Supervisor Antonovich wants Wagner dropped from opera festival [Update]

[Updated 11:28 p.m.: Supervisor Mike Antonovich said he does not want to cancel the festival. He wants to substitute works by other composers.]

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich is demanding that Los Angeles Opera discontinue the Ring Festival L.A. planned for next year, calling Richard Wagner a, “Nazi composer.”

“To specifically honor and glorify the man whose music and racist anti-Semitic writings inspired Hitler and became the de facto soundtrack for the Holocaust in a countywide festival is an affront to those who have suffered or have been impacted by the horrors of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialistic Worker Party,” Antonovich said in a statement released today.

Holocaust survivors and their families have contacted supervisors in recent weeks to express outrage at the festival. Some have threatened to picket.

Antonovich suggested the opera company, “Delete the focus on Wagner and incorporate other composers as headliners including Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, Schubert, Schumann, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn and others.”

But the festival is already underway. Singers are in rehearsal, posters are printed and tickets are on sale.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who began his political career as a Jewish activist, has been an ardent supporter of the festival, appearing at the opening news conference and lauding the participation of 75 community partners.

Yaroslavsky was traveling today and unavailable for comment.

L.A. Opera attempted to address Wagner’s legacy in a note on its website.

“While Richard Wagner is considered one of the most important and influential of all composers, he is also rightly reviled as having been an anti-Semite,” the site says. “Wagner’s writings on the subject percolated into German politics and popular culture and, decades after the composer’s death, were celebrated by Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. It is the Company’s belief that opera has value not only as musical and theatrical entertainment, but as a way to gain important historical insight and to explore moral issues. Ring Festival LA will specifically address the subject of Wagner’s anti-Semitism in several contexts, including seminars, panel conversations and performances.”

-- Molly Hennessy-Fiske at L.A. Hall of Administration

Comments

[Rob R Barron]

How about we ban all Lutheran churches as well, since Martin Luther the founder of Lutheranism was also an anti-Semite?

Instead of making political hay with something like this, I suggest our Supervisors spend more time fixing our roads, our hospitals, our schools and our neighborhoods.

[dino]

Antonovich is a moron

[Brad Davies]

Well I'm glad the board of dupes, I mean sups has addressed the important issues... Like gang violence (speaking of racially motivated hate crimes), 12-20% unemployment (canceling a festival will create hundreds of new jobs I'm sure...

[Samantha]

I do not want the Board of Supervisor censoring performances. He is welcome to criticize openly, but he / they do not have the right to censor. Wagner is recognized for extraordinary musical talent. If the Board is successful in censoring Wagner, who next?
It would be, indeed, a slippery slope.

[BTinSF]

Oh please prove how provincial and petty you are, LA, and send this production to San Francisco, Seattle or even Santa Fe, all of which have done successful and non-controversial Ring cycles in recent decades.

Instead of attending The Ring, Angelenos can spend some time reading up on the post-war debate about the greatest of Wagner conductors, Wilhelm Furtwangler, who, in spite of entertaining Hitler at numerous concerts, left a deathless legacy of great performances that have long since outlived the controversy.

[Absolutely Vic]

It's one thing if Richard Wagner was literally Hitler's composer. Unfortunately for Mr. Antonovich, he died in 1883. What he's doing is making a mountain out of a molehill. What's next? Picketing the Beatles or the Beach Boys because they inspired Charles Manson? This is the kind of knee-jerk politics that infuriates me. If you don't like Wagner, guess what? Don't go to the performance. Doesn't Mr. Antonovich have better things to do with his time than get up in arms about this-- you know, like help fix the city's financial woes?

[J Minger]

While we acknowledge that for some, painful memories are attached to the performance of this music, Wagner's abhorrent beliefs and his amazing music are not legitimately connected to each other. The L. A. Opera is correct to proceed with this important music while acknowledging the dark side of the man. Any direct connection to the Nazis was created by the Nazis well after the composer was dead and buried.

[Peter]

Modernely, I wonder if Wagner would have changed his tune if he were allowed to take the subway to the sea, rather than a crowded SRO bus due to the anti-regular people mindset in Beverly Hills and Hancock Park?

[jay]

The right always starts by banning things. This time the Ring and all of Wagner, the next time who knows? Who will decide, what will the boundaries be? A too slippery slope.

Especially since Antonovich knows that the very Jewish Zev is for it, this is clearly another case of Republican grandstanding as they look to place one of their own in the Mayor's office in 2013/ just as Zine and Trutanich have already started "campaigning" according to the Daily News' Rick Orlov this week. Hell no, and it's especially offensive when people like this try to speak FOR Jews based on feigned outrage for votes.

[Kwagmyre]

This issue has come up before. It was in Israel several years ago and understandably it provoked much controversy. Just basing the decision on Wagner's anti-Semitism alone wouldn't be adequate grounds for exclusion in my opinion. Tristan Und Isolde(and esp. the Libestod)is one of the prettiest operas around.

[Charles Duran]

Banning or suppressing any work of art because one finds it offensive is the mark of hypocrisy and ignorance, you know like, Nazi book burning.

[John Norman Howard]

I'm sure banning Wagnerian Opera will cause anti-semitism to decline and win many new friends for the Jews.

