COMMENTARY : Wagner vs. Wagnerism in Israel

Tonight was supposed to be the night in Tel Aviv. If all had gone as planned, Daniel Barenboim would have led the Israel Philharmonic in a historic concert devoted to music by Richard Wagner.

The German composer--who died in 1883--has been virtually outlawed in Israeli concert halls for decades. In 1938, 10 years before the founding of the state of Israel, a passionate anti-Nazi named Arturo Toscanini led the Palestine Philharmonic in a Wagner program. Then came the long silence, predicated in small part on Wagner’s documented anti-Semitic philosophies and in great part on his posthumous popularity with Adolf Hitler.

In 1981, Zubin Mehta dared to perform some Wagner as an encore. This controversial move met with massive disapproval. The experiment has not been repeated in the interim, much less expanded.

Now, Barenboim’s program, which was to have included excerpts from “Der fliegende Hollander” and “Tristan und Isolde,” has been postponed. The cautious management of the orchestra has decided to poll its 36,000 subscribers to ascertain if Wagner is still unacceptable to Israeli sensibilities.

Insiders say that the plan to play the potentially inflammatory music will be abandoned even if no more than 20% of the responses are negative. For most practical purposes, the postponement looks permanent.

It is easy, even from this distance, to understand the hostility toward Wagner. The Germans misused his music and distorted his ideology during the Third Reich. Siegfried--the archetypal blond, blue-eyed bully--became a symbol of Aryan power. An anachronistic swastika adorned the festival meadow in Berlin performances of “Die Meistersinger.” Bayreuth served as the Nazis’ Valhalla, while strains of the “Liebestod” rang with grotesque irony near concentration camp gas chambers.

For anyone who survived the Holocaust, the associations must be agonizing. No one should have to listen to music--any music--that causes pain. Still, listening remains a voluntary experience. The proposed Barenboim concert was to have been a non-subscription event.

Ironically, Wagner can be heard on state-run television and radio in Israel. Wagner CDs can be purchased in Israeli record stores. Israelis drive Volkswagens with impunity and import countless commercial goods from Germany. The musicians of the orchestra actually voted 39 to 12 (with 9 abstentions) to break the Wagner ban.

Nevertheless, some observers feel a public performance represents some sort of desecration. Fears run deep.

One member of the Israel Philharmonic board analyzes the situation bluntly. Opponents to the concert, he says, “are trying to save Wagner as the last symbol of the Nazis, and they don’t want to let go of it.”

The conflict is elemental. It pits artistic freedom against political rigidity.

America witnessed the same conflict, to a minor degree, when the Metropolitan Opera banned Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” between 1941 and 1946. Apparently, the authorities didn’t deem it proper at the time to cast a sympathetic light on an Asian heroine. Cio-Cio-San, the innocent geisha longing for the fine day when her American lieutenant will return, was the enemy.

Some enemies are more useful than others.

One doesn’t have to be a Nazi to be a Wagnerian. Nor does one have to admire Richard Wagner to appreciate his music.

The man was a vain, manipulative opportunist whose dubious theories on race and ethnicity demand to be judged within a specific historical and sociological context. Anti-Semitism did not preclude his anointing a Jewish disciple, Hermann Levi, to conduct the premiere of “Parsifal.” Levi’s “Christian feelings,” we are told, earned Wagner’s special commendation.

It may be worth noting that the most important interpreters of Wagner at his own shrine in Bayreuth today happen to be Jewish. Barenboim conducts the “Ring.” James Levine conducts “Parsifal.” They couldn’t do the same in Tel Aviv.

The abiding theme of “Der fliegende Hollander,” which was supposed to have been heard in Tel Aviv tonight, is redemption through love. It isn’t a bad idea, even if it comes from Wagner. For all his personal bigotry, the composer repeated it at the Leitmotivic climax of the “Ring.”

Acts of violence--theoretical as well as physical--usually succeed in damaging the cause that they are supposed to reinforce. Sympathy tends to go to the victim.

While touring Israel in 1953, Jascha Heifetz had the audacity to play a violin sonata by Richard Strauss. A German de-Nazification court had cleared the composer five years earlier on charges of Nazism. That did not prevent an Israeli extremist from striking the violinist’s right hand with a steel bar at the stage door of a Jerusalem concert hall.

The immediate victim in Israel today is democracy. When a society finds it necessary to stifle controversial sounds, whatever the avowed justification, that society may stifle controversial ideas as well. The precedent is dangerous. Call it censorship.

Barenboim identifies the enemy as ignorance. “There are a lot of people in Israel today,” he says, “who still think that Wagner lived in Berlin in 1942 and was a personal friend of Hitler.” The conductor argues persuasively that no serious orchestra should deprive itself or its audience of the music of this giant of romanticism.

The Nazis banned Jewish composers from German concert halls. The Jews ban Wagner from Israel. The motives differ. The result, alas, is the same.