Loving Wagner anyway

At the Hollywood Bowl recently, the Los Angeles Philharmonic gave a rare performance of Percy Grainger’s imaginary ballet, “The Warriors.” There were, as far as I could tell, no protests from the audience about performing this rambunctious and wonderfully odd score, despite the fact that John Henken’s program notes alluded to the fact that the Australian-born composer who immigrated to the U.S. in 1914 was a racist.

He was quite the anti-Semite as well. Grainger even went so far as to clumsily purge the English language of words that might have a foreign or ethnic tinge. Yet such bigotry often is excused as a kind of endearing eccentricity.

The late Albert Goldberg, who was music critic of this newspaper for many years and was Jewish, studied piano with Grainger in the ’20s, and I once asked him whether his teacher’s anti-Semitism was an issue. He reminded me that Grainger, for all his prejudices, had many Jewish and African American friends and thought the names of George Gershwin and Duke Ellington belonged next to Bach’s.

So how did Albert explain this?

“People,” he said, “are funny.”

Richard Wagner’s dislike of the Jews, however, has never been so easy to dismiss. His article “Judaism in Music” is the most repulsive screed penned by a great artist that I’ve ever come across. Wagner’s operas proved an inspiration for Hitler and perhaps the creation of the Third Reich. “Siegfried,” the third in the “The Ring of Nibelung” cycle, presents a spectacle of the pure Aryan hero ridding himself of a sniveling, scheming cultural interloper. That opera reaches Los Angeles Opera the afternoon of Sept. 26, during the Jewish high holidays and just before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and holiest day on the Jewish calendar.

Wagner was not all bad. He was kind to animals. He took an interest in Buddhism and was a pacifist with anarchist leanings, all of which would have made it exceedingly difficult for him to become a brownshirt had the German composer, who was born in 1813, lived on to be around when Hitler took power 120 years later. Still, Wagner’s anti-Semitism was no small quirk, and it left him plenty to atone for.
“Judaism in Music” was originally published anonymously in a small music journal in 1850 by a young composer jealous of the success of the Jewish French grand opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer. The Jew’s art, Wagner came to believe, was imitative and as such could never be an authentic vessel for holy German culture. Wagner deemed that deception dangerous and the Jew repugnant.

In 1869, at a time of German unification and the granting of full civil rights to Jews, Wagner republished the essay under his own name. Now a highly celebrated composer and cult figure, he added an appendix to the essay with petty attacks against a so-called Jewish press and with puerile insults heaped on Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn (who had converted from Judaism to Protestantism).

Given that Wagner was perhaps history’s most influential musician, this anti-Semitism is all the more pernicious. Protests about L.A. Opera mounting a $32-million, high-profile “Ring” Cycle this year have come from Jews and Gentiles alike, and organized demonstrations or vigils at performances are a possibility. Last month, county Supervisor Mike Antonovich proposed that the company change the focus of the related citywide “Ring” festival — which has just begun and will continue through the spring, when the full cycle is performed — to something less Wagner-specific. In response, many Times readers pointed out that it’s possible to love the art but not the artist. Michael Jackson’s name came up repeatedly.

Taking on an easier subject than either Wagner or Jackson, New York Times Magazine ethicist Randy Cohen wrote in a recent column about his quandary concerning the screenwriter Budd Schulberg, who had just died. Cohen admires the film “On the Waterfront” but disapproves of Schulberg having  named names to the House Un-American Activities Committee. It is hard to make great art and it is hard to be a good person, Cohen concluded, so asking for both may not be humanly possible. It is the art that lives on.

Even so, I believe we lose much in separating the artist from the art. Wagner the man is all over his operas, and that is what makes his operas universal.

Let’s forget Wagner’s anti-Semitism for a second and look at some of his other awful character traits. He is excoriated for having been a lech  and a leech, for his adulterous affairs and for continually finagling his financiers. In 1857, Otto Wesendonck, a silk merchant and Wagner devotee, gave the composer use of a house beside his villa outside of Zurich. Wagner figured that Wesendonck’s beautiful young wife Mathilde went along with the lodging.

Consumed by his mystical love for Mathilde, Wagner broke off the composition of “Siegfried” and wrote “Tristan und Isolde,” an epically erotic depiction of intimacy unlike anything that had been presented on the lyric stage. Wagner might be seen justifying his illicit attraction (we don’t have evidence one way or the other of consummation) by showing that he was capable of love that transcends earthly laws or bounds. But “Tristan” also enters into the darkest recesses of love’s fixations and loss of self.
“Tristan” may be the greatest opera ever written; its harmonic innovations alone make it the most important. So here’s a nice little ethical dilemma: Was the cuckolding of a businessman whose name would never otherwise be remembered worth the creation of a work that changed the course of music and Western thought?

Wagner’s vision of idealized love arrived from his pre-Mathilde frustration with writing “Siegfried,” which begins with the domesticated dwarf Mime conniving to trick the big dumb oaf Siegfried into doing the dirty business of killing a dragon to acquire a hoard of gold and a magic ring that Mime plans to keep for himself. The German theorist Theodore Adorno called Mime the “ghetto Jew” and accused Wagner of making all his rejects caricatures of Jews. It follows, then, that Siegfried would be the Nietzschean Superman as he is portrayed in many productions of the opera.

At the Bard College Wagner Festival last month, the school’s president and festival director, Leon Botstein, noted that this stereotype didn’t represent the urban German Jew but the Eastern European émigré, of whom the successful Jews of Wagner’s time were, themselves, dismissive. In an essay in the “Cambridge Companion to Wagner,” Thomas S. Grey notes that there isn’t a single comment in all of Wagner’s voluminous writings and correspondence on a Jewish connection to any of his characters.
I would go further. I see bits of Wagner, himself, all over “Siegfried,” including in Mime. Grey quotes a letter Wagner sent to Meyerbeer 10 years before “Judaism in Music.” “I must become your slave, body and soul,” Wagner wrote in his then-craven admiration of the Jewish composer. This could almost be Mime talking.

The “Ring” characters were, in fact, devices for Wagner to work out his own deep issues. Wagner clearly saw himself as a Siegfried (the heroic savior  of German art); he saw himself as a Wotan, the king of the gods, and as an Erde, the all-knowing Earth mother. On a subconscious level, aspects of the composer even found their way into the thieving Alberich and redeeming Brünnhilde.

Ultimately, Wagner was more than enough egotist and megalomaniac to consider his crises and insecurities the world’s crises and insecurities. From whence comes lasting, universal art.
And from whence come some of the peculiarities of bigotry. Prejudice isn’t rational.

In a brilliant essay on Wagner and German Jews in the Bard festival companion book, “Richard Wagner and His World,” Botstein points out some of the ironies of Wagner’s anti-Semitism. In 1895, a Jewish journalist covering the Dreyfus affair, about a notorious French anti-Semitic incident, spent his evenings at the Paris Opera listening to Wagner. And it was  Wagner’s ideas of community and the role of the outsider that led this young Wagnerian, Theodore Herzl, to found the Zionist movement, with its call for the creation of the Jewish state.

Botstein also credits Wagner’s anti-Semitism and sense of community, as well as his music’s ability to express human solidarity, as leading the Swiss composer Ernest Bloch (famed for his “Schelomo”) to reinvent himself from an abstract Modernist to the voice of the modern Jewish people.

Albert Goldberg was right. People really are funny.

Wagner and  the “Jewish question” must be posed anew for each generation. And it serves best to use it as a mirror with which to reflect the prejudices of our own time. Wagner’s repugnant writing, for instance, practically pales in comparison to much anonymous ranting and raving on the Web. Our problems right now are larger than what Wagner stood for, but maybe he can help with the discussion.

-- Mark Swed

‘'Siegfried." Los Angeles Opera, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.; 1 p.m. Sept. 26; 2 p.m. Oct. 4 and 11; 5:30 p.m. Oct. 7 and 17; $20-$260; (213) 972-8001; running time: 4 hours, 48 minutes.

File photo of Wagner.

Bottom photo: Vitalij Kowaljow, left, is Wotan and John Treleaven has the title role in a dress rehearsal of L.A. Opera’s production of "Siegfried." Credit: Anne Cusack.

Comments

[David Ocker]

The real issue which Los Angeles needs to address has nothing to do with Wagner the man or his operas or his opinions or his essays. The real issue is whether it is appropriate to hold a public, county-wide arts festival sanctioned by the Board of Supervisors solely to honor an important musical laureate of Hitler and the Nazis. Such public support in 2009 is completely inappropriate. Adding the swastika (which had only positive meanings before the Nazis) to our county seal would be just as reprehensible.

