Louise T. Guinther

It’s Richard Wagner’s birthday! This isn’t exactly a happy-birthday post, since Wagner, by all accounts, was a first-rate jerk, and anyway, he’s been dead for nearly a century and a half. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a grand old time celebrating the products of his genius. Every human being is defined by both virtues and failings, talents and ineptitudes, a dark side and occasional splendid flashes of light. Hardly anybody I know has angels on both shoulders, so we all have to try to extract and appreciate the best parts of our fellow humans even when their worst parts are hanging out for all to see.

Sermon over. We will now try to set aside Wagner’s anti-Semitism and megalomania and concentrate on his inarguable genius. I have always been fascinated by how Wagner the man could be such a louse while Wagner the artist came up with characters of resplendent goodness and generosity. In Lohengrin, for example, the eponymous swan knight sails onto the scene girded in shining armor and filled with absolute trust in the innocence of Elsa, whom he has come to save. He demands nothing from her — no payment, no protestation of innocence, no evidence, no defense (a good thing, since at that point, she doesn’t have much of anything coherent to say). He defeats her accuser in a trial by combat and then lets him live (a tactical error, perhaps, but born of the most noble intentions). And in return, all he requires of Elsa is the same consideration he has given her: “Trust in me without question.” Elsa, of course, being human, eventually can’t resist, and she spoils the whole deal by demanding to know who her knight really is and where he comes from. Modern directors get all twisted up in WHY she isn’t allowed to know and impute mysogynistic qualities to the tale, but the why isn’t the point: Lohengrin has placed complete, unquestioning trust in Elsa, and she has failed to do the same for him. You may argue that in the real world, it isn’t wise or practical to believe in someone without knowing everything about him, but that is the very definition of true faith, and a world entirely without faith would be an even sadder world than the one we live in now.

Anyway, Wagner, the egotistical blowhard, somehow managed to create Lohengrin, the paragon of trust, forbearance and forgiveness. Here are Lauritz Melchior and Plácido Domingo to give us the swan knight’s first and last words.

Of course, Wagner often depicted himself in his works: both Tannhäuser and Walther von Stolzing represent the rebellious, revolutionary, misunderstood artist whose genius separates him from society. Both these characters behave like jerks at times and seem to understand, acknowledge and even rue their own flaws at others. (Just like the rest of us, I guess.) Both get the lion’s share of great music in their respective operas, but Wagner also created their counterweights, Wolfram (in Tannhäuser) and Hans Sachs (in Meistersinger), who don’t get the girl or the show-offiest arias but do get the lion’s share of the audience’s sympathy.

While Tannhäuser is diddling around deciding whether it is more personally aggrandizing to make love to Venus herself or be loved by the innocent Elisabeth and respected by the wider community of troubadours, Wolfram, the epitome of courtly love, who knows that his inamorata is in love with Tannhäuser, nevertheless welcomes his disgraced friend and rival back into the fold, defends him against the righteous ire of the rest of the singer/poets and offers him comfort and friendship even after Elisabeth has pined away for him. Both Wolfgang Brendel and Lauritz Melchior capture the full tenderness and transcendent grace of this character.

Walther von Stolzing is brash, self-absorbed and carries a Wagnerian-sized chip on his shoulder while he’s trying to break into the guild of mastersingers without following any of their rules or respecting any of their traditions. Sachs — older, wiser and nicer by a long shot — has all the balance and perspective the young hothead lacks, and though he dearly loves Eva himself, he generously grooms Walther to be the victor in the song contest for Eva’s hand, realizing that Walther’s obnoxious exterior hides true potential as both a poet and a life partner. Donald McIntyre was the most palpably human and touchingly humane Hans Sachs I ever saw. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any significant clips of his performance on the internet, though you can purchase a DVD of a production from Australian Opera on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Wagner-Meistersinger-Nurnberg-Mackerras-Australia/dp/B00005RIXK. For now, we’ll settle for the artist McIntyre himself identified as his favorite Sachs, Josef Greindl, along with Elisabeth Grümmer, Wolfgang Windgassen, Gerhard Stoltze and Elisabeth Schärtel, all joining together to christen the new master song with which Walther will win Eva once and for all.

At any rate, we can guess from these generous figures who sprang from Wagner’s imagination that somewhere deep down, he must have known he was a jerk and wished with all his heart that he had some sympathetic friends and supporters, like Sachs and Wolfram, who would stick with him and do their best to guide him even at his jerkiest moments. All the gentleness, kindliness and selflessness Wagner couldn’t muster in his own nature, he poured into these characters, and they are his beneficent gift to the world. So happy 211th birthday to Wagner after all.