Fall 2011 - The Boston Wagner Society

Wagneriana
Zu dir, Frau Venus, kehr’ ich wieder,
In deiner Zauber holde Nacht.
—Tannhäuser
Fall 2011
Volume 8, Number 4
From the Editor
T
his fall brought us two terrific events. On September 24 Sirius XM and Metropolitan Opera’s charming host
Margaret Juntwait gave a talk titled “The Met on the Other Side of the Camera and the Microphone,” followed by an opera quiz in which she awarded CDs to those who answered her questions correctly. The College Club was the perfect venue for this intimate and fun get-together, which was followed by an informal reception. For photos of the event, see page 8.
On October 30 the talented filmmaker and writer Hilan Warshaw gave a fascinating talk and presentation on the
influence of Wagner on films, with rare video footage. Although the talk was a repeat of last year’s event, there was
so much new material here that it might as well have been part 2 of the same topic. For those who could not attend,
there is a DVD available of the lecture and video clips.
We are now planning winter and spring events. On February 24, Music Advisor Jeffrey Brody will present Visconti’s marvelous film Ludwig. On April 22, Maestro Brody will give a lecture/demonstration titled “The Unknown
Wagner-Humperdinck Collaboration,” featuring the world premiere (since 1882) of Humperdinck’s Parsifal music.
In this issue you will find two reviews of the Metropolitan Opera’s simulcast of Siegfried. In addition, there is a
review of Tannhäuser in Paris, appropriately followed by an article by member and art historian Donald Rosenthal
on paintings of scenes from this opera.
–Dalia Geffen
The Visual Aspects of Lepage’s Siegfried
Siegfried, Metropolitan Opera simulcast in HD, November 5, 2011; conductor: Fabio Luisi; Brünnhilde: Deborah
Voigt; Siegfried: Jay Hunter Morris; Mime: Gerhard Siegel; the Wanderer: Bryn Terfel; Alberich: Eric Owens;
Erda: Patricia Bardon; Forest Bird: Mojca Erdmann; stage designer: Robert Lepage
T
hough I should suspend judgment on the 24 planks of the 45-ton
“machine,” I begin to doubt its worth. Yes, a metal frame seems
very appropriate for an opera whose three key events involve
metal: the forging of Nothung, the smashing of Wotan’s spear, and the
lifting of Brünnhilde’s breastplate. But perhaps the machine’s benefits—
a unifying focus for action, a shiny background, a varied division of the
stage into separate areas—are outweighed by its disadvantages: the
creaking, danger to the performers, and huge costs to reinforce the stage
(we must all dread the danger that the Met might join City Opera in financial collapse).
But the stunning visual aspects of this production almost made me
forget the machine at its heart, especially the three-dimensional projections with a technology never before used in a theatrical production. Yes,
there were other stunning visual aspects: costumes, props, lighting, and
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Heldentenor Jay Hunter Morris with the
dragon in Lepage’s Siegfried at the Met
superb acting. But the three-dimensional projections often made me feel I was watching reality. Never had I seen
an actual Forest Bird, much less one that responds rhythmically to the singer’s voice as she sings. (Didn’t Lepage
use a similar dance in The Damnation of Faust simulcast that first brought him to the attention of most of us?) And
the projections dominated the entire opera. First came the cave, near the brimming waters that cool Nothung as it is
being rebuilt. This is the ideal background for Siegfried’s and Mime’s angry resistance to the learning that their
teacher, the Wanderer, seeks, vainly, to impart. Next, Act 2 makes us see the forest with flocks of birds shimming
through the trees. And in Act 3 projections make us see the earthy depths where Erda sleeps—another unsuccessful
teacher. (The opera’s only successful teacher is Brünnhilde, who unwittingly teaches fear to Siegfried.) Finally, projections enable us to view the rocky mountaintop and ring of fire at the climax.
