Misunderstandings and Hopes
"Asmodeo monitore settimanale dei teatri" ("Asmodeo: Weekly Monitor of Theaters") is a newspaper printed in Milan from 1872 to 1889. On its pages very interesting Wagnerian news from all over Italy appeared. Its title contains the name of a lame devil trapped in a bottle, a sort of genie ready to release cutting reviews and judgments ranging between the severe and the humorous aspects of theatrical life in the Boot. This article, written on May 9th and published on the 16th of the same month in 1883, reports the Roman news of the first performance in German language of the Ring at the Teatro Apollo (demolished in 1888). Angelo Neumann's traveling company had reached the capital with its train, and Alfredo (the correspondent's name) describes the impressions of the audience of Rome in front of Wagner's masterpiece, on stage since April 28th, 1883, with the Rheingold.
Interestingly, for today's reader, it is interesting to notice how duels based on the code of honor were still common at the time. A duel only hinted at and imagined by the journalist who explains that a letter in the article not corrected by the proto (the chief typographic worker who distributes the model copies for printing) changed the adjective describing people who came to the city from outside Rome for the wedding of the royal Princes Tommaso di Savoia and Isabella di Baviera-Wittelsbach from "exotic" to "erotic."
A colourful introduction then swiftly moves on to the description of the Wagnerian staging, not so much appreciated by Rome's audience, who believed they were facing a new Lohengrin (the first Roman production dated back to January 3rd, 1878, at the Teatro Apollo) but instead had to witness a performance devoid of singing and entirely declamation. "This innovation is rebuked by Italian musical sentiment," the reviewer polemically concludes. Alfredo presents a certain amount of hope: "the time will come" when even Italians will know how to appreciate Wagner who, according to the journalist, should not be evaluated for the absent melody (evidently Wagner's endless melody was a concept far from the Italian sensitivity of the late nineteenth century, more used to the melodic arias of melodrama) but for the "mechanical" yet perfect and complex instrumentation, which, we could say, is "German" rather than "Latin," icy rather than fiery.
"In the Nibelungen, Wagner does not musicalize the drama, he instrumentalizes it," so much so that, Alfredo continues, the singing is so monotonous that it could be suppressed. Therefore, the direction of Anton Seidl is much more appreciated than the declaimed singing of actor-singers, who climb on the notes to lead an action that is not at all understood by the correspondent. Only the instrumental pieces seem to attract his attention, proving that, in 1883, the year of Wagner's death, Italy at the end of the century was not yet ready to move on. It's amusing to note how the Marquis Francesco Flores d'Arcais, a prominent critic whom we will revisit in our articles of the Digital Wagner Library, fell asleep throughout the first act of the Walküre. This is a detail that our journalist had no choice but to tell it, being one of the most fashionable music critics of those years. Alfredo doesn't dwell on the singers, inviting Milanese people to go to the theater themselves to follow the show which, after Rome and Turin, was supposed to reach the "moral capital," that is Milan, as defined by the Neapolitan Ruggero Bonghi, journalist of the daily newspaper "La Perseveranza" in 1881, on the occasion of the National Industrial Exhibition which took place in Milan. As the economic and industrial centre of the newly united Italy, Milan was therefore morally considered the capital of Italy.
The fact that this Alfredo was not exactly a competent and broad-minded music critic is evident from how he mistreats the great Hedwig Reicher-Kindermann, defined as "too Wagnerian," suitable for German halls and intolerable for the sensitivity of the "Bel Paese". We must keep in mind that the great Bavarian would die a few months later, in June, in Trieste after playing for the last time the part of Brünnhilde, her piece de resistance. The critic also does not support the cuts made by conductor Seidl to the so-called (improperly) "recitatives" which were too long for the audience of Rome, thus preventing a complete and transparent judgment of Wagner's work. It is recalled that the audience was almost entirely German and strictly immobile. And in any case, Alfredo concludes, at the Costanzi Theater, Il Trovatore and Tamagno are raging. Verdi's pyre still clearly triumphs over the much more articulated and challenging one of the Valkyrie. Wagner's times in Italy, especially in the capital, were not yet mature.
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