Patrick Carnegy: Wagner and the Art of the Theatre
"My book is an attempt to answer the question, 'Why is it a good thing that operas can and should be done in very different ways?"
Patrick Carnegy to The Guardian
The production of Wagner’s operas is fiercely debated. In this groundbreaking stage history Patrick Carnegy vividly evokes the—often scandalous—great productions that have left their mark not only on our understanding of Wagner but on modern theatre as a whole. He examines the way in which Wagner himself staged his works, showing that the composer remained dissatisfied with even the best of his productions.
After Wagner’s death the scenic challenge was taken up by the Swiss visionary Adolphe Appia, by Gustav Mahler and Alfred Roller in Vienna, and by Otto Klemperer and Ewald Dülberg in Berlin. In Russia the Bolsheviks reinvented Wagner as a social revolutionary, while cinema left its indelible imprint on the Wagnerian stage with Eisenstein’s Die Walküre in Moscow in 1940.
Hitler famously appropriated Wagner for his own ends. Patrick Carnegy unscrambles the interaction of politics and stage production, describing how post-war German directors sought a way to bury the uncomfortable past. The book concludes with a critique of the iconoclastic interpretations by Patrice Chéreau, Ruth Berghaus, and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg.
"People who say that Wagner knew exactly how he wanted his works produced - so what right have you to stage the Ring on Mars or down a salt mine - are wrong," he says. "Wagner was precise [in his stage directions] because the theatrical world into which he launched his works was a total mess, and the quality was very poor. The reason he took such trouble was defensive: it wasn't so much that he knew what he wanted, but he jolly well knew what he didn't want."
Patrick Carnegy to The Guardian
Patrick Carnegy on the Bayreuth Festival
Patrick Carnegy first came to Bayreuth as a young critic in 1967. "I was bowled over," he said to The Guardian. "It was the year after Wieland Wagner had died; to be able to see his productions was a total knock-out. These bare stagings, where everything was done with lighting. The light changed with the music, and the shadows and patterns seemed as archetypal as the music itself. Nobody had done that on the stage before. I thought it was extraordinary and wonderful."
Patrick Carnegy to The Guardian