4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mildly interesting family reminiscences and Wagner thoughts, December 22, 2004
This review is from: The Wagners: The Dramas of a Musical Dynasty (Hardcover)
Some of Richard Wagner's genius descended to his son Siegfried Wagner, whose vastly under-rated music I am currently, delightedly, discovering. I wish Siegfried had composed more.
But the only aspect of Richard Wagner's talent that reached as far as his grandchildren and great-grandchildren is that for writing self-serving autobiographies. In fact a minor literary genre has been established: memoirs by people who are famous only for being a descendent of Richard Wagner. Thus we have _Shadow over Bayreuth_ by Friedelind Wagner, _Acts_ by her brother Wolfgang ["it may be called _Acts_, but it sure aint Gospel"], the book by Gottfried Wagner that has so far been published under three different titles, and counting, and Nike's _The Wagners: The Dramas of a Musical Dynasty_.
The only Wagner descendent with an interesting story to tell, and a ghost writer who told it well, was Friedelind. But then she appears to have been a genuinely likeable, if extremely difficult, human being, who inherited some of her grandfather's courage and directed it against the Nazis, in the certainty (I think utterly justified) that he would have approved.
The remainder of the Wagner memoirs are marked principally by petulance, the tone tending to waver between the whiny and the snarky. Of these, Nike's book is the least bad. So what can we say about Nike's book, beyond that it is better than Gottfried's or Wolfgang's books?
The most interesting section is the family history, which from my point of view contains a few, all too few, anecdotes or glimpses of the last Wagner descendants to be at all interesting in their own right: that is, Siegfried Wagner and his daughter Friedelind.
Nike thinks that her father, Wieland Wagner, was also a major creative person, like his father and grandfather. I don't think that, though it depends on what you mean by "creative"; certainly he was a moderately innovative theatre director. Anyway, she gives us a partial portrait of Wieland. I feel her account is slightly bowdlerised, perhaps because she is making her claim to the Bayreuth Festival through her descent from Wieland, and therefore she would not wish to bring into question his fitness to have been involved in the post-War Bayreuth. So awkward matters like Wieland's involvement with the Flossenberg Concentration Camp remain glossed over.
On the evidence of this book, it seems that if Nike's claim on the festival were to be successful, it would not result in greater openness in relation to the Bayreuth archives for the period 1920-1945.
The rest of Nike's more recent family gossip is of less interest to me, since none of the living Wagners are especially interesting people. They belong in the society pages, and not in cultural coverage. Except perhaps Wolfgang, who could look back on and reveal much about a fascinating historical period; but his "autobiography" makes it clear he has no intention of doing so.
The other part of the book reveals Nike's thoughts about the works, and ideas for revitalising the festival. The thoughts are mostly moderately interesting, if not blindingly insightful. The only oddity is bringing the early 20th century nutcase Otto Weininger into her discussion of _Parsifal_. The trouble is that Weininger was a tormented homosexual Jewish man who hated homosexuals and Jews in general, and himself in particular, also hating women, while he was about it, and committed suicide.
I suspect Nike bought into the 1960s/1970s idea that insane people are somehow more insightful and interesting than the rest of us. In fact the opposite is true. Weininger's thoughts on _Parsifal_ are as relevant to an understanding of that work as Charlie Manson's thoughts on the _White Album_ are relevant to the exegesis of that Beatles' classic.
As for Nike's thoughts on the Festival, I think they have merit. It would be useful to perform Wagner's earlier operas at Bayreuth as part of the Festival, perhaps not in the main theatre, and also to perform operas that influenced him (Beethoven, Cherubini, Marschner, Weber, and others), and were influenced by him. And Bayreuth should commission and perform new operas, which surely is what Wagner meant by "Children, do something new."
So Nike's thoughts about the festival make a worthwhile contribution. Still, as for the succession, with some sentimental regret I think that it should go to the best candidate, and I think it astronomically unlikely that the best candidate will be called Wagner.
Summary: a mildly interesting book. Very far from essential, but at least readable. And I'd rather spend time in her company (I mean as a reader) than either Gottfried or Wolfgang. What a terrible shame, by the way, that Siegfried Wagner didn't write an autobiography.
Cheers!
Laon
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