Wagner popularity went through the ring cycle in Nazi era
ACCORDING to popular belief, Nazi-era Germans flooded opera houses to be enthralled by Rhinemaidens and Valkyries.
But Richard Wagner, far from being the Third Reich's "house composer", actually became much less popular during Adolf Hitler's rule, according to new research.
Germans were much more keen on Carmen, Bizet's tale of a soldier's scandalous obsession with a Gypsy, and on Madama Butterfly, Puccini's opera about an officer's doomed liaison with a Japanese courtesan neither particularly appropriate tales by the standards of Nazi ideology.
According to Jonathan Carr, author of the book The Wagner Clan, Hitler was obsessed by "the Master", but the party faithful were not and attended performances at Hitler's insistence.
"We are all told that the Germans poured into opera houses to listen to Wagner as soon as Hitler came to power. The opposite is true," Carr said.
The party faithful's devotion to Wagner has also been exaggerated, according to Carr. We may think of Wagner as the soundtrack to Nazism, with newsreels of Hitler at Bayreuth and the famous Wagner performances at Nuremburg rallies. But according to the memoirs of Albert Speer and Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge, most Nazis were bored silly at the prospect of watching five-hour epics.
At the 1933 gala performance of Die Meistersinger, for instance, so few turned up that a furious Hitler sent patrols to drag party members out of beer gardens and brothels, Speer wrote. And during one performance of Tristan and Isolde, Junge recalled, a member of Hitler's group dropped off and had to be saved from falling from the box they were in. His rescuer had himself been asleep for most of the performance.
The author analysed the operas performed in Germany in the 1930s. Wagner's works did not come to dominate the output. Rather, they had begun a slow decline during the Weimar period and continued to wane.
In the 1932-33 season Carmen was the most performed opera in Germany, with Weber's Der Freischutz second. Four Wagner operas were placed next.
But by 1938-39 the highest-ranked Wagner opera, Lohengrin, was at only 12th place. Puccini's Madama Butterfly was third. And by the war years, Verdi, not Wagner, was Germany's most performed opera composer. Wagner's market share dropped to less than 10 per cent.
"Wagner was already considered by the younger generation to be rather old hat," Carr said.
Wagner's music was used at key events for the Nazi regime such as the opening of the Reichstag or to accompany radio announcements of important deaths but Wagner's popular penetration has been exaggerated, Carr said.