Yet when in the simulcast interview Lepage and Peter Gelb thanked their Siegfried for being the salvation of the
production in real life as he was for Wotan in the opera, we realize that technology always comes second to the performance of great singing actors in achieving the visual aspects of opera. No matter what the technology is, it’s the
performers who ultimately make us see the drama: The comedy of Mime’s greed and Siegfried’s ignorance (peaking at “That is no man!”), the struggle for world power in the wrangling between Mime, Wotan, and Alberich—
ironically, won by Siegfried, who doesn’t know what he’s won, the hero’s growth to manhood by overcoming a
series of obstacles, and finally, the gradual awakening to joy of the two lovers in the happiest finale of all the Ring
operas. Not a bad actor among any of these six principals!
If the most striking image is the Forest Bird, we should note that the Forest Murmurs scene symbolizes how
modern technology opens up new areas of understanding to the modern audience, with visual effects Wagner
could have scarcely imagined. The taste of dragon blood enables Siegfried to hear Mime’s concealed murderous
intentions, just as today’s technology enables our Forest Bird in 3-D projection to be guided by the rhythms of the
singer crooning her message. Even more important, the taste of dragon blood that awakens Siegfried to danger is
comparable to the simulcast technology that was nonexistent a decade ago yet now makes it possible for far more
than a million viewers in 56 countries to simultaneously watch the glorious opera with the world’s best singeractors. Wagner’s dream of the total work of art is at long last fully redeemed.
–Reginald McKeen
Reginald McKeen has been a member of the Boston Wagner Society since 2004.
Siegfried a Slap at Wagner
I
was incensed by the visual and directorial presentation of Act 3, Scene 2 in Siegfried as presented by the Metropolitan Opera. In this glorious scene we are supposed to experience a huge change from the previous acts. Instead we got an ineptly staged dark scene. This is inexcusable in any context. The ascent of the music in the high
strings is supposed to signify a light and airy realm. This change is part of Wagner’s design in the musical arc—
from dark to light—and in the visual contrast between the cave and the forest. I have seen quite a few variously
designed Rings—from realistic ones to abstract ones—and this change has
always occurred. If this failure is due to the need to keep the stage’s luminosity low for the projections, then let’s do away with them. Just a bright
sky would do. This is the happiest moment in the Ring, a glorious ending
in C major, and Lepage has slapped it in the face!
My reaction was especially strong because, after having liked the first
act of Siegfried, I was prepared to rethink my reaction. Alas, each of the following acts strengthened my negative response to this staging of Wagner’s
Ring, and this mountaintop scene was an insult.
As for the “machine,” it was used successfully only in the first act. It
was set up so as to leave in many locations—the cave, outside by a stream,
and above the cave. For the rest, I felt that the machine restricted the singers’
Heldentenor Jay Hunter Morris and
movements, resulting in banal direction.
Soprano Deborah Voigt
Brünnhilde as Somnambulist
In Die Walküre, we had left Brünnhilde suspended upside down where she is supposed to sleep for about 18 years.
Well, it seems that she walked in her sleep because Siegfried finds her lying horizontally on the mountaintop!
On Fabio Luisi’s Conducting
Luisi’s timings were close to Levine’s, but his interpretation was off the mark. This was especially evident in two
cases: (1) There was no aural highlighting of the shimmering strings during the “Forest Murmurs” section, with the
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result that the scene passed by uneventfully; (2) the prelude to Act 3 was mushy. There was no delineation of the
different motivic strands that build to a great climax. Even the timpani rhythms were underplayed.
The Cast: Strength Where It Counts
Jay Hunter Morris is a Siegfried that I want to hear and see again. His fresh, youthful voice and agile acting created
a believable character. His interaction with and response to the other characters was good, and only in the final
scene did I notice that he was looking at the conductor. Gerhard Siegel as Mime created a character who was slowly losing his mind. He sang the role without whining and acted without caricature. Bryn Terfel’s Wanderer was a
joy to hear. His lightweight bass-baritone allowed him to sing with great feeling, and yet he was able to deliver the
vocal power needed in his confrontations with Mime, Erda, and Siegfried. Eric Owens as Alberich sang very well
but did not seem hostile enough in his scene with the Wanderer. The Forest Bird was well sung by Mojca Erdmann,
and its realization through active projection was excellent.
