Blog on Wagner Year: The Lord of the Ring
Richard Wagner: Indisputable genius, disputable man (photo: Wikipedia)
2 March 2013
2013 is the year of Richard Wagner. What significance for art and science does the controversial composer still have in this day and age? This question is now to be explored in a Goethe-Institut blog. By way of an exception, however, let us begin with the end – with the death in Venice.
Death in Venice: this sounds like Thomas Mann, this sounds like Luchino Visconti. Yet the death in Venice whose 130th anniversary occurred two weeks ago on 13th February is of musical-historical significance rather than of literary or cinematic relevance.
For on that day in February 1883, when the little Thomas Mann is perhaps just sitting at his school desk in Lübeck and learning to read and write, and director Visconti has yet to be born, Richard Wagner is in his study in the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi, one of the most splendid palaces at the Canal Grande in Venice. He is writing a treatise. The title speaks volumes:On the Feminine in Human Nature. Yet suddenly the composer collapses. He is dead.
Since, however, 2013 not only the anniversary of Wagner’s death but also, on May 22nd, his 200th birthday, there is ample occasion this year to commemorate this exceptional composer to a special extent.
Scene from “Lohengrin”: What fascinates us about Wagner? (Photo: Marcus Lieberenz/bildbuehne.de)
Richard Wagner, the name stands for the Flying Dutchman, Lohengrin and the Ring of the Nibelungen. However, it also stands for the blatant anti-Semitism of a genius, who was celebrated not only by the fairy-tale king Ludwig II but also by Adolf Hitler. And it stands for a still ongoing Bayreuth family saga that at times assumes all the characteristics of a soap opera.
Hence engagement with the person and the composer Wagner can be ambivalent, but it is never boring. For this reason Goethe-Institut is now devoting its own weblog to this man. What fascinates and concerns artists and scholars about Wagner? Does he still play a role for them today? And if so, what is it? These questions form the core of the blog. The discourse on the topics is to take place in diverse formats – in interviews as well as in videos or comic form. And we hope also in a lively exchange with our readers. For My Personal Wagner, that is the title of the blog, should also be Your Wagner.
My Personal Wagner: To the blog
In all contributions the perspective on Richard Wagner may be a subjective one: thus the comic artist Mat Tait from New Zealand will approach the Flying Dutchman in a kind of serial, while Dan Schifrin from the Contemporary Jewish Museum San Francisco describes his existential crisis as the starting point for access to the figure of Richard Wagner. And a virtual tour takes us through Wagner’s places of residence in Riga. And the Belgian choreographer Alain Platel reports on his work with the music of Wagner:
All dealings with Wagner, however, do not need to be deadly serious, as the “Lady from the Lohengrill” proves: If you always wondered whether Wagner could cook – she will tell you, as well as finally solve the riddle of who really is behind Ring-o Starr of the Beatles.
The fact that Richard Wagner’s death occurred in Venice is, incidentally, no absolute coincidence. For Wagner was a frequent visitor to the city. Venice was one of his favourite cities. “Everyone knows,” he wrote to his father-in-law Franz Liszt before first visiting the city in 1858, “that Venice is the most peaceful city, I mean the quietest city in the world, and that is why I have decided that it is absolutely the right place for me.” Richard Wagner, the man of quiet tones. That sounds surprising.
Starting in the month of the 130th anniversary of his death, the Wagner blog will run till August. During this time, too, surprises may be expected.
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