Lohengrin

It is a nineteenth-century telling of a widespread medieval myth about a knight who appears on, with, or in a boat drawn by a swan to save a falsely accused damsel in distress. (By the High Middle Ages, this myth accrued features of a dynastic legend, filling in some potentially embarrassing gaps in the noble lineage of the leader of the Crusades, Godfrey [Gottfried, in German] of Bouillon). And while there are militaristic and nationalistic elements in Wagner’s operatic treatment of Lohengrin that present problems for the modern audience, there is also an eternal question at its core that speaks to everyone: How well can we really know the people we love? How hard should we even try to know them?

Lohengrin was composed during Wagner’s final days in Dresden, before his sympathies for the revolutions of 1848 made him an exile for the subsequent decade and a half. The premiere was given in Weimar under the direction of Wagner’s then-acquaintance and future father-in-law Franz Liszt. The available resources for this premiere in 1850 were universally acknowledged to be inadequate: Lohengrin needed a large, well-trained orchestra, chorus, and group of soloists, as well as a certain monumentality in the production. Wagner, on the run, was not even present for the premiere and didn’t hear the opera until 1862. But even as early as 1850, Wagner was realizing that his works—those already written but especially those he was only conceiving—required a level of production entirely different from anything then available. He espoused his new ideas and aspirations in volumes of prose such as the tract “The Artwork of the Future” in 1853. In expressing these ideas, Wagner set a somewhat condescending if still affectionate tone for the operas he had already composed.  Those critics who came after and who were more Wagnerian than Wagner himself too often took this assessment at face value. It became typical to look at Lohengrin, the last of Wagner’s works to even be called an “opera” as opposed to the later “music dramas” (i.e. Tristan und Isolde, the Ring, et al.), as a sort of stepping stone necessary for the vulgar masses to approach the rarified later works.

This was exciting debate in 1870. It is of historical interest now, but no more than that. It doesn’t matter anymore whether an opera is through-composed in the manner of late Wagner or Verdi, or built of older forms such as arias and duets. All that matters is whether or not the opera is good. And those critics who still regard Lohengrin as merely a transition from Wagner’s romantic youth to his intellectually magnificent maturity are depriving themselves of one of opera’s greatest treasures. Lohengrin might well be Wagner’s dreamiest creation, in every sense of the superlative term. The heroine Elsa introduces herself by relating a dream; she wins the protagonist’s affection and the audience’s by this revelation. Moreover, the opera invites the listener into a dream state, and what we do with those dreams is up to us. But beware: the dreams engendered by Lohengrin are potent, and they can be toxic.

One of the first people to grasp the power of the dream nature in Lohengrin was King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and he held his love of the story and the opera throughout his life. Indeed, some have doubted Ludwig’s sophistication because of this: Did Ludwig appreciate the music, or the faux-medieval pageant? But Ludwig can never be dismissed—the traditional view of him as an archetypal victim, a sad and insane homosexual with a frenzied passion for Wagner, has given way to a more complex view of this remarkable man.  

Ludwig grew up in a castle associated with the Lohengrin legend—Hohenschwangau, in Bavaria, sits on a lake supposedly visited by the Swan Knight. Frescoes on the walls of Hohenschwangau depict the legend, and Ludwig was fascinated with the tale from a young age. It was the first Wagner opera he saw, and it was the first Wagner opera he ordered produced—expense be damned—at the Court Theater when he attained the throne at the age of eighteen. Ludwig occasionally dressed as characters from Wagner’s operas, but his emphasis on Lohengrin was extraordinary:  He had a suit of armor made of silver to wear as this character. When Bavaria suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Prussia during a brief but important war in 1866, ministers had to wait in the antechamber with the necessary papers while the king dressed as Lohengrin to receive them. In the Throne Room of the Munich royal palace, (to which, despite its public-sounding title, very few were admitted), medallions of the French kings Henry IV and Louis XIV adorned the walls while the room contained one statue of Saint George, one of Lohengrin, and a bust of Wagner.
One detail of the tale, particularly as presented by Wagner, has not received enough attention. What seems to have interested Ludwig most was the swan. This appears in the names of Hohenschwangau (“High Swan County Palace”) and Ludwig’s most famous architectural fantasy, Neuschwanstein (“New Swan Castle”). The swan is represented in paintings and carvings throughout those two palaces. But it also makes notable appearances in Ludwig’s other residences as well. Swans clutter his desks and writing tables in several palaces, and are painted and carved on those walls as well. At Linderhof—a rococo jewel box whose exteriors recall Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon at Versailles and whose interiors are homage to the intimate royal life at the eighteenth century French court—Ludwig constructed a Venusberg grotto. The Venusberg is a reference to Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser, but Ludwig floated about the grotto in a mechanical swan boat in the manner of Lohengrin. Ludwig’s most extravagant palace was Herrenchiemsee, a reproduction of the Château de Versailles itself—or as large a chunk of it as could be finished in Ludwig’s abbreviated lifetime. The swan had a central role even in this monument to Louis XIV. On the single occasion when Ludwig was known to entertain at Herrenchiemsee, guests were transported by mechanical swan boats to an island in the lake, where they smoked and took after-dinner coffee. 

For years, it was assumed that Ludwig’s first obsession, Wagner, was replaced with his later idol, Louis XIV, but the evidence in the palaces and the figure of the swan oppose this idea of one obsession replacing another. But then what are we to make of Lohengrin’s swan at the grandiose monuments to the Bourbons at Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee? Was it really a case of Ludwig merely being insane, with no further rhyme or reason? Actually, Ludwig—“insane” though he may have been—seems to have had a more profound sense of symbolism than his chroniclers, and Wagner’s operas and the Bourbons were sensibly conflated in his mind. For starters, the swan is the means by which the hero is delivered. If Wagner was the hero who would revivify Germany through art, then Ludwig (in his role as the “absolute” monarch who willed the impossible) was the means by which the hero would be, and indeed was, delivered to the nation. Moreover, we must remember who the swan is in the opera: he is Gottfried, Elsa’s brother, the legitimate King of Brabant, transformed into a swan by the evil Ortrud, and transformed back into his true form by Lohengrin’s prayers at the end of the opera. He is the Past and the Future, and therefore the embodiment of the twin obsessions and insecurities of the dynastic monarch: legitimacy and continuity. This is why he appeared among signs and symbols of Bourbon absolutism.

Both legitimacy and continuity were core issues in Ludwig’s reign—the first because he had it in abundance and the second because he lacked it. Ludwig’s family was among the most ancient in Germany, and everyone agreed he had what many other German princes only aspired to—the right to reign. It was this ancient lineage that secured Ludwig a grudging role in the creation of the German Empire, the Second Reich (the First Reich, or realm, was the Holy Roman Empire, referred to in the libretto of Lohengrin and finally abolished in 1806; the Third Reich was yet to come and will also figure in the story of this opera).

The Iron Chancellor of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck, convinced Ludwig to compose a letter “inviting” King Wilhelm of Prussia, to assume the title of Emperor, or “Kaiser.” Ludwig agonized over this chore, but he did write the letter, and the Empire was born, Ludwig providing its veneer of legitimacy. And shortly after this, Ludwig’s personal finances were augmented as miraculously as anything in the Grail stories, no doubt facilitating such pet projects as the construction of Neuschwanstein and the Bayreuth Festival House.

However, the question by the 1870s became whether legitimacy mattered anymore. Already a constitutional monarch, Ludwig’s role as a king became entirely symbolic after the declaration of the Second Reich: Thus his obsession with Louis XIV and Absolutism, which had become as distant a dream in its own way as the knights of the Grail were.

The mirror concept of legitimacy—dynastic continuity, was another story altogether. Ludwig never married—his one engagement called off without explanation. Historians have knowingly shrugged off Ludwig’s failure to produce an heir as an obvious by-product of his homosexuality, but that is not a sufficient explanation. Europe’s history is full of homosexual monarchs who rallied to the dynastic cause—or who at least made the arrangements necessary to appear as if they had done so. Even the most flagrant homosexual of Versailles, Louis XIV’s brother Philippe, Duc d’Orleans, (“Monsieur,” as he was known) produced heirs. This Orleanist line was, in fact, being seriously considered for a restoration of the French monarchy in the 1870s. It is unthinkable that Ludwig was unaware of this historical precedent. Nor is impregnating a princess such a unique accomplishment that Ludwig could not have managed it. It seems more likely that Ludwig failed to produce an heir, not because of his deficiencies, but rather because of that keen insight that he alone among his contemporaries seemed to possess at times. He knew that an heir simply didn’t matter anymore in this post-monarchic world. That knowledge would have made the subject of dynastic continuity more poignant. It would have increased his obsession with the symbol of the swan, Elsa’s brother Gottfried, the once and future king.

These are only some of the issues that Ludwig must have discerned in the myth of Lohengrin. But the story contains so many diverse elements, and of such bizarre natures, that one can only guess what it has meant to the subsequent historical characters who have responded to it. These include Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, whose curious relationship to the operas of Wagner included a keen interest in Lohengrin.  The suffragettes made a fetish out of Wagner at the turn of the last century, and the opera they would have seen and heard the most then was Lohengrin. A generation later, Adolf Hitler became a great admirer of this opera—whether primarily of the story or of the score, we do not know. There was no shortage of Nazi catnip in the libretto—warnings about invasions of the Fatherland by barbaric hordes from the East, appeals to the unity of that nebulous entity known as the German “Volk” (“Folk”), and so forth. Even the bizarre choice of the common German word “Führer” as a title for Hitler might well have had its origin in the opera’s libretto (when Lohengrin tells the assembled, unified Germans to accept Gottfried as their “leader,” “Führer”). It’s a wonder Hitler didn’t bust a gut during this opera. In fact, he almost did just that during a Bayreuth production of Lohengrin by Emil Preetorius in 1936, which stressed the pageantry and militarism in the opera with a gigantic chorus and legion of extras. Hitler was so impressed with this production that he offered to send it as a package to the English King Edward VIII as a coronation gift. (Edward declined the offer—not out of political or esthetic scruples but rather since opera in general bored him. In any case, the coronation never happened).

Perhaps the ultimate statement on the dream-power of this opera, and one that acknowledged Hitler’s connection to it, was made by Charlie Chaplin in his film The Great Dictator. Music from Lohengrin’s ethereal prelude appears in the movie’s most iconic scene, in which Chaplin, as a parody of Hitler, dances a fantasy ballet with a globe. It is a pas de deux between the lover and his beloved (the world), and the lover’s batting eyelids and delicate demeanor cannot belie the fact that the goal here is total conquest and domination. Less famous, inexplicably, is the second use of the Lohengrin prelude in the film’s climactic final scene.  The Hitler character’s look-alike, a humble and oppressed Jewish barber, is mistaken for the dictator just before a great party rally (looking very much like those held during that decade at a Wagner-redolent location, Nuremburg). The barber makes the speech the dictator should have made in a perfect world, denouncing the domination imperative and urging people to resist brutality while the exact same music plays as in the world-domination ballet.

The point is clear and important: Art (in this case, Lohengrin) is morally neutral in itself, but it is extremely powerful. It can—it will—have either a toxic or transcendent effect on you, the listener, and you are responsible for the results of that choice. Chaplin made a strong comment on the power and lack of power in art, one that should be borne in mind when there is any discussion of Wagner’s astounding art.
 
William Berger is a writer, radio producer, and commentator for the Metropolitan Opera. His books include Wagner Without Fear, Puccini Without Excuses, and Verdi With a Vengeance.
 

Can you talk a little about your concept of this production, specifically Lohengrin and his relationship with Elsa?

The most problematic character in this opera is Lohengrin himself. He can come across as a distant, self-contained character who never gets emotionally engaged. I started thinking about his existence in Monsalvat, living with his father, Parsifal. His father has a wife, because they produced Lohengrin and his brothers, the noble lineage of knights, but he and his brothers are not allowed to marry. They’re obliged to travel the world performing miracles, but they are denied the miracle of love. I thought of Lohengrin as a lonely wanderer, a suffering individual who sees himself as a slave to his father. Desperately seeking redemption, he finds it in Elsa. He wants to experience the miracle of human love with her, and he is prepared to sacrifice his immortality to do it.
 
Why do you think the myths that Wagner dealt with in this piece matter today?