Deborah Voigt’s Brünnhilde was disappointing vocally. Her awakening did not create a climax. She improved
later in the act but never achieved vocal ecstasy. As with Morris, she was seen looking at the conductor a lot.
Vocally, Patricia Bardon’s Erda was good, but the staging of her interaction with Wotan created an expectation
that something unique was about to occur when she left her mountain cleft. However, except for the moment when
the Wanderer touched her lightly, nothing exciting happened. What a shame, for this scene could use some new
thinking.
The closeups in the HD allowed us to see the expressive facial features of all the singers, and the sound continued to be excellent.
–David Collins, M.Ed.
David Collins, a member of the Boston Wagner Society, is the resident lecturer for Opera Boston and teaches opera appreciation in the Greater Boston area.
A Highly Appealing Tannhäuser in Paris
Tannhäuser, Opéra national de Paris, October 6, 2011; conductor: Sir Mark Elder; Tannhäuser: Christopher
Ventris; Elisabeth: Nina Stemme; Venus: Sophie Koch; Wolfram: Stephane Degout; Hermann: Christoph
Fischesser; stage director: Robert Carsen
P
aris was enriched in October by the quality and variety of the productions presented by the Opéra national
de Paris. Standards over the past few years have been impressive, and my recent experiences confirmed my
positive views.
My latest trip was ostensibly yet another in my pursuit of the talents of Klaus Florian Vogt, the erstwhile hero of
Lohengrin in Bayreuth. He was singing the title role in La clemenza di Tito at the Palais Garnier, and I was keen to
hear him assay the Mozartean fach, a medium in which I imagined he would excel. To my surprise, my greatest
thrills came instead at a performance of Tannhäuser at Opéra Bastille, heard at its season premiere on October 6.
My summer experiences in Bayreuth had further sensitized me to the bombast, irreverence, and challenges of
Regietheater, so it was gratifying to encounter the validity and integrity of Robert Carsen’s conceptualization. It
shared a commonality with Katharina Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, in that both productions represented the artistic process in terms of the visual rather than the aural medium. Tannhäuser was transmuted into a
painter. His artistic output in the Venusberg was reflected in the frenetic, feverish excesses of his prolific red canvases, cluttering the stage in the opening sequences. By the time this scene ended, everything was awash in red
paint—the stage and protagonists were inundated by a carmine torrent. As with the revelry ending Act 2 of Die
Meistersinger, I wondered if the stagehands could ever succeed in restoring cleanliness to the effects of this colorful
stagecraft. Although the sheer density of the action tended to detract at times from one’s appreciation of the music,
the overall impression was captivating. For the most part, Carsen’s theme was intelligently sustained throughout
the opera in a rational, integrated and uniform fashion. Empty wooden stretchers, devoid of any canvases (or imagery), were later carried by the pilgrims. The final scene displayed canvases representing humankind’s highest
artistic achievements through the ages. The directorial concept remained relevant and provocative without insisting on a viewpoint abstractedly divorced from Wagner’s libretto and/or score.
Sir Mark Elder elicited sumptuous playing from the pit. His approach was highly lyrical, often measured and
stately, and this reading revealed nuances in the score I had previously not appreciated. I am always educated and
expanded by discovering freshness and novelty at any performance. The music was suitably pompous, overbearing
and brash when required, and I found the conducting highly appealing. The chorus and orchestra were superb.
Christopher Ventris was an accomplished Tannhäuser, vocally and histrionically. His voice met the challenges
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of this cavernous auditorium, and he sounded as fresh in the Rome Monologue as he had been virile in the Venusberg. He maintained power, roundness of tone, and acting skills throughout.
Nina Stemme engendered wonder and admiration I had not experienced since I heard Leonie Rysanek sing my
first Elisabeth at the Met many years ago. At the beginning of Act 2, the house lights went up, and Elisabeth entered through the auditorium, eventually placing herself in front of the orchestra pit. Eyes ablaze, euphorically absorbed in the role, oblivious of the surrounding audience members, she launched into “Dich teure Halle” while
surveying the reaches of the house. Vocally and dramatically, it made for an indelible coup de théâtre. Her glorious
voice and dramatic skills were unflagging, giving a sympathetic, nuanced portrayal of Wagner’s selfless heroine.
