13895 Wagner News 174 - Wagner Society of England

WAGNER’S DREAM OR WAGNER’S NIGHTMARE?
Professor Karel Werner
It is well known that Wagner was, on and off, preoccupied with the idea of writing a
Buddhist opera, Die Sieger (The Victors), after becoming acquainted with
Schopenhauer’s philosophy (Sept. 1854), which he supplemented by a study of Eugène
Burnouf’s Introduction à l’histoire du Buddhisme indien. He talked about writing and
composing Die Sieger even after completing Parsifal. What his sudden death deprived us
of has now been boldly accomplished by Jonathan Harvey in his opera Wagner Dream
composed in 2007 to the libretto by Jean-Claude Carrièra and premièred the same year in
Amsterdam. It was given its first showing in this country on 29th January 2012 in the
Barbican Hall, directed by Orpha Phelan, played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under
the baton of Martyn Brabbins and sung by six soloists and a small chorus. Wagner here
dreams his last opera while in a coma in the period between his heart attack and death on
13th February 1883 in the Palazzo Vendramin in Venice, while events around him are
shown through protagonists who are actors with speaking roles.
Cosima’s diaries enable us to follow the genesis of the idea of Die Sieger. In his
programme notes Christopher Cook, in conversation with composer and conductor, uses
them and regards her entry of 29th June 1869, according to which Wagner said he might
do Die Sieger as a play, as being his first mention of the theme. But the entry of 2nd April
1875 already suggests it would be an opera. On 27th February 1880 Cosima records: ‘R.
relates to us the story underlying his Sieger, wonderful and moving’ ... the opera ‘will be
gentler than Parsifal’. On 6th January 1881, a year before completing the score of Parsifal
at Palermo, Wagner again promises to compose Die Sieger if Cosima will look after him
well, and he speaks about the fact that both stories are about the redemption of a woman.
The libretto combines the story, which Wagner took for his sketch from Burnouf,
with Buddhist notions about the process of dying as an intermediary stage before the next
incarnation and with known as well as fictional events taking place around Wagner’s
unconscious body. First Wagner is approached in his intermediary state by the
transcendental Buddha Vairochana, who explains to him that he is free to make some
choices as to his immediate steps. Wagner finally decides to compose Die Sieger and the
semi-staged production of the opera unfolds.
Prakriti, a young woman, and Ananda, a prince whose cousin, Siddhartha,
renounced the world and became the Buddha, fall in love. The Buddha, who has another
plan for his cousin, appears (seen only by the audience) and turns Prakriti for a moment
into the Tantric goddess Vajrayogini. Overwhelmed, Ananda prostrates himself and
leaves. But Prakriti cannot live without him and she approaches the Buddha, surrounded
by his monks, who now include Ananda. She asks if she can live near Ananda. The
Buddha, always compassionate, explains to her that the rules make it impossible. Taunted
by an old Brahmin watching the scene, Prakriti tries to drag Ananda away. The Buddha
explains the situation by relating a jataka, the story of their former incarnation when
Prakriti as a high Brahmin’s daughter, rejected the low-born Ananda, who was wooing her
and who then lived his life alone. Now Prakriti wishes to kill herself, but Ananda
persuades the Buddha to admit women to his order, and Prakriti becomes a nun.
Who, then, are the victors? In the first place the Buddha, who bears also the title
Victor (Jina, as do other renouncers who have reached liberation from further
incarnations) and Ananda, of whom tradition says that he was liberated soon after the
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