The Nazis tainted Wagner by their use of his music. That taint has not lessened since the Nazis were defeated. No other artist, no matter how anti-semitic, comes close to carrying as large a burden as the one which the Nazis added to Wagner's legacy. The County of Los Angeles should not formally promote itself by honoring such a corrupted musical icon.

[MarK]

Do we really want to let Nazis dictate to us what music (and other arts, for that matter) we should like and dislike? Why would we want to give them such victory?
No one here in LA is planning a celebration of Wagner the man. His great music is what truly deserves celebrating and i am proud that my city is doing it. Nobody is trying to hide his abhorrent views and his disgusting personality. But his music belongs among the greatest artistic creation in the history of humankind and we would be robbing ourselves of enormous cultural riches by avoiding it, just because a bunch of mass murderers happened to like it.
Disclosure: both of my parents are Holocaust survivors and practically the entire family of my father was murdered by the Nazis. So, believe me, i have no love for any such horrific criminals, but that is one of the main reasons i refuse to be dictated by them what music i should enjoy hearing.

[BK]

Describing the Ring as a story of "the pure Aryan hero ridding himself of a sniveling, scheming cultural interloper" is far from the whole truth, and opposite to what is arguably the Ring's overriding message: a message of love and compassion and how the perversion of this love by the desire for power destroys the world.

Wagner is an extreme, although by far not the only, example of an artist who held loathsome views yet created works of art which express some of the most noble emotions that humans are capable of. I am curious how this is possible, but it does not help to dismiss the works because of this, or read something into them that is not there.

It is true that Hitler admired Wagner. But it is not true that Wagner was anything like the official composer of the Third Reich. In fact, performances of Wagner declined in numbers during the Third Reich (whereas those of Verdi and others increased which, by the way, does not diminish my love for Verdi) and one Wagner opera, Parsifal, was banned by the Nazis, due to its "pacifist undertones."
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[David Ocker]

In Michael Kater's book "The Twisted Muse" (about classical music during the Third Reich) a 1933 issue of the official Nazi party newspaper is quoted (p.39). It said "National Socialism was anchored in the works of Wagner." At that point the party was about 10 years old. Notice their claim that Nazism was anchored in Wagner's _works_ not in the man himself.

How much of history should you forget in order to enjoy Wagner's operas? Is the unassailable fact that Wagner's music inspired Hitler made somehow less important by the need to celebrate LA Opera's Ring-size accomplishments? Can a politically approved Ring festival really celebrate "our distinctively 'Angeleno' identity"? (That last bizarre quote is from Placido Domingo in the Nov.08 press release announcing the Festival.) The answers, of course, are none, no and no.

In the current political climate of the U.S., where just about everyone gets called a fascist no matter what their politics, it is very unwise to paper over the use of Wagner's operas, including the Ring, by legitimate fascists. The choices which Nazi politicians made back then should indeed affect the choices our leaders make right now. Anything else means we are starting to forget what should never be forgotten.

The supervisors should learn from history. Their proper course is to retract public support from the Ring Festival and wish the Opera good luck with its own private celebration. Or, as Barry Sanders called it on the Ring Festival website, "the party".

[MarK]

The answers to questions posed in the comment above are as follows:
1) No forgetting of history is necessary to enjoy Wagner's music - its appeal is timeless and universal (which does not mean that everybody has to like it - a matter of taste is a separate subject);
2) The fact that Wagner's music "inspired" Hitler is not as "unassailable" as it may seem - for example, it is highly doubtful that the Fuhrer would have been a better man if only he never heard Wagner's music;
3) The admittedly awkward "Angeleno identity" quote notwithstanding (English is not Placido Domingo's native language), the Ring Festival, if successful, can become a very valuable celebration of Los Angeles's coming of age as a culturally mature city and can help this "entertainment capital" join a select group of ("classical") musical capitals of the world.
The truly enlightened "proper course" for the city therefore is to support this Festival as much as financially possible.
The notion that we should base our understanding of "classical" music on a quote from a Nazi newspaper is, to put it as mildly as i can, not worthy of being seriously considered. When it comes to defining the contents and meaning of "classical" music, whom would you rather believe - world-class musicians such as Domingo (one of the greatest operatic singers of all time) and Maestro James Conlon (an internationally renowned conductor, courageously and tirelessly dedicated for many years to "recovering" and performing music that was banned and suppressed by the Nazis) - both of whom, in addition to being superb artists, happen to be truly wonderful human beings - or Herr Goebbels' propaganda? The choice is obvious and clear.
There are at least two reasons why Nazis would want to make pronouncements such as the one quoted in the comment above. First scenario: they made a common mistake of confusing the man's music with his writings and were happy to embrace it all, as if there was no difference between the two. Second scenario: they did know the difference but chose to ignore it in order to blatantly and shamelessly link their cause to Wagner's music, thus trying to make themselves more appealing to cultured Germans, since by 1933 the less educated loved them already. Most likely, it was a combination of the two scenarios - they did not care whether there was any difference or not, but enjoyed flattering themselves by imagining and proclaiming that their horrific worldview was based on this great music.
In any case, taking our musical cues from Nazis would be an egregious error for people in the 21st century. The best we can do with Wagner's music now is to rescue this cultural treasure from the unsavory association that has indeed tainted it for several decades and place that music where it truly belongs - among humanity's greatest artistic achievements, to be appreciated for what it really is and to be enjoyed by all.