Similarly, the entrance of the guests through the auditorium for the singing contest was an effectively calculated
procession.
Sophie Koch was an appropriately seductive Venus, singing with beauty and richness. Stephane Degout was
empathetic and supportive as Wolfram, and gave a praiseworthy performance with burnished voice.
Wagner’s characters rarely elicit in me the same emotional responses as do the heroes and the heroines of the
Italian and/or French repertoire. The figures seem more metaphysical and totemic, and my reactions are generally
more cerebral, detached, and analytical. I may be thrilled, enraptured, engrossed, and overwhelmed, but seldom
lachrymose. It is usually the music, rather than the words or stage actions, that deeply affect me in Wagner.
However, one particular moment in Act 3 changed these perceptions. Elisabeth sang her prayer from a mattress
in Tannhäuser’s stark and disorderly atelier. This was then followed by Wolfram singing to the Abendstern (Evening Star) from the exact same site, within the confines of Elisabeth’s contours on the mattress. The poignancy and
delicacy of the scene were irresistible, and the humanity and vulnerability of the two characters were sensitively
manifested.
The song contest in Act 2 was transformed into a competition on canvas and was surprisingly effective. Though
Tannhäuser’s painting was never displayed to us, I sat there fantasizing on what images might be represented to
cause such shock, horror, and scorn from the guests. The directorial concept was brought full circle in the closing
moments with an exhibition of the world’s most acknowledged and beloved paintings. It suggested the limitless
beauty and grandeur achievable when artistic creativity is channeled in the noblest direction.
I left the Bastille fulfilled, challenged, gratified, provoked, and excited. It had been one of those rare nights at the
opera when my expectations had been surpassed rather than deflated.
–Jon Brian Greis
Jon Brian Greis has been a member of the Boston Wagner Society since 2010.
Delacroix, Fantin-Latour, and Tannhäuser in Paris
I
n September 1859 Richard Wagner arrived in Paris for a stay that, with brief interruptions, was to last nearly
two years. Wagner’s goal was to obtain a production of one of his works in a Parisian opera house, and the
score he had in mind was Tannhäuser. The opera had had its premiere fifteen years earlier and had been succeeded by Wagner’s more experimental later scores, in particular the still unperformed Tristan und Isolde. Nevertheless, due to his long political exile from Germany, Tannhäuser was the most recent of his operas Wagner had actually seen performed on the stage. Wagner also had a particular interest in this work, which he continued to revise
almost until the end of his life.
During an earlier long and rather unhappy sojourn in Paris (1839–1842), Wagner had attempted to have one of
his operas performed, even offering to provide Rienzi in French for the Paris Opéra, but to no avail. This time, returning as a prominent composer and theorist with influential contacts, Wagner was determined to succeed.
Through the intervention of well-placed friends, Wagner obtained a decree from Emperor Napoleon III himself
ordering a full-scale production for March 1861 at the Opéra Impérial, the most influential opera house in Europe.
After twenty years, Wagner was at last to achieve his ambition of a production at the Opéra.
Wagner was, for once, impressed with the provisions made for his work. As he wrote in a letter published soon
after the production, “Every acquisition desired by me was forthwith carried out, without the slightest counting of
the cost; to the mise-en-scène a care was devoted such as I had never conceived before” (Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, April 7, 1861). The costumes alone cost more than fifty thousand francs, an extravagant sum for an opera
scheduled for a limited number of performances. Though strongly advised to follow the house custom of adding a
ballet in the second act (after the arrival of the guests in the Landgrave’s hall), Wagner proposed that the dance
music be placed at the beginning of the opera in the Venusberg scene, a revision he had had in mind for some time.
