jools at the opera

[jasonioni]

there is a line (season 1?) that I just don't understand at all. Having gotten Jools Siviter out of the opera house, Harry asks "Don't you find it the most repugnant music ever?" Does he mean "Die Walkure" or that production of it? Do people no longer like the music itself because the composer was a pig? I thought that has been the consensus for decades?

Or was he just trying to piss him off?

I'm not standing on a soap box, it's just bugged me for years.

[Philippa]

My guess is that Harry is referring to the music itself. Wagner is not to everyone's taste, so my guess is that Harry prefers a different kind of classical music. I myself like to listen to classical music as well from time to time, but I don't really like Wagner either.

[Kazters]

yeah i think it was harry not liking the wagner he is a classical man (the image of harry liking say the rolling stones, the beatles or the clash makes me giggle) but as said above wagner is an aqquired taste

[HellsBells]

Yes I think that Harry is inferring that real connoisseurs of classical music would not be listening to Wagner's Die Walkure. Although I personally love that piece of music, but then I don't listen to that much classical music.

[binkie]

I think the reference is, as much as anything, an early indication of the tricky balancing act Harry performs between being entirely Them, or entirely Us. There are all sorts of complexities of class, education, association, networking and politics involved in the relationship between Harry and Jools, between Harry and the Service, and between Harry and his very particular perception of (the value of) patriotism. The Wagner comment highlights several of these, all of which are underpinned by centuries of development and counter-development in terms of the making and un-making of cultural constructs and intellectual consensus.

Wagner is an extremely contentious, even toxic, figure in the history of the creative arts. His anti-semitism, racism and proto-eugenic politics bled into his work. Furthermore, because of his extraordinary contemporary popularity, and the extent to which he was happy to play the part of a sort of 19th-century sleb, the communication of his opinions and attitudes accompanied his work in the wider world. He does, though, suffer somewhat by association in retrospect: Friederich Nietzsche was an admirer of his, and was a member of his intellectual retinue. The appropriation by the National Socialist movement of elements of Wagner's and Nietzsche's vision of Man-in-the-World (and the constitution of what it meant to be German in that world - even at a time when Germany did not really even exist) continues to exert negative influence over any rehabilitation of the work of either man.

Harry, it appears, is less willing than Jools to be charitable about concepts of art existing in a vacuum. For Harry, if Wagner was a proponent of a compromised intellectual expression - and, worse than this - was an object of hero worship for a man whose intellectual and political compromise was so utterly and devastatingly horrendous to behold, this is all there is worth knowing of Wagner. Jools, it is implied, has no interest in the man, or the historical backdrop or development of application of his works or his philosophies. He just likes the rousing tunes: the actual Sturm und Drang. Jools has had a better, more expensive, education than Harry. But Harry is the man with the brains - the man who sees the bigger picture.


There is, of course, every chance I'm just spectacularly over-thinking this

[HellsBells]

Thanks for the insight, binkie!
I'm with Jools on this one, I just like the rousing tunes.

[binkie]

(28-03-2011 01:49 PM)HellsBells Wrote:  I'm with Jools on this one, I just like the rousing tunes.

Well, quite right

There is, of course, an alternative reading of Harry's comment which is just that he dislikes Jools anyway, and is more than happy to use the Wagner excuse as a handy cover! Jools, I suppose, will merely conclude that this is an example of Harry's intellectual immaturity.


I know this much about opera

[A Cousin]

For me, Wagner's music is best described by Rossini when he said that "Wagner has wonderful moments, and dreadful quarters of an hour."

I think that binkie has hit the political implications on the head - as usual. (Very well stated!) I think the specific choice to use The Walkyrie is interesting as well. There is a helluva lot going on there. I am dredging this up from many moons ago, but first, some back story.

I like to think that Wagner's most popular operas fall into 3 periods. (There is an earlier period but I'll just conveniently recitative past those. Few bother to produce them - Wagner and his descendants included!)

The first is his Dresden period in which he wrote Der Fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser,and Lohengrin. These three operas (my personal favorites of his) are of a more traditional operatic nature. Wagner himself pretty much disowned them just as he was exiled from Dresden for revolutionary activity with the Socialist wing.

Period two and three I like to call BS (before Schopenhauer) and AS (after Schopenhauer.) (*vague puns intended*) Die Walkyrie lands at the tail end of the BS period and is generally considered that opera the best balances the Composer's own theoretical principles of Drama and Opera. Simply put, music is of secondary importance to the elements of drama. His idea was to hit the spectators in the emotional gut, as it were. He succeeds with Jools. Not so much with Harry.

Then Wagner became aware of Schopenhauer and it all went to hell in a hand basket from there as it all descends into an over blown sense of musical importance. Even Neitzsche turned on him after The Ring because he thought Wagner was pandering politically and religiously to the new government. Jools:Harry::Wagner:Neitzsche, if you will. (Not overall, philosophically speaking, just in the pandering to the government bit.)

And now I am probably spectacularly over-thinking this, too. So, binkie, I'll buy you a drink some day!

[Tea Lady]

Not sure I can add much to this debate other than I have only ever purchased one Opera CD and that was Tannhauser. Loved it.

As for Harry, well he certainly does love some opera. Remember Lucas asking him what his favourite opera was in S9? Harry obviously loves it enough to discuss with work colleagues.

[binkie]

(29-03-2011 07:25 PM)A Cousin Wrote:  And now I am probably spectacularly over-thinking this, too. So, binkie, I'll buy you a drink some day!

So glad you stopped by A thread like this will always benefit from some insight into the actual work of actual art in question.

I'll have a glass (or two, since, really, I should buy you one too) of Jura, thanks. Yum