Jesus of Nazareth and Other Writings

Rating:
Summary: Wagner's Collected Writings, Volume 8
Review: Late in life, Wagner published his complete writings: Gesammelte Schriften (GS). In the 1890's, William Ashton Ellis translated them and they were published in English in 8 volumes. They were originally published by London:Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. as "Richard Wagner's Prose Works". In 1995, they were reprinted in this country. Title not withstanding, this is volume 8 of that set. This volume contains various bits and pieces that were not a part of the original GS, and is more like an appendix to the original series. There are some important pieces, but in the end it is not that much more valuable than the other 7 volumes in the series.

1)The first piece is the complete, original prose poem for Siegfried's Tod (50 pages). It has the happy ending where Siegfried and Brunnhilde enter Valhalla together rather than Ragnarok.
2)The next section (200 pages) is labled by Ellis as "Discarded". These are not really discards, but were not included by Wagner probably because he did not have access to them while preparing GS. These works are essays, letters, and articles of little importance (you can probably skip every other sentence while reading them and not miss anything of importance).
3)The next section contains sketches for potential operas: "Die Sarazenin" (25 pages) whose plot bears a striking similarity to Rienzi, "Das Liebesmahl der Apostel" (5 pages) which Wagner composed as an independent choral piece, and "Jesus of Nazareth" (60 pages), Wagner's risible attempt to rewrite the New Testament.
4)The last section (60 pages) is a mish mash of unpublished fragments found in various manuscripts. It begins with "Kunstlerthum der Zukunft" - Artisthood of the Future (20 pages). In spite of its incomplete state, I found this essay to be more decipherable than most of Wagner's other pieces, but only because it contains his main points without the usual rhetorical conflations. You will also find a brief, one page prose sketch for "Die Sieger", another potential opera but this time about Ananda, Prakriti, and Buddha (here, the theme is unrequited love, and the plot is similar to Tristan).

For those who are interested in the other 7 volumes of this series, here are the titles: The Art-Work of the Future (volume 1), Opera and Drama (volume 2), Judaism in Music (volume 3), Art and Politics (volume 4), Actors and Singers (volume 5), Religion and Art (volume 6), and Pilgrimage to Beethoven (volume 7). Note that the book titles were assigned by the American publishers (Bison Books), and are merely the name of just one of the essays in the book and do not constitute the entire book's contents. The exception is Opera and Drama, which is a book-length essay constituting the entirety of volume 2.


Rating:
Summary: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO...RICHARD WAGNER?
Review: More than just a dry run for his liturgical Christian music drama PARSIFAL, the German composer's personal look at the life of Christ merges the traditional Passion story with his own brand of revolutionary politics, proving true novelist Reynolds Price's words that "virtually all post-Gospel lives of Jesus [have] told us far more about their authors than their subject." Yet for a man so often identified with anti-Semitism, readers will be surprised that Wagner's mystery play is remarkably free of racial bias or slurs. Not only are the Jews not scapegoated as the Christ-killers of Medieval lore, but the portrayal of Judas as a heroic freedom fighter echoes the portrait in Nikos Kazantzakis' THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. (One wonders if this interpretation tricked down to Kazantzakis during his intensive studies of Wagner friend-turned-foe Friedrich Nietzsche.)

All in all, fascinating material not only for musicologists, historians, and Wagnerites, but for those interested in the Christology as seen though the eyes of historical personages.