[Argonaut]

By the logic of Mr. Ocker (and others) Wagner is as American as apple pie. After all, didn't the Ride of the Valkyries appear in Apocalypse Now? An American Film Made By A Great American?? Proof positive!!!

Seriously, folks. To paraphrase Bryan Magee, you don't have to be a communist to enjoy a play by Brecht, and you don't have to be an Italian nationalist to listen to Verdi, but an amazing number of people think if you like Gotterdamerung, you're a Nazi.

BTW, an excellent article Mr. Swed. I don't know if I'd go as far as you did attributing Tristan to Mathilde Wesendonck, but who knows? Wagner, like other artists, put his whole life into the id-blender and out came his art. If we knew how this happened we could tell computers how to write great music.

[michael schrage]

less a comment than a compliment:

i thought this was a well-written, well-handled and usefully comprehensive 'take' on the 'politics of wagner'...

...i wish mr. swed had managed to reference barenboim's controversial 'importing' of wagner into israel as part of his post but - still - a very good effort and an excellent read

my thanks

[Jonathan5052]

It should be noted that the "Jewish High Holidays" and Yom Kippur are *not* strictly Jewish, they are Biblical. Both Christians and Jews celebrate these holy days, and before the segregation of the Christian faith from its alliance with Judaism, both faiths worshiped together on the seventh day of the week and celebrated the same "high holidays" through the third or forth century CE. In Leviticus 23 these holy observances are "festivals of the Lord," which means they are commanded from God to everyone. The Bible or Torah was not written for only the Christian or Jew, but for everyone.

[Jack C, NYC]

Humans are animals first. Wagner, although talented was still an animal. Most fit in the category of "monkeys with carkeys."

[David Ocker]

@MarK - Timeless? How can an opera that was barely begun 150 years ago be considered timeless today? Religions which are millennia old with billions of adherents _might_, just barely, be considered timeless. But the Ring could completely disappear from the culture in another century. I assume you believe this won't happen because of your personal tastes. But we're not talking about personal tastes.

Universal? Not at all. The Ring is quite elitist. If all LA Opera's Ring performances sell out and no one attends more than once, not even 1% of LA County residents will be able to witness the "magic". What percentage of people do you think could identify the name Richard Wagner? A lot less than would identify Michael Jackson. From what has been announced so far, I doubt the Ring Festival will attract many more people.

You might have meant that The Ring is universal because it deals with mythic subjects with which anyone can identify. As such it's not unlike Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, both of which are far more universal in our current culture. And their plots make lots more sense.

Nazi quotations? I loved the way you deconstructed that one and flipped its meaning around. Here's another good one, from Dorothy Crawford's recent book A Windfall of Musicians (p.1) "A school dropout at age sixteen, Adolf Hitler based his life's ambition 'to become the people's tribune' on the example he found in the arrogant, destructive hero of Wagner's early revolutionary opera, Rienzi. ('In that hour it began,' he boasted to Winifred Wagner at the Bayreuth Festival in 1939.)" (Crawford credits this information to a book by August Kubizek, a childhood friend of Hitler.)

A culturally mature city? Maybe so, if by that you mean a "culturally mature European city"? L.A. (along with Tokyo) is about as far away from Europe as a big city can get. There's no real reason we need to compete on European terms. As a huge multi-ethnic community, Los Angeles ought to come up with some new and better ways to spend 19 hours listening to music. I lament our failure to do this.

