Lohengrin

On November 1, 1871, _Lohengrin_—the first of Wagner’s works to be staged in Italy—premiered amid much local buzz at Bologna’s Teatro Comunale. Five weeks later, the entire production was exported to Florence’s Teatro Pagliano. Cast, chorus, orchestra, staff, sets, costumes, and stage machinery were all relocated by train, an undertaking that required the transportation of between 300 and 400 people. In this article I examine this pioneering operatic translocation—to my knowledge the first of its kind in Italy and, possibly, in Europe—in relation both to the institutional quagmires it created and to the broader context of railway travel.

I argue that “mobilizing” the 1871 _Lohengrin_, by resituating it within a less stationary framework than the one in which it has traditionally been set by scholars (i.e., late-nineteenth-century Bologna), allows us to recover an as-yet-unexplored form of operatic interplay between late-nineteenth-century Italian cities: a type of material interaction that is often lost to modern scholarly accounts, which emphasize networks of discourse and local resistance to the nation’s unifying impulses after 1861. I also suggest that the _Lohengrin_ transfer anticipated trends that would take root in subsequent years (during the 1870s and 1880s), when full-blown opera productions started to go more regularly on the move. After pursuing _Lohengrin_’s relocation, I thus turn to a number of these later transfers, reading them alongside and via the technological apparatus of the railway. Referred to by Italian contemporaries as _trasferimenti_ or _trasporti di spettacolo_, these early mobile productions lay bare conflicting attitudes to movements that held varied aesthetic, political, and technological implications. Besides revealing key tensions between mobility and immobility, as well as oldness and newness, railway operatic mobility during this period lends itself to probing questions of mediation: questions that underlay both the changing status of opera at the _fine secolo_, and notions of sound reproduction that were emerging around the same time.

The majority of the second section of Liszt's essay on _Lohengrin_ (1851) is presented here in an edited translation, taken originally from the _Monthly Musical Record_'s translation of 1876. It is prefaced with an introduction placing the essay in the context of Liszt's ambitions for the Hoftheater in Weimar, the milieu of music publishing and criticism in 1850s Saxony, and of Liszt's changing relation to Wagner's music.

In diesem Artikel geht es vorrangig um zwei Lohengrin-Neuinszenierungen – und zwar um eine Inszenierung im Jahre 1923 in Moskau und eine im Jahre 1958 in Ost-Berlin –, die beide einen breiteren kulturpolitischen Disput um die Oper Wagners auf dem sozialistischen Spielplan zur Folge hatten.

Once Wagner's most popular opera, Lohengrin has suffered scholarly neglect in the post-war period. This essay re-engages with the work from the novel perspective of game theory analysis. Centring on Elsa's breach of the Frageverbot, it offers a close epistemological study of the opera's main characters. As an alternative to traditional interpretations of the heroine's fatal decision, we propose a complex and psychologically more compelling account. Elsa asks the forbidden question because she needs to confirm Lohengrin's belief in her innocence, a belief that Ortrud successfully erodes in Act II. This interpretation reveals Elsa as a rational individual, upgrades the dramatic significance of the Act I combat scene, and, more broadly, signals a return to a hermeneutics of Wagnerian drama.

Liszt’s decision to stage the premiere of _Lohengrin_ in Weimar on 28 August 1850 involved political as well as artistic risk. Wagner’s compromised public profile, following his activities as a republican agitator during the Dresden uprising in 1849, risked tainting the Grand Duke Carl Alexander’s Weimar court by association. Yet the money invested by the Grand Duchess Maria Pawlowna in the premier was unprecedented, and the event was widely trumpeted as part of a new progressive agenda for music in Weimar. The evidence suggests, however, that the premiere was much less of an artistic success than Wagner had hoped. In seeking to uncover the motives and machinations of the figures involved in the unveiling of _Lohengrin_, this article examines the political dynamics of Wagner’s interaction with Carl Alexander alongside the apparent artistic failure of the premiere itself (evidenced through Liszt’s conducting score as well as discourse analysis). It raises the question of why Liszt wrote his essay on _Lohengrin_ so quickly after the premiere, and the extent to which he sought to steer Wagner’s public profile away from any unwanted political associations.

