Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
This comprehensive history of opera's oldest summer music festival is directed to the general, music-loving public. Regular attendee Spotts supplements his own perceptions and collection of programs with numerous published sources in German and English. He presents Bayreuth, perpetual showplace for only seven of Richard Wagner's operas, as a cultural icon whose history represents not just the composer's art and his family's functions and dysfunctions but wider German artistic and political ideologies and influence from the late 19th century until today. When the repertory is unchanging, new interpretations such as this keep critics talking and writing. For large music collections.-Bonnie Jo Dopp, formerly with District of Columbia P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
Stressing that ``Bayreuth demands seriousness'' of attendees--the author himself has attended every year since 1955--Spotts, who had the cooperation of the Richard Wagner-Gedenkstatte at Bayreuth, here presents a study of due seriousness, a knowing, engrossing, opinionated overview of the shrine that Wagner established to himself in 1876. The material on the founding of the Festival, and on Cosima Wagner's management of Bayreuth from 1883--following her husband Richard's death--to 1906 is familiar, although no less involving for that, as is the contemporary information. But Spotts's research into the Nazification of the Festival and the Winifred Wagner-Hitler friendship makes this a seminal study for a new generation. Because, as the author notes, Wagnerian opera was perceived among Germans as an extension of nationalism, the composer became Messiah and Bayreuth the last bulwark of true German values. Spotts reviews Winifred Wagner's administration of the Festival after the death in 1930 of her husband Siegfried (Cosima died that year as well), the composer's son, who, in 1915 at age 45, married the 17-year-old German-bred British orphan out of fear that his homosexuality would be exposed. Hitler and his devoted Winifred kept Bayreuth functioning throughout WW II, with the Fuhrer underwriting expenses for his War Festivals; annually he rewarded up to 30,000 of his troops and war workers with free attendance to Bayreuth. Spotts, a former member of the American Foreign Service, also tracks the uncertain fate of Bayreuth under the Allies, until the Festival reverted to the Wagner family in 1950, dual control passing to Winifred and Siegfried's sons Wieland and Wolfgang. It took Wieland's genius to de-Nazify Bayreuth and make it a vital Festival, shows Spotts, who is critical of Wolfgang's management after his brother's death in 1966. If Bayreuth is, as the author argues, a simulacrum of the German nation, it is no less so for devotees of Wagner. The Nazi connection is known at least in outline to younger Wagnerites but is little discussed. Spotts does the music world a service by confronting that legacy. Photos not seen by PW . (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
CHOICE Review
From its inception in 1876, the Wagner festival in the small Bavarian town of Bayreuth has been sui generis. Site of the Festspielhaus, still considered the world's most perfect venue for opera, and for many years the only place one could hear Parsifal, Bayreuth has taken on the aura of a musical Mecca. Spotts (Center for European Studies, Harvard) has produced not only an exemplary history of the festival, but also an indispensable book about Wagner and his legacy. The Wagner family has always controlled the festival. Leadership passed dynastically from the composer to his widow, Cosima; then to their son Siegfried; to Siegfried's widow, Winifrid; then to their son, Wieland, and his younger brother, Wolfgang (who became director on Wieland's death in 1966). Although Spotts is evenhanded in addressing each of the directors' virtues and flaws, heroes emerge, particularly Wieland, whose postwar series of revolutionary productions introduced a revisionist view of Wagner's oeuvre in universal, rather than German nationalistic, terms. Ironically, the other period of outstanding artistic achievement was the 1930s: Siegfried's British-born wife, Winifrid, was an early and ardent supporter of Hitler. An intimate friendship developed between them, which may have been more than Platonic in light of Siegfried's homosexuality. When Winifrid became director upon Siegfried's death in 1931, the Nazis gave her a unique degree of artistic freedom, which resulted in the intelligent choice of Heinz Tietjen as general manager and Wilhelm Furtw"angler as conductor. Spotts's mastery of this fascinating material is complete and his writing is an unalloyed pleasure. Highly recommended for all collections. E. Gaub; Villa Maria College
Booklist Review
Few artists have been as central in their nation's culture as Richard Wagner, whose operatic syntheses of myth and nationalism intoxicated Germans from 1870 until 1945. He intended his operas to be sacral, and to ensure their sacramental essence would be recognized, he created a summer festival for them at an out-of-the-way Bavarian village, Bayreuth. Spotts traces that festival's development from 1870 to the present. To this day, the Wagners run the festival, so Spotts gives a thorough account of them as well as of the festival as an institution. As he does, he proffers telling insights on the festival's impact on Germany and makes a convincing case for the operas' influence upon Hitler's rise to power, a case that includes chilling descriptions of the festivals during the Nazi period. Further, Spotts' discussion of the denazification resulting from Wieland Wagner's efforts to modernize the staging of the operas is particularly good: Wieland wanted to restore something of his grandfather's original mythic intentions, but the new productions provoked the fury of those who correctly felt the changes constituted a condemnation of the Nazi near-past. A provocative and accomplished study. ~--John Shreffler
Kirkus Book Review
A smart, splendid account of the world's most famous--and quirkiest--serious music festival. Less than a century elapsed between the age of Mozart, when musicians were the servants of great princes, and the age of Wagner, who made royalty his servants and idolaters. The crowning act in this unparalleled social role reversal was the erection in the early 1870s of a temple in which to stage the Meister's lengthy music dramas, particularly the four-opera, 19-hour Ring cycle and the ``sacred festival play'' Parsifal. It was (and still is) a peculiar, wooden barnlike structure on a hill in a drab, sleepy, and otherwise undistinguished provincial German town. Yet for 118 years, the Festspielhaus has hypnotized the world's musical and social aristocracy, who brave the August heat, the uncomfortable seats, and the cramped accommodations to sit in hushed reverence for hours of music--afraid to cough or stir for fear of their neighbors' icy glances. It's all very German, and Spotts, an associate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard, does not slight the story's darker side: Bayreuth's symbolic significance as a shrine for German nationalism and, ultimately, fascism and anti- semitism. Richard Wagner died before the festival was a decade old; its management passed to his widow, Cosima, and later to his children and grandchildren. Unsurprisingly, given his own craziness, Wagner spawned a sizeable population of difficult characters and a few genuinely talented artists, in particular his grandson Wolfgang, a superb director who dragged Bayreuth into a new age of theatrical innovation after it had been tarred by the racist brush of the older generation. Spotts decribes them all perceptively and is also good on the unusual acoustics of the theater itself, with its famous hooded orchestra pit. An important, elegantly written, deeply engrossing cultural history of this unique (and uniquely strange) cultural institution.
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BookPublisher: New Haven : Yale University Press, 1994 1996Description: x, 334 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.ISBN: 0300057776; 0300066651.Subject(s): Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883 | Bayreuther Festspiele