Perhaps he should have tried to drape himself in velvet instead.

March 1, 2007 7:18 AM

What does one wear to Ride the Valkyries? A silk dress? Something with "richness of the material, width, ruches, flounces, bustles, ribbons ..."? Apparently Richard Wagner, the neckbearded, anti-Semetic, hero to Adