as easy as possible for Terfel, but one suspects, after luxuriating in this program, that an artist of his caliber could have sung the selections in any order multiple times and would have encountered no vocal terrors, merely more food for thought. For the record, the BSO opened with a stunning Meistersinger prelude. The perfection of the ensemble and the masterly playing and conducting were apparent from the very first. One was immediately drawn into the beloved opera’s Nürnberg set-ting, and all cares of the day were forgotten. (How often does that happen?) Terfel then sang a most thoughtful and ruminative Fliedermonolog. One knew immediately that here was the Wagnerian bass-baritone of the day. There followed a masterfully controlled and beautiful (not vulgar and loud) Walkürenritt. Terfel sang Wotan’s Abschied to perfection. This makes his spring Met performances something to which we will eagerly look forward. Then came an intense Fliegende Holländer overture, re-plete with unusually rich string playing and incredible work from the horns and trombones. To close, Terfel gave a defining performance of “Die Frist ist um.” The opening recitative had all the requisite mystery and contained fury one would want. The aria proper began with an explosive outburst of power. Here the rage was unmistakable. The slow and quiet middle section, often sung with strange intonation, was performed in an incredibly beautiful and haunting mezza voce. The ending, always a shattering experience, was made even more so in the hands of Levine and Terfel. Those who were fortunate to be present on this special occasion were rewarded with an encore, the Tannhäuser “O du mein holder Abendstern.” This was delivered by Terfel in an intimate, lieder-like manner. One could hardly believe that just a few minutes earlier he had been giving his all at the end of the Dutchman’s aria, and here he was now, scaling the voice back down to almost nothing, and still singing within the core. This, like the rest of the evening, was a master class in the art of singing. Some will carp that he is no George London, Friedrich Schorr, Anton von Rooy, or even James Morris. No matter; he owns this rep now, and we can hope to enjoy many more years of his singing. As for the great maestro, all I can say is that to experience such a concert with him is to enter a realm of blessedness, some-thing that does not happen often. Having heard his subsequent BSO Mahler second and fifth symphonies, each one several times over a period of two weeks, this listener can happily and gratefully remark that it is a great honor to be in the same room as he and to enjoy musical performances on such an exalted level. Despite the unhappy naysayers, we can all be thankful for his musical presence here and in New York. Long may he live and prosper.

–Jeffrey Brody Jeffrey Brody, a composer, pianist, and vocal coach, is the Music Adviser of the Boston Wagner Society. His new opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray, will have its premiere by Longwood Opera in June 2011.

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Götterdämmerung in Hamburg: A Plethora of Brilliant Touches

Götterdämmerung. Principals: Christian Franz, Robert Bork, Wolfgang Koch, Sir John Tomlinson, Deborah Polaski, Ann Gabler, Petra Lang, Deborah Humble, Cristina Damian, Katja Pieweck, Ha Young Lee, Maria Markina, Ann-Beth Solvang. Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg: Simone Young, cond., Claus Guth, dir., Christian Schmidt, scenery and costumes, Michael Bayer, lighting. Performance of October 17, 2010 (premiere).

aving just seen the Met’s new production of Das Rheingold (both at Lincoln Center and on screen), I was eager to re-turn to Hamburg for the completion of the Staatsoper’s new Ring, the eighth complete cycle in the distinguished his-tory of that house. The contrast between the two conceptions of Wagner’s most challenging work was as stark as it was

illuminating. Take the crucial question of the Ring’s time and place. In New York, Robert Lepage goes with Wagner, as it were, and locates the action in some mythical never-never land. In Hamburg, Claus Guth goes with Nietzsche and Shaw, insist-ing on the modernity of the Ring’s characters and placing the action firmly in the here and now. Accordingly, the costumes for Das Rheingold seem to spring from a fancy-free fairy tale. Wotan’s showy washboard breastplate, for example, evokes the original 1876 Bayreuth production, and one wonders what the point of this might be. The characters in the Hamburg Ring, by contrast, wear contemporary garb, from T-shirt to tuxedo and everything in between. The stage setting for Das Rheingold dis-penses with architecture in the common sense of the term, substituting for it an elaborate construct of movable metal planks. Throughout the Hamburg Ring elements of modern architecture, including the mock-up of Alberich’s and Wotan’s designs for a brave new world (serving as the objective correlatives of their will to power), keep underlining the contemporary relevance of the action. In Götterdämmerung, Guth and Christian Schmidt opt for a set of contiguous, sparsely furnished rooms, suggesting a labyrinth in which Siegfried is destined to lose his way. On a second tier we see Wotan watching, and Alberich trying to ma-nipulate, their respective proxies, Siegfried and Hagen. The most palpable difference between the two productions lies in their sense, or non-sense, of drama. Compared with the subtlety and plausibility of Guth’s work, Lepage’s stage direction strikes me as unimaginative. The lively and dramatic pro-ceedings of Das Rheingold here appear ponderous. With the exception of the Rhinemaidens, everyone seems to be hampered, rather than stimulated, by the menacing, overpowering “machine” that is to serve as the uniset for the entire New York Ring. Let it be noted, though, that for viewers in the movie theater the camera does wonders, as it highlights certain dramatic niceties that are likely to go unnoticed on the Met’s large stage. Guth’s Götterdämmerung contains a plethora of brilliant touches that help us see Wagner’s gods and heroes in a fresh light, as through a magnifying glass. My three favorite instances concern Siegfried—a character who, on the German stage, once used to be idealized and who is now routinely both deconstructed and denounced. Guth opts for something more interesting and affecting—a deeply probing psychology. Thus, in “Dawn,” Siegfried and Brünnhilde do not, as Wagner has it in the score, suddenly emerge from their cave to intone their jubilant love duet. Instead we get to watch them spend a restless night (as we would) before their fateful departure: Brünnhilde is tossing and turning in bed, while Siegfried, sitting at the kitchen table next door and reading the newspaper, drink in hand, ponders something momentous and checks nervously on his sleep mate next door. When Brünnhilde breaks into “Zu neuen Taten,” we hear her summarize what we have been witnessing during the slowly emerging strains of the so-called Hero motif that dominates “Dawn.” When at the conclusion of Act One Siegfried returns to Brünnhilde’s abode, dressed like Gunther in white slacks and a navy blue blazer and momentarily forgetting his current iden-tity, he heads for the fridge to grab a beer as he was in the habit of doing. But at the last moment he checks himself before opening the can lest he be recognized by his drinking habits. Here the mythological high-wire act of this scene has been neatly and plausibly recast in ordinary human proportions! The happy confluence of stage design and “Personenregie” (the intimate level of stage direction focusing on individual char-acters and their interactions with one other) reaches its most memorable moment at Siegfried’s death. After being struck in the back not with Hagen’s spear but with his own sword, Siegfried gives his murderer a reluctantly approving pat on the shoulder and, to the heart-breaking strains of “Brünnhild, heilige Braut,” begins the slow descent into his now unblocked memory as he makes his way from the Hall of the Gibichungs through the labyrinthine passage back to his and Brünnhilde’s kitchen, there to expire. Brünnhilde, at the end of her concluding address, solemnly follows in his steps. As she reaches home, precisely at “Im Feuer leuchtend,” she envisions Siegfried standing by the window bathed in light—transfigured—before she, too, expires. I have never seen a more moving realization of this most challenging of operatic climaxes. In a strong cast, John Tomlinson as Hagen was the dominant performer. Sir John was in fine voice and clearly relished the rare opportunity to show off his comedic talents. Deborah Polaski’s voice, alas, has entered the twilight of its glory days; still, her mezza voce passages were exemplary, and she remains, of course, an intelligent actress. Christian Franz excelled in the first two acts; his unheroic appearance dovetailed with the director’s human, all-too-human conception of Siegfried. Wolfgang Koch was the vocally outstanding Alberich. Anna Gabler and Robert Bork, the dashing Gibichung siblings, delivered fine, idiomatic performances. The Staatsoper’s band is not in the same league as the orchestra at the Met, but it produced a solid rendering of this magnificent score. Simone Young’s supervision of the musical proceedings was dependable and not without moments of brilliant insight.