In a world that’s full of grubby politics and contains little spirituality in day-to-day living, the notion of miracles is very appealing—something that disturbs, shocks, lifts us out of our sometimes humdrum lives. Someone once told me that every storyline is essentially the same: a stranger comes to town.  Based on this paradigm, Lohengrin is the archetypal story.  His arrival is the inciting incident that changes everything. On a fundamental level, Wagner is tapping into exactly what we look for in many of our cultural outlets today, whether we’re going to the opera or the movies.
 
How does the period you’ve chosen to set this production in relate to the time period that Wagner chose?

Lohengrin is a love story set against a background of impending war, with a clear political and military context. In the end, you either put the singers in abstract costumes or you put them in clothes—in which case you have to base yourself in some period. Of course, one is at liberty to remain in the tenth century of Wagner’s libretto, but the production then has to find ways of making a chorus of eighty move (or, worse, not move) in clanking medieval armor.
I felt that finding a relatively contemporary political and military context to place the story in which to place the story would be more exciting and relevant for the audience, and I was immediately drawn to studying the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Our Lohengrin is not set in Hungary in 1956, but it’s inspired by the events of that time.  There are helpful parallels between Wagner’s original tenth-century setting and our period: a power vacuum after the leader has died/resigned, with rival factions battling to fill that vacuum. In Hungary, you had the rebellious group wanting to cut ties to Russia, fighting those who had previously been supported by Stalin and Khrushchev. In our version, that is expressed by the battle between the group of Elsa’s rebels against the pro-Soviet group supporting Friedrich von Telramund. The essential military and political contexts of the Hungarian conflict and Lohengrin are invitingly similar.
The difficulty in updating Lohengrin is that people may think the period equals the concept, even if it’s actually of secondary importance to the story we are telling. The idea of Lohengrin renouncing his god-like status to experience human love was the emotional core of the piece for me. I believe that the period that we’ve chosen to frame the story in gives it even more emotional resonance.

 
How do you deal with the swan in the period you’ve chosen?

There’s no doubt that when Wagner conceived of a swan pulling a boat down the river, it would have been an extraordinary effect—just as boys flown in on clouds must have been incredible in the time Mozart wrote The Magic Flute. But looking at that today feels like something we’ve seen before. Aesthetically we’re used to it, and our tastes have changed.

The point of the swan is that he’s Gottfried, the heir to the Brabantian throne. Since Gottfried’s murder at Ortrud’s hands, Lohengrin has preserved his life—containing his soul in the body of a swan until Gottfried can again assume human form at the end of the opera. In the Prelude, we present the swan as a young boy (with magical wings) in an upstage outer world beyond Brabant. He and Lohengrin complete a long journey to the edge of Brabant, where he remains until the moment when Lohengrin summons him back into human form.
 
How are American audiences different from those you’ve encountered in Europe regarding their sense of adventure in experiencing new settings for operas?

The early pieces that I’ve done for American audiences [Wozzeck with the Santa Fe Opera and The Cunning Little Vixen here in San Francisco] were not widely known; many people were experiencing them for the first time. They came in with an open and curious mindset, and their response was wonderfully visceral.

The challenges lie with pieces like La Traviata, which I recently staged in Houston, where the audience is much more familiar with it. There are certain expectations that are probably a little more conservative than in Europe, where there is a longer operatic tradition and where (in Germany, for instance!) one is likely to get booed for not being different or unexpected. In the Traviata that I just did for Houston, which was set in the original 19th century, I did make some subtle changes, and I tried to share those thoughts through forums and interviews so that the audience understood I was trying to make the piece as effective as possible.

Having already done Lohengrin in Houston, my sense was that some were expecting it to be set in the tenth century and were quite surprised when it wasn’t. But I feel that most of those people were won over by the story that we told. What I hope they came away with was the sense of something I believe to be fundamental to how we experience opera: you can certainly set Lohengrin in the tenth century, but it’s extremely unlikely that such a far-away period—when coupled with the physical distance at which we usually experience opera productions, as opposed to film or television—will allow for the kind of emotional engagement and clarity of character presentation that was our aim, and which I hope we achieve in our production of Lohengrin in San Francisco.