Consignas de seguridad para la puesta en marcha

The next two artists I will discuss, Richard Wagner (1813–1883) and Andy Warhol (1928–1987), ex- emplify the modern cult of artistic personality. Wagner played the part of Romantic genius to a ‘T’ with his tumultuous love life, fanatical admirers, flights from scandal and debt, and international fame. Fortune found him in the patronage of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who built him a home and theatre at Bayreuth, still a pilgrimage point for Wagnerians today (with a ticket waiting list of seven years). I will look at an illustrative work by each artist: Wagner’s last (and, some say, greatest) opera, Parsifal, and Warhol’s early signature piece, his Brillo Box from 1964.

Wagner’s musical genius is undisputed. Commenta- paradigms and purposes

tors marvel at his manipulation of hundreds of musical themes in prodigiously ambitious operas. He intro- duced a new dramatic role for orchestration with scores that are richly textured, subtle, and profound. His music poses hideous challenges to singers and requires enormous stamina and power. Wagner saw opera as ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, a complete art form in which he controlled not only musical features but also the libretto, staging, costumes, and sets. His multi-opera 18-hour Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle develops an elaborate mythological plot encompassing Rhine maidens, gods, dwarfs, Valkyries, dragons, flying horses, rainbow bridges, etc. Wagner’s influence has reverber- ated into associated art forms, like motion picture scoring. His use of leitmotifs—phrases associated with particular themes or characters, as well as used for dramatic effect—recurs, for example, in John Williams’s music for the Star Wars movies.

Wagner’s opera Parisfal is a tale in which suffering is celebrated, as we follow the path of a young knight who is a ‘pure fool made wise through pity’. Critics either love or hate the opera, calling it sublime or decadent. The five-hour-long opera tells a grand story about seduction and loss of innocence in the search to reunite the Holy Spear with the Holy Grail. It spans musical emotions from the jagged shrieking solos of the

sorceress Kundry to the seductive siren songs of the Flower Maidens. The music becomes radiant, signifying spiritual transformation, in the final act, set on Good Friday. Parsifal, now Knight of the Grail, heals the king’s wound by touching it with the Holy Spear. The final words are ‘redemption for the redeemer’.

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), one of Parsifal ’s fiercest critics, was a former fan who had been in the audience at the premiere of Wagner’s magisterial Ring in 1876 (along with composers Liszt, Tchaikovsky, and a throng of monarchs and aristo- crats). Nietzsche met Wagner in 1868, and the two became friends. Nietzsche’s book The Birth of Tragedy (1872) was dedicated to Wagner and spoke in glowing terms of a rebirth of tragedy that everyone knew referred to the composer. Nietzsche, a philologist and young professor, described the origins of tragedy from the worship of the god Dionysus. Tragic vision showed the very essence of life as violence and suffering, with no meaning or justification. The beauty of ‘Apollonian’ poetry in tragedy provides a veil through which we tol- erate the horrific yet enticing Dionysian vision, which was conveyed especially through music and harmony. In Wagner’s operas, as in Greek tragedy, suffering was revealed and even revelled in, as Wagner’s wonderful and often dissonant music recaptured the Dionysian

life-force. Nietzsche, who lamented the weakening of Germany’s ‘pure and powerful core’ by ‘foreign elem- ents’, celebrated Wagner for revitalizing German/ European culture by evoking primitive roots of ancient Nordic and Teutonic mythology—using Aryan rather than Semitic myths.

But in 1888 Nietzsche published The Case of Wagner, berating the composer and Parsifal. Why this turn- about? Nietzsche found Parisfal ’s music wonderful: he praised its clarity, ‘psychological knowingness’, and ‘precision’, and even called it ‘sublime’. However, Nietzsche rejected Parsifal ’s message as too ‘Christian’, with its theme of a sacrificial saviour and redemption: ‘Wagner . . . sank down, helpless and broken, before the Christian cross’, ‘decaying and despairing and deca- dent’. Nietzsche found the plot life-denying and ‘sick’, not full of affirmation—not truly Dionysian. Well- educated musically, Nietzsche felt that Parsifal ’s sheer beauty only made things worse, by tempting one to suc- cumb to the composer’s intentions. When he lampoons the mass adulation of Wagner at Bayreuth, Nietzsche sounds like Plato warning about the seductive powers of tragedy.

Some modern commentaries feel a similar ambiva- lence about Wagner: while they may appreciate the beauty and complexity of his music, they find aspects of

Wagner’s ‘Aryan’ mythologizing repugnant. Wagner’s rabid anti-Semitic writings were read by an admiring Hitler, and his operas became virtual state music for the Nazis. This has led to his music being unofficially banned in Israel until quite recently. Even without this worry, some people ridicule Wagner for grandiose themes and plots, or for his self-absorbed characters like Tristan and Isolde, with their unwieldy 40-minute love duet. We need not share Nietzsche’s critical view to dismiss the plot of Parsifal as pretentious mumbo- jumbo, regardless of religion and politics. For many people, and not just Nietzsche, then, aesthetic and moral concerns clash to create a quandary in assessing Wagner’s operas.