Teacher's Guide Cambridge Pre-U MUSIC Available for teaching ...

Cambridge Pre-U Teacher Guide
the beginning of the Prelude and at the end of Act III represents the purity of ‘holy German art’ (as
Sachs describes it), free of foreign influence. This may be more than an innocent declaration of
nationalism, important though that was at a time when moves towards German unification were
already under consideration. The message of Sachs’s closing address carries with it a more sinister
implication in the light of Wagner’s anti-Semitism. Indeed, the text of Die Meistersinger is full of
thinly veiled references to a notoriously anti-Semitic story by the brothers Grimm, Der Jude im Dorn
(The Jew in the Thorn Bush). Wagner was not alone in pursuing these views, which were shared by
large numbers of contemporary German intellectuals. But through the work of such a prominent
figure as Wagner they gained currency, increasingly so as time passed. His music dramas, and Die
Meistersinger in particular, exerted a formative influence on the political stance taken by the Nazi
party in its rise to power in the 1930s. While this may have represented a distortion of Wagner’s own
opinions, it is an aspect of his work that cannot be ignored and which remains highly controversial;
it is one of the main reasons why so many commentators, even those who most admire his music,
cannot escape a feeling of profound ambivalence towards the works themselves, and especially
towards the man who created them.
Die Meistersinger was first performed in the Munich Court Theatre on 21 June 1868, conducted by Hans
von Bülow. Wagner watched the performance sitting next to King Ludwig in the royal box. The occasion
was a triumphant success, but in a dreadful breach of court protocol Wagner spoiled it by taking his
bow from the royal box – a prerogative strictly reserved for the King himself. Nevertheless the success
of the venture made Ludwig anxious for more. The following year he wrote to Wagner expressing a
desire to see Das Rheingold performed in Munich. By that stage Wagner had resumed work on the
Ring, after an interval of twelve years, but did not envisage it being performed until it was complete
and could be presented, in its entirety, under festival conditions. He did all he could to resist the King’s
plans, even resorting to various kinds of subterfuge, but to no avail. The performance took place, again
in the Court Theatre, on 22 September 1869. Wagner had persuaded the planned conductor, Hans
Richter (another of his protégés) to withdraw at the last minute, so it was conducted by Franz Wüllner, a
relatively inexperienced local musician. Almost exactly nine months later, on 26 June 1870, Die Walküre
was performed under similar circumstances, again conducted by Wüllner. Shortly after this Cosima’s
marriage to Hans von Bülow was finally dissolved and Wagner married her that August 3 .
The Munich performances of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre had strengthened Wagner’s resolve
to find a suitable place to establish his festival. The town of Bayreuth in northern Bavaria was
recommended to him because the eighteenth-century theatre of the Margraves of Bayreuth
possessed one of the largest stages in Germany. When Wagner first saw it in 1871, however, he
immediately rejected it because its orchestra pit was far too small for the enormous orchestra he
required for the Ring. He decided that the only alternative was to build a new theatre, but this
required financial resources that were well beyond his means. A major fund-raising scheme was
begun, and a network of Wagner Societies was established to contribute to the cause. The foundation
stone of the building was laid on Wagner’s birthday, 22 May 1872, with a ceremony that culminated
in a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the Margraves’ Theatre. The design of the
Festspielhaus was largely borrowed from the plans drawn up by Gottfried Semper for the projected
festival theatre in Munich; Wagner adapted them himself and supervised the construction. The
Festspielhaus had a number of novel features. The auditorium was quite unlike a conventional
opera house, with tiers of seats and boxes arranged in a horseshoe shape; instead, the seating was
arranged in a single block in the shape of an arc, so that everyone could have an uninterrupted view
3 Wagner had three children with Cosima, all born before the marriage. They were Isolde (1865–1919), Eva (1867–1942) and
Siegfried (1869–1930).
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