Despite the elaborate preparations, the production of Tannhäuser in Paris was a notorious fiasco. The story has
been told many times, though the precise reasons for the opera’s failure remain somewhat unclear. One German
musicologist at the time situated the debacle in a history of Parisian controversies over “foreign” operatic innova4
tions: from Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s La serva padrona in 1752 to Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Iphégenie en Aulide
in 1774 (E. Schelle, Der Tannhäuser in Paris und der dritte musikalische Krieg. Eine historische Parallele [Leipzig, 1861]).
Nevertheless, hostility to Wagner’s music does not seem to have been the cause of the problem: a series of concerts
of his own music that Wagner conducted in Paris in January and February 1860 was generally well received. Nor
was anti-German sentiment an issue: the Franco-Prussian War lay a decade in the future, and several German-born
operatic composers (notably Wagner’s bête noire, Meyerbeer) had been wildly successful in the French capital.
Wagner himself, in the same article, placed the blame squarely on disturbances caused by the members of the
aristocratic Jockey Club, who, he wrote, were irate because they were unable to admire their favorite danseuses from
the ballet corps, due to the club members’ customary late arrival in the second act. Although there were multiple
causes, the most important may have been political: Napoleon III was a dictator, unpopular with both the republican Left and the monarchist Right (including the Jockey Club). The Tannhäuser production was too closely connected to the emperor’s patronage; similar disturbances occurred at some other theatrical performances of the period,
again because they were seen as associated with the Napoleonic regime (G. Servières, Tannhäuser à L’Opéra en 1861,
2nd ed. [Paris, 1895], 120ff.).
A vast amount has been written about the influence Wagner exerted on composers, in France as in other countries; on prominent aestheticians and writers, most importantly the French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire, one
of Wagner’s strongest defenders; and even on philosophers, in particular Friedrich Nietzsche. Much less has been
said about the immediate effect the Tannhäuser production of 1861 had on leading visual artists in Paris. France was
then the center of the European art world, just as Germany and Austria were dominant in music. It was a moment
of artistic change, when the painters later known as the Impressionists and their circle were at the beginning of
their careers. The few pictorial works soon inspired by the Paris Tannhäuser production are in fact associated with
leading members of the artistic avant-garde.
One such work connected to Tannhäuser is a little-known finished painting in gouache (opaque watercolors) on
vellum. Depicting a moment immediately after the ballet in the Venusberg scene, the painting shows Tannhäuser
pleading with Venus for his freedom (Coninx Museum, Zurich/Glarus). Numerous secondary figures, corresponding to the nymphs, Graces, bacchantes, etc., of Wagner’s scenario, are loosely indicated in the middle ground and
background in the cave. The gouache is signed at the lower left—“Eug. Delacroix f[ecit]”—though this in itself is
not decisive proof of authorship. At the upper right an indistinct circular pattern, perhaps a collector’s stamp or
watermark, shows through the vellum. The work is rather large for a watercolor or gouache: 54 by 71.9 cm., or
about 21¼ by 28¼ inches (Berlin, Akademie der Künste, Die Symbolisten und Richard Wagner, 1991, 202 and 166).
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was the most famous painter of the European avant-garde during the second
quarter of the nineteenth century. A great colorist, Delacroix was considered the leader of the Romantic school, and
he had a profound effect on younger painters like Edouard Manet and the Impressionists. He made his reputation
with large, often violent, politically engaged paintings of modern subjects such as The Massacre of Chios and Liberty
Leading the People. Delacroix was also “musical”: he was close to the composer Frédéric Chopin and painted a large
double portrait of Chopin at the piano, watched by his mistress, the novelist George Sand.
The first issue to address in regard to the Tannhäuser painting is whether the attribution to Delacroix is correct.
The Tannhäuser story would have appealed to Delacroix for its medievalism, an aspect of Romantic taste that he
shared with Wagner. A number of authors have compared the painter and the composer. One of the first to do so
was Nietzsche, who, in a rather overheated passage, writes of his former mentor Wagner and the Romantics: “I
specially mention Delacroix, the nearest related to Wagner . . . great discoverers in the realm of the sublime, also of
the loathsome and dreadful, still greater discoverers in effect, in display, in the art of the show-shop; all of them
talented far beyond their genius, out and out virtuosi, with mysterious accesses to all that seduces, allures, constrains, and upsets; born enemies of logic and the straight line, hankering after the strange, the exotic, the monstrous, the crooked, and the self-contradictory” (Beyond Good and Evil, 1886, transl. H. Zimmern, 1907, 219).