–Hans Rudolf Vaget Hans Rudolf Vaget is Professor Emeritus of German Studies at Smith College. He has written and lectured widely on Wagner. His next lecture to the Boston Wagner Society will take place in the spring.

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Longwood Symphony Gives an Affecting Performance

Longwood Symphony Orchestra, cond. Jonathan McPhee; December 4, 2010; Jordan Hall. Borodin, Symphony No. 2 in B Minor; Wagner, Götterdämmerung: Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey, the Immolation Scene with soprano Joanna Porackova.

ince founding the Boston Wagner Society in 2003, I have marveled at the high proportion of physicians among the Bos-ton Wagner Society’s membership. I ascribe doctors’ numerical superiority in our Society to the affinity between Wag-ner’s music and the healing professions. After all, Wagner’s operas are full of characters who, in one way or another,

seek to be healed or to find redemption. The most obvious example is Parsifal’s Amfortas, whose afflictions arouse the com-passion of the holy fool Parsifal. Similarly, Sieglinde’s sufferings in a loveless and brutal marriage in Die Walküre rouse Sieg-mund to protect and heal her. And in Tristan und Isolde, Isolde treats Tristan’s wound despite the fact that he has killed her fiancé. I shouldn’t have been surprised, then, to witness the marvelous music making of a volunteer orchestra composed for the most part of members of the healing professions: pediatricians, psychiatrists, periodontists, nurses, internists, and so on. The Longwood Symphony Orchestra consisted of first-rate, professional-level musicians who want nothing more than an opportu-nity to play music. Led by the very able and creative artistic director Jonathan McPhee, the ensemble surpassed all expecta-tions. Borodin’s Symphony No. 2, an exciting piece, was performed smoothly. Like the orchestra’s musicians, Borodin had a dual career as a scientist and musician. He graduated from the Medico-Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg with distinguished honors, and he was criticized for spending too much time hearing and playing chamber music. Naturally, I was looking forward to the Wagner pieces. It seemed courageous of the musicians to choose such challenging music. All of the Wagner pieces were so beautifully played that I was transported to another realm, particularly during Joanna Porackova’s emotional and dramatic rendering of the Immolation Scene. The transitions were a bit rough, and the ending could have been quieter, as befits the demise of the gods’ world, but overall this was a very successful rendering of scenes from Göt-terdämmerung. Maestro McPhee, who, alas, is leaving at the end of the season, was a serious and energetic conductor. I look forward to more concerts by this gem of an orchestra in our midst. This season is the 19th anniversary of Longwood Symphony Orchestra’s “Healing Art of Music” program, which helps raise funds for the medically underserved and for medical research.

–Dalia Geffen Dalia Geffen is the president and founder of the Boston Wagner Society.

Tristan und Isolde: A Drama of the Soul

onster and genius, Wagner was the most influential artist of the nineteenth century. In him one world (the Romantic period) comes to an end and a new world (our world) begins. The poet as priest, prophet, and revolutionary. No one better fits Robert Brustein’s definition of the modern artist as a “messianic rebel” than Richard Wagner. And no one wielded quite so much power over the modern artistic sensibility. For 50 years after his death, Europe

was drunk on Wagner. His influence in music is too well known to be mentioned again, but his impact on literature tends to be overlooked. Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Proust; Mann, Hofmannsthal, Zola; Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf. That two writers of such different stripe as Paul Valéry and D. H. Lawrence could both seek inspiration in Wagner shows how wide-ranging his influence was. Virtually every major artist fell under his sway, and through both operas and theoretical writings, he restruc-tured the sociology and aesthetics of Western art. First the sociology. Wagner, who wrote operas for a stage, for an audience, and for singers who did not yet exist, became the prime example of the ostracized genius—misunderstood and despised by the middle-class Philistines he wanted to redeem. Through his art, Wagner longed to work a moral, social, and political rebirth that would save humankind from a self-seeking, self-destructive materialism. The orchestra pit as “mystical abyss” and the theater as temple. We have since lost our hope in art as a substitute religion, but not so very long ago it was still an article of faith, and Bayreuth was the major oracle. Second the aesthetic. By turning his back on realism to explore legends, myths, and dreams, Wagner negated reason and science. His operas sowed the seeds of symbolism, expressionism, surrealism, and all other variations on the avant-garde that glorify the irrational. Man’s salvation lay through intuition, imagination, emotion. Wager was not the first to believe quia ab-surdum, but he developed new strategies that enabled art to probe the subconscious more deeply than it had ever done before. His use of multivalent symbols, structural Leitmotive, and an idiom of suggestion rather than statement laid the groundwork for modernism in poetry and stream of consciousness in fiction. But in literature, Wagner’s greatest contribution was to the drama, a fact not sufficiently noted. Early commentators stressed his philosophical ideas. After World War I, attention shifted to his rich store of psychological insights. In his works, both Freu-dians and Jungians found a happy hunting ground. We have now entered a third phase of Wagner criticism and are just begin-ning to appreciate his power as a dramatist. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche asserted that by expressing the clash between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, Wagner had re-created the spirit of Greek tragedy. When he started writing, European theater, dominated by farce and melodrama, had

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reached its lowest ebb since the fall of the Roman Empire. In his operas, Wagner restored to the theater its dignity and serious-ness of purpose. Through his example, other imaginative artists understood that the stage could serve as an instrument for ex-amining deep-seated psychological and social conflicts. If he had done nothing else, Wagner would deserve a place alongside Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov as one of the pillars of modern drama. But, of course, he did much more. By studying his operas and his theories, Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig discovered a eurhythmics of the theater that revolutionized stage design and changed forever the way we see a play. But Wagner’s greatest contribution to the drama was to reveal the invisible, or, in the words of Baudelaire, to uncover “what is most hidden in the heart of man.” Aristotle insisted that drama is the imitation of an action, but in Wagner mood replaces plot. His operas are symbolist theater that reduces external action to the minimum to concentrate on internal reaction. Tristan und Isolde remains Wagner’s greatest attempt to forge a drama of the soul. External events disappear as Wagner creates a theater of pure inwardness—inscape rather than landscape, inner states rather than outer gestures. Tristan and Isolde do not act; they feel. The Hegelian retreat of the spirit from the world can go no further. Wagner’s ability to reduce the sprawling, chaotic narration of courtly love into a tightly knit, carefully balanced dramatic structure demonstrates his skill as a master craftsman of the theater. Unerringly, he selects only those moments he needs to turn a romantic legend into an existential fable. Tristan und Isolde is as much about isolation as about intimacy, as much about al-ienation as about love. By focusing on the subjective consciousness of his characters rather than on an objective narration, Wagner brought about a modern psychomachia. The “action” of the music drama is the evolution