Trudy Gold
Wagner and the Jews
Trudy Gold - Wagner and the Jews
- What time do you want me to start? 17:O3.
That’s what we normally do. Yeah, we normally give three minutes, don’t we?
I’ve got a question. Let’s see what we’ve got. Pouring here in London, Janice is asking, how’d you cancel the text?
[Judi] Janice, you should have a button that just says, “Hide Subtitle.” On my computer, it’s at the top of the screen, and there’s three dots that say “More”, and there should be something that says “Hide Subtitle” there. If you’re working on an iPad, I don’t know how to switch it off on an iPad, unfortunately.
Unless there’s anyone on an iPad who can tell us because I can’t do it either.
[Judi] Arlene has responded, on an iPad at bottom a box with an X.
Top or bottom?
[Judi] It says bottom. On an iPad at the bottom a box with an X.
I don’t have one of those, what a pity! Sorry, my life. Let’s see what other…
[Judi] Oh, that’s just Judi saying, “Click live transcript, live transcript.”
Yeah, just click it.
[Judi] Don’t click buttons, Trudy, you know what happens when you click buttons?
I’ve the live transcript, but I’ve still got something. Just don’t click buttons, Trudy. You know what you mean? So I’ve still got the transcript. I love it. You know I need someone holding my hand.
[Judi] Yes.
My grandson said to me, “Grandma, what would you rather do? Talk to a thousand people or learn how to work a computer?” And then they all thought that was hysterically funny. Oh, Wendy has just joined us.
Hello!
Hi, Wendy!
[Judi] We are live, Wend.
Judi, I don’t have a link on my computer, only on my telephone, I don’t know what’s going on here. Can you email it to me, please?
[Judi] For this talk now?
Yeah.
It’s in your diary, sorry, just have a look in your… Just make sure your iPad isn’t on do not disturb, otherwise it wouldn’t have updated, but I can send you the link now from…
No, I don’t know what’s going on with this iPad.
[Judi] So sorry, but I will just, because I am sharing the screen, I’m going to have to send you… Right. Trudy, I’m going to have to just stop screen sharing for one second, so I can send Wendy a copy of the link.
Fine, and then back on-
Hello?
Yeah.
Hi, Trud!
Hi, Wendy, I can see you.
I’m in, I think.
Yeah, I can see you.
[Judi] Okay, so I’m going to go back to screen share then.
[Trudy] Thank you.
[Judi] There we go, back to screen share.
Okay, tell me when you want me to start. I think…
Oh my god! I got caught in a whoosh, whoosh, whoosh baffle.
Okay.
You just need to make one mute, Wendy.
Hold on a sec, I’ve to turn one off.
Hmm.
Okay, good. Are we ready?
Okay, hello everybody. Oh goodness, you’ve opened up, there’s lot of people on. Welcome everyone. Hi, hi, Trud!
Hi, Wendy!
Oh, horrible day! God!
I’m in Forth, we’ve been chasing the storms back from Cornwall.
Oh my God! I couldn’t get it Miserables.
Wild, wild.
Cope with it.
Okay, I’m going to over to you, sorry.
Okay. Can I have the first shot, please, Judi? Okay. The reason we thought that it’s time to give a lecture on Wagner is that because Patrick when he was choosing his favourite operas, he wanted to include Lohengrin, and Wendy said there’s no way he can do Wagner unless we at least present the arguments. So let me explain from the beginning, I am not talking about his music. Patrick is looking at Lohengrin on Sunday, and obviously then you will, and over the next term or so, we will be looking more at Wagner’s music, if that’s the big question because… Just read this. This is from Patrick McGee. I sometimes think that there were two Wagners in our culture, almost unrecognizably different from one another. The Wagner possessed by those who know his work and the Wagner imagined by those who only know his reputation. Can we now have his picture, please, Judi? Yeah, there’s Rich Wagner. You see one of the problems with Wagner, and there are many, many, many. I remember about 10 years ago, we staged a debate with the German Jewish studies department in Sussex University on Wagner, and did he have any culpability in the murder of the Jews of Europe?
Now in the end, the judge, and we did it with very, we did it in a courtroom formula with two experts playing Wagner, discussing Wagner. One who believed he was culpable to an extent, and the other who believed that he wasn’t. And in the end, the judge went for remote causation. You see the point about Wagner, he is one of the most important cultural figures in the modern world. He towers above the 19th century, his followers worship him with the kind of awe that is very, very seldom seen to any great artistic figure. And yes, nobody denies that he was violently antisemitic. And unfortunately today, I have the horrible job of actually reading some of it to you. And in addition to that, some of his critics actually believe that some of the operas contain negative stereotypes of Jews. I’m not going into that today because again, everything about Wagner is contentious. And, of course, the kind of animosity and the kind of adoration that he invokes is absolutely extraordinary. And, of course, Bayreuth, the great opera centre that he created became a total centre of German nationalism, particularly under his wife, Cosima, under his daughter-in-law, Winifred Wagner, who became a close friend of Adolf Hitler, and of his son-in-law, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, one of the most important figures in the rise of race literature and antisemitism in Germany.
And, of course, it’s the impact of Wagner on Hitler that is such a problem. Not just Hitler’s, not just the writings of Wagner, but the impact. Woody Allen in one of his throwaway lines, he said, “Whenever I listen to Wagner, I invade Poland.” Now you could see that as a glib statement, but there is something almost hypnotic in his music, and it had an amazing impact on Hitler. He first heard the opera Rienzi, which is one of Wagner’s first works. He heard it in Linz when he was 16-years-old. And we know all about it because his close friend at school, his only real friend, Kubizek, actually wrote about it in his autobiography, and he talked about having seen the opera. And, of course, the story of the opera is important. And I’ll quickly tell you the story because this comes into the whole issue of Wagner and his antisemitism. It’s based on the life of an Italian, Cola Di Rienzo, whose dates were 1313 to 1364. He was an Italian populist leader who led the people, he was very much the man of the people who led them against the corrupt nobility and the corrupt people who worked for them, for the nobility, and it totally hypnotised Hitler. Hitler saw himself as a man of people. And Kubizek recounts after the opera, he was only 16-years-old, they walked to the top of the hill in Linz, and that’s all he wanted to talk about. And, of course, at the end of the opera, and it’s based on a story by Bulwer-Lytton, a very interesting English writer and a friend of Disraeli. What happens is, of course, in the end, the populist leader becomes the tyrants, and he and his followers have a last stand at the capital, which is burnt, Gotterdammerung. Now Hitler was so in love with Rienzi that the Nuremberg rallies were actually, he always had Rienzi, the Ouverture to Rienzi as the opening. And I suppose that’s one of the problems.
Hitler once said, “To understand national socialism, you have to listen to Wagner.” So one of the main problems that we have is the linkage between the music of Wagner, his writings, which are so antisemitic that it makes many Jews feel incredibly uncomfortable. Now it’s important to remember because I did discuss this with Anita Lasker-Wallfisch because, of course, she is a musician, and she was in the orchestra at Auschwitz, and she’s very firm on these things. She actually says that music…. She actually said, “I don’t like Wagner very much, but music in a way is beyond the composers themselves, their lives.” She said, “Does it really matter what they are like?” And in fact, the Palestine Orchestra did play Wagner right up until 1938. There are all sorts of myths about it. Wagner was not played in the death camps, but nevertheless, it’s become… He is, if you like, become a focus. I think there is a certain culpability because his writings are so absolutely obscene. But on the other hand, and I’m trying very hard to be evenhanded at the moment. One of the tragedies of 19th century cultural life is that the majority of important figures were actually antisemitic. The level of antisemitism was so high in Europe, I mean, for example, do you want me to destroy for… Many of you will know this? But if you look at many of the French Impressionists, I mean Degas, he is absolutely obscene about the Jews. Can we no longer look at his paintings?
Or if you want to think about people’s lives in general. Canaletto, think about him, and also Paravadio who was a murderer. Do we look at him with awe and reverence? So there’s a gradation on this, and it is very, very problematic. There is still almost an unwritten rule in Israel not to play Wagner, it’s not official, but there seems to be a ban on Wagner. And so many Jews do feel very, very uncomfortable. I remember at the LJCC, we ran a course on Wagner that was run by Margaret Briley, who really, really focused very darkly and deeply on his antisemitism. But one or two of my friends who went, they said, “We want to listen to Wagner, but we feel guilty.” So if we do it in this context, it’s fine. So it’s back to the whole. Nobody would ever say to you, “He is not an anti-Semite.” Even those who absolutely adore him, you have to say the man is an anti-Semite. But having said that, can we listen to his music? To what extent was he a destructive force in the history of the Jews? I think it’s important to remember also that when Bayreuth became the centre of German nationalism, on his death it exacerbates even more. I’m going to lay even more blame at the feet of his wife, Cosima, the daughter of Franz Liszt, and we’ll talk about her later; and Houston Stewart Chamberlain; and Winifred Wagner, his daughter-in-law. Winifred Wagner, I think was in love with Hitler. She even, when he was in prison after the failed Putsch, she sent him food parcels, and it was she who probably gave him the paper on which to write Mein Kampf, and they were incredibly close friends, and he went every year to Bayreuth.
And when he came into power, he gave so much state money to Bayreuths, for them to be able to run the festival. And so it’s a complicated picture to unpick. I also met one of the Wagners, his great-grandson who completely repudiated his father’s, his ancestors’ memory, and spent much of his time actually visiting Jewish organisations apologising. And I’m afraid, I said to him, “I believe so strongly the sins of the fathers are not visited on the children.” In Jewish history, that’s happened to us so much, the supposed sin of the day aside that when someone apologises to me for their family, I just find that it actually creeps me out, if I can use that terrible expression. So what I’m saying to you from the beginning, and I’m sure that there will be people listening who have incredibly strong views on this, and what I’m going to try and do is hold the line. So let’s move on, and let’s have a little bit on his biography to see if we can actually unpack the man, and where his terrible hatred came from. He was an incredibly complicated figure. Even those who I think adore him admit to the fact that he had huge character flaws. He was vain, he was narcissistic, he was unbelievably arrogant, he was vengeful, he was a serial womaniser, and he believed he had this talent from the gods.
The gods, not God, you’d note. And he was so cruel to so many people that he’s not the kind of person you’d ever want to have around you, be him an anti-Semite or not. But having said that, what you do have in him is this music that some people find transcendental. I’ve been to a couple of Wagner operas. I was actually first taken by a Holocaust survivor because I had all sorts of… I was teaching the shower, and Truda Levy, who is no longer with us, she was a very close friend of both Patrick and myself. And she said, “Look, come with me to a Wagner opera and see what you think.” And it was very, very difficult for me to actually… But I was with her. And ironically she found that easy… She was a musician herself, she found that easier to take them when I’ve taken her to a few films on the shower, particularly “Life is Beautiful”, which he found obscene. So it’s also how it hits you as an individual. And, of course, the Ride of the Valkyries is so much part of our culture. So who was this man? Well, he’s born in 1813 and he dies in 1883, and he was born to an ethnic German family, they lived in Leipzig, actually in the Jewish quarter of town. He was the ninth child of Carl Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police force, so his petty bourgeois and his wife is the daughter of a baker. His father died when Richard was only six-months-old, and afterwards the mother moves in with her husband’s friend, a playwright called Ludwig Geyer. And she probably married him, but there’s no documentation, but the point is, there could be the suspicion that Geyer was Jewish. And later on this becomes a bit of a problem for Wagner.
And the same thing, whether it’s true or not is actually irrelevant because I would say not proven, it’s the same with Adolf Hitler, because Adolf Hitler’s father was illegitimate, there was always a question mark about his grandmother’s, really about who his grandmother’s lover was. And she was a servant to a Jewish family called Frankenberger. Now there’s absolutely no evidence, and Israeli historians have proved this that the young boy of 18 was in any way involved with a 40-year-old servant. But the point is, Hitler may have thought he had the taint of Jewish blood. And tragically, and this is one of the sole agonies, particularly of Jews working in the German speaking world and also in the French speaking world, think the Dreyfus case that they were trying so hard to be part of it, they fell in love with it, and yet you’ve got this terrible backlash of nationalism, which turns into antisemitism. So he was introduced to the theatre by Geyer, and we know that he always had a love and a bent for music, and he gradually became more and more adept. I’m not going to give you an in-depth biography about Wagner, there are hundreds of them, and it’s very interesting. I’m not going to recommend any either, because it depends entirely on what side of the fence you’re going to come down. Anyway, we know that he went to Leipzig University, he got involved with a Saxon student fraternity, which is interesting because you’ve got to remember in 1815 after the Congress of Vienna, and I’ve often referred to this, there was a hope that Germany would unite under the Prussian model. Remember, Prussia was one of the victorious powers.