In his late literary fragments, Nietzsche returns to the subject several times, describing both Wagner and Delacroix as, in his view, examples of sickness or neurosis (H. Weigel, W. Klante, and I. Schulze, Tannhäuser in der Kunst
[Bucha bei Jena, 1999], 170–71). Like Baudelaire before him, Nietzsche senses a Romantic striving for heroic excess
in the works of both the painter and the composer.
Delacroix very frequently painted literary, theatrical, or operatic subjects. He also painted mythological figures,
including a large Venus reclining on one elbow, for the ceiling of the Salon de la Paix of the old Hôtel de Ville, Paris
(1849–53; destroyed 1871). The strong, reddish tonalities, seminude Venus with exposed breasts, and crouching
leopard in the center of the gouache all have analogies in Delacroix’s work. Some oddities in the drawing, such as
the figure of Tannhäuser, who is in shadow and appears smaller than Venus (though also farther away, gesturing
toward the exit), may be compared to expressive distortions in Delacroix’s works.
On the other hand, the hothouse eroticism of the cave, though appropriate for the Venusberg scene, seems closer
to the style of later nineteenth-century painters who were influenced by Delacroix, most notably Gustave Moreau.
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Assuming the work has a Parisian origin, as seems likely, it must relate to the 1861 production, since Tannhäuser
did not appear again at the Opéra until 1895. The picture is not mentioned, however, in an excellent catalogue of
Delacroix’s paintings and drawings published in 1885. (A more recent Delacroix catalogue, in seven volumes, concentrates on oil and wall paintings.)
If Tannhäuser is by Delacroix, it is a very late work, but it was not in the auction sale of the contents of the artist’s
studio after his death in 1863. It could have been sold quickly out of the Paris area, and so Delacroix’s friends and
biographers would not have known of it. The painting was first reported in a private collection in Basel and was
sold at auction in 1971 (Lucerne, Galerie Fischer, sale no. 208, June 21–22, 1971, lot 878). The Swiss museum that
owns the work does not have information about its earlier provenance. By 1975 the gouache was in the collection of
Werner Coninx in Zurich (H. Barth, D. Mack, and E. Voss, eds., Wagner: A Documentary Study [New York, 1975],
color plate 128). Since connoisseurship does not seem to be conclusive, what external evidence, relating to Delacroix’s attitudes about music (and Wagner), can we bring to bear regarding his authorship of the painting?
As he grew older, Delacroix, though still a vanguard painter, became more conservative both politically and
musically. The painter’s famous Journal is filled with comments on the importance of form and structure in music.
Thus: “Mozart is superior to all others in the way he carries his form through to its conclusion” (April 21, 1853). At
the opera, Delacroix could still enjoy the works of the long-retired Gioachino Rossini but intensely disliked
Giuseppe Verdi’s more recent Nabucco and Il trovatore. At this period Delacroix, like most Parisians, had no direct
experience of Wagner’s music. During an excursion to Baden, where he enjoyed a performance of liturgical music,
Delacroix wrote of the society hostess Countess Marie Kalergi, who had highly praised Wagner and his music:
“This Wagner wants to be an innovator; he thinks that he has reached the truth; he suppresses a great many of the
conventions of music, believing that conventions are not founded on necessary laws. He is a democrat; he also
writes books about the happiness of humanity, books that are absurd, according to Mme Kalergi herself” (September 27, 1855).
Delacroix based this stern judgment at most on a second-hand familiarity with Wagner’s writings, perhaps including Art and Revolution (1849). Given this attitude, Delacroix’s “conversion” to completing a large, detailed gouache of a Tannhäuser around 1861 is surprising. At that period the artist, in poor health, was conserving his energy
to complete a major decorative commission for a chapel in the church of Saint-Sulpice, Paris. He rarely went out
socially and made no entries in the Journal between January and April 1861.
Though we do not know whether Delacroix attended the performances at the Opéra, he could have been familiar with the scenario for the revised Venusberg scene, which the gouache follows fairly closely. Wagner had published the libretto in a French prose translation in Quatre poèmes d’opéras (January 1861); the book also included a
lengthy “Lettre sur la musique,” usually known today as “Music of the future,” in which Wagner laid out his most
recent theoretical concerns. The letter was addressed to Frédéric Villot, curator of paintings at the Louvre and a
friend of both Wagner and Delacroix. Delacroix certainly must have been aware of the “scandal” of the Opéra performances and of Charles Baudelaire’s important book Richard Wagner and Tannhäuser in Paris (1861), which touches on the political issues associated with the production and also mentions Delacroix several times. Baudelaire had
been Delacroix’s leading critical supporter for many years, and the two men were in regular contact. Baudelaire’s
theory of the “correspondences” among the arts of music, painting, and poetry, outlined in the book, would have
appealed strongly to Delacroix.
Another pictorial version of Tannhäuser from this period had a much greater public visibility. The composition
was by a young painter, Henri Fantin-Latour (1836—1904), who was strongly influenced by Delacroix. Though not
a household name, Fantin is still well known in France today, mainly for one aspect of his work, his group portraits
of avant-garde artists and intellectuals (a circle of which he had an insider’s knowledge), executed in a nearly photographic realist style. Fantin himself set far more store on his imaginative subjects, painted with a loose and colorful technique; one of these was a large Scene from “Tannhäuser” that he exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1864, a popular exhibition that attracted thousands of visitors.
Fantin, an avid music lover, had purchased a ticket for the fourth Opéra performance of Tannhäuser, which
Wagner had canceled. He could have had access to the published libretto and/or full score of the opera, however,
and he chose the same “scene” as in the Zurich gouache, that on the Venusberg, for his painting. The choice was
certainly no accident, since the Venusberg scene and its ballet had been the principal focus of controversy during
the Paris performances of 1861. That this was not the only possibility may be seen in a work by another distinguished artist, the young German Anselm Feuerbach. In 1855 Feuerbach had painted an uncharacteristically
sketchy Tannhäuser (Museum Oskar Reinhart, Winterthur), fancifully based on the end of the opera, with a seminude Venus confronting three bishops (but not Elisabeth’s funeral procession) in the struggle over Tannhäuser’s
soul.
Fantin first approached the subject in 1862 in one of his earliest efforts in lithography, a medium that was later to
become his preferred means of expression. The monochrome scene, printed in only a few copies, already has most
6
of the compositional elements of the 1864 painting in
place, though reversed from left to right, a common strategy in transferring compositions between prints and
paintings. A reclining Venus looks up at an evasive
Tannhäuser, while dancing bacchantes fill the rest of the
foreground.
The final painting shown in 1864 is some fifty-one
inches in width, which would have been considered a
substantial size for a theatrical subject picture. Fantin has
used considerable artistic license in interpreting Wagner’s
libretto. The scene is placed outside the mouth of the cave,
rather than inside, before an expansive landscape. Although depicting the ballet scene, Fantin reduces the naiads, sirens, nymphs, tender couples, and bacchantes of
Wagner’s scenario to a few dancers and a musician, now
placed in the middle register. Venus rests her head on
Tannhäuser’s lap, rather than the reverse. In other respects, however, Fantin closely follows the French libretto: the
two principal figures are placed in the left foreground, and the background includes the bluish lake specified by
Wagner. Wearing a black costume that is closer to the Venetian Renaissance than to medieval Germany, Tannhäuser stares out intently, oblivious to both the dancers and to Venus.
