Tony Palmer: Wagner

Wagnerian Mastery

Wolfgang Wagner meeting Tony Palmer.

By Jerry Floyd

Highly regarded when it premiered in 1983 to commemorate the centenary of Richard Wagner’s death, director Tony Palmer’s newly re-mastered Wagner biographical film is still an important addition to any Wagnerian’s DVD collection. The film’s 16:9 aspect ratio makes it perfect for today’s wide-screen high-definition TVs, while enhancing Palmer’s breathtaking natural panoramas.

The renowned cast includes stage, cinema and TV actors, opera singers, and even a noted composer, some of whom appear only briefly in the 566-minutes-long film. The film is released on three DVD disks of approximately equal length.

Even allowing for inflation, the film’s original $7 million cost could hardly be replicated today. (Depending on which inflation indicator is used, $7 million is worth $14-$29 million in 2011 dollars.)  The re-mastered film is also one of two current Palmer releases. The director’s full-length version of The Wagner Family was recently reviewed by Wagneropera.net

Starry Ensemble

Richard Wagner is of course portrayed by Richard Burton, who died in 1984, the year after Palmer originally released the film. Burton’s tendency to speak in a monotone becomes enervating. Perhaps the actor was ailing during the filming; although Burton sometimes performs brilliantly, his characterization of the composer lacks the power of some of the actor’s earlier work.

Vanessa Redgrave is Cosima. Her performance also lacks the dramatic resonance she brings to other stage and screen roles. However, since Cosima didn’t become a dominating figure until after Wagner’s death, Redgrave’s portrayal may be deliberately subdued.

Ludwig II’s three ministers are portrayed by the legendary English actors, Sir John Gielgud (Pfistermeister), Sir Ralph Richardson (Pforden) and Sir Laurence Olivier (Pfeufer). The scene-stealing performances and behind-the-scenes by these performers and their characters’ machinations are rather akin to the operatic carryings-on of Turandot’s Chinese trio of ministers, Ping, Pang and Pong.

Composer Sir William Walton is among the classical music figures in the film, appearing in the brief role of Friedrich August II of Saxony. The film also includes several Wagnerian singers, including four who appear in Patrice Chéreau’s Bayreuth Ring videotaped production. 

Soprano Gwyneth Jones, Brünnhilde in the Chéreau Ring, portrays the first Isolde, Malvina von Carolsfeld. Tenor Peter Hofmann, who was Siegmund at Bayreuth, is Wagner’s first Tristan, Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Tenor Manfred Jung, Siegfried in the videotaped Bayreuth Ring, appears briefly as Georg Unger, who sang Loge at Bayreuth in 1876. Another Chéreau Ring tenor, Heinz Zednik (Loge and Mime in the centenary Bayreuth production video), is a character named Ander.

The noted Wagnerian tenor Jess Thomas sang Siegfried, Parsifal, Tristan and Tannhaüser during his career and in Palmer’s film he bears a startling physical resemblance to his character, the famous nineteenth-century singer Albert Niemann. This tenor’s antics as he rehearses Tannhaüser in Paris provide this somber film with a few minutes of needed levity. One wishes screenwriter George Wood included more lighthearted moments.

Other stage and screen actors in the film include Gemma Craven (Minna). Ronald Pickup, Nietzsche, was later cast in the starring role in The Life of Verdi, an even lengthier depiction of the Italian composer.

Swiss actress (and more recently opera director) Marte Keller is a serene, radiant Mathilde Wesendonck and Hans von Bülow is portrayed with finesse by Miguel Herz-Kestranek, a well-known Austrian actor, author and activist.  The German Brecht actor Ekkehard Schall is Franz Liszt, who champions Wagner and is Cosima’s disapproving father.

Fit for a King

Hungarofilm & MTV was a partner in making Palmer’s film and several Hungarian actors appear in the cast, most notably László Gálffi (photo below) as Ludwig II. Gálffi’s youthful, imperious mien and petulance seem better suited to the Bavarian monarch than Helmet Berger’s at-times overwrought portrayal a decade earlier in Luchino Visconti’s stylized film version of Ludwig. (Trevor Howard appeared as Wagner in Visconti’s 1972 movie.)

Palmer’s film also includes the composer’s great-granddaughter Daphne Wagner as the Princess Pauline Metternich, who attempts to aid Wagner in Paris and Vienna.

The narrator is Andrew Cruickshank, whose onscreen role is Minister Bär, the official who secured an amnesty for Wagner in Dresden after the composer’s long exile following the 1848 uprising. 

Other historical figures that played a role in Wagner’s life and career and who appear in Palmer’s film include the radical Mikhail Bakunin (Péter Andorai), Wagner’s benefactor Otto Wesendonck (Richard Pasco) and the alluring Judith Gautier (Bernadette Schneider).

Also appearing in the panoply of historical characters are French choreographer Marius Petipa (Jean Luc Moreau), architect Gottfried Semper (John Shrapnel) and conductor Hans Richter (Stephen Oliver). The painter and designer Paul von Joukowsky, who created sets for the premiere production of Parsifal, is portrayed by Brook Williams.

The shots inside the Sienna cathedral, which inspired the first Parsifal Grail Temple set, are among the film’s most memorable visual sequences. The movie’s battlefield scenes, filmed in Hungary, are realistic and the Alpine scenery is magnificent. A number of characters are shown from a distance in the film and their voices are sometimes realistically faint. The subtitles are therefore very helpful.

Wagner’s Dark Side

No one can accuse of director Palmer of ignoring the composer’s shortcomings. Wagner’s anti-semitism, jingoist attitudes, unscrupulousness, egocentricity and womanizing are all reinforced at various points, including one sensational sequence when he is standing on a balcony and throws money down upon Giacomo Meyerbeer (Vernon Dobtcheff).

In real life, Wagner’s boorish treatment of Meyerbeer was done through scurrilous print attacks. In the film Hanslick is also verbally assaulted for his ethnicity by Wagner.

Yet even though he behaves so abhorrently towards others, Wagner’s genius is underscored by his brilliant music, conducted by Sir Georg Solti, who leads several ensembles used in the soundtrack.  Palmer’s frequent use of the Nibelheim leitmotif and shots of dwarves forging steel are reminders that even an often-despicable human being can be partly redeemed in the crucible of creative genius.

The re-mastered version of Wagner can be purchased at Tony Palmer Films, either separately or as part of a six-DVD box set that includes the aforementioned The Wagner Family, Parsifal: Search for the Grail and Silent Wagner.

Related Links

• Tony Palmer Films
• The Wagner Family
• Gwyneth Jones
• The Life of Verdi
• 1976 Bayreuth Ring
• Miguel Herz-Kestranek
• Parsifal:  Search for the Grail

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