Genius and Jerk

The general public knows two things about Richard Wagner. One, he was a great composer. Two, Hitler loved him. Some have even commented that his was the background music to the Holocaust, which isn't quite fair, since Wagner died in 1883. And according to some sources, he wasn't even Hitler's favorite: Verdi was. Wagner was right up there, though, as was Beethoven; the Nazis played music by both at their rallies. But Verdi and Beethoven didn't publish theories as to how, for example, the music of Jewish composers could never be great art, because, as aliens or "freaks of nature," they had no access to "the genuine spirit of the Folk." You can see how that thought would resonate with Hitler.

If he'd known how famous he would become, and for how long, Wagner might have thought better of publishing essays such as "Das Judenthum in der Musik" ("Jewishness in Music"). This was originally published under a pen name, in a newspaper called Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, in 1850--but he republished it as a pamphlet, under his own name, almost 20 years later, and he wrote other anti-Semitic essays as well. Wagner did have Jewish friends. He just thought they all should convert to Christianity and, for God's sake, blend in! He seemed to want to see the end of Jewish culture, not of the Jews.

In any event, Wagner is a poster boy for the question Can bad people create good art? It seems to me now that one has little to do with the other. I remember how surprised I was by how much the cold-hearted protagonist of Snow Country, by Yasunari Kawabata, loved ballet. In my young mind (I was about 20 when I read the novel), I equated love of the arts with sensitivity. It was wasn't much of a leap, then, to link sensitivity with empathy. But clearly, you can adore ballet and opera and hate humanity, or the Jews.

So a "bad" person can have good taste. But can he or she have the depth of feeling that underlies great art? My favorite literary critic, the late Malcolm Cowley, once wrote, "No complete son of a bitch ever wrote a good sentence." Some people think he was saying that bad people are incapable of creating art, or even of stringing words together well. I think he meant that if you can craft a fine sentence--perhaps he should have said "create a great poem"--then you cannot be a thoroughgoing cad.

Speaking of empathy and depth of feeling, Cowley also said, "Be kind and considerate with your criticism.... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book." And perhaps more apt, getting back to Wagner: "Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you."

A Year in the Ring Cycle (not to be confused with the spin cycle)

As you set out to read, I hope, this year-long blog, I can hear you wondering: Who are you? And possibly, if you're not an opera buff, What is the Ring?

To get things squared away right away: The Ring refers to Richard Wagner's magnificent cycle of four linked operas, The Ring of the Nibelungen, which can be--and usually have to be--enjoyed by themselves, like stand-alone episodes in a TV series. I'm a writer and editor based in the Bay Area, and one of the great experiences of my life was seeing all four operas performed, one after the other, over the course of a week in San Francisco, in 1998. Why am I telling you this? Because, yay: In June 2011, San Francisco Opera is presenting the entire cycle again, with different sets and singers, of course. It's a mammoth undertaking, involving both other opera companies and SFO's brand-new production of Gotterdammerung, the final opera. It'll take months to come together, and I'll be following it all.

Believe me, you don't have to be an opera lover to love the Ring. The story has everything: love, sex, greed, gold, dragons and giants, magic spells, heroes and villains, gods and goddesses, family strife, even the end of the gods' world--a grand moral and mythological tale conveyed through thrilling and accessible singing and orchestral music, usually with cool sets. Wagner not only composed the music, he wrote the libretto (story and lyrics) as well. This is rare.

In the summer of 1998, when the Ring opened in San Francisco's gilded opera house, I had just become the senior editor for culture at San Francisco magazine. Jerry Stark (my husband) and I went to opening night--on a Thursday evening, I think; then we went to a Saturday matinee, a Wednesday night performance, and finally a Sunday matinee. Each time, we drove in from Marin County with our new friend Dana Gioia, a poet and lecturer who wrote about classical music for San Francisco until he moved to Washington, D.C., to head the National Endowment for the Arts. (Could I make that up?) We sat amid the same Ring-loving people at each performance, discussing the previous opera as we settled into our seats.... We soldiered on with our day jobs, but with the music, the characters, and the epic tale constantly hovering on the edge of my attention, the Ring became the theme and focus of the week. I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd experienced and what was to come; everything else felt like a distraction. That Sunday, as I applauded the cast for the last time, I felt a little bereft.

Now, not only do I get to see the Ring again, I'll be watching the preparations. I'll be at the opera house as technicians tweak the lights for a dramatic scene in Siegfried (opera #3), for instance, and in the costume shop as new boots for the giants in Das Rheingold (#1) and costumes for the gods in Gotterdammerung are created. I'll be talking with conductor Donald Runnicles and some of the musicians about, for instance, maintaining the stamina to perform four long operas in one week. (Last time, I remember, some of the horns were sounding a mite ragged toward the end.) I'll catch up with some super Ring buffs, who, like solar-eclipse fanatics, fly to the site of their passion every time there's an occurrence. I'll also be blogging about SFO's other operas this year, beginning with Aida in September, and about Wagner (a genius and anti-Semite, so: controversial), and... and.... From time to time, I'll blog about other events in the ring of Bay Area arts as well.