The “nationalist rhetoric of Wagner and his works” (Grey 2002) has come to dominate our perception of the composer as staunchly and exclusively German. Yet his first published writings lauded Italian opera and singers, he maintained a lifelong allegiance to Bellinian melody, visited Italy no fewer than nine times, and was happy to die in Venice. This chapter explores Wagner’s concealed Italianism. It asks to what extent Wagner’s writings individuated common outsider perspectives on Italian identity—eroticism, sensuality (Sinnlichkeit), vitality, instinct, warmth—from figures such as Goethe and de Staël. And by charting the “discourse networks” surrounding Wagner’s literary encounters with Italy, it seeks to qualify our Germanocentric view of Wagner.

Er(r)go…,

fiasko mowy – prosimy zachować ciszę, bo cisza jest skarbnicą dźwięków, ich nasyceniem, kumulacją brzmień. A dalej: cisza aktywna, energia ciszy, cisza dźwięków, język poetycki jako muzyka ciszy, pejzaż dźwięku, milczenie roślin, performatywność ciszy. Wnikając w ciszę, docieramy do dźwiękowego świata i do wszystkiego, co ciszą nie jest: intonarumori – rumorarmonio, ululatori, rombator, scoppiatori, sibilatori. Szmery, szumy, hałasy, stuki, zgrzytów wycie, jęki, śmiechy, głosy ludzi i zwierząt, warkot, łoskot, huk, trzaski, skrzypienia, szurania, tarcia,  świsty, syki, sapania, piknięcia i puknięcia, muzyka maszyn, brzmieniowe akordy słów, harmonia szmerów, wibracje i rezonowanie, dźwięki niechciane. Nicowanie obecności i nieobecności – fizjologia wewnętrzna, niema dramatyzacja serca i oddechu: szumy, jęknięcia, wdechy i wydechy, periodyczne pulsy. Jęknięcia, chrząknięcia, gruchanie, świsty i dmuchnięcia, ciche uderzenia górnej i dolnej wargi śpiewaczki, ciche pocieranie korpusu instrumentu.

Cisza zmienia się w grzmot. Hałas industrialny: maszyny brzmią, świszczą, wyją, huczą, łomocą, sapią, syczą, gwiżdżą, dzwonią, kują, jazgoczą, świdrują, zgrzytają, kłapią, biją, warkoczą, szumią. Muzyka jako efekt ciszy – to cisza jest tym, co daje siłę dźwiękom, czyni ciemność mniej głuchą, gdy najmniejszy szmer staje się zjawą. Milczący fortepian – sztuka hałasów i 4’33”.  I kilka postaci: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Salvatore Sciarrino, John Cage, Jacques Lacan, Arnold Schoenberg, Wassily Kandinsky, Maria Pappenheim, Anna O., Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leris, Colette Peignot, Francesca Woodman, Bracha L. Ettinger, Tres, Dan Geva,  Noit Geva, Gillian Wearing. Muzak. Audiosfera komunizmu: śpiewające, mistyczne ciało kolektywu, trąbka w rękach zetempowca, bzyczenie much, bełkot wroga. Na dodatek głos jako obiekt kazirodczy. Transcendencja dźwięków otoczenia, dzwonienie w uszach, tinnitus, muzyczny rollercoaster, marsz żałobny na pogrzeb głuchego, sekunda tak pełna, że nie mieści się w półgodzinie, dźwięk jako rozdźwięk, dźwiękowość naszego ciała, szum gestu, hałas przedmiotów, elektroniczny jazgot i zgiełk, pętle muzyczne, bębnienie palcami, recitale od-tworzenia, Rauty Zmian Nastrojów i w końcu balsamowanie dźwiękiem.

Przyjaźń jako cisza; cisza, która mówi, aby lepiej się ukryć, przytłumiony i poszarzały sweter, niedźwiękowy potok słów, czytanie uchem, słuchanie różnicy, słyszenie siebie.  Trzeba wyjść poza granice pięciolinii. Milczenie i przemilczenie. Cisza jako władza i jako forma kształcenia ciał, uciszanie budynków, wysysanie dźwięków.

Tacet. Cisza nie istnieje. „W absolutnej ciszy każdy w końcu coś usłyszy”. Co słyszę?