In fact, all that happened was that Germany was cleaned up from over 360 city-states into 36 city-states, but the dream was there of German nationalism. So it’s important to remember, and at university he joins a student fraternity. And, of course, he takes more music lessons. And then his brother, one of his brothers, remember, he had many brothers and sisters, he became the choir master at the theatre in Wurzburg. And this is where Wagner composes his first operas, The Fairies, and it’s not actually produced until after his death in Bayreuth in 1883. He had a brief appointment at the opera house. He wrote… This opera, it was a complete failure, and it closed after two performances, but he married his first wife, Minna. It was a terribly tempestuous marriage. And as I said, they were both completely unfaithful to each other, in many ways they deserved each other. And it’s then that he’s going to live a nomadic life, he next goes to Riga. And when I was in Riga a few years ago, which is by the way, despite its horror, it’s a beautiful city, it’s an art deco city. It’s beautiful, beautiful. And that’s one of the things I’ve always found strange about Europe, the beauty juxtaposed about with what we knew was going to happen. So when you visit Europe post-show, it’s chilling, but there’s huge plaques to Wagner. He was there for three years, but again, he and his wife, they were incredibly always in debt, and the debts cause him to free. He goes on a stormy trip to London, which led to the notion in his head of The Flying Dutchman. He then moves to Paris where he finishes Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman. And, of course, in Paris he comes across two individuals, which basically the first, Meyerbeer, is going to have an incredible impact on him.
And let’s just see the next picture, please. Oh, sorry, that is Mendelsohn first, I had them around the wrong ways. Felix Mendelssohn. Felix Mendelssohn, the brilliant composer, the son, the grandson of the great Moses Mendelssohn whose father had converted him. And he was the man, not only was he a great musician himself, and of course, he died tragically young. He rediscovered Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, dies as I said in 1847, a great favourite of Queen Victoria, a child, really a child prodigy. And in fact, Wagner did send him an opera, which because it was Mendelssohn who founded the Leipzig Conservatory, conservatoire, and he lost it, nothing happened. And, of course, that must have been a blow to Wagner. And then, can we see the next one, please, Judi? Meyerbeer, yeah. Meyerbeer is a fascinating man, to a wealthy German Jewish family. He does not convert, and by the time Wagner comes to Paris, he is really one of the great figures. Think about his grand French opera, and he was attracted to this brilliant young composer, Wagner, because remember Wagner has huge talent. And it’s actually Meyerbeer who facilitates the first real performance of Rienzi in Dresden. So consequently Meyerbeer, the great exponent of French grand opera, who was incredibly popular. All the greats would go to his operas, he was the great superstar, and he was kind to Wagner. Now later on, of course, that’s going to rebound because you don’t have to be that much of a psychologist to work out what happens when people are too kind to you. Anyway, his time at this period, he goes from country to country, he’s always in debt. H
e falls in love with other people, he goes back to his wife, and then he comes across, he’s becoming more and more political, he’s moving to the left. He comes under the influence of characters like Hegel, and he meets a man called Bakunin who is an anarchist. And this is one of Bakunin’s speeches on the Jews, and it’s going to have an influence on Wagner, “This whole Jewish world is a single exploiting sect of blood sucking people, a kind of organic destructive collective parasite, not only going beyond the frontiers of states, but of political opinion. This world is now for the most part at the disposal of Marx on one hand, and Rothschild on the other.” And, of course, Wagner makes contact with Bakunin because he’s already moving into a very radical position. And what happens in 1848? Revolutions sweep Europe, there are 54 separate revolutions in Europe. They begin in the German states, but they’re going to spread. England ironically was spared any revolution. There was a minor Chartist demonstration. And, of course, Benjamin Disraeli, one of his great quotes, “It’s the fog mid-air, it’s the fog.” Anyway, Bakunin was the man who taught Wagner how to make grenades, and it was Wagner who rang the bell that signalled the Dresden revolution. And it’s when he then escape, he has to escape. So he escapes to Switzerland, and it’s in Switzerland that he writes one of his most infamous pamphlets, Jews in Music. And he writes it under a pseudonym. The problem is that later on he’s going to, in 1869 when he’s far more established, he’s going to write it under his own name. And I am going to read to you some of it because I think it’s actually quite important that you understand what people were talking about.
So now let me just go back to Bakunin. You see Bakunin made the mistake that every anti-Semite makes. I have never minded whether people disliked me, but I would get very angry if they dislike me because I’m a Jewish woman. And the mistake that both these characters are making, they do not see the Jews as Frenchmen or as Germans, they see them as a separate species, if you like. And because Jews have always been a bit idiosyncratic, as you well know, they plunge into the modern world. And yes, the visible sign of capitalism is the house of Rothchild, the sign of dissent is Karl Marx. Now what on earth did Karl Marx have in common with the Rothschilds? As I’m sure you all know, Marx wrote the most disgusting antisemitic pamphlets. He accused the Jews of being the spawn of capitalism, but he himself had a problem with his Jewish roots. His father baptised him when he was eight, but he had a very swarthy complexion, and he was bullied. And because he got none of of the benefits of being a Jew, he turned against his people. Now antisemitism, although the term isn’t coined till 1878, it’s already there, the notion, not that it’s not hating the Jews for their religion, it’s hating them because they are a separate race. This is the beginnings of the periodization of the races. It ties up with nationalism, it ties up with the fact that there are empires like the Habsburg Empire, which are ruling over 16 different national groups. It ties up with thwarted nationalism in Germany, it ties up in France with the fact that France can’t make up its mind whether it’s a republic or a monarchy, kept on changing its dissidents. It’s tied out to economic troubles, which Wagner had. And you’ve got a real problem on your own hands.
And Wagner, this idiosyncratic narcissist who thinks that his music is so much greater than Mendelssohn or Meyerbeer or Halerich, he’s going to spew it all out. And this is the pamphlet, as I said, that he wrote anonymously to start with in a music review. It’s actually 15 pages of it, and I’m not going to bore you with that, but I think it’s important you read the highlights. I read you the highlights. “It is in particular the sensuous manifestation of the Jewish speech that revolts us. Culture was unsuccessful in eradicating the peculiar stubbornness of the Jewish nature with respect of the characteristics of the Semitic manner of expression despite 2,000 years of intercourse with European nations. Our ear perceives, especially the hissing, the shrill sounding, buzzing and grunting tonal expression of the Jewish way of speech as thoroughly foreign and unpleasant. In addition, the arbitrary twisting of words and phrase constructions, which is totally uncharacteristic of our national language, gives this tonal expression the character of a completely insufferably confused babbling in listening to which our intention involuntary dwells on this revolting speech.”
