This is regarding Richard Rothschild’s “A Jewish music lover defends Wagner” (Arts & Entertainment, May 21). I’m working on a political biography of Richard Wagner. Of course, Mr. Rothschild isn’t the first to take that stand. There’s little doubt that no cultural figure of the 19th Century commands the kind of devoted loyalty as the German composer, in spite of his 30-year unrelenting campaign against the Jews. The campaign started with his “Jewry in Music,” condemning all Jews, and came to a head some three decades later with his “Know Thyself,” in which he calls on Germans to “awake” and there will “no longer be any Jews,” a “great solution” that later become the cornerstone for Hitler’s campaign to accomplish the chore.
His most devoted followers urge that we separate the man from his music and enjoy what they consider the most beautiful music ever written. Is Wagner’s music really that popular and important that we drop everything to stage his works? Is his music so much in demand by the opera-going public?
A measure of his compositions can be found in a report from the opera company of Nashville, Tenn., which recently dropped Wagner from its schedule because it barely filled half the house. As an alternative, I’d suggest a staging of one of the many heralded operas composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer, the pre-eminent composer of his day throughout Europe and the first victim of Wagner’s middle-age onset of rampant anti-Semitism. Having recently returned from attending Meyerbeer’s “Robert le Diable” in Berlin, where it received a 10-minute standing ovation by a sold-out house, I can now understand why Chopin, after attending the premier, wrote, “If ever magnificence was seen in the theater, I doubt if it reached the level of splendor shown in `Robert le Diable.'”
