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Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Hang on, keep happy
David Blake
Tristan and Isolde, Bayreuth, 1981
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Books Features Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters So -- it has lived to survive another opening. In the mad can-can world of European classical music, the survival of the Bayreuth Festival is a first priority. late July sees it open -- mid-August sees it close, and within that short annual chunk of a year, more emotions are unleashed than in any other musical event.
Richard Wagner has as many biographies as Napoleon. He is one of controversy's elite, a veritable factory of disturbance, moral, historical and musical. He is a one-man Trojan War unto himself. Bayreuth was the first modern festival, the first, oldest and most exciting of all. It is a happening, rather than a festival. It is light years away from the other festivals, insolent, contradictory, irreverent and much better at putting itself down than any of its enemies can do. The annual booing, hooting, steaming and baying of the audience arouses troubles. However, it is happy and young, rather shabby, except for the Opening Night parade when, as the trumpets sound from way up in the strange folds of the wooden Festspiel House announcing the leit motif of the drama to be performed this night, the audience arrives, on foot, bike or anything.
And then the big stuff comes, those who turn up on the hill, for this particular night, in stupendous motor contraptions, heads of state, majesties in ropes of anything that glitters, the billionaires, then merely the stars of anything and everything. To watch their serene highnesses alight, totally immaculate in their elegant getups, and to know what awaits them when they pass into the noble austerity of the auditorium is the best giggle of the night.
It is the drama of the music that matters, what rises from the dark shadowy skull beneath the stage which will soon be coming. There are no personalities except the drama and the work in hand. Tonight is the Walkura and we are all in it -- good, bad or unmentionable. Trust, hope, betrayal, fratricide, lust, murder, incest, gold, the rot of ages. Then, the end.
Some love Beyrouth city, others think it's dour. It's a bit like northern Yorkshire. Many of the buildings are built of stone, and stone makes for heaviness. So Bayreuth is no charming south Bavarian cow town. It is rich, industrial in its own right, and the population takes a mixed view of the whole festival fuss. They are so far removed from the theatrical mayhem that goes on around them that their aloofness from it causes the strange, out-of-focus atmosphere which is so unique.
Bayreuth is an old city, famous since 1415. It survived the Reformation and became a Margravine residence in 1735. Wilhelmeiner, sister of the musical Fredrich the Great, wished to rival her brother's Prussian court, and so turned Bayreuth into a European musical centre. It contains a great jewel at the centre of the city, the astounding Margravine Opera House, designed and built by the greatest theatrical architect of the 18th century, Guiseppe Galli Bibiena, opened in 1748. It turned Bayreuth into a pilgrimage centre before the Festspiel House.
Wagner went there in 1871, and a year later, on a hill virtually overlooking the city, bought and built his festival house. Funds were low, so he built it with the cheapest material. The theatre, which sits on the top of the green hill, doesn't look much from the outside, but the interior is a cavern of miracles. Wagner was helped in this work by Gottfried Semper, who knew the composer wanted a Greek amphitheatre. He has one. Only Herodatticus and Epidorus can rival its sweep and splendour of rhythm, with all lines leading to the stage.
The orchestra and conductor are hidden. There is not much comfort to be had for the workers or the audience in this theatre. It is infamous for its seats. If you have come loll back, better try another theatre. But the Festspiel House has its miracles, and they are enough. The acoustics are perfect, with a completely stunning proximity between actor and audience.
It often rains in Bayreuth. Driving into the city, it has its own unique blend of good strong solid bourgeois dignity, sifted over with a magnificence from its old Magravine past. It is possible to really love Bayreuth, even in the rain. Wagner knew all about trouble. No money was present until the king helped him out, but even then he had to pay to build this theatre himself, because the Germany of Bismarck was hostile. So he virtually began with brick-bats. Now in the 20th century he still gets them, they rain down upon him. Almost everything he ever said has been exaggerated and falsified. Only the works remain. And he knew that this would be even before it happened.
The 20th century would have held no surprise for him. He was working on a story of the Buddha as the opera to follow Parsifal when he died in Venice in 1883. The Falkan king was dead. Verdi was shattered. So had passed the most controversial figure of the 19th century. His grandson Wieland died young after a brilliant life as a synthesiser of his grandfather's works. He never called them operas, but they were old miracle plays. He helped form great singers, Nilsson and Windgassen, then threw out all the tomb nonsense and museum claptrap they had made of his grandfather's works.
No one has come to take his place. He was kind and sweet, but with his grandfather's grit and tongue. Times have gone far beyond Wieland, but not beyond the grandfather. As the enormity of Wagner's Ring opens we hear words and listen to the sounds of time itself. One must hear the Norns speaking. Kosova is the new philosophy lying in wait for the 21st century. Hopes are that something will save Bayreuth, and Brunnhilde's words of hope will close the death of the gods.
