Wahnfried: this Wagner reality saga outshines Succession
The Birth of the Wagner Cult was a high-risk departure for Longborough, widely acknowledged as the Bayreuth of Britain.
Wahnfried: The Birth of the Wagner Cult, an opera by American Israeli composer Avner Dorman, had its UK premiere at Longborough Festival Opera on 27 May. It was a high-risk departure for the company, widely acknowledged as the Bayreuth of Britain.
To forge that reputation over thirty years, Longborough has performed cutting-edge Wagner operas from a chicken shed in a hill fold in the Cotswolds. It had seemed, until now, a good plan to stage, well… operas by the great man. Hardly an original strategy.
After their acclaimed 2024 Ring Cycle delivered by director Amy Lane, Longborough decided not to rest on laurels, but to strike out for a new, controversial shore. Address, head on, Wagner’s dubious legacy after his death in 1883, its manipulation by his widow, Cosima, their complex son, Siegried, and a random Englishman.
For, added to the Bayreuth melting pot came the bizarre, opportunistic Brit, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a butterfly-catching tourist cuckoo in the Wagner nest. He eventually married Eva, the composer’s daughter. Sprinkle a little Longborough magic. Hey presto! An unusually gripping account of the domestic affairs of the widow Cosima and her family.
This Wagner reality saga outshone in every way the Netflix Succession fictional series focused on Logan Roy and the struggle for control of his media giant, Wayco Roystar. For starters, Hitler did not feature in Succession. He does in Wahnfried. Kitted out in red clown pompoms in the final scenes.
Some housekeeping, for transparency’s sake. I enjoy assisting Longborough in a voluntary role, as their US Ambassador, drumming up support across the Atlantic. I have a Schnauzer in this fight. Nonetheless, I shall strive to shine on Wahnfried a disinterested eye.
The name of the Wagner family villa, Wahnfried, translates as Freedom from delusion. Wishful thinking. This a far cry from a more traditional choice for retired intellectual musicians, perhaps, Duncomposin. The very name of the house points to an ongoing Wagner project and a perceptive premonition that his mission would not end with his death. Merely shapeshift to a different form. A cult.
When I first heard that Longborough was taking on Dorman’s opera, premiered at Karlsruhe in 2017, my native Scottish sceptical reaction was “I hae ma doots!” Why should a small, niche house like Longborough risk its hard-won reputation on a throw of the dice?
Understatement. Dorman pulls no punches with Wahnfried. More like rushing headlong into a fin de siècle minefield littered with Wagner family unexploded devices. “Don’t step on that anti-Jewish essay on music!” “Chamberlain’s Foundations of the Nineteenth Century is armed with a Teutonic supremacy anti-handling device”. “That corporal, Adolf, will be popping round for tea”.
I think the Longborough balance of judgement came down to this. Having established unshakeable credentials for performance, it was important to sustain the intellectual credentials of the house by contributing to the ever-evolving debate about Wagner’s influence, not just on the world of his era, but up to the present day. Opera being Longborough’s language, it was time to speak.
Dorman’s Wahnfried speaks in the voice of the burlesque. A rapid-fire sequence of twenty scenes, each self-contained, flagged up on a blackboard. The audience knows what they’re getting.
The work pulses. Think Berthold Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera. Although the subject matter is deadly serious, Dorman and his librettists Lutz Hübner and Sarah Nemitz avoid the trap of piety.
With the help of two outrageous, invented characters. The Wagner-Daemon, a haunting, violently lime-green-clad ghost of the composer, complete with comically exaggerated posing pouch, returned to keep an eye on his inheritance. And Hermann Levi, the Jewish maestro who conducted the premiere of Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882.
They were there to keep an eye on Chamberlain, who was intent on moulding the Wagner cult to fit his distorted historical view.
What happens? Act I
The action opens in the early 1880s. Germany is newly unified. The British natural scientist Houston Stewart Chamberlain and his German wife Anna lark about, catching and studying butterflies whilst on holiday.
Chamberlain is the British tenor Mark Le Brocq, who delivers a towering performance. From the innocent, clumsy lepidopterist on his hols, he morphs before our eyes into the opportunist who will steer the Wagner heritage towards his own fantasy land.
Initially, Houston even struggles to speak German. Anna has to speak for him until he resolves to learn the language and shapeshift to a German identity. Anna is sung by soprano Meeta Raval.
The Chamberlains arrive at Bayreuth, butterfly nets and all. Houston falls in love with Wagner’s music. He meets other Wagnerian acolytes becoming a superfan.
