Wieland Wagner

Wieland Wagner (January 5, 1917 – October 17, 1966) was a German opera director.

Life

Wieland was the elder of two sons of Siegfried and Winifred Wagner and grandson of composer Richard Wagner.

In 1941, he married the dancer and choreographer Gertrude Reissinger. They had four children Iris (b. 1942), Wolf-Siegfried (b. 1943), Nike (b. 1945) and Daphne (b. 1946). [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_(Familie) The Wagner Family tree (in German)]

Late in his life, Wieland had a love affair with the much younger Anja Silja, one of the singers he had recruited for Bayreuth. [ [http://arts.guardian.co.uk/fridayreview/story/0,,734553,00.html Interview: soprano Anja Silja | | Guardian Unlimited Arts ] ]

In 1965, he was awarded the Pour le Mérite.

He died of lung cancer in October 1966.

Career

Wieland Wagner is credited as an initiator of Regietheater through ushering in a new modern style to Wagnerian opera as a stage director and designer - substituting a symbolic for a naturalist staging and focussing on the psychology of the drama.

Wieland began his directorial career before World War II, working on operas by his father and grandfather. His innovative approach did not become clear until after the war. His design for the 1937 Bayreuth production of "Parsifal", for example, was conservative, though it did have film projections during the transformation scenes. When the Bayreuth Festival reopened after the war in 1951, Wieland and his brother Wolfgang became festival directors in place of their mother, whose association with Adolf Hitler had made her unacceptable. (Wieland's own past was, however, suppressed.) The revolutionary productions evoked extreme views both for and against. [ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,889200,00.html Twilight of the Gods - TIME ] ]

Wieland's long-lasting 1951 production of "Parsifal" included many features with which he later would be identified. Post-war austerity and his own interest - influenced by Adolphe Appia - in lighting effects led to the use of round minimalist sets lit from above. [http://www.wagneroperas.com/index1951parsifal.html (Wagner Operas.Com)]

Wieland's first post-war "Siegfried" represented Fafner with a 30ft statue of a dragon belching fire. In his later production of the opera he instead used pairs of giant eyes, which were picked out in turn from the back-projected forest, to suggest the movements of a huge creature stretching halfway down the Bayreuth hill.

Wieland's 1956 ""Mastersingers" without Nuremberg" was the symbolic culmination of his campaign to move away from naturalism in Wagner production with the medieval town represented by the cobbled shape of a street and, above the stage, a ball suggestive of a flowering tree. [ [http://www.wagneroperas.com/index1956meistersinger.html Wagner Operas - Productions - Die Meistersinger, 1956 Bayreuth ] ]

Wieland's minimalism extended beyond the stage furniture and props. The performer of Gunther, for example, was expected to sing leaning forward in Act 1 of "Götterdämmerung" until he felt his authority challenged by Hagen and sat up straight. It is hard to imagine a greater contrast with traditional operatic acting.

The successive productions of the 1950s were matched by an extremely strong succession of conductors including Hans Knappertsbusch, Joseph Keilberth and Clemens Krauss. Hans Hotter, Astrid Varnay, Wolfgang Windgassen and Birgit Nilsson were among the leading singers. Many recordings of this period are available on CD.

Although Wieland is best remembered for production's of his grandfather's works at Bayreuth, he was often asked to work elsewhere in Germany and Europe. For example, he produced the "Ring" in Naples, Stuttgart and Cologne, and Beethoven's "Fidelio" in Stuttgart, London, Paris and Brussels. [http://archivowagner.info/6002s.html Listings of Wieland's productions - in Spanish.]

Silja sung for Wieland as Elsa in "Lohengrin", Elisabeth and Venus in "Tannhäuser" and Eva in "Meistersinger" at Bayreuth. Elsewhere, he cast her as Isolde, Brünnhilde, Richard Strauss's Elektra, and Salome, and Alban Berg's Lulu and Marie in "Wozzeck".

Associations with Hitler and Nazism

Winifred Wagner's close friendship with Hitler meant that, as a teenager and young man, Wieland knew the dictator as "Uncle Wolf" [ [http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/richard_wagner/index.html?s=oldest& Richard Wagner News - The New York Times ] ] . His family connections allowed him to avoid the draft in the war. Instead, he was a deputy civilian leader of the Bayreuth satellite of the Flossenbürg concentration camp. [ [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/08/02/wagn02.xml Wagner's son 'was in charge of Nazi slaves' - Telegraph ] ]

Videography

* Wagner: "Tristan und Isolde" (Nilsson, Windgassen, Hotter; Boulez, 1967) [live] Bayreuth Festival at Osaka
* Wagner: "Die Walküre" (Silja, Dernesch, Thomas, Adam; Schippers, 1967) [live] Bayreuth Festival at Osaka

References

* "Wieland Wagner: The Positive Sceptic", by Geoffrey Skelton, St Martin's Press, 1971.

Notes

ee also

*Wagner family tree

External links

* [http://www.wagneroperas.com/indexwielandwagner.html Wieland Wagner: New Bayreuth] at Wagneroperas.com includes pictures of Wieland's Bayreuth productions.
* [http://archivowagner.info/6002s.html] is a Spanish site listing Wieland's productions.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRQoVnO2m8w] YouTube: An excerpt from Wieland Wagner's production of "Die Walküre", with Anja Silja and Theo Adam (1967).