Well, that’s just one little bit. Let me have a look at it more, I’m afraid. “The Jew, who as everyone knows, has a God all to himself. It strikes us primarily by his outward appearance, which no matter to what European nationality he belongs, has something disagreeably foreign to that nationality. Instinctively we wish to have nothing in common with a man who looks like that. We cannot hold him capable of any sort of artistic utterance of human essence. The Jew who is innately incapable of presenting himself artistically through his outward position, appearance or speech, and least of all through singing, has nevertheless been able in the widest sense to reach the rulership of public taste in music. This is where he’s hitting out, and the popularity of Meyerbeer and of Mendelssohn. For the turning point in our evolution where money with less and less disguise was raised to the patent of nobility.” So basically what he is saying is the Jews have bought their way into art, and he blames him his lack of success because, yes, Rienzi wasn’t the opera, it was a mild success, but why are these characters who haven’t got the talent of him in his very narcissistic worldview, how on earth can they be anything but alien? And, of course, in Paris he’d been quite poor. Meyerbeer lent him money, in fact gave him money, he’d have to resent, he’d actually had to do some copy editing. And this man who has such a strong sense of his own importance, he’s been reduced. After the article came out, he wrote a self-justifying letter to Franz Liszt who was a close friend, “A long suppressed resentment against Jewish business was as necessary to me as gore is to the blood.” Now let me just read you one one more excerpt. “I consider the Jewish race to be the born enemy of pure humanity and all that is noble in man.
There is no doubt that that we Germans especially are destroyed by them. And I may well be the last remaining German, who is an artist knows how to hold his ground.” And I’m going to quote now Robert Wistrich on this period of his life. “Drawing on both the radical Hegelian romantic nationalist tradition, Wagner identifies the spirit of Judaism, not as progress, but as an expression of decadence and artistic decline. Jewry’s entry into the modern society is seen by Wagner of the infiltration of a holy alien group whose success personifies the spiritual and creative crisis of German and European culture. The Jew is, quote, ‘Evil conscience of our modern civilization.’” That’s another one of Wagner’s quotes. Let me read that again, “The evil conscience of our modern civilization.” If you think of the content of Wagner’s operas, he is dreaming of a world of the gods, he hates the… Although he’s vain and he wants money, on one level he hates the materialism of modernity. You’ve got to remember, many of these nationalist movements which spill into racism, they’re tied up with the romantic movement. They want to go back to a time before cities, and so you have all this kind of craziness into a jargon that in the end sees the Jew as the major arbiter of the modern world. And ironically, to a large extent they were people of Jewish birth. I don’t have to tell you just how extraordinary their story was. And yet you have characters like this who are saying, “These people are not contributing to our world, they’re destroying our world.”
This is what he also says, this is Robert again. “As far as Wagner was concerned, the Jew is cold, loveless, purely cerebral being, no passion, no soul, no inner capacity for life, nor true music or poetry. The only redemption,” says Wagner, “is the going under of Jewry.” And what on earth does that mean? And that, of course, has led to some scholars saying that he actually suggested the elimination of the Jew, but it’s very complicated with the language. And there’s 10 pages of this, 10 pages. And he declared that the causes of Jewish or the causes of Jewish resentment, that the Jews resent the Aryan, resent the German, I should say, or resent any nationality amongst whom they arrive. And at first it didn’t attract that much attention, but it’s later when he publishes it 19 years later under his own name when he is very famous that it’s greeted with disbelief. Anyway, so he goes on in that strange world of his, and the next important stage, of course, is that gradually he is getting more and more success, but he is always in debt. He is creating some of the operas, which of course, are later going to, I suppose in many ways change the artistic world. I mean, Tannhauser, which is written, The Flying Dutchman was written in 1841, Tannhauser in 1843, Lohengrin in 1845, Rheingold 1852, Die Walkure, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, which was written earlier, but not, it’s none of them are going to be actually exhibited for awhile.
The great Tristan and Isolde, Die Meistersinger, and of course, Parsifal. These are the works that are really going, for many people are musically going to change the world. And then you know that great story, “Mister, I met a man”, and then he does meet a man. And that man, of course, is Ludwig of Bavaria. And, Judi, can you do something really naughty because I want to put it in a different order now. Can we have a look first at Ludwig of Bavaria before we, it means you have to go on. I apologise everyone, I do get carried away. Can you jump on, Judi? Yeah, lovely, Ludwig of Bavaria. Oh, what an interesting character is Ludwig. Ludwig of Bavaria, he was born in 1845, he becomes king in 18… He becomes king… Oh, sorry, oh, dates, dates. 1845. No. When does he become…? He becomes king in 1866 and he dies in 1886. Sorry about that. And he was a very interesting… Sorry, that’s my fault, Judi. He’s a very, very interesting character, a very, very kind of emotional romantic man, and he comes from a dynasty that controls Bavaria.
Now of course, Bavaria is the second most important state in Germany, it’s Catholic. He comes to the throne when he’s 18-years-old, and what a character he was. He was first cousin to the Empress Elisabeth. Elisabeth who was very much… She was married to Franz Joseph. I’ll be lecturing on them, next term we’re going to look at the Hapsburgs. And Elisabeth of Bavaria, his first cousin and the love of his life was really the princess Diana of the 19th century, high-strung, fay. This boy was an incredibly high-strung, incredibly romantic figure. And when he became king in 1865, I beg your pardon, and he’s going to die in 1886, he comes to the throne at 18-years-old. He is already incredibly romantic and he is already madly in love with the music of Richard Wagner. He is the man who is going to create the fairytale castles. Can we have a look at them, Judi, if you don’t mind?
[Judi] So let me check off.
They come straight after Ludwig. There you see, I’m sure you’ve all seen pictures. I don’t know how many of you have visited Munich, that’s Neuschwanstein, it’s honoured to the Swans. He spent most of his money building fairytale castles. And, of course, Neuschwanstein is the Disney castle. Can we see, have we got others of them, or is that just it? That’s Neuschwanstein. Anyway, I think we’ll keep them on that while I talk a little bit about it. Now when he became king, he was desperate to meet up with Wagner. Now Wagner was all over Europe trying to evade creditors, in trouble with females. He had just met a woman who later is going to become incredibly important. And his second wife, Cosima, and he is at the moment was in Vienna, hiding on the largesse of his current mistress, and avoiding his creditors. And it’s at this stage that Ludwig, the romantic Ludwig whose life story is so, so very strange. I mean, you can spend hours discussing whether he was mentally ill or not, but what is absolutely true is that he was obsessed with the music of Wagner. And later on he’s going to decorate some of his castles to Wagner operas, he was Lohengrin.
