Appendix B — Wagner and the Ballet
The difficulties which have always stood in the path of a realisation of Wagner’s ideals in regard to the ballet in opera are worthy of some consideration, because they are the results of a high conception of the functions of the dance in the drama. Wagner’s troubles in this department began with his “Rienzi.” In his “Communication” he says: “I by no means hunted about in my material for a pretext for a ballet, but with the eyes of the opera composer I perceived in it a self-evident festival that Rienzi must give to the people, and at which he would have to exhibit to them in dumb show a drastic scene from their ancient history, this scene being the story of Lucretia and the consequent expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome.” He confesses in a note that this ballet had to be omitted from all the stage performances of “Rienzi.”
Why? Simply because the pantomimic ballet called for imagination on the part of the ballet-master and mimetic skill in the dancers. If these elements in the ballet were wanting in Wagner’s day, they are almost wholly absent now. Yet, except in cases where the ballet is seen by the spectator to be a mere entertainment for the personages on the stage, as in the garden scene of “Les Huguenots,” it ought to have some connection with the drama. That later composers than Wagner have had some desires of this sort is proved by the presence of the Brocken scene in Boïto’s “Mefistofele,” the inferno scene in Franchetti’s “Asrael,” and other such episodes. But nowhere is there such an opportunity for a highly significant ballet as in the first scene of “Tannhäuser.”
Whoever cares to read it, may find in the essay of Wagner on the “Art-work of the Future” a long disquisition on the nature of the dance. In brief, he says that in the dance the material is man himself, and the method of expression is motion. This motion is governed by rhythm, but its purpose is the communication of the essence of the material to the spectator. In other words—not Wagner’s—dance approaches speech from one side just as absolute music does from the other. It is a painter of mood pictures, just as an orchestra is. It therefore reaches its highest form in pantomime, or mimetic action. Again, in “Opera and Drama,” Wagner tells us at some length how ballet music as written by the conventional opera composer has cramped the development of this beautiful art of mimetic dancing, the very art, in a sense, from which the drama itself originated at the altar of Bacchus. By writing in the prescribed dance-forms and rhythms the composer compelled the dancer to confine himself to certain conventional steps and figures. Wagner’s ideal was a symphonic poem of motion, mimetic in its essence, following the incidents of a story, and moving to the strains of an orchestral background which should free the dancer from formulas and at the same time paint in tone-colours the moods of the pantomime.
The difficulty in the way of realising this ideal at present is the total separation of the arts of dancing and pantomime. Only a few of the dancers of to-day possess the old-fashioned schooling which would make possible a performance of Auber’s “La Muette de Portici.” To this unique work Wagner owed much of the food for thought which resulted in his opinions upon the office of the ballet in opera. I have witnessed some representations of this work in recent years—not many—but always with sorrow at the utter inability of the impersonator of the dumb girl to realise the author’s conception. She has always been a mere ballet-dancer, striving to perform her work on the strict lines of the conventional stage dance. Now what such a part requires is some one who can dance, but who does act. And that is what the Wagner ballet, especially in “Tannhäuser,” needs. The conventional ballet steps and arm movements are at once seen to be absurd, or else they make the scene appear so to the thoughtless spectator, who notes only what he sees. To interpret properly the Venusberg scene of Wagner’s third opera there should really be a corps of Pilar-Morins. But just here again would come a difficulty. The Pilar-Morins would not be dancers, and, while they might perform an intelligible pantomime, they would obliterate from their work every trace of rhythm, and thus once more be untrue to Wagner’s almost intangible, yet not impracticable, ideal.
And of course in the end we have to reckon with a public which has no skill in the comprehension of pantomime, and hardly any in the appreciation of the dance. For in this frivolous age of pictorial dramatic art the dance means coloured lights and high kicking. Hélas! Yet I still believe that if Wagner’s designs in such scenes as that of the Venusberg and the Roman festival in “Rienzi” could be properly carried out, the public would awake to the existence of a poetic and beautifully graphic art which is now quite unknown to it.
The End
Footnotes
1 Quoted from “Wagner and his Works,” by Henry T. Finck. 2 vols., New York, 1893.
2 See Appendix A.
3 Laube wrote in the Journal du Monde Elégant, of Leipsic, after the private performance of the symphony, the first public criticism of Wagner’s work. It was favourable, and helped the young composer to gain a public performance.