After being unceremoniously divorced in the Anna role by Chamberlain, Raval spookily evolves into Eva Wagner, who he marries to embed himself into the household. More properly, Eva’s surname is von Bülow, as she was conceived by Richard and Cosima while she was still married to Hans von Bülow.
When Wagner dies in 1883, widow Cosima enlists Houston to help her preserve the composer’s legacy for the world. As the Wagnerians speak of Richard Wagner’s immortality, the Wagner-Daemon is born.
Cosima was stately soprano, Susan Bullock. Who sweeps everything before her, even when standing still. A Longborough fixture, she dominated the stage as the determined widow. Even the Wagner-Daemon shook in its shoes!
In 1899, Houston writes The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, which becomes a bestseller. There is an apposite reminder of Chamberlain’s lepidoptery days, a beautifully crafted display case replete with pinned specimens with pride of place in the drawing room.
History has written Chamberlain off as a bit of a twat. Take care. Foundations ran to eight editions, selling more than a quarter of a million copies by 1938 and was de rigueur in the bookcase of any self-respecting SS officer. Or, at least, a useful doorstop.
It runs beyond 600 pages. I downloaded a pdf copy and waded in. The introduction by Lord Redesdale alone was a 50-hairpin mountainous uphill struggle. By page 43 I found myself asleep at the wheel and veered off-piste, only to plunge into another abyss, the author’s introduction. Another 50 ‘virages en épingles’ journey of twists and turns.
But enough of the essence rubbed off to get the point that Chamberlain’s task was to underpin his antisemitic view of history with seemingly valid academic credentials. Far from being written out of history. Chamberlain needs to be called out.
The Wagner-Daemon is joined by the spirit of Hermann Levi, the Jewish conductor who premiered Parsifal. He constantly challenges the racist ideas embedded in Houston’s book.
Stroll on. Now a famous writer, Houston meets Kaiser Wilhelm II. Houston grows ever closer with the all-powerful matriarch, Cosima Wagner. Chamberlain works with Cosima to purify the history of Richard Wagner’s life.
Cosima and Houston embark on a clean-up operation. Inconveniently, Wagner was a bovver-boy of the 1848 failed revolution. His early letters dating from his revolutionary period which clash with the desired conservative narrative of the German meister, are dumped as inconvenient, a precursor of 1930s Nazi book burnings.
Houston’s influence continues to grow, and he marries Eva, Cosima and Richard Wagner’s youngest daughter. There is a wonderful surtitle which pops on screen. “Houston, we have a problem.”
Act II
Richard Wagner’s son Siegfried Wagner struggles as Houston insists that Siegfried’s homosexuality is hidden. Siegfried’s operas are critically panned; the family dismisses these critiques as a smear from the ‘Jewish’ press.
Meanwhile, Cosima and Richard’s oldest daughter Isolde (born while Cosima was still married to Hans von Bülow), fights for her son and Wagner’s first grandchild Franz Wilhelm Beidler to inherit the festival. Instead, Cosima banishes them from Wahnfried.
Houston Stewart Chamberlain is increasingly frail. He is haunted by the Wagner-Daemon and the ghost of Hermann Levi.
At the outbreak of the First World War, Houston hopes for a German victory. He resorts to antisemitic conspiracy theories to explain Germany’s defeat.
Cosima’s wish that Siegfried marry is granted when he marries Winifred Williams; they have four children in quick succession, shifting the power dynamics within the Wagner clan.
Wahnfried feels Germany’s post-war economic decline. In 1923, there is a knock at the door. The Wagners welcome an unknown Austrian soldier into their home. This soldier is passionate about Richard Wagner, his music, and a new future for Germany. Guess who?
As Houston dies, he prepares to be celebrated amongst the German greats. However, the Wagner-Daemon tells him he has misunderstood. He is a mere footnote in history. But for the audience, an awful warning, not to be ignored.
That the story, with all its twists and turns, was an immersive, enthralling experience is down to Director Polly Graham and the whole Longborough backstage team. Make no mistake, this was as difficult to stage convincingly as any Wagner opera.
Don’t take it from me. I was accompanied by a friend from New York. Happens to be a “big wheel” in the world of Broadway, and a fellow member of the Metropolitan Opera Club.
I was leery of his reaction. I need not have feared. He was astonished that Longborough had attempted the seemingly impossible, was initially sceptical of the outcome, but returned to London a convert. Dorman’s Wagner-Daemon had worked its magic. Upping Longborough’s game.