And he actually, this 18-year-old boy, he wants his secretaries to comb the lists to find Wagner. And he actually sends his secretary to track down Wagner. He finds Wagner, the secretary finds Wagner in Vienna, and Wagner all too willing to escape his creditors, he comes with the secretary to the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich, it’s still there. Munich, as I said, is a fascinating, incredibly complicated city because it was also, of course, the home of national socialism. At this stage, of course, it’s under a young romantic king who is very isolated. He was gay at a time when it was not really acceptable to be gay, and he lived this very aesthetic life. Later on, he’s going to get more and more involved in debauchery, but at this stage, he’s a very, very beautiful young man. And one of the first things that happens to him, Wagner, he has an audience with Ludwig of Bavaria. So the King of Bavaria has summoned him, he’s unbelievably rich, he’s an autocrat, he’s isolated in his castles, and now he sends Wagner. And this is the letter that Ludwig wrote to Princess Sophie of Bavaria about his meeting. “If you could only have been a witness to how his thanks embarrassed me, I reassured him by giving him my hand that his great Nibelungen would not only be completed, but the production as he wants it will take place, and I shall carry all responsibility.” Which means he’s going to pay the bill. “Then he bowed over my hand and seemed moved by it. I had the sensation that we had changed roles, I moved closer to him with the feeling in my heart that I was taking an oath to be faithfully bound to him for all time.” Now this is the king about Wagner.
He is a great letter writer, so is Wagner. And this is Wagner’s account. “I would be ungrateful creature if I didn’t write to you immediately to tell you of my boundless happiness, to know that the young king of Bavaria has been searching for me. I go to him, he is unfortunately so handsome and so brilliant, and so soulful of mine, I fear that his life might dissolve like a wing dream of the gods in this mundane world. He loves me with the tenderness and fervour of a new love. He knows all about me and understands my soul as I do myself. He wants me to work, rest and produce my work.” Can you imagine Wagner who is always escaping his creditors, who has got this incredibly restless soul, who is completely amoral, and because of his music, Rienzi was at this stage, Ludwig’s most favourite opera, and he would always go and listen, and this is what he adores, and now he’s met the great creator? He wants me to rest and produce my works, he wants to give me everything for it. I shall finish Nibelungen, I will produce it in the way I want. I should be my own master, nothing but myself and his friend. And he understands everything serious. All needs should be taken from me, I shall have all I want, I have only to stay with him. Is it not unbelievable?
Can it be anything but a dream? My happiness is so great that I am completely shattered.“ And this is Ludwig to Wagner on the conclusion of his letter. "Oh, how I have looked forward to the time when I could do this. I hardly dare to hope being able so soon prove my love to you. And as I said, because he adores all his arts, he paid all his debts, he talked for hours, he knew all the librettos of the operas by heart. Ludwig had had a very strange education, he’d been brought up with his brother who tragically later on went mad. And he was this very rarefied isolated soul. Later on, I mean, I’ve been to the castle, and one of the things that most struck me… I’m talking about Neuschwanstein now, there are six castles that he could visit. He’s so in the end loathed human contact that his servants would pile his food on a table and it would be pulleyed up into his room. He was a very, very strange man. And honestly, if lockdown ever permits it, it is worth a visit to Munich. If you want to understand so much of 19th century history and early 20th century, if you walk those streets, it is interesting. I mean, his grandfather, Ludwig’s grandfather had lost his throne over an Irish dancer called Lola Montez, and he created the Gallery of the Beauties, which is, I think Patrick has already lectured on that. And so it is an interesting place. Anyway, he pays all Wagner’s debts, and it allowed the greedy opportunist to do what he wanted. And, of course, the arrogance of the man, he makes a lot of enemies at court, but Wagner is given a villa in the summer near Ludwig.
And at this stage he doesn’t just want Ludwig, so he summons his clique to be with him. And that, of course, includes one of his best conductors, a man called von Bulow, who has a woman, a wife called Cosima that he is very interested in. So can we now go back on ourselves, Judi? I’m so sorry about this. Can we go back to Liszt, which is the figure after Mendelssohn. This is my fault, there, there’s Franz Liszt. Franz Liszt, one of the greatest composers, and of course, pianists in Europe, also a very fractured, very interesting man, but a close friend of Wagner. And he had many, many affairs, including with a French woman called Marie, and he produces children, including Cosima. Can we have a look at Cosima, please? Cosima is going to become Wagner’s mistress and his second wife. As I said, she’s the daughter of Franz Liszt and Marie d'Agoult. And she’s married to Hans von Bulow, who himself is a very talented musician, also a notorious anti-Semite. She’s already begun a relationship with Wagner, and she’s got a very strange, fractured personality herself. In many ways she’s more of an anti-Semite than Wagner, if that’s possible. And basically she had a very masochistic strain to her nature, and she sought her whole life was to be dedicated to Wagner and to his great art. And her diary though, when you read her diary about her attitude to Jews, it’s absolutely horrific. In her diary basically, she uses the word "Israel”. Israel stands for all that is bad, and Germany stands for all that is good. If a play or an opera failed to please her because she was a great cultural figure.
This is one of the problems with these characters, they were the cultural elite, and it’s going to be the cultural elite that really makes antisemitism respectable in Germany. That to me is one of the most appalling indictments against Cosima, and of course, Richard Wagner. So if a play fails to please her, it’s because of the Jews. If a Jewish artist turns in a good performance, he’s only mimicking non-Jews. That’s another theme in Jewry and music, I should mention, by the way, which I didn’t stress, Wagner said, “No Jew can ever really get it out of his soul. All he can ever do is mimic anyone else.” She said of Joseph Rubinstein, “Who in the way of all the Jews has copied all sorts of things from my father, much to his own advantage.” Of course, Joseph Rubinstein, the great pianist, And, of course, she believed every anti-Jewish story that came her way. And where did the infection with her start? Probably in Paris because she was brought up by her grandmother in rabid anti-Jewish Catholic aristocracy. And if you think about it, in the 1850s, 1860s in Paris when she’s brought up the level of antisemitism in that incredibly fractured society, was very, very high. Also she had a very low self-esteem. So if you’re a psychologist, she’s masochistic, she has a low self-esteem, she is married, she has children by Bulow, but she falls in love with Wagner, with this kind of blind adoration and self-abasement. It’s a very, very sick relationship. She was never ever at peace with herself it would seem. She kept diaries, there are so many correspondence by her, and also by Richard that psychologists can actually have a field day looking at them.
