Wagner's Ring(worm) Cycle --
Los Angeles' Götterdämerung?
By Harley Schlanger
May 2010
 Richard Wagner 1813-1883 |
Printable 1-page leaflet (PDF)
As part of its commemoration of the 200th birthday of Robert Schumann, the Schiller Institute is continuing the fight that Schumann, his wife Clara, and leading associates, such as Johannes Brahms, waged against that anti-human, nihilistic degenerate, Richard Wagner. In addition to musical celebrations nationwide, featuring works by Schumann and his collaborators, the Schiller Institute will be distributing the leaflet (below) during the upcoming Los Angeles Opera production of Wagner's pre-Nazi "Ring Cycle," which is being presented as a $32 million multi-media extravaganza.It should come as no surprise, to those who know history, that the blaring and screeching of Richard Wagner's operas were the last sounds heard by many Jews on their way to their mass deaths, by gassing, at Nazi concentration camps. Wagner's “music drama” was the preferred “heroic” art form of Hitler and his closest allies.
What is surprising is that this anti-Semitic filth should be revived by the Los Angeles Opera at precisely the moment when President Obama and the gutless, immoral Congress have passed health care legislation which incorporates Hitler's death policy for “useless eaters,” under the guise of “saving money,” and when brutal budget cuts by that son-of-a-Nazi Governor Schwarzenegger are hastening the deaths of many poor, elderly and sick Californians.
Has L.A. Opera, which is careening toward bankruptcy, no shame? Does Los Angeles County have nothing better to do with $13 million, than bail out L.A. Opera, so that it can celebrate the monstrous sexual fantasies, and the cult of violence, of that vile anti-Semite, Wagner?
And what of opera lovers in L.A., who march into the opera hall, to be assaulted by a Disney-style multi-media extravaganza, of a story which fortified German anti-Semites in the justness of their cause, to eliminate the Jews of Germany?
You don't think Wagner was anti-Semitic? Read his despicable tract, “Judaism in Music,” which he first published anonymously in 1850, then again, in his own name, in 1869. Read Wagner's own words, in 1851, when he proclaimed, “My entire political creed consists of nothing but the bloodiest hatred for our whole civilization, and contempt for all things deriving from it....”
Read the true confession, “Twilight of the Wagners,” written by his great grandson, Gottfried Wagner, who wrote, “Richard Wagner, through his inflammatory anti-Semitic writings, was co-responsible for the transition from Bayreuth to Auschwitz.”
 Felix Mendelssohn 1809-1847 |
Wagner despised true classical culture, which was the legacy of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. His “Judaism in Music” was aimed at Felix Mendelssohn, whose crime, in his eyes, was the defense of that Bach tradition, against the assault of Wagner's “new” German music.
Despite the riches and fame bestowed on Wagner by Europe's degenerate oligarchy, there was one voice which refused to be intimidated, that of Clara Schumann, a collaborator of both Mendelssohn and her husband Robert. She wrote of “Rheingold”: “I decided to go see `Rheingold'. I felt as if I were wading in a swamp....The only good thing about the opera is that one is not deafened by the brass as one is in his other operas....The boredom that one must endure, however,is dreadful. In every scene the actors on stage are in a cataleptic trance....The women have just a few measures to sing in the entire opera and just stand around forever; in general they are all nothing but tattered, villainous gods.”
 View enlargement Clara Schumann (1819-1896) and Robert Schumann (1810-1856) |
Of “Tristan and Isolde,” she wrote that it was “the most disgusting thing I have ever seen or heard in my life.” It was an event, she concluded, “in which every feeling of decency is violated...the saddest thing I have ever experienced in my entire artistic life.”
Ironically, the only way L.A. Opera, and our civilization, can survive, is to return to that true classical culture, which Wagner was committed to destroy. If Nazis and modern anti-Semites wish to wallow in this garbage, that is their prerogative.
However, the citizens of Los Angeles, and L.A. County, deserve better. I recommend you join with the Schiller Institute, in commemorating the 200th birthday of Robert Schumann, on June 8.
Harley Schlanger
Schiller Institute