"Whom would you rather believe?" If in 2009 I am supposed to accept advice on what constitutes good music from the principals of the LA Opera, would I also have been expected to believe Hitler in 1930's Germany. According to Richard Evans' book The Third Reich In Power (p.201), Hitler insisted that party members attend Die Meistersinger which opened every yearly Nuremberg rally. To their credit they didn't. When he forced them, they didn't pay attention. If only they had shown such independent thinking in other matters. But this discussion is not about their personal tastes in music.

@Argonaut - Wagner is a part of wider American culture only through the Ride of the Valkyries as in Apocalypse Now and What's Opera Doc. A recent Red Bull ad showed a woman attack her dead, philandering husband in heaven to the accompaniment of Valkyrie music. Hiyao Miyazaki's movie Ponyo, intended for young children, had a shameful rip off of the same. The image of the buxom blond woman carrying a spear with metal plates over her breasts is pretty common. Not terribly positive, but common. That's about the extent of it.

"if you like Gotterdamerung, you're a Nazi" - I don't believe that for a moment. Conversely, the story about Hitler and Die Meistersinger proves that being an actual Nazi does not mean one must like Wagner.

[Tabitha]

Ibsen was the second most performed playwright in Nazi Germany. Peer Gynt was an all-time favorite of the führer and his cronies. I don't see anyone complaining about performances of The Doll House. If Wagner was the laureate of Hitler then Ibsen was a close runner-up. So we should make sure that our high school and college students stop reading material that the Nazi's enjoyed. There must be something wrong with it morally and ethically. In fact, we should burn down the Ibsen museum in Oslo.

Half the people in the library were adulterous and the other half were racist. Oh and then there is the question of misogyny, which if we take that into account, well, there goes everyone from Ghandi to Swift.

Give me a break people. Just enjoy the art.

[wmlohse]

many of you have never been to Festspielhaus in Bayreuth in Bavarian,
and many more have no German heritage, and most of all peoples all over
the world throughout history have held unpoplular feelings about
minority people, except, your own neighbors, family and associates.
however, history teaches that leadership thrives on exploiting all of
this for political purposes, especially to find an "enemy" among us.
consider Ibsen, many years ago who wrote "Enemy of the People"
and you find not much ever changes. God Lord, 99.9% of people
go to work, do their job and suffer the differences among all of us
which is probably unnecessary, but it is the war mongers who exploit
all of that. Hitler was a supreme master of that, but if you page thru the
history books, you will find a Hitler in every town, every city, every
nation throughout history, and the other .1%, his buddies impose their
power and exploit all of us to their own perverse ends. Far more clever and intelligent people than i have written of the this for centuries, yet the
average person is too overwhelmed to know, let alone understand how
to deal with it, doing day to day jobs, family, responsibilities, you name it.

does not real good to name bad guys, we all know we live among them
and they, in actuality run our lives no matter where on the planet we live
nor what time we find ourselves in throughout the calendars.

sad indeed, but at the end of my life, i see no end to it. were you to
to do an analysis of today's events according to the foregoing rough
calculus, you would find a truth which would be as fundamental as
that which Einstein set out as E=MC squared. it happens to be a truth
we are stuck with, derivative of Darwinism. The strong will always
prevail, always feeding on those who are not, and at the top of the food
chain, well, the competition is always stiff, because their are Super Bowls
to be one, Wars to be Won, and, gosh, we all have to root for the home
team or get shot (or our pensions stolen, our kids sent to wars, and on
and on it goes).

so, quit all the talk, enjoy Wagner, whom i don't particularly care for
myself, but many like peanut butter and i do not, but what never will
happen, sadly, is "live and let live".

[Peter Lake]

It's not Wagner's fault that Hitler saw his music as a inspiration to National Socialism, nor is the fault of the music.
Hitler focues on Siegfried as being the embodiment of German nationalism, but I find it astonishing that he missed how his own band of murdering thugs would not be seen as equal to the many villains in The Ring.
Wagner's themes were drawn from mythological sources and were not created by him with the Jews in mind.
If some Jews don't like Hitler's taste in music, why should they blame Wagner?

[Cris Ranston]

Another religious polemic against a dead guy.

[Sabrina Messenger]

Not only is Richard Wagner's anti-Semitism something that should seriously be called into question, his scandalous attitude towards women should be as well. It is a known fact that he was a womanizer, plus he also fathered children with a woman who was still married to someone else! Yes, Cosima and Wagner eventually married but just the same it proves Wagner's character and morals were highly questionable on several levels. Do we really need to glorify someone like that? I think not.