4 Published in the summer of 1851. It will be found in Vol. I. of W. Ashton Ellis’s translation of Wagner’s Prose Works. It is Wagner’s most important paper in regard to his own artistic development.
5 “Richard Wagner, a Sketch of his Life and Works,” by Franz Muncker. Bamberg, 1891.
6 Wagner wrote a long account of the conception, composition, and production of this juvenile work. It may be found in his collected prose writings, translated by W. Ashton Ellis. The translation from which these words are taken is in “Art, Life, and Theories of Richard Wagner,” by E.L. Burlingame. In speaking of the “Sicilian Vespers,” Wagner refers to history, not to Verdi’s opera, which was not produced till 1855.
7 Nevertheless there are passages which suggest the future Wagner. Note this curious resemblance between a part of the chorus of nuns in “Das Liebesverbot” and the so-called “feast of grace” theme in “Tannhäuser.”
[ [XML]
LIEBESVERBOT.
Salve regina cœli! Salve!
[ [XML]
TANNHÄUSER.
8 “Wagner as I Knew Him,” by Ferdinand Praeger, New York, 1892.
9 Mr. Finck, who relates these facts, obtained them from articles in the Frankfurter Zeitung and from some of Dorn’s writings.
10 Praeger is the only authority for the incidents of Wagner’s first visit to London.
11 “Richard Wagner, His Life and Works,” by Adolphe Jullien; translated by Florence Percival Hall. 2 vols. Boston, the J.B. Millet Co.
12 The God that in my breast is owned
Can deeply stir the inner sources;
The God above my powers enthroned,
He cannot change external forces,
So, by the burden of my days oppressed,
Death is desired, and Life a thing unblest!
Goethe’s “Faust,” Act I, Scene 4.
Bayard Taylor’s translation.
13 R. Wagner, par A. de Gasparini, Paris, 1866.
14 R. Wagner: Letters to Uhlig, Fischer, and Heine. London, 1890.
15 Spohr quotes this letter in his “Autobiography.”
16 In his letters from Germany Berlioz wrote of Wagner thus: “As for the young Kapellmeister, Richard Wagner, who lived for a long while in Paris without succeeding in making himself known otherwise than as the author of some articles published in the Gazette Musicale, he exercised his authority for the first time in helping me in my rehearsals, which he did with zeal and a very good will. The ceremony of his presentation to the orchestra and taking the oath took place the day after my arrival, and I found him in all the intoxication of a very natural joy. After having undergone in France a thousand privations and all the trials to which obscurity is exposed, Richard Wagner, on coming back to Saxony, his native country, had the daring to undertake and the happiness to achieve the composition of the text and music of an opera in five acts (‘Rienzi’). This work had a brilliant success in Dresden. It was soon followed by ‘The Flying Dutchman,’ an opera in three acts, of which also he wrote both text and music. Whatever opinion one may hold of these works, it must be acknowledged that men capable of accomplishing this double literary and musical task twice with success are not common, and that M. Wagner has given enough proof of his capacity to excite interest and to rivet the attention of the world upon himself. This was very well understood by the King of Saxony; and the day that he gave his first kapellmeister Richard Wagner for a colleague, thus assuring the latter’s subsistence, all friends of art must have said to His Majesty what Jean Bart answered Louis XIV. when he made him a commander of a squadron: ‘Sire, you have done well.’”
17 In reality the most striking feature of this work is the complete silence of the orchestra till the descent of the Holy Ghost. The composition, however, is weak.
18 “Jesus von Nazareth, von R. Wagner.” Leipsic, 1887. Translation in 8th Vol. of Mr. Ellis’s edition of the prose works.
19 “Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt,” edited by Francis Hueffer, 2 vols., London, 1888.
20 In his residence at Zurich, Wagner was also pecuniarily aided by Wilhelm Baumgartner, a music teacher, Jacob Sulzer, a local office holder, Mme. Laussot, and Frau Julie Ritter, whose son Carl was associated with Wagner’s musical activities in the Swiss city. Frau Ritter placed a permanent fund to Wagner’s credit. Others who aided him will be incidentally mentioned.
21 Praeger, “Wagner as I Knew Him,” p. 231.
22 A parrot which he had humorously taught to say frequently: “Richard Wagner, you are a great man.”
23 A sketch of this drama, under the title of “The Victors,” was found among Wagner’s papers, dated May 16, 1856. The hero, Ananda, an absolutely pure man, renounces sexual love. He is passionately beloved by Prakriti, the beautiful daughter of King Tchandala. The heroine, after vainly suffering the torments of unrequited passion, renounces love, and is received into the order of Buddha by Ananda. The idea of salvation through negation is found in Wagner’s “Tristan” and again in his “Parsifal.”
