Author : Jos Hermans
"On our hill now stands a sturdy fortress; here we have our dear Savior to ourselves, freed from all the unworthiness with which a sad humanity has burdened him. Into this house of God all are called who are true and needy." (COSIMA WAGNER, Aug. 16, 1887)
The grieving widow
With a morbidity worthy of Queen Victoria, Cosima Wagner sank into an emotional coma after the death of her husband. For twenty-five hours she sat alone beside the corpse. Then she cut off her hair and placed it on the chest of the disembodied one. For four days she hardly ate or slept. Instead, she withdrew and sunk into deep seclusion. For support and advice, she turned to her friend Adolf von Groß, the prototype of the successful banker: outgoing, farsighted, discreet, and cool-headed. His devotion to Cosima was absolute, her confidence in him total. For the next 30 years he would become Bayreuth's unapproachable "éminence grise" and no decision would be made without consulting him. Wagner had left no will - after all, he had always had more debts than anything else - and neither verbally nor in writing had he entrusted his estate to his wife. This legal vacuum called into question the future of the festival. Cosima retreated to Wahnfried and spoke to no one except her family and Groß. But already a few days after Wagner's death she authorized Groß to take the necessary steps to have herself and Siegfried registered as legal heirs to Wagner's property including the Festspielhaus and to have Siegfried recognized as the only legitimate child.
Thus she secured for herself an unassailable position as the sole legal authority regarding Wagner's artistic legacy before other parties including the Wagner societies could take even the slightest steps. She also lost no time in laying the foundation of a Wagner cult that would become the mania for the rest of her life. Once back in Wahnfried, her first concern was to recover all letters, documents, and manuscripts from Wagner's hand no matter what they cost. She was determined to turn the master into a magnificent golden icon, and so she censored, altered, and falsified every document she felt sullied this hagiographic image. Thus began a long-standing family obsession to possess and manipulate information about Wagner and which, fueled by an innate paranoia, considered everyone an enemy who proved incapable of flattery.
Parsifal 1884
Significantly for the further course of the festival, Cosima decided to limit the festival to the works of Wagner - the composer's intentions were rather ambiguous on that point - and to establish a set of rules. Parsifal was to be performed annually and from 1885 there was to be a new production each year - Tristan in 1885, Holländer in 1886, Lohengrin in 1887, Tannhäuser in 1888 and Die Meistersinger and the Ring in 1889. For orchestral direction, Hans von Bülow and Franz Liszt were considered but Liszt was too old by now and Von Bülow was not interested. In 1883 she let the festival run its own course as a repeat of 1882; she herself did not set foot in the Festspielhaus. Scaria was artistic director and Julius Kniese, the musical assistant of 1882, took charge of the rehearsals. The festival was considered a requiem for Wagner. Behind the scenes, major disagreements arose between Kniese and Scaria. Kniese, a pedantic anti-Semite, aspired to the post of conductor Levi and sent endless reports of condemnation to Cosima. Faced with a choice between art and anti-Semitism, Cosima chose art and sent Kniese packing at the end of the season.
The 1884 season became another Parsifal with the same cast. To adjust the rehearsals, Cosima proverbially stepped out of the shadows. From behind a curtain she observed the rehearsals without being seen herself. Following the music from a piano score, she despatched a steady stream of comments and directions to Levi. Levi allowed himself to be swayed by the comments, and amateur or not, Cosima Wagner seemed to exert a convincing authority on all the collaborators. The festival itself had an excellent press, had passed its second season financially and artistically and so Cosima formally announced that she was taking over the running of the festival which was dismissed in musical circles as excessive. The Wagner societies objected vehemently and sent two delegates to Bayreuth to register their veto. Cosima refused to receive them: the Cosima Wagner era had begun.
Tristan 1886
For financial reasons it was decided not to have a festival in 1885. In contrast, "Tristan und Isolde" was programmed for 1886 and Cosima now threw herself into the study of the original Munich premiere, supervised by Wagner, and of the Berlin production of 1876. With a pedantic literalism brimming with 19th century naturalism, Cosima thereby set a production standard that seemed to apply to all opera houses in the world. "In this opera where the most complex feelings are expressed through the music, there is hardly a gesture that does not come across as absurd or a facial expression that can match the power of the music," she wrote to Levi. Her acting direction was minimal. The performance was quite successful. Rosa Sucher who alternated with Therese Malten as Isolde was the star of the festival but opinions were rather divided about Heinrich Vogl as Tristan. This laid the foundations of the Bayreuther style.
Cosima saw herself not as someone who imposed her will but as the testamentary executor of her husband's intentions. In this she was sometimes more creative than she admitted: although she always did this in the name of Wagner, sometimes this Wagner was more Cosima than Richard. From conductors she expected complete submission and she had no difficulty in obtaining it. The degrading servility of her conductors like Weingartner, Levi and Mottl bordered on masochism. Felix Mottl was appointed as musical director from 1886 to 1903. This made him the leading exponent of the Bayreuther style. The basic principle of the Bayreuther style was that the music should be inseparable from the action on the stage; the orchestral direction had to follow directly from the drama rather than from the score. For the conductor this meant, among other things, that he always had to moderate the volume of the orchestral sound in order to make the text easier to understand. The tempo was also strictly regulated and from Cosima's point of view it was usually rather slow. She may have found this necessary for her acting style or she may have wanted to reinforce the works with a quasi-religious sanctity.
A vital part of the Bayreuther style was enunciation of the sung words. She tirelessly demonstrated how she wanted the words to be sung -and sometimes rather spoken. The pronunciation of the consonants was particularly important here, and the resulting harsh declamatory style became known as the "Bayreuther Konsonanten Spuckerei" or the "Bayreuth bark." Acting and gestures were also considered subordinate to the drama from which followed a whole series of strict rules for postures and facial expressions that were meticulously recorded by the musical assistant Carl Kittel. Cosima was strongly criticized for it but was equally praised for it. Financially, the 1886 festival was not a success with only 200 visitors on some days and Groß decided not to hold a festival the following year. Moreover, a legal problem presented itself when, after the death of King Ludwig in June 1886, the ownership rights to the Ring and Parsifal were claimed by the Bavarian government through Duke Christoph Krafft von Crailsheim. When Groß showed the waiver of rights written by King Ludwig, he was told that it was invalid because of his insanity to which Groß replied that then the appointment of the Minister of Finance must also be invalid to which the discussion broke down. An agreement the following year secured Wagner's heirs the right to act as the sole owners of all Wagner's works and gave Bayreuth the exclusive right to stage Parsifal.
Die Meistersinger 1888
In 1888 Cosima wanted to perform Tannhäuser again but Groß insisted on a more popular work - Die Meistersinger. Cosima copied the Munich premiere production of 1868 on which the master's eye had still rested and which he himself had described as ideal. Julius Kniese was again invited to rehearse the choral parts. This time the festival was an unqualified success. Every seat for Parsifal was sold out and the demand for tickets for Die Meistersinger could not be met. The production was applauded in the press even though the vocal performances were rather underwhelming with a disappointing Heinrich Gudehus as Stolzing and Theodor Reichmann as Sachs. Positive press, on the other hand, was there for Fritz Plank and Carl Scheidemantel as alternatives to Sachs, Sebastian Hofmüller as David and Fritz Friedrichs as Beckmesser. Cosima's transformation of the town clerk from the usual comic caricature intothe serious figure Wagner had intended intende, was considered a masterstroke. Cosima was credited with giving the work a deeper meaning than ever before. Conductor Hans Richter, who had accepted Cosima's invitation only on the condition that she not interfere with his work, was unanimously praised. Parsifal, on the other hand, was conducted by Mottl, who replaced the ailing Levi. Mottl's direction was unanimously disapproved of as too slow, tedious, and tension-free. It was assumed that Cosima was to blame for this. Be that as it may, the festival enjoyed great financial and artistic success and there could be no doubt that the festival was there to stay.
Immediately voices raised arguing that the festival was too important to the nation to remain in private hands. Others considered Cosima a tyrant, an artistic dilettante who had betrayed the ideals of the master, or condemned her for opening the festival to foreign influences, such as giving the role of Parsifal to Flemish tenor Ernest Van Dyck. The following year in which Mottl took office as conductor of Tristan, Richter for Die Meistersinger and Levi for Parsifal, surpassed all records. Bayreuth, meanwhile, had become fashionable and was now attracting the beau monde including the new German Emperor William II, who took an interest in Bayreuth insofar as Bayreuth could do anything for German cultural supremacy. A request for imperial protection, on the other hand, he had rejected.
The audience included, for the first time, George Bernard Shaw, who covered the performances with his incisive, understated humor. Mostly he was not satisfied with the orchestra which he found a hotchpotch and the singers, in his eyes, screamed more than they sang. Least of all, he was satisfied with Cosima, whom he reproached for having no function other than that of the "illegitimate living memory." For Shaw, Bayreuth had chosen the path of tradition and that was the path to death. Bayreuth's supposed monopoly on authenticity was strangling Wagner's lyrical dramas, note for note, measure for measure, nuance for nuance. Shaw believed that a drama should be brought to the stage from its deeper meaning where text, music and the spectator's imagination should do the actual work rather than Wagner's arbitrary stage directions. In doing so, Shaw came close to one of the great theater innovators: Adolphe Appia. Appia sent set designs for the Ring to Bayreuth but they were flatly rejected by Cosima, for whom the 1876 sets remained the norm.
Tannhäuser 1891
With the financial success of 1889 behind her and a pause in 1890, Cosima could now venture into 1891 on Wagner's most popular opera: Tannhäuser. Never before had an opera been prepared with so much care. It became an extremely expensive production in which even dogs were trained to bark. In her interpretation, the opera was not so much about Tannhäuser as it was about the contrast between the Venus mountain and the Wartburg, between Dionysian ethos and medieval Christian spirituality, between Venus and Elisabeth. She chose the Paris version and provided the piece with a remarkable bacchanal in a choreography by the Milanese prima ballerina Virginia Zucchi. The Brückners were once again responsible for highly realistic, highly romantic sets. Mottl conducted. Elisabeth was sung by Pauline de Ahna who would later marry Richard Strauss. Rosa Sucher sang Venus and Tannhäuser was shared by Max Alvary, Hermann Winkelmann and Heinrich Zeller. Reichmann and Scheidemantel alternated in the roles of Wolfram. Conservative Wagnerians were appalled at the inclusion of this early romantic work in the Bayreuth repertoire, and that the Paris version was preferred to the Dresden one was seen as a provocation. Tickets for the performances were sold on the black market at four times the normal price: Bayreuth had now become one of the greatest musical attractions in the world. However, the production received a bad press. Most critics were disillusioned by expectations that were too high.
Lohengrin 1894
Cosima's next major production was the Lohengrin of 1894. The central point of her reinterpretation was to emphasize the religious-mystical aspects of the story and present it as the clash between Christianity and paganism, although this was hardly consistent with Wagner's own concept. Wagner had given precise stage directions for the 1850 premiere in Weimar, and Max Brückner followed them to the letter. The prescribed silhouette of the citadel of Antwerp was dropped because it did not correspond to historical reality, as Wagner had established during his visit to Antwerp. Cosima's Lohengrin was well received, even by Shaw. The vocal performances were found to be underwhelming, Ernest Van Dyck as Lohengrin was considered a miscast. Moreover, casting of the singers had become a controversial matter for ideological rather than vocal reasons. The Wagner phenomenon had by now spread throughout Europe and America, and Bayreuth became a little more international each year.
In 1894 most of the leading roles were sung by foreign performers, a situation which the conservatives found intolerable and some of the most fanatical Wagnerians became the greatest critics of the festival and of Cosima. This conservative attitude was increasingly accompanied by an unpleasant nationalism and by xenophobia that were typical of the German Reich anno 1894. The festival belonged to the nation, it was argued, and instead of being a center of German culture, Bayreuth had become Babel, a kind of boarding school for foreigners. Criticism was strongest among the so-called Bayreuther Kreis, a political sect that had grown up around the Bayreuther Blätter and that held conservatism, nationalism and racism in high regard. Through these folks, the Festspielhaus was seen as the "temple of art for the renewal of Aryan blood" and Bayreuth was transformed into a center of an aggressive, chauvinistic ideology and into a symbol of German supremacy - a kind of Krupp of the culture industry.
To the question of foreign singers, Cosima had no ears. Cosima wanted soloists who were comfortable with the Bayreuth spirit and its leadership or as Lilli Lehmann put it, "All roads lead to Rome but to Bayreuth there leads only one road - that of slavish submission." To train new soloists, Cosima founded a school. At its head she placed Julius Kniese and she herself gave instructions for direction and dramaturgy. Only 17 candidates showed up at the opening in 1892 and by 1898 there were only 5 students and the little school was later disbanded. Nevertheless, great performers emerged from this: Ellen Gulbranson as Brünnhilde, Alois Burgstaller as Siegfried, Hans Breuer as Mime and Otto Briesemeister as Loge. The young Richard Strauss, who shamelessly played on Cosima's anti-Semitic feelings in order to be allowed to conduct at Bayreuth, eventually did so only once namely for Tannhäuser in 1894. He was not asked back because Cosima considered his compositions a betrayal of Wagner and Siegfried saw him as a dangerous competitor to his own work. "A pigsty among pigsties" Strauss told Pauline, his bride-to-be.
In 1903 Cosima faced high treason on account of her loyal disciple Felix Mottl. The latter had accepted the post of chief conductor at the rival Munich opera. This made him draw a line under his career in Bayreuth. Cosima now fell back on Hans Richter, who now became the musical mainstay, and attracted Karl Muck as Parsifal conductor and successor to Hermann Levi, who had retired for health reasons.
The Ring 1896
Cosima was now ready to take on a new challenge: the production of a new Ring. Max Brückner painted the sets, still relying on Hoffmann's old designs and with even more realism in the details which pleased Cosima immensely. The whole mise-en-scène hardly differed from the premiere in 1876. A few scenes were changed with a view to greater realism: the Walkürenrit was performed by children moving across the stage on wooden horses and Fricka's carriage was drawn by two real rams. Unlike the 1876 premiere, the press now focused on the performance rather than the work itself. The whole was considered stronger as the sum of its parts. Carl Perron's Wotan was weak, Vogl's Loge a triumph, Brema's Fricka received an adequate rating, Breuer's Mime and Friedrich's Alberich were excellent, the Rhine Daughters swam better than they sang, Sucher's Sieglinde was heartening, Emil Gerhäuser's Siegmund was disappointing. The sensation of the season was Ellen Gulbranson as Brünnhilde who was so successful that her double Lilli Lehmann left Bayreuth never to return. As Brünnhilde, Gulbranson then dominated the stage at Bayreuth until 1924.
Siegfried Wagner's debut as conductor was considered a flop. Strauss thought he was terrible. His conducting would improve little over time and although Shaw and Mahler praised him and he sometimes managed to reach great heights, his conducting was usually lifeless, mechanistic and of a sleep-inducing languor. Despite the amazing success of the festival, a deep-seated anxiety about the future lived in the Wahnfried home -the fear of losing Bayreuth's artistic pre-eminence and institutional hegemony and the constant worry about the family's artistic and financial fortunes. "40 million is what I need to give the Germans a festival; perhaps one day they will be given to me by a good soul, by a Jew who wants to atone for the sins of his race," Cosima said in 1889. Indeed, a real threat came from Munich where Ernst von Possart, the manager of the Munich court opera, was having an opera house built to the plans of Gottfried Semper also with the intention of performing Wagner's works. Bayreuth was in too weak a position to prevent this, but through the intervention of the Bavarian prince regent both parties were able to reach an agreement that was advantageous to Bayreuth. Thus was born in Munich the Prinzregentheater and it was agreed that Bayreuth and Munich would never program the same works nor engage the same soloists.
However, this did not eliminate the friction between the two houses: Possart was keen to bring Parsifal to Munich as soon as possible. The copyright for Parsifal would expire after thirty years in 1913 and Cosima's request to increase this copyright to 50 years was not granted. Even worse, the opera was first performed at the New York Metropolitan in 1903 with the artistic support of Munich. Bayreuth used all legal means to prevent this "profanation of the Grail" but saw its efforts unrewarded because the United States did not belong to the Berne Copyright Convention. Parsifal was performed on Christmas Eve and over the next two years had 354 performances in the New World. Cosima reacted with particular resentment and expelled all collaborators from Bayreuth such as Anton Van Rooy, Burgstaller and conductor Alfred Hertz.
Holländer 1901
Cosima's last production was Der Fliegende Holländer. As usual, she subjected the opera to her rigorous analysis, meticulously studying the previous productions of Weimar 1850 and Munich 1864. Brückner was again responsible for the sets and Maximilian Rossmann for the costumes. With its very naturalistic sets, the production was again very conventional and entirely original was Cosima only with her decision to run the opera without an intermission and to have the scene changes happen behind closed curtains. The press was unanimously positive and the work became more popular than it had ever been. In these years around the turn of the century, the Wagner dynasty was doing well and, thanks to Groß's cunning, the festival capital exceeded the one million mark and the family fortune was able to grow to four times that. But with the "Hausverbot" of Franz Beidler, who was married to Isolde and claimed a larger role in the festival for himself, the family had its first major quarrel. Siegfried, too, had his problems. Although he had already fathered an illegitimate child in 1900, he lived the life of a licentious homosexual and rolled from one scandal to another, of which Cosima knew nothing and from which the loyal Groß managed to rescue him each time.
In 1906 Cosima resumed her "Tristan und Isolde" which was again positively received. It was her last season. In December she suffered several severe heart attacks that left her severely weakened in a mentally comatose state until her death in 1930. The time had come for Siegfried Wagner to take over the dynastic torch.