[Gina]

There isn't much new about Wagner. He was an anti-semite and very likely prejudiced against ethnicity other than his own. He was also Hitler's favorite composer.

[MarK]

To "Chris Ranston": there is virtually no religious content in most of these comments, and the polemic here is more ABOUT than AGAINST.

To "Peter Lake": this particular Jew couldn't care less about Hitler's taste in music - it is his other "preferences" and, most important, deeds that we should always continue learning about and remember.

To "Jack C, NYC": very elegantly put, "monkeys with carkeys" - and so are you and i and the rest of us; but so what? Some monkeys are apparently more clever than others, which allows them to drive better cars. Now, that is truly profound.

To "Tabitha": you have made a good point, but all those "people" whom you have asked to give you a proverbial break, seem to be speaking so far solely with none but the single voice of "David Ocker" who must have been duly elected to represent them all by his own lonely self. So, let's talk to him then, but gently, since otherwise it wouldn't be a fair "fight".

In operatic terms, Richard Wagner's best operas are indeed timeless and universal. Speaking of them in any other terms would be pointless. The reason i am convinced that they will not "completely disappear from the culture in another century" is not my personal taste at all, but the fact that in the history of classical music, nothing that lasted with such high (actually, rising for most of the last century) level of acclaim for 150 years, suddenly disappeared 100 years later. By the way, i personally am not a passionate opera fan in general, and therefore am not among most fanatical devotees of Wagner's operas in particular, either. But i do admire his music tremendously, am often moved by its sublime beauty and emotional power, and have utmost respect for the undeniable fact that he is the creator of some of the most influential classical music written in the last two hundred years.

Universality of music's appeal is not exactly the same thing as that music's popularity - these two concepts should not be confused. The former may lead to the latter, but it does not always happen that way because there are many other factors involved. Classical music, like any kind of "high" culture, has always been relatively elitist, and those operas that were written by Wagner are not any more elitist than any others. Besides, being elitist does not necessarily mean not being worthy of attention. Quite often, exactly the opposite is true. If the Ring Festival can make Wagner's music a little bit more popular, it would definitely be a positive outcome.

As for the Michael Jackson comparison, i have to admit - that one is a winner. There is no way that Wagner can compete with The Gloved One. For example, as far as i know, the former has never been accused of sleeping with children. No, he is known to have been far more conventional in his personal habits, severely restricting the range of his sexual partners to adult women only, preferably young wives of his devoted and loyal friends - overall, a kind of vice that is fairly common and much too boring compared to those of the late entertainer. As for the quality of the two men's contribution to music - well, here i can rest my case in complete confidence that the jury of time will once again reach the correct verdict. Meanwhile, we can probably agree that plots of Wagner's operas are not their strongest feature. Music, however, most certainly is.

It's nice to know that someone actually "loved the way" i "deconstructed" the Nazi quote, but one shouldn't flatter me too much - i am really not very good at "flipp[ing] meaning[s] around". No, i simply looked at what i had read and tried to explain it as reasonably as i could. It must have been convincing enough though, because so far i haven't seen any arguments against my interpretation. As for Hitler's attribution of the genesis of "his life's ambition" to a Wagner's opera - well, it isn't the only time when great art was claimed to have inspired either great evil or great good. Personally, i am rather skeptical of such claims, in either direction, and actually consider them quite dangerous. The way i see it, taking this boast by Adolf at its full value, and actually believing it, is very close to giving full credibility to a kind of criminal defense that would essentially claim that certain criminals cannot be responsible for their crimes, since they committed them only because they may have accidentally heard the wrong piece of music. This "sue the composer" approach is not what we need if we want to strengthen and, if possible, improve our justice system.

Was the protagonist of "A Clockwork Orange" violent because he liked Beethoven's Ninth? If so, then should that be deemed a sufficient reason to stop listening to Beethoven? By the way, here is a composer who was beloved not only by the Nazis but by the Communists as well - apparently Vladimir Lenin happened to like Beethoven's music, and so of course Lenin's devoted and obedient followers have officially decreed that Beethoven's music was the greatest because it was all about the class struggle of the poor against the rich, with the correct side always prevailing in the end. Considering that even the most horrific crimes of the Nazis pale in comparison to the murderous achievements of Communist regimes, should we then ban, or at least marginalize, Beethoven's music for good measure too, along with Wagner's?