[Luke]

Wow! It's hard to believe that this could happen in the year 2009 in LA of all places.

Wagner was not a nice guy and had some repulisve views, not least of all his anit-semitism. But he had nothing to do with Hitler and the Third Reich. If Hitler hadn't been a Wagner fan this wouldn't be an issue. Hitler was a big fan of the visual arts too. Should we ban all the paintings he liked as well?

[SeanBoy]

While we are at it, how about also banning all cars and trucks make by Ford? Since Henry Ford is also a fanatic anti-Semite.

[Bob]

I'm kind of amazed the Times even dignified this blather by reprinting it. Antonovich has been foaming at the mouth with one pointless and doomed-to-fail publicity stunt after another for decades. Moving on ...

[AL]

What confuses me is that LA Opera announced the Ring Festival at least three years ago, and we heard absolutely nothing from Antonovich at the time. So all of sudden, after they've premiered 2 of the 4 operas in their regular cycle, Antonovich decides he has something to say? Since when does the Board of Supervisors have anything to say about what the LA Opera chooses to present? It's not a county institution. Furthermore, presenting a Ring Cycle is a huge step in furthering the international prowess of LA Opera, which is one of the big reasons they wanted to do it. They've stated this motivation, so why would Antonovich's suggestion of replacing Wagner with Mozart and whatever be any consolation? I just can't even begin with how idiotic this whole thing is. Seriously, it's a minor tragedy that LAT is even reporting it.

[Dundili]

This is absolutely ridiculous. Shameful. Banning and censoring is far more fascist than Wagner's single note (the man was dead before Hitler was born).

Open your mind Antonovich, and while you are at it, go learn a bit about music.

[Madrugada]

While you're at it, Mike, better make sure that none of the works of art in the LA County Museum of Art were painted by anti-Semites!
And what about the books in the LA County Library system?

[A.J.]

It's pretty funny that this should be happening in L.A., which has been presenting its Recovered Voices operas for several years now, and might therefore be entitled to more than a little ideological impunity when programming a repertory staple by Wagner.

I suppose if the bureaucrats in L.A. were smart enough to take serious umbrage with any municipal support of the arts, it might have been with the $2 million of taxpayer money recently used to memorialize a drug-addicted pedophile.

But that's just my 2¢.

[AntiZionisterror]

This is why I am against all Zionist Terrorists.

[David Ocker]

This is not about censorship. Please put that argument away. No one, as I understand it, in spite of the reporting above, is asking anyone to cancel anything. What this IS about is balancing opposing viewpoints in a publicly supported venue.

Also -- this is not about the operas themselves. It IS about the Festival specifically which was announced last year as a city-wide fawning Wagner fan-fest. It received a good deal of civic-booster support from business leaders and politicians. The Music Center is a county institution and the Performing Arts Center of LA County is first on the list of Festival partners. As such it's entirely appropriate for the Supervisors to address this issue.

If you want to attend Wagner's operas, please do so. Enjoy them. If you want to drive a certain brand of auto or go to a particular church or whatever other specious comparisons were made above, I certainly have no complaints. Those things have NOTHING to do with this subject.

We need to concentrate on the fact that it is still too soon in history to forget that Wagner and his music were inspirations of great evil. The fact that Wagner was already dead does not mitigate the evil. The Nazi stains will simply not wash out of the Ring Cycle because people still like the music.

I believe that a Wagner festival held in my name - in the names of all LA County residents - should have a strong focus on the story of how the Nazis were inspired by Wagner. This belongs front and center. Not to give this issue prominence is, in effect, a small bit of forgiveness for Hitler and his abominations.

[Jason Saunders]

You know IBM designed and built the machines that tabulated the deaths of Jews and heterosexuals and they knew exactly what they were doing. Volkswagen made their cars. Bayer made the gas that killed the Jews. Siemens, one of the companies that makes L.A. Metro's light rail cars, built huge factories with concentration camp labor.

These companies did what they did knowingly. Wagner, an important figure in the history of music, was long dead by the time the Nazi's came around.

Should we ban these companies too?

[Elizabeth Tatum]

Dear Mr. Antonovich:
As an African-American, I myself would be outraged by any overtly oppressive and/or racist artistic productions in Los Angeles. However, Wagner's music (some of which I have sung) is not intended to support the Nazi cause, which didn't even EXIST until long after the man died. If someone wants to glorify Hitler, then I'll be outraged. Please don't censor meaningful and beautiful art, in addition to crushing opportunities for those who have worked endlessly to provide a wonderful artistic experience for the public.

[Polomoche]

Wagner is a great opportunity to thoughtfully explore issues of anti-Semtism towards a more tolerant future. If you ban Wagner, you then have an incredibly long list of anti-Semites to accompany him, both in the U.S. and abroad. In short, this Antonovich is an idiot.

[inked]

Yes, yes, this is all well and good... when will the opera be bringing Ice T's, "Cop Killer," to the stage? Or, for that matter, Body Count's version?

Maybe a medly of related songs could be arranged - sort of like Deuling Banjos?

Ah... nothing like a night at the opera. That's class, baby. That's class.