inside Tristan and Isolde as they come to realize what love means. In Tannhäuser Wagner used two external objective correlatives—Venus and Elisabeth—to represent the conflict in his hero’s soul between the flesh and the spirit. In Tristan und Isolde he has internalized the conflicts and dramatized psy-chology; Tristan and Isolde’s souls—not Cornwall and Kareol—are the real scene of the play. Each act follows the same underlying pattern: anticipation, union, separation. Each act closes with the brutal intrusion of the external world forcing itself onto the withdrawing consciousness of the two lovers. And Wagner structures each act around a basic emotional conflict. Act 1—a masterpiece of subtle psychological characterization that catches the ebb and flow of Isolde’s shifting emotional states—centers on one of the vital conflicts of life: self versus society. Both Tristan and Isolde are torn between what they owe to themselves and each other and what they owe to duty (ironically summed up by Isolde in the word Sitte). They both come to the tragic realization that to remain true to their sense of honor, they must remain untrue to themselves. Each must sacrifice individual happiness to social responsibility—and the two are irreconcilable. Freud was to analyze this antagonism in Civiliza-tion and Its Discontents, but no one ever dramatized it with greater power and pathos than Wagner. Act 2 centers around the contrast between the highly charged symbols of night and day, and here Wagner, by subtly fusing Oriental and Christian mysticism, weaves a philosophical argument difficult to unravel without consulting his preliminary prose sketch. The verse he employs—elliptical, allusive, mysterious—foreshadows much of modern poetry while harking back to Novalis, Schopenhauer, and St. John of the Cross. Not for nothing did W. B. Yeats cite Wagner as the supreme example of symbolism in Germany. Day stands for the world of reason, society, and individual, empirical will—the phenomenal world that Tristan comes to recognize as illusion. Night stands for a transcendent realm of truth that the lovers, through their love, are only beginning to grasp. The “Liebesnacht” is really a dark night of the soul—the state in which the self, emptied, is ready to merge with the godhead. Act 3, which paradoxically contains both the most melancholic and most exultant music ever written—centers on the con-flict between life and death, between what Freud called eros and thanatos. Freud would also have said that the yearning of Tristan and Isolde (in fact, the impulse behind all romantic love) represents an attempt to re-create our first state of conscious-ness when we have no sense of being an entity separate from our mothers—the “oceanic state,” suggested by Isolde’s final images. The fall from a state of grace is the first awareness of isolation. Through death, Tristan and Isolde seek to escape not only the illusions of the material world, but also the limitations of the individual ego—the burden of self-consciousness. It is in this sense that one must interpret Isolde’s last words: “unbewusst—höchste Lust!” (unconscious—utmost bliss!). It is not until this act that Wagner reveals the full meaning of the wound imagery. In Act 1 Isolde relates how Tristan’s wound brought them together for the first time and how while tending his physical wound, she inflicted a second, psychologi-cal wound—the joy and pain of love—on both herself and Tristan. (The wound is a frequent symbol in both the poetry of courtly love and Christian mysticism.) In Act 3, Tristan lies wounded again. Here the wound comes to symbolize the funda-mental isolation of the individual and the fallen state of nature. Again he longs for Isolde and her healing arts. The only cure now is to lose the self in an infinity of love. Isolde’s last song—Wagner called it a Transfiguration, not a Liebestod—makes this meaning clear, and it conveys the deep-est paradox of the opera. Through sin, the lovers find their salvation. In no way should one think of the end of this opera as a death if by “death” one means the cessation of life. For Tristan and Isolde, death is a liberation and a transformation—a transi-tion to a higher state of being. Isolde’s Transfiguration is both the most sensuous and most spiritual moment in all of Western drama. The flood of erotic energy released by the relentlessly building rhythms underscores the interpenetration of the sexual and the sacred—not unlike Saint Theresa of Avila’s description of the mystical union. The final mystery of Tristan and Isolde is that by yielding to the body, they discover the soul. Their salvation lies not in but through the flesh.

