Wagner and Venice

Greatness, it seems, often comes with extreme character flaws. Michelangelo was a misanthrope. Jefferson owned slaves. Picasso hated women. Dostoyevsky died an extremely conservative pro-Tsarist. Dylan Thomas drank himself to death. It’s alarmingly simple to toss off lists like these. The examples flow quickly to the point of overkill.

Once these luminaries die, given adequate time for their mortal flaws to pale, what generally remains to posterity is the good stuff. The Davids and the Guernicas. Often, history forgives, and then ultimately, forgets about the bad stuff.

As any former U.S. president understands, it’s all about legacy. Go ahead, secretly bed blond bombshells, bomb Cambodia or boink an intern or two. Sure, you’ll take a few lumps in the short-term if you get caught. But in a half-century, who knows? Maybe you too will have your name on a national performing arts theater or an international airport.

To say the least, the pantheon of “immortals” that have become intertwined with Venice’s story can also be simultaneously awe-inspiring and wince-inducing. You’ve got brilliant satyrs like Byron and Casanova. Builders and destroyers like Enrico Dandolo and Napoleon. Sublime cranks like Ezra Pound and John Ruskin. Heroes in Venice are  -- no surprise -- as fallibly human as they are in the rest of the world. So when I consider the history of Venice, I totally accept this “take the good with the bad” doctrine.

That is, with one towering, repulsive exception: Richard Wagner, genius composer and poisonous anti-Semitic insect. It’s one contradiction, no matter what I do, that I am unable to reconcile.

The city of Venice felt otherwise. In 1883, when Wagner died in his first floor apartment in the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi, they threw him a funeral of the most theatrical possible proportions: a massive flotilla of hundreds of boats, including barges holding a complete orchestra. The Venetian people crowded the quays and balconies along the Canal Grande in a show of final respect.

We all know “Ride of the Valkyries” from Die Walkure and the "Bridal Chorus" from Lohengrin along with other sumptous Wagnerian operatic morsels. But let’s take a look at some of Wagner’s lesser known compositions.

Here are a few of his thoughts on the Jewish people.

“Judaism is the evil conscience of our modern civilization”.

"[Jews are] "cannibals now trained to be business agents of Society".

Upon learning of the massacre of Jews in Russia in 1881, Wagner’s wife wrote that Richard said:

"That is the only way it can be done -- by throwing these people out and thrashing them"

On Aryan superiority:

“Whilst yellow races have viewed themselves as sprung from monkeys, the white traced back their origin to gods, and deemed themselves marked out for rulership. It has been made quite clear that we should have no History of Man at all, had there been no movements, creations, and achievements of the white man”

“ the ruin of the white races may be referred to their having been obliged to mix with [lower races]”

It might be easy to write this stuff off as the overlooked, inconsequential ravings of a kook who was wandering far outside of his sphere. But Wagner was a national hero of the highest order during his lifetime, admired greatly by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and seen by his countrymen as one of the great intellectuals of his era. His influence was immense.

It is, I suppose, fully natural that Adolph Hitler should not only admire Wagner, but draw fuel and inspiration for Nazism directly from his writings. Here are some gems from Hitler:

"Whoever wants to understand National Socialist Germany must first know Wagner."

Reflecting back on a transformational moment when he first saw a performance of Wagner’s Rienzi, Hitler said:

"It was in that hour that it (Nazism) all began”.

Hitler’s Mein Kampf was written while listening to recordings by Wagner, on paper supplied by Winifred Wagner, wife of Richard’s daughter.

For more reading on the topic of Wagner and Hitler, see an excellent article by Larry Solomon.

So it’s your call. Colorful, quixotic, troubled genius or forerunner to Nazism and genocide? Does the good outweigh the bad? Feel like winking?

In his 2003 book, Paradise of Cities, John Julius Norwich devotes a chapter to Wagner’s life in Venice. I admire Norwich greatly, in fact I think he’s the finest chronicler of Venetian history there is. But only twice in 20 pages does Norwich criticize Wagner’s malignant viewpoints, describing one screed as “infantile” and decrying Wagner’s “hideously racialist ideas”. The rest of the time, we’re left with a generally loving, highly sympathetic portrait of “the great man” and his movements within the city, down to the smallest details of his final moments. Wagner’s music has filled La Fenice more than any other Italian opera house, and he holds a special place in the heart of the city, Norwich tells us,

Personally, I’ll hold my nose when floating by Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi (seen below in a shot I made in 1992 ... click on it for an enlargement).

Comments

[liljiffy]

Incredibly informative entry, Norman.

Oh my goodness!

[liljiffy]

Makes one think deep. Why can't we all be kind to each other and get along?

Thank you,

-jj

[Brandon]

The thing that blows my mind is this: it looks like Theodor Herzl was sitting in the same performance of Rienzi that Hitler was, when Hitler had his "transformational revelation"... Herzl (the founder of Zionism)wrote that he was inspired to his idea of Zionism by those same musical structures and story in Rienzi! The same music inspired Nazism AND Zionism!!! One led to death for millions of Jews.. the other to the rebirth of Israel after 2000 years!!! How weird is that??!!??