Educational Media Reviews Online

This interesting documentary explores Richard Wagner’s close yet complicated relationships with a number of Jewish musicians. Wagner’s anti-Semitism is well-researched and widely known; Israel has unofficially boycotted performances of his music since 1938. Yet his fondness for and connection with particular Jewish conductors and performers and his reliance on wealthy Jewish patrons was very strong throughout his lifetime. Like when Franz Liszt had sent 16-year-old Jewish virtuosic pianist Karl Tausig to Wagner, and Wagner looked after him paternally. After Tausig died suddenly, Wagner wrote an epitaph that is published on Tausig’s tombstone. Or when the young, mentally unstable pianist and transcriber Joseph Rubenstein—who had lived with the Wagners for years—committed suicide after Wagner’s death. Or when Wagner appointed well-regarded Jewish conductor Hermann Levi to premiere Parsifal at the 1882 Bayreuth Festival. The film spends a good deal of time examining Wagner’s racism in general, particularly any definable turning points, such as Wagner’s initial admiration of the wildly successful Jewish composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, who helped Wagner get started but whose accomplishments later earned great contempt from Wagner as penned in his anti-Semitic writing Judaism in Music (W. Reeves, 1910).

In the film we hear from several musicologists, Wagner biographers and experts, and conductors and composers, among them Zubin Mehta, Jan Swafford, and John Louis DiGaetani. The film also features fascinating and relevant primary sources provided by a number of museums, archives, and other cultural institutions: images of the people and places it explores, and voice-over delivered letters and other writings by the film’s subjects. Disc extras include extended interviews with Zubin Metha and others, a performance of Rubinstein’s Parsifal, and a couple interviews with the filmmaker. Highly recommended for viewing by the general public, as well as courses in Jewish Studies, Music, Religion, and History.