24 “The Music of the Future,” W. Ashton Ellis’s translation of Wagner’s Prose Works, Vol. III.
25 A gentleman, who in his youth heard Schnorr sing Tristan, has assured me that he was not the typical German representative of the part, but that he approached in his singing the manner of Jean de Reszke. Schnorr’s voice, my informant says, was a beautiful, sweet, lyric tenor, and his style was one in which a fluent and touching cantabile was the most conspicuous feature. This statement, in conjunction with Wagner’s declaration that Schnorr fulfilled his ideal, should contribute something toward a destruction of the foolish notion that Wagner’s music ought not to be beautifully sung.
26 The new Munich Wagner Theatre, opened in the summer of 1901, stands almost on the spot on which King Ludwig’s was to stand.
27 The date of Siegfried Wagner’s birth has never been made known by the Wagner family. In his chronological table of the incidents of Wagner’s life, Houston Stewart Chamberlain notes, in the year 1869, “Siegfried Wagner born on June 6 of the marriage with Cosima Liszt.” In spite of the direct and the indirect falsehoods contained in this note, I have reason to believe that the date is correct.
28 “Richard Wagner in Venice,” by Henry Perl. Augsburg, 1883.
29 I have taken the liberty of changing the wording of the translation in two places where the meaning was obscure.
30 Even the purely lyric style is sometimes employed in strong situations where a song might be used, as in the case of Siegmund’s Love Song.
31 Who to them came for comfort,
And for their lives’ salvation,
With love and with grace;
Who the flames scattered
(Holy and heaven-bright)
Of the hot fire,
Swept at and dashed away,
Through his great might,
The beams of flame.
—Paraphrase of the Song of Azariah.
Thorpe’s translation.
32 Prose Works, Vol. I., W.A. Ellis’s translation.
33 The Great Musicians Series, Charles Scribner’s Sons.
34 Wagner, “On the Performing of Tannhäuser,” Prose Works, Ellis, Vol. III.
35 “Parzival,” a knightly epic, by Wolfram von Eschenbach. Translation by Jessie L. Weston. London, David Nutt.
36 It is worthy of note that in 1863 there was printed in Mobile, Ala., a long blank-verse poem, entitled “Tannhäuser; or, The Battle of the Bards,” by Neville Temple and Edward Trevor. This was a paraphrase—and in some places a translation—of Wagner’s opera book. It was written by two young men in the English civil service in Germany and sent over to America by a friend. It transpired that “Edward Trevor” was no less a personage than Robert, Lord Lytton, better known as Owen Meredith, author of “Lucile.”
37 This explains the meaning of Kothner’s question to Walther in the first act, “What master taught you the art?” To this Walther answers with the beautiful lyric, “Am stillen Herd,” in which he declares that Walther von der Vogelweide, one of the minnesingers (see “Tannhäuser”), was his master.
38 Many of these works are now regarded as spurious, but the majority of them are undoubtedly from the pen of the famous cobbler-poet.
39 London, Walter Scott, 1888.
40 For the substance of the Elder Edda consult “Asgard and the Gods,” by Wägner & McDowall; London, Swan, Sonnenschein, Le Bas & Lowrey, 1886. For the Prose Edda, see “The Younger Edda,” translated by R.B. Anderson, Chicago; Scott, Foresman & Co., 1897.
41 Mime.
42 “The Prose Edda”; translated by R.B. Anderson.
43 Wagner obtained the name of Mime from the Thidrek Saga, in which Mimir is a cunning smith, the brother of Regin. In this saga Regin is the name of the dragon. A naked child comes to Mimir, and because a hind runs out of the wood and licks the child, Mimir knows that it is a stray which the animal has cared for. He takes the child and rears it and calls it Sigfrid. This youth slays the dragon, and then the tale proceeds along the same lines as the other sagas connected with Siegfried.
44 In the locale of this scene Wagner follows the Thidrek, not the Volsunga Saga. The latter makes the place a heath.
45 Rassmann holds that the name “Gram” (“Wrath”) was given to the sword in the Volsunga Saga because only Odin’s wrath could break it. See Rassmann’s “Heldensage,” vol. i.
46 See “Parzifal,” translated by Jessie L. Weston, London, David Nutt, 1894; Book V., “Anfortas.”