–Arthur Holmberg Arthur Holmberg, a new member of the Boston Wagner Society, is the literary director of the American Repertory Theater.

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A Note on the Met’s New Ring Production: Das Rheingold

ave reviews in the New York Times and Boston Globe, as well as in my own head, seemed to state that something was missing in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of the Ring Cycle, without being able to state precisely what that was. Both reviewers wrote vaguely of missing the characterization (Anthony Tommasini of the Times) and

the deep drama (Jeremy Eichler of the Globe). Of course, as both of them indicate, Die Walküre will be the real test. But my guess is that the reason for their opening-night doubt and uncertainty (as well as mine) is that the stunning new staging overwhelmed us. This is ironic because it was used with restraint and because the designer, Robert LePage, warned against this danger: “subtle . . . effects . . . you can’t overwhelm.” But inevitably the critics were overwhelmed. In this same, September 16 Times article just quoted, Stephanie Blythe (Fricka) summed the issue up: LePage’s setting is simply another language for the audience to get used to. To borrow LePage’s analogy in the October 4 New Yorker, it is like visiting the geological splendors of Iceland for the first time. That some reviewers complained about constant motion while others felt the production was too static suggests to me that LePage got it about right. This staging enhances the drama—in Peter Gelb’s words, “The big visual moments work to accentuate the straight drama.” They are “like coloring crayons,” if I may bor-row the words LePage used to describe all the leitmotifs. Since Wagner regarded opera (music drama) as the unity and culmination of all the arts, he would have been particularly pleased by the way the background at times responded directly to the singers’ voices. For the most part, the singers kept on the front stage apron, between a series of stunning coups de théâtre. Interaction with the scenery was generally left to the stuntmen, though this might change in Die Walküre when we shift from 14 important characters in two and a half hours to five major characters in five hours. Appreciation of the new visual language requires us to follow through the series of coups de théâtre—scorned as gimmicks by some critics. At the opening, 24 aluminum planks undulate as waves, a stage setting in lively motion. In the music and on the stage, a new world is in the process of creation. The giants appear larger than life as some of the 24 planks open up on high like gigantic hands. The steady descent into Nibelheim and the eerie glow of the dwarves’ workspace evoke Alberich’s slave empire. A spectacular dragon appears larger than the huge Met stage. Loge’s hands glow red. And at last there is a real rainbow bridge into Valhalla. We humans can’t walk straight upwards, but gods can. As the Toronto Star concludes: “Modern technology has finally made Wagner’s drama possible.” Didn’t Wagner once plan to stage the Ring in another place of geological splendors: the United States? He’d be thrilled to know that this simulcast is broadcast in every one of the 50 states. He’d love this new Ring because it

1. is respectful of Wagner’s performance tradition; 2. is respectful of Wagner’s ideas; 3. is deliberately restrained in its use of stage effects, concentrating them in the coups de

théâtre (Rhinemaidens, giants, Nibelheim, the ring, Valhalla, and so on); 4. puts most of the action downstage . . . ; and 5. demonstrates Wagner’s concept of the ideal opera as combining all the arts; for example, acrobats climbing a vertical

plane at the end of Das Rheingold, the lighting showing gold filling Loge’s hands. Bravissimo, LePage!

–Reginald McKeen Reginald McKeen, an avid Wagnerian, has been a member of the Boston Wagner Society since 2004.

Donors to the Boston Wagner Society

The following members generously gave to the Boston Wagner Society. We acknowledge their donations with gratitude.

THE RING ($250–$499)

Miguel and Suki de Bragança Christopher Laconi

Edward Pinkus

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Director Robert LePage

A scene from the Met’s Rheingold

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NOTHUNG ($100–$249)

Lawrence Bell Carla Birarelli Renata Cathou

Evangelos and Chariclea Gragoudas Tom and Anneliese Henderson

Atsuko Imamura and Landis MacKellar Jane MacNeil Thomas Kwei Saul Lowitt

Arthur McEvily and Davida Bagatelle James Perrin

Preston and Carolyn Reed

TARNHELM ($25–$99)

Dimitri and Nathalie Azar Joseph Foley

Jon Brian Greis Anahid and Arutun Maranci

Fred Meyer Anny and Nicholas Newman

Samuel Pinós and Margarida Aldabó Erika Reitshamer

William B. Ruger Jr. Heinz and Johanna Schönmetzler

Future Events

Lecture and concert, Parsifal With Maestro Rainer Armbrust, Heldentenor Alan Schneider, and Soprano Joanna Porackova Saturday, February 12, 2011, 8 p.m. The College Club 44 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston $20; members $15; students $10

Tribute to Soprano Hildegard Behrens Audiovisual presentation by Vice President Erika Reitshamer Sunday, February 27, 2011, 2 p.m. Brookline Public Library 361 Washington Street, Brookline Free to All

Lecture and concert, Wagner and Mahler With Maestro Jeffrey Brody and

Soprano Andrea Matthews Sunday, March 27, 2011, 2 p.m.

The College Club 44 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

$20; members $15; students $10

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Wagneriana is a publication of the Boston Wagner Society, copyright © The Boston Wagner Society, Inc.

Publisher and Editor: Dalia Geffen Proofreader: Erika Reitshamer

Logo design: Sasha Geffen

We welcome contributions to Wagneriana. Please contact us at [email protected] or 617-323-6088. Web: www.bostonwagnersociety.org. Address: Boston Wagner Society, P.O. Box 320033, Boston, MA 02132-0001, U.S.A.

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