Wojciech Kalaga


Er(r)go…,

failure of speech – please be silent, because silence is the treasure hold of sounds, their saturation, the accumulation of tones. And further: active silence, the energy of silence, poetic language as the music of silence, the landscape of sound, silence of the plants, performativity of silence. Penetrating the silence, we reach the world of sound and of whatever is not silence: intonarumori – rumorarmonio, ululatori, rombator, scoppiatori, sibilatori. Murmurs, humming, noises, knocking, grinding, howling, groans, laughs, human and animal sounds, drones, clatter, din, boom, crash, creaking, scraping, rubbing, wheeze, hiss, gasp, ping, pop, machine music, tonal cords of words, the harmony of murmurs, vibrations and resonances, unwanted sounds.  Reversing presence and absence – internal physiology, mute dramatization of the heart and the breath: noises, moaning, breathing in and breathing out, periodic cadence. Moans, grunts, billing, whizzing, blowing, quiet strikes of the upper and lower lips of the diva, quiet rubbing of the body of the instrument.

Silence turns to thunder. Industrial noise: machines whizz, howl, boom, crash, groan, hiss, whistle, toll, hammer, clatter, grate, grind, beat, whir, hiss. Music as the effect of silence – it is the silence that gives the sounds their strength, makes the darkness less still, when the tiniest noise becomes a wraith. A silent piano – the art of noise and 4’33”.  And several figures: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Salvatore Sciarrino, John Cage, Jacques Lacan, Arnold Schoenberg, Wassily Kandinsky, Maria Pappenheim, Anna O., Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leris, Colette Peignot, Francesca Woodman, Bracha L. Ettinger, Tres, Dan Geva,  Noit Geva, Gillian Wearing. Muzak. The audiosphere of communism: the singing, mystical body of the collective, the trumpet in the hands of a young ZMP zealot, the buzzing of flies, the jabber of the enemy. In addition, the voice as an incestual object. The transcendence of the sounds of the surrounding, the ringing in the ears, tinnitus, the musical rollercoaster, the funeral march at the burial of the deaf, a second so full that it does not fit into half an hour, cord as discord, the soundness of our bodies, the hum of a gesture, the noise of  an object, electronic clatter and clamor, musical loops, drumming of fingers, recital of re-playing, The Banquets of Changing Moods, and, finally, embalming with sound.

Friendship as silence; silence that speaks in order to hide better, a muted, ashen sweater, nonverbal torrent of words, reading with the ear, listening to the difference, hearing oneself. One must go beyond the staff. Muteness and dissemblance. Silence as power and a form of shaping bodies, the muting of buildings, the sucking out of sounds.

Tacet. Silence does not exist. “In absolute silence, everyone will eventually hear something.” What do I hear?

Wojciech Kalaga

This essay examines the story of two stories, both by Richard Wagner: a story of Lohengrin, knight of the Holy Grail, and of Lohengrin, the opera.1 Lohengrin's story is well known: Elsa of Brabant, accused by her former suitor Friedrich of Telramund of having killed her brother ...

Review of Almut Suerbaum, George Southcombe, and Benjamin Thompson, eds. Polemic: Language as Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Discourse. Farnham, Surrey, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015. Reviewed in Speculum 92.3 (2017): 901–903.

Although the attempts to perform "Lohengrin" in Athens date back to 1892, when a French company visiting the Greek capital intended to include the Wagnerian opera in its repertoire, it was finally an Italian Company who first sung Lohengrin, in front of a Greek audience: in Alexandria (Egypt) on December 1896 in Italian. The first performance of a Wagnerian music drama on Greek soil would finally take place on December 1902, in  Corfu and three months later Athens (March 1903), and it was "Lohengrin", Wagner’s most popular opera at the time.

An article (in Turkish) about a trip to Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castles in search of Ludwig II of Bavaria, Richard Wagner and "Lohengrin".

Emre Aracı bir kartpostalda gördüğü Ren nehri ve buharlı “Lohengrin”gemisinin hayaliyle çıktığı yolculuğunda Alp dağlarından geçerek Bavyera Kralı II. Ludwig'in, bulutlara değen Alpsee gölünün yamacında inşa ettirdiği Neuschwanstein Şatosu’nda, bu tapınağı andıran mekânda, Wagner’in ruhuna ve o tarihin büyüsüne dokundu.
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Peter Konwitschny’s interpretation of Richard Wagner’s romantic opera Lohengrin (premiere in Hamburg 1998) is a good example of an innovative way of staging a well-known opera. Konwitschny set Lohengrin in a classroom of the Wilhelminian era, on the eve of the outbreak of the First World War. All singers play schoolchildren in uniform, armored with wooden swords, except Lohengrin, who is the only adult among children. Konwitschny interpreted Wagner’s pseudo Middle Age legend of the mythical knight Lohengrin as a realistic encounter between the spheres of childhood and adulthood. One aspect for wider consideration of this staging is its references to three literary works: Heinrich Mann’s Der Untertan, Thoman Mann’s Die Buddenbrooks, and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

A ópera Lohengrin, de Richard Wagner, expõe a trágica história de Elsa von Brabant, acusada injustamente de um crime, mas defendida por um cavaleiro desconhecido com quem ela se dispõe a casar, mas que impõe à protagonista, como condição, a proibição de perguntar pelo seu nome ou origem. É possível, observando esta personagem, identificar nela a angústia diante da pergunta proibida. Propõe-se aqui então a possibilidade de se fazer uma comparação livre e alegórica entre Elsa von Brabant e Adão, tal como analisado por Kierkegaard em seu livro O conceito de angústia.

Once Wagner's most popular opera, Lohengrin has suffered scholarly neglect in the post-war period. This essay re-engages with the work from the novel perspective of game theory analysis. Centring on Elsa's breach of the Frageverbot, it offers a close epistemological study of the opera's main characters. As an alternative to traditional interpretations of the heroine's fatal decision, we propose a complex and psychologically more compelling account. Elsa asks the forbidden question because she needs to confirm Lohengrin's belief in her innocence, a belief that Ortrud successfully erodes in Act II. This interpretation reveals Elsa as a rational individual, upgrades the dramatic significance of the Act I combat scene, and, more broadly, signals a return to a hermeneutics of Wagnerian drama.

RESUMEN El objeto de este texto es el análisis de los dos poemas inéditos («Lohengrin» y «La sospecha») de Konstandinos P. Kavafis dedicados a la ópera Lohengrin de Richard Wagner, escritos en 1898. Como en otros poemas de su etapa formativa, por ejemplo, «Segunda Odisea» y «El rey Claudio», Kavafis ofrece en estos textos una versión trasgresora del argumento de la ópera original: en el primer poema, Lohengrin no acude a socorrer a Elsa y, en el segundo, el campeón es derrotado por su enemigo Telramund. Al contrario que Elsa, la figura protagonista de los poemas de Kavafis es, por tanto, culpable del crimen de que se le acusa y no merece la salva-ción que sus sueños le prometían. Estos poemas conectan con textos de la obra posterior de Kavafis en los que se reivindica su condición marginal. PALABRAS CLAVE: Konstandinos P. Kavafis, Richard Wagner, Lohengrin, recepción literaria. ABSTRACT «The call of the herald: Lohengrin and Kavafis». The aim of this paper is to analyse two unedited poems of Konstandinos P. Kavafis («Lohengrin» and «The suspicion») which are dedicated to the opera Lohengrin by Richard Wagner and were written about 1898. Like other poems of his formative years such as «Second Odyssey» and «King Claudius», Kavafis offers in these two poems a transgressive version of the plot of the opera: in the first poem Lohengrin doesn't come to save Elsa and, in the second one, he is defeated by his enemy Telramund. Unlike Elsa, the protagonist of the poems is guilty of the crime of which he is accused and he doesn't deserve the salvation which his dreams promised him. These poems connect with other texts dated in the poet's maturity in which he claims his marginal status.

Toissa keväänä Lontoon kuninkaallisen oopperan
katsomon ilmapiiri sähköistyi äkisti,
kun tekstityslaitteelle ilmestyi käännös kuningas
Heinrichin juuri saksaksi laulamasta
fraasista: ”Never again shall anyone abuse
the German Empire!” Yleisö vajosi kuitenkin
nopeasti takaisin Lohengrinin musiikilliseen
lumoukseen. Kenties se pienellä viiveellä
muisti, ettei Wagnerilla voinut olla aavistustakaan
Wilhelm II:n tai Hitlerin puheista?
Esityksen kokenut Jukka von Boehm pohtii
artikkelissaan Wagnerin Lohengrinin vaikutushistoriallista
monimuotoisuutta, sattumanvaraisuutta
ja ristiriitaisuutta.