Connecting opera to current, particularly American political events usually doesn’t work, and even more unlikely when the connection can be made, to an opera by Richard Wagner. Donald Trump has changed all that; in only ten days or so as President he has indicated a rather amazing parallel to the hero or at least to the title character in Rienzi, Wagner’s first and now quite rarely performed success.
The story of Rienzi came from a book by Edward Bulwer-Lytton who wrote of the 14th-century Italian populist leader who achieved temporary political success. A foe of the establishment and a representative of the people, though a military man, Rienzi became for a short time the popular leader, opposed by the aristocracy.
Wagner’s libretto, as opera will, focuses mainly on the romance between Rienzi’s sister Irene and the son of one of his patrician enemies, Adriano, but it does describe Rienzi’s rise and fall. He promised his people much; his was supposed to be a democratic and fair government. Unfortunately, like so many others he began to see himself more and more as embodying the government and believes that his acclaim by the citizens makes him supreme. The public eventually turns against him. His desires were originally honorable, but hubris takes over, and though he prays to God for help—one of the most memorable moments in the opera and one certainly the most performed—it doesn’t help him. The citizenry burn the capitol with him in it.
The opera was the first Wagner opera attended by Adolf Hitler, who much to the regret of Wagnerians, fell in love with the music and loved Wagner’s operas until his timely end. He never understood that Wagner was describing the overthrow of tyranny, not defending it.
The parallel to any modern situation in Rienzi has never occurred to me vis-à-vis the United States until the last ten days. Our new President, in carrying out what he said in his campaign, much of which was dismissed as talk, is doing exactly what he said he would do despite rulings, laws, and American tradition. His first moves were predictable though deplorable: moving to kill the Affordable Care Act without any substitute so that many millions would have no insurance, move against the environment in every way possible, offend as many of our allies while establishing a possible warm relationship with the one country that has been our opponent for most of the last seventy years, rate its dictatorial leader on a par with the democratic and responsible Prime Minister of Germany and, though the majority of people who elected him are suffering economically, create a cabinet composed almost completely of multimillionaires and billionaires. But now he has gone too far, as far as Rienzi did in ancient Rome.
In his decree stopping immediately all those coming from seven basically Moslem countries (modified blessedly by not excluding green-card holders) and proclaiming that immigrant Christians will be given preference to any Moslem coming into the United States, he has literally stomped on the graves of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, the immigrant Alexander Hamilton, and all the other founding fathers of this country, so extinguishing Lady Liberty’s torch. In choosing to exclude all immigrants from these countries without any consideration of their value to the United States or their reasons for coming here he has mocked not only our 240 years of tradition but mocked it by not including the three majority Moslem countries that have harbored terrorists or even mentioning Jewish immigrants from the countries he has banned. And why are the citizens of these countries given a pass? No one knows, but the evidence is so shocking that many dictators in the last century would not be so bold: he has hotels in those three countries.
Our tradition of freedom guaranteed by our Constitution, our courts, our whole political history demands that this man be stopped. Ronald Reagan referred always to America as a city on a hill, a beacon of democracy and goodwill to the world. While we still have the power to object, to let our somewhat passive representatives in the Congress of the United States know that we will not allow our flag, yes the flag that he has the nerve to say must be revered, be dragged in the mud of intolerance, prejudice and greed. We have many more constitutional safeguards than the fourteenth-century Italians had and can check this man in a Constitutional way. But we must, I think, let our representatives in Congress in both the Senate and the House know that we demand from them a dedication to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the 240-year life of this great Republic.
BRAVO, Speight! No one could have said it better.
The parallels are chilling.
Yes & yes. A sad time for our country & dangerous. It is difficult to keep a hopeful mind but I believe the true American spirit will prevail
Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker said your politics are pretty much determined by notions of human nature. We can see this fact among the Framers of the constitution. During 1795 the Feds, the men who wrote the constitution, passed a law saying that one had to be white to be a citizen. A person born in 1932, and who has a PhD from Berkeley said it was common knowledge before the 1960s that as gorrilas have flat noses, black skin and small brains, these are also characteristics of Africans, and in general forming a hierarchy for the races. Anthropologist Barbara King, at the college of William and Mary, said brain sizes increase as populations move north on the globe.
What’s interesting is that today each group of people in America reproduces, to varying degrees, the socio-economic conditions of their native lands. For instance, in San Francisco, Japan town resembles Tokeyo, and skid row resembles Africa, and so on.
Trump simply has a more inductive approach to assessing the sutibility of people for US residence. And given the many anamalistic terrorist actions leading up to the elections, the US electorate agreed that there is such evidence to limit who comes to the US. I hope this clarifies some basics.
I do not think this post clarifies anything. It is simply a piece of bigotry.
My statement is simply a series of scietific facts that we are blind to today because our intense belief is Christian universal love. Politics has to be based on the reality of human nature and not cosmic fantasyland.
Bravo Speight! Thank you!
Thank you for such an amazing and insightful analysis.
Well said, Speight. The parallels are frightening. I hope we can get out of this mess SOON.
I was terribly disappointed with the Seattle LA TRAVIATA for so many reasons. There was no context of time and place. The gratuitous introduction of Alfredo’s sister, whom the elder Germont hits without provocation, was absurd and irrelevant. The lack of any emotional connection among the characters was bewildering.
Leaving Violetta stranded on stage alone, at the end made no sense. Having Annina, Alfredo, his father and Dr. Grenville standing in the aisles of the theater showed her abandonment, but that’s not what Verdi intended. Fortunately the principal singers were excellent, except for Joshua Green, whose vocal quality was harsh and unfocused, Now I have to face the Met’s red couch and clock version. I’m inflicting it on myself only to see and hear Michael Fabiano.
I look forward to your future comments, Speight.
Thank you for saying what must be said!
I think you might have misspoken when you referred to Hitler’s “timely” death. He died after creating a war that cost 50 million lives. If Johann Georg Elser’s asassination attempt in 1939 had been successful, Hitler’s death would have been far me timely and saved the lives of those 50 million people.
I suspect Wagner would have been an avid supporter of Trump’s nationalistic racism and religious bigotry. The extravagant pomposity of Trump’s tastes as shown in his dwellings would have also appealed to Wagner.
John Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera” might be address our current situation. It satirized politics, poverty and injustice, focusing on the theme of corruption at all levels of society. It was also an anti-opera that satirized the conventions and artifice of Italian opera that was popular in London at the time.
It could be staged in a way that could also comment on the current cultural plutocracy (especially prevalent in the opera world) in America, including Trump’s talk of eliminating the NEA, NEH, and PBS. The values that brought us Trump are not exactly invisible in the “cultural country clubs” that surround opera in America.
The Beggar’s Opera was part of a once lively tradition of satirical ballads operas called Agustan Drama. It is quite predictable that tradition is absent from our time…
I think I would have disappointed if you had not negatively responded to my blog as you have at virtually every blog I have written. I agree that timely may have been the wrong adjective. Hitler’s death would have been timely at any point, before he rose to power, after, or certainly prior to September of 1939. As for your belief that Wagner would have approved Trump, I am happy again to disagree with you. Wagner’s anti-Semitism was deplorable, and his nationalism, though understandable when he lived, worked out very unfortunately for the world. But that he would have supported anyone as uninformed and anti-intellectual as Trump is not borne out by anything he did or said.
Speight Jenkins
Yes, I have many criticisms of the opera world, including the sanitation of Wagner’s racism and other aspects of his thinking which were all too often very crude. I’m sorry my ideas get your goat, so to speak.
It is interesting to consider how Trump might have fit with Wagner and the second half of 19th century Germany. As bad as Trump’s views are, in comparison they would likely have been considered somewhat progressive — as ironic as that might sound. The standards of humanistic consciousness have evolved greatly since then. Germany’s colonialist genocides in Herero and Namaqua in what is now Nambia give a hint of German and European views at the time. Overt racism was a central part of German society and 19th century cultural nationalism that left a legacy that exists to this day.
And of course, Wagner was an adherent Arthur de Gobineau, even if they had some disagreements. Gobineau was the most famous and influential racialist of 19th century Europe. In 1881, Gobineau spent five weeks with Wagner as a house guest at Wahnfried. Trump’s racism pales in comparison to Gobineau’s.
Anyway, a person who had Gobineau as a house guest for five weeks, would have little trouble accepting the views of Trump. But alas, the opera world continues to live in its delusions which is one of the reasons it has become so stagnant and increasingly irrelevant.
Well said! I join the consensus of agreement.
Incidentally, if you are feeling inclined to delete Paul Berlin’s comment: Few would blame you, but it may be helpful to leave it posted as a reminder of a Trump supporter’s thought process, and of exactly what we are fighting.
You have described the reign of Barrack Hussein Obama to a tee! What an amazing and incredibly accurate comparison. Thank you!
And thank you for clarifying that Wagner’s music supersedes politics and is to be enjoyed no matter how far-left or far-right are the beliefs of the listener.
Carl says “I am an idiot”
Thanks, Speight, for such a fascinating analysis of both Rienzi’s message for us today and for your powerful indictment of the current threat to our democracy, our freedom, and the safety of the citizens of our country made by the newly elected president and his administration.
Thank you for this.
Dear Mr. Jenkins
I could not be happier that someone of such esteemed stature in the opera/theatre/art world has spoken up about this. Thank you. Perhaps it is because you are retired that you have the freedom to speak so bluntly and clearly. Because so many of the large arts organizations depend on contributions from donors who may support the despot who currently sits in the Oval, many arts leaders will remain silent. If any group of people should speak up, take a stand and present works that reveal these truths in times like these, it should be those of us in the arts who, through our voices, tell the stories and struggles of the human species. We should not be silent.
A handsome, suave, educated and elegant man with a beautiful wife and lovely children achieves high office and, despite all his election campaign promises, embarks on an eight year long rampage of murder and mayhem, whilst protecting the enormous wealth of his anonymous backers and punishing the poor. At the beginning of his time in office he has his portrait painted and whilst he retains his good looks the portrait metamorphoses into a grotesque, stupid, ignorant and illiterate bigot with a yellow face and small hands.
My choice of an opera that connects to today’s America would be Lowell Lierbermann’s “A Picture of Dorian Gray”, a production of which was staged in Boston just 10 days after Trump’s triumph.
Well said Speight. I always enjoy reading your comments. And for the record I am NO relation to Paul Berlin, who by the way might want to consider using a dictionary to correct his spelling errors.
Great comparison with decaying Rome and the USA, Thanks Speight.
One only needs one crook to do away with everything, Founding Fathers et all..
I prefer to compare him with Alberich. All this gold, all these “achievements” through money. No love, no compassion, nothing. Only cruelty, humiliation, subjugation from a deeply resented and insecure villain against anybody upholding basic human values.