Bringing Los Angeles closer to the great European capitals in terms of cultural stature would be a very beneficial development for all Angelenos. If this city can contribute something more diversified, then this is wonderful too - let's do a big festival every year, celebrating a different cultural genius every time! Who would be against that? This coming Spring, LA Opera's big and expensive project is naturally likely to become the center of attention, but in following years the focus can certainly shift to completely different directions. This would be perfectly fine and, as far as i know, no one is arguing against this. Nobody is saying that Wagner's music is the only thing worth celebrating. It's just that producing the entire "Ring" is a rare achievement that may not happen here again for decades, and it gives the city an opportunity that should not be missed.

Finally for now - yes, i courageously recommend that Placido Domingo's and James Conlon's opinions about merits and meanings of classical music should be valued immeasurably higher than those of Adolf Hitler. It is a huge stretch, i know, but i am bravely going on that limb all the way to its precarious end. Besides the obvious differences of the above-named luminaries' intentions, there are even more obvious enormous differences of their musical qualifications, not to mention the fact that the first two are wonderful human beings, while the third apparently belongs to an entirely different subdivision of, unfortunately for us, the same species. And once again, this has absolutely nothing to do with anyone's personal tastes.

[Alejandro Salazar]

I think Jews would do better to concentrate on action of Iran, and president Obama cozy relationship with Palestinians and Iran, and new rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. Forget Wagner.

[Garcho]

Wagner's role in music is so overstated it's silly. He had a huge influence on European and eventually, Western art music for the last 140 years or so. But one has to discount the music of over 5 billion 'other' people to believe that he's had an influence on all music, not even including the world of contemporary Western art music more heavily influenced by American composers like Ives and Cage than Wagner. Granted, Western music has spread to every part of the world, much like Muslims' music a thousand years ago, and in that sense Wagner's influence has ballooned, but to say that he's personally responsible for revolutionizing music is sensational. Thank god he's had no influence on Indian rag, Middle Eastern makam, or Japanese Nogaku, just to name a few other art musics, and it goes without saying that plenty of people who listen to rock, folk, dance and trance music are intelligent, fulfilled, wise, educated, cultured individuals without listening to music influenced by Wagnerian musical devices.

I couldn't care less if Nazis liked Wagner, just like I couldn't care less if they liked beer, sausage, cotton underwear and accurate watches. I'm sure some Soviets sincerely liked Shostakovich, and the USSR killed, torture and imprisoned a lot more people, had a larger, more sever secret police, banned more art and knowledge, started more wars of aggression and seized more land than Nazi Germany. I can't imagine anyone would think of questioning whether or not we should publicly fund a Shostakovich concert series, and unlike Wagner, he was unfortunate enough to live under such an evil regime. I suspect the main motive behind protesting this concert series is the never ending search by spoiled Americans to feel self-righteous by associating others with politically convenient historical monsters.

[BK]

Wagner's influence on music and culture in general may be overstated sometimes, but even more often it has been downplayed or rightout ignored (especially, and understandably, after WW II). Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, and many other cultural giants have explicit Wagner references all over their work, modelled the structure of their work after Wagners operas, or drew heavily upon Wagner's characters and plots as a source for their most important works. The list of these examples could go on and on. Yet rarely has this been acknowledged or analyzed (the notable exception is Nietzsche).

It should be obvious that Wagner's influence on music is even greater - Mahler, for one, said in a letter that "in music, there is only Beethoven, Wagner, and then, nobody." However, the degree to which Wagner's influence is ignored is striking: To give just one example, Alban Berg's violin concerto quotes a motive from the third act of Tristan, and uses it all over its first movement, deeply ingrained in its structure. But I have yet to read an analysis of the concerto that would mention this.

As far as popular culture goes, just watch a random movie and it's very likely that the movie music uses a version of Wagner's Leitmotifs - however crude that usage may be.

It is time to strip Wagner's works of their heavy historical ballast and see them for what they really are. Generations of Jewish conductors - from Herrmann Levi, who conducted the first performances of Parsifal under Wagner's own direction, or Gustav Mahler, or Georg Solti, to such people as Daniel Barenboim and James Levine of our time - have been performing and admiring these works.

The city of Los Angeles does well to support staging of the Ring. Just as with any piece of culture, the point is not that everybody needs to see it, but that everybody is given the opportunity.