The free brushwork and intense colors are indebted to old master painters, particularly the Venetians and Rubens, and to Delacroix. Though Fantin painted few imaginary subjects because he found them commercially unviable, he sold this one fairly quickly; today it is in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (L. Curry in LACMA Bulletin 16 [1964]). Almost the only other surviving picture by Fantin in this colorful, fanciful style is a canvas of identical size called the Display of Enchantments (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts). Rejected by the jury for the Salon of
1863, Fantin had shown the picture in the notorious Salon des Réfusés of that year, along with the scandalous
works of Edouard Manet and James McNeill
Whistler. The picture shows a young woman in
vaguely oriental dress arriving in a harbor, where
kneeling women greet her and offer gifts. Given
Fantin’s Wagnerian interests, it has been suggested that the picture shows Isolde arriving in Cornwall as the bride of King Marke, from the not-yetproduced Tristan und Isolde (Montreal Museum of
Fine Arts, Guide [1977]). The relaxed atmosphere
and orientalizing costumes make this unlikely:
the precise subject, if there is one, is closer to biblical themes such as the departure of the Queen of
Sheba after her visit to King Solomon (1 Kings
10:13), a scene of a kind much beloved by the Venetian old masters. This subject, like that of
Tannhäuser, had an operatic currency: Charles
Gounod’s grand opera La reine de Saba had been
produced at the Paris Opéra in February 1862.
Henri Fantin-Latour, Scene from “Tannhäuser,” oil on canvas, 1864
Fantin showed one other painting at the Salon
Digital Image © 2009 Museum Associates/
of 1864, a much larger group portrait entitled
LACMA/Art Resource, NY
Homage to Delacroix (Musée d’Orsay, Paris); of the
two pictures, it received nearly all the critical attention, an imbalance that largely has continued to this day. Though
painted in radically different styles, the two pictures taken together comprise an homage to Delacroix and perhaps
to Wagner as well. The center of the Homage is occupied by the image of a framed portrait of the recently deceased
Romantic master, which is surrounded by formally dressed members of the contemporary artistic and literary
avant-garde. The controversial painters Whistler and Manet stand flanking the portrait, while seated at the right
are two prominent art critics, Jules Champfleury and the poet Baudelaire, both of whom had published short books
defending Wagner. Seated on the left is Fantin, shown working in his shirtsleeves and holding his palette.
These three seated foreground figures are connected not only to Delacroix but to Wagner, whose Tannhäuser
Fantin celebrated elsewhere in the exhibition in a style strongly influenced by Delacroix. As we have seen, Delacroix himself, here represented by his posthumous portrait, evidently also had painted a version of Tannhäuser. In
Eugène Delacroix, Tannhäuser, gouache, c. 1861
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later years other French avant-garde artists, particularly Paul Cézanne and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, were to paint
scenes relating more distantly to Tannhäuser. After a visit to Bayreuth in 1876 for the first performances of the Ring
cycle, Fantin himself was to become a prolific creator of Wagnerian images, particularly in lithography. The Scene
from “Tannhäuser,” created in the wake of the controversial 1861 Paris production, nevertheless remains Fantin’s
largest and most ambitious Wagnerian work. Taken together, Henri Fantin-Latour’s two pictures in the Paris Salon
of 1864 may constitute a tribute to Richard Wagner and to the inspiration Tannhäuser provided to Parisian painters
and writers at a moment of intense artistic ferment.
–Donald Rosenthal
Donald Rosenthal holds a PhD in the history of modern art from Columbia University. He has been a member of the Boston
Wagner Society since 2009.
Photos of the Margaret Juntwait Event, September 24, the College Club
From left to right: Margaret Juntwait;
her husband, Jamie Katz; and Boston Wagner
Society members Janice and Darrell Christie
From left to right: Margaret Juntwait conversing with
BWS Member Anneliese Henderson
Photos by
Dalia and Paul Geffen
From left to right: President Dalia
Geffen sharing a happy moment with
Margaret Juntwait
From left to right: BWS Board Members
Brian Reasoner and Edward Pinkus in discussion
with Margaret Juntwait
______________
Wagneriana is a publication of the Boston Wagner Society, copyright © The Boston Wagner Society, Inc.
Publisher and Editor: Dalia Geffen
Proofreader: Erika Reitshamer
Logo design: Sasha Geffen
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