Obviously, both she and her husband blame the other for any slight, and she hated anything to do with liberalism. She found Jewish emancipation totally appalling. And when in 1869, even though he’s now with Ludwig in Munich, he has everything he wants. He has an opera house, all his works are going to be played. And later on, of course, he’s going to be able to, quote, to create Bayreuth. Nevertheless, this anti-Judaism still runs. And this is what she said when he reprinted that terrible plan for it, “It seems to me in their contacts with the Israelites, the Germans come to grief on account of not only their bad qualities, but also their good ones. For example, their lack of desire, which makes them so capable of idealism. Now under the pressure of these rapacious people, this is turning into indolent insensitivity. So basically you have a situation where everything is turned by Cosima. And so you have this really serious cocktail between the two of them. Now I think this is a good place to stop because I’m continuing on Thursday. And as I said to you, I’m trying to hold the line.
So let’s have a look at the questions and it’s going to be down to you whether I am holding the line.
Q&A and Comments:
Joan is saying, she just arrived in time for the London weather.
Rose is saying, he was such an antisemite. This is wrong. Obviously very problematic, separating the artist from the art. Would you have a heart transplant done if the surgeon was technically superb, but a terrible racist? Should you not take pleasure from art made by a bad or immoral person? I can understand not supporting a living artist, i.e. not buying a ticket for a Mel Gibson movie, but the issue quickly becomes very complicated and easily feeds into cancel culture. That’s an interesting quote, Ron.
Q: This is from Helma. How many Jews did Wagner know?
A: Well, tragically, some of them are going to work for him, including his great conductor, Hermann Levi, who he is going to treat abysmally. But don’t forget Meyerbeer, and don’t forget Mendelssohn. And, of course, it isn’t about how many Jews he knows. Antisemitism is never about individuals, it’s blaming the Jew for everything’s wrong in your society. And this is Melvin. Art transcending man, adopting the concept is the only way I can listen to Wagner.
Oh, this is from Martin. The grandson you referred to, he’s got the… Met him in South Africa years ago. Yes, Martin, he was really doing the rounds, wasn’t he?
And this is from Ron. Regarding apologising for an ancestor’s actions, there is a shame and guilt carried by the descendants, so that it seems acceptable to me to graciously accept the descendant’s apology. It’s a complicated one, Ron. I remember a very interesting talk that the late Rabbi Hugo Gryn gave, and he said, "If someone offends me, I can forgive them. I cannot forgive for the murdered, because they’re not here.” You see with Judaism, his notion was that guilt and responsibility is personal. That’s the point. If I offend you, I can ask your forgiveness. If you kill me, you can’t because I’m dead. And it’s not to my children to take it on. So it’s interesting, I mean, we’ve all got our own views on this. This is from Mira. I understood his music was played in the background when experiments were carried on in the camps, especially by Mengele.
Mira, I don’t believe that to be true. There’s a lot of stories about Wagner. I’m going to check whether it was ever played in Dacau. Now according to Anita, and she was in the orchestra, it was not played in the camps, in the death camps. Now it’s become such a red flag in Israel. As I said, the Palestine Orchestra did play Wagner up till 1938. It was Kristallnacht that they stopped, when they stopped playing Wagner. I think there’s a lot of misapprehension about it. What we have to decide, and I think we’ll do this on Thursday. As a group what you have to think about, to what extent has he any guilt whatsoever in what happened to the Jewish people, Bayreuth does become a total centre of Nazism, but not under him. And if you want an irony of history, and I’m going to talk about it in more depth on Thursday. In 1883 when Wagner died, young Theodore Herzl was at the University of Vienna, and there was a student demonstration. Up until that time, he’d been a member of a student fraternity. He was incredibly pro-German nationalism. He loved going to the opera, Rienzi was one of his favourite operas. He wanted to have an opera house in… When he finally turns to Zionism, he wanted a European style opera house in Palestine where they would play the great music of Europe, including Wagner, but it was… When Wagner died in 1883, all the student fraternities, there was a huge march of commemoration. This is the greatest artist in the German speaking world, and many of them became antisemitic. And that was the first step on his journey away from assimilation into, of course, creating Zionism. So that’s another little loop of history.
Q: Do not think that even if he was a genius musician, his music reflects his soul too?
A: Carol, the problem is, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a Wagner, if you’ve ever been to a Wagner concert, but people are transported. I’ll try and bring it down to my own level. I remember I went to Las Vegas, actually my daughter was writing a piece, and it was a fun trip, because I’m not suggesting anyone go visit Las Vegas, but we went to the Grand Canyon. Of course, they’re playing Ride of the Valkyries in the helicopter as we drove, and it was a mad experience.
Father Owen Lee wrote a book titled, “The Awful Man who Wrote Beautiful Music.” Yes, that kind of sums it up, doesn’t it?
Oh yes, this is Joan, she’s saying she met the great-grandson who resembled RW so much in Tel Aviv. Yes, he actually came back for supper and washed up. It was a very, very strange experience. Wagner’s great-grandson doing the washing up, but life is extraordinary.
Barenboim likes, well, likes his music, Valerie. Yes, he played unexpectedly in Tel Aviv as an encore, and some people walked out. You see, it’s so complicated. Is the Israeli ban on I don’t believe it is. Arlene, I love the music of Wagner, and I’ve been to Bayreuth four times. He was immorally bankrupt individual, not only antisemitic, but an adulterer and a scrounger. Voltaire had written terribly antisemitic diatribes, as we know. And there are many artists who were antisemitic. Most people do not know the history of the authors who book they read, or as Trudy has said, the history of other great artists.
I do not think about his antisemitism when listening to his music, guy was not Jewish.
No, he wasn’t, Arlene. That’s true, but all I’m trying to say is, it appears that Wagner thought he was. That’s the problem.
Gaia, probably Jewish was a red guy in the Jewish, he said. Look, we don’t know, but most of… Gaia certainly was a Christian, did he have Jewish ancestry? That’s the story because Arlene it’s…
Rochelle, it’s not about religion, it’s about the taint of Jewish blood by this time, when we get to this period of history. Oh, I’ve lost the… Sorry, I’ve lost the…
Jonathan Livny said, the German composer was a horrible man who wrote Godly music. Jonathan is the President of the Israel Wagner Society. That’s a very interesting quote, Richard.
“A horrible man who wrote Godly music.” And yet his music is pagan, isn’t it? If you think about it, it is to quote Nietzsche, “Beyond Good and Evil”, brother and sister cohabiting. It’s fascinating, and I am going to talk about Nietzsche in my next presentation on Wagner because Nietzsche became a part of the Bayreuth circle for awhile, and he turned violently against Wagner, and Nietzsche was never an anti-Semite. And I want to put this record straight on Nietzsche as well. I read an appalling article by Wagner on the Jews an extremely insulting. Yes, of course, Valerie, that was an extract I read you from “Jewry and Music.” Yes, absolutely appalling. I was in Paris, age 18 in 1948. What played at the opera Tristan und Isolde, it bored me stiff for five hours. No idea at the time that Wagner was the antisemitic inspiration of Hitler. How amazing, Wagner was playing just three years after the war. That’s the French, I guess, I love that phrase. Yeah. My uncle, who was a musician greatly admired Meyerbeer. Yes, well, Meyerbeer, I think Meyerbeer, it’s a different kind of, it sends you into a different kind of mood, doesn’t it, Meyerbeer?
This is Monique. I love the music of Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and Wagner. Yeah, yeah. This is the problem. We’re on a long, deep, dark, slippery road. Are we only going to listen to the music of people we find morally acceptable or read the books of people we find morally acceptable? It’s complicated.
Hello, this is Rose. All of Moses Mendelssohn’s children converted despite him coming from an Orthodox family. No, one of them remained Jewish, Rose.
Q: Did Moses’ children convert spontaneously or is that the path that Moses chose for them?
A: Oh-ho-ho-ho! That is some question. So let me try and answer that question because it’s an important question. Moses Mendelssohn was, of course, the Jew who crossed from the world of the ghetto into the German intelligentsia, and he remained a practising Jew all his life, and none of his children converted in his lifetime or in that of the wife. The problem was political as well. You’ve got to remember that after Mendelssohn’s death, when Napoleon conquered parts of Germany, all the Jews were freed, they became emancipated. And then in 1815, many of those rights were taken away after the defeat of Napoleon. Moses Mendelssohn’s son and the father of Felix, he actually said, “I have converted because Christianity is the religion of the civilised.” Heinrich Heine who converted, baptism is the passport to European civilization. This is one of the huge dilemmas of the modern world. You desperately want it. Can you be a Jew and have it too? You see Moses Mendelssohn, he walked the world, he knew Torah, he knew Talmud, he was comfortable in his Jewish skin, he didn’t educate his children Jewishly. He said, “My children, they can’t be bothered with their Hebrew, I don’t bother.” You see, this is one of the dilemmas that face any parent today who wants their children to walk both worlds. It’s an interesting one.
Q: Do we reject Richard Strauss conducting his music for the Third Reich?
A: I think not. I’m going to get… I want Patrick to answer that, Frank, because he’s got a lot to say about Strauss. Strauss is much more complicated than that.
Brad, listening to is like waving the confederation flag in the US Senate. Yeah, thank goodness.
Q: This is from Ken. Hi, Ken. Arguably Marx on the Jewish question, the Jewish figure that represents materialistic modernity, and it’s that materialism that is Marx’s real target. To what extent can that be said about Wagner’s Judaism and music?
A: Yes, I very much agree with you, Ken, because he’s talking about how the Jews have brought in to modern music. It’s all about Jewish money. Yeah. No, no, no, the dates were wrong. Ludwig became king, he was 18 when he became king in 1866. It’s my fault, I got the figures wrong. Yes, Dachau is about… Yes, Dachau is very near Munich. Yes, I know.
Oh, this is interesting, Roberta. Last Saturday at 7:30, on BBC Four there was a programme on Ludwig’s castles. Honestly, it’s really worth reading a good biography of Ludwig. He’s an interesting character, as is his cousin, Elizabeth of Austria, who, as I said, I’m going to talk about. Have you considered to what extent Wagner strangely identified with Jewish figures? He explicitly says that his Flying Dutchman is related to the figure of Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, and Wagner himself was something of a displaced wanderer. Oh, yo-yoi!
Ken. Ken is a professor at Birkbeck. That is a complicated one. That’s a very interesting one. Can I put that thought into my head and think about it till Thursday?
Q: Was Wagner bisexual?
A: Haven’t read about that, from what I got… His language towards Ludwig was very, very loving because he wanted him, so he wanted all his largesse. I think, I believe he stuck to women. Was Ludwig bisexual? That’s another one.
So hard to understand all the antisemitism that you all believe in Jesus. Elaine, you’re trying to be logical. You can’t be logical when you’re dealing with faith and belief.
Q: Where does his hate for Jews come from?
A: Well, because he felt displaced and dispossessed, and he had a very twisted personality, and he needed to blame someone. And tragically in Europe, in Europe the Jew does become the easiest scapegoat, the outwardly successful. It doesn’t matter what walk of life, being in communism, capitalism. You see Marx, the irony was that Marx’s detractors hated him, they called him The Red Rabbi.
Q: You mentioned that Wagner was amoral. If he was not moral, what can we describe him? What was he?
A: Now that’s down to you. I know what I think.
Oh, this is Rebecca saying, she’s happy to keep in touch with people. It’s interesting that one of the greatest and most acclaimed conductors of Bayreuth during the 1990s was James Levine.
Q: And Asher is asking, why does that interest you? Why does this interest you?
A: Why does what interest me? Asher, is it because of James Levine? Look, Hermann Levi was the conductor in Bayreuth in Wagner’s lifetime. He abased him, he was appalling to him, but Levi was one of the pallbearer at his funeral.
Q: Did Wagner borrowed money from the Jews?
A: Yes. This is, I think Wagner was very jealous of the Jews.
This is Barry. He was very successful in the art, so he to be Wagner. Am I off base? My wife and I went to a Wagner opera stage, the music is powerful. Yes, but he hated the Jews for all sorts of reasons. Yes, he borrowed money from Meyerbeer, he never gave it back, of course. He had a Jewish mistress at one time, he was always borrowing money from.
Q: What started him on the antisemitic path?
A: Aha! Ah! Can you ever pinpoint things like that?
Joan says, my parents went to Bayreuth several times in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, they never missed the Ring at The Met. Hmm. People in Germany were also transported with Hitler’s speech? Yes, the IPO does not play Wagner.
Yes, I know, Janice. The fact that Wagner was a vicious anti-Semite who influenced his generation and future generation. They choose… V
alerie, I think what I’m going to argue next Thursday is, I think most of the damage, the real damage that transfers it, is really Cosima, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Winifred. They turn it into something more murderous.
This is from Judith. Tristan und Isolde, the first four bars usually create a state of ecstasy in listeners. Yeah.
This is Marcia. We have a cousin who was in the IPO who told us because of the Holocaust survivors were in the orchestra, he told us when Zubin Mehta wants to play Wagner, the whole orchestra walked out of the rehearsal in solidarity. It is incredibly controversial. As I said, my friend Anita, who was a musician in Auschwitz, she said to me that music should be above that, although she doesn’t like Wagner’s music, she says. Now you can go layers on that as well. It’s the same with Disraeli. Yes, Disraeli’s father never converted by the way, he became a reformed Jew, Disraeli he converted. Who said baptism is the passport to the European civilization? Heinrich Heine. Wagner also had a go at Heinrich Heine. He said that Jews couldn’t be poets, and he had to deal with Wagner. And Haier is mentioning The Hare with Amber Eyes, describes the Parisian society attitudes towards the Jew. Quote, “No cross, no Constance.” Lionel here. What about Roald Dahl? I will be, that’s… Yes, you see, this is again, the issue, isn’t it? What do you do with an artist or a writer who is notoriously an anti-Semite? It’s complicated, but the same would be from any minority group. I think we’ve got a lot of thinking to do. It also almost ties in to woke, and I’m going to announce that… William, bless him, for next year. He’s promised to give a lecture on the history of woke, and in many ways it does all tie up with what I’m talking about.
This is from Barbara. As a previous music teacher, I had to study Wagner, and as a clinical psychologist I cringe when I hear Wagner. I believe that Ludwig II probably loved him perceiving him as an idol from a homosexual perspective, and Wagner just used and used him. Oh, sure, Barbara, no question of it. Wagner did just use, he used everybody. He wasn’t very nice to Cosima by the way, he was cheating on her, but she had a very strange masochistic personality.
And this is from Mira. I’m an Israeli and had tickets to a Wagner concert in the Israeli Festival in Jerusalem and protested against government attempts to cancel the concert because… And maybe it is because my family were murdered by Hitler, and my parents survived the camps. I refused to let anyone restrict my choice of what I listen to. I believe the being is the most vague human compose in the most divine art. Does it mean that I even have to consider his twisted ideas? It’s a very good point, Mira, and I think you are in a position to make a judgement . It is a complicated one, isn’t it? In a way you can listen to Wagner because we’re here.
This is from James Patterson. Regarding performance of Wagner in Israel, surely as Daniel Barenboim has said, “It should be a matter of personal choice. No one is forcing anyone to listen to Wagner. People are free to walk out or not attend, but in the tradition of old-fashioned liberalism, they should allow others to choose for themselves, preferably without disrupting performances. This is a problem, isn’t it? Because I think we are living in an age where liberal values are a threat in so many, many ways.
And this is from Jonathan, this is lovely Jonathan. Regarding any Jewish boycott of his music, I think he would’ve been horrified by a great Jewish orchestra playing his music. That’s rather lovely.
Q: You mentioned Chamberlain, was he related to Neville Chamberlain?
A: Oh, I don’t know. I’ve got to check that out. I don’t necessarily think so. I’ll be talking about Houston Stewart Chamberlain on Thursday.
Oh, Rhombik. I recently watched online a play called "You Will Not Play Wagner” about an international conductor’s competition in Israel. The winner was an Israeli, about 30-years-old, who decided to perform Wagner. The financial benefactor of the competition was a Holocaust survivor. The play was a discussion between the conductor and a supporter on whether it was acceptable. Well done, excellent acting. I don’t know if it’s possible to you online. Actually, this is very interesting, Rhom, because the daughter of the writer has actually been in touch, or Anita has given it to us. And if it’s on YouTube, I think it would really, she informed Wendy and I about it. I really think, take that down because obviously it’s very good, and I think it will add to your own interest in this.
How is this for a conflict? Atia. We haven’t finished James. It’s a real conflict. I suppose it’s similar to whether Mein Kampf should be sold or read. Not sure about that, I need to give that more thought.
This is from Bobby. As a Jew who has never heard of Wagner piece, I feel almost fearful of listening and being transported emotionally. I feel it’d be a betrayal, so maybe not expose myself to it. Oh, Bobby, that’s a very sensitive comment.
James. Here is the conflict. At Bayreuth, I met and shook hands with Wolfgang Wagner, the next day I found out that Wolfgang’s godfather was Hitler. On the same trip I saw a person attending the festival wearing a kippah. Now that would also be an interesting play, wouldn’t it? I’ve just met ultra-Orthodox Jews who won’t listen to Mozart or Beethoven. It just shows how difficult the whole subject is.
Yes, Nick. And that is a good place for me to stop because that’s the end of the questions. Anyway, I think I’ve opened up the debate, and I think Wendy was totally right, she said, if… And Lohengrin has got very little of any of this in it, by the way, it’s the one, but Wendy felt that we should begin the debate, if we’re going to talk about a Wagner opera. And that’s what I’ve hoped to do. Obviously this is not a comprehensive lecture on Wagner, but I’ve tried to highlight the things that I think will be interesting to you. And I will be continuing on this theme on Thursday.
[Wendy] Thanks, Trudy. It was truly outstanding and fascinating. And story is story, it’s so interesting to hear about the personalities.
Yes, I mean, I can’t make my mind up, Wendy. I don’t know whether you can. I mean, it is so complicated. There’s a part of me that wants to go to Bayreuth. I’ve never found anyone who is prepared to go with me. My son-in-law. Hmm, my son-in-law.
Oh, maybe we will. I just don’t know.
Yes, we have.
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. It’s so complicated, isn’t it?
It is.
And, of course, that incredible Woody Allen line, “Whenever I listen to Wagner, I invade Poland.” Ugh!
That’s amazing.
I don’t know-
Well-
Anyway, God bless everyone, and-
Thank you so much.
Take care, bye.
[Wendy] Thank you so much, take care. Bye-bye, bye-bye, everybody. Thanks for joining. Thanks, Judi.