Number 202: July 2011 - Wagner Society of England

The Mastersingers “Living in Exile” weekend
THE WAGNER FAMILY
Tony Palmer’s introduction to his new film at Aldeburgh Cinema,
15th May 2011
Roger Lee
Tony Palmer always feels welcome when he visits Aldeburgh Cinema, which is
important to him because as a result of this film he is now banned from Bayreuth. “I’ve been
sent a letter from the office of the Burgermeister saying that it would be unwise for me to go
to Bayreuth this summer.” Introducing his film, he said: “One family has hung on to the
Festspielhaus Theatre in Bayreuth for over 140 years through lies, deception and very, very
dangerous political alliances. And that is the subject of this film.”
Palmer responded to the fact that two people marched out of the auditorium during
the showing of his film with: “John Osborne once told me that the only success he was ever
aware of was when he heard seats being upended at a showing of Look Back in Anger.” After
the film run Jeremy Rowe asked whether the legacy, the inheritance over the years (ie of the
Bayreuth Festival) makes it inevitable that this family would continue to be at loggerheads.
Palmer replied: “You could argue that the whole family has gone through hell right up until
the present day. Wolfgang Wagner was the last of the line indulging in his own way in
villainous activity, just hanging on to it forever, which was just absurd.”
One thing which did not appear in the film because it was not known to Palmer at the
time was hinted to him by Pierre Boulez. “After I had finished it Boulez said ‘There’s one
thing I forgot to tell you.’ For him the real tragedy of 1966 when Wieland Wagner died was
that Boulez had gone to Bayreuth to conduct Parsifal after he and Wieland had cemented
their friendship working on Wozzek the previous spring in Frankfurt. In the intervening
months, they had talked about the fact that, after 15 years since the 1951 resumption of the
Festival, Wieland was sufficiently confident in himself and his artistic achievements that he
felt that it was now the time to do what he believed that his grandfather had always wanted
to do: ‘Let’s do all the operas which Richard Wagner himself admired: The Trojans, Der
Freischutz…’ I forgot to tell you that Wieland wanted to put on Schoenberg’s Moses und
Aaron! He recognised that the Festival was dying on its feet – the same people were coming
every year and he knew (as Tony Pappano in Covent Garden has obviously grasped) that
you’ve got to attract, endlessly, a new audience. By all means, do the repertoire pieces, but
we must always do new works, however outrageous. We must have the chance to make
terrible mistakes.” We were then told of another ambition which Wieland Wagner shared with
Boulez. “To restrict the use of the Theatre to 5 or 6 weeks in the summer was ridiculous.
There was no reason why it should not also be opened at Easter (as in Salzburg) or later in
the year.”
Palmer continued with the fact that one thing which is lacking in opera houses and
becomes more and more critical, he believes, as time goes on, is to have some kind of school
(as we have now in Snape), not just for musicians, but to help those who want to direct, to
design scenery, etc. There is no such training school anywhere, and Wieland said that this is
what his grandfather absolutely would have wanted. So this is why Boulez said that it was
such a tragedy that Wieland died when he did. “Wolfgang, who knew all about that because
I remember discussing it with him, simply didn’t want to know. For him it was just a case of
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