Redraping Grandpa's Work

Hisses and boos mingled with cheers as Richard Wagner's grandsons rang up the curtain last week on the sixth postwar season at Bayreuth. Reason for the excitement: Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner had finally got around to applying to Die Meistersinger the same stripped-down, dramatically lighted staging in which they have redraped all but one (Rienzi) of their Grandfather Richard's works.

To Wagnerians, the looming, medieval sets of Die Meistersinger have long seemed almost as sacrosanct as the music itself. Of all Wagner's operas, Die Meistersinger was the one deemed least adaptable to modern staging. But, for better or worse, Designer Wieland Wagner decided to refute the purists. Wieland only slightly distorted the interior of St. Catherine's Church in Act I. But the medieval Nuremberg of Act II was not only "dema-terialized," as traditionalists feared; it was totally atomized. There was not a trace of the famed gingerbread houses.

Instead, the bare stage was bathed in cobalt blue, and a giant, soft. flower ball was suspended above a bench, which represented Hans Sachs' shop. For the singing contest of Act III, W71eland tried a bullfight effect, with a 50-ft. high amphitheater surrounding a bright yellow ring, in which the singers performed.

The production's cast of veterans (Hans Hotter as Sachs, Wolfgang Wind-gassen as Stolzing) put on a plodding, vocally uninspired performance. But few members of the audience had ears for the music--it was the sets and the staging that intrigued them. Some critics conceded that Wieland had given the work spiritual unity, but they argued that the staging style was not consistent.

Wieland's mother Winifred complained: The daughter-in-law of Richard Wagner, who herself directed at Bayreuth in Hitler's time and is now barred from the festival as an ex-Nazi, said of her son: "He's such a gifted boy and knows so much about opera. It's a pity he couldn't produce some other operas and leave his grandfather's alone."

To clear the air, Wieland Wagner called in newsmen and offered his explanation. "This is the first time," he said, "that Die Meistersinger has not been done as a cliche. This opera is a wish dream of my grandfather, a revolutionary who failed.* It's actually a monologue--a discourse between himself as Hans Sachs and as Walther von Stolzing--the Wagner of maturity and youth. Musically, it's between Bach and Handel, and between Debussy and modern jazz. The real meaning of Meistersinger is Sachs' lament: 'Fools, fools, all of them fools.' The young growing up to be foolish, and the old. like Beckmesser, becoming foolish despite age. It was always done as a nationalistic, Nazi show, and I hated it. Now I've done it as I felt it should be performed."

* Wagner was exiled from Dresden in 1849 for suggesting the proclamation of a republic and participating in street fighting. He lived outside of Germany for several years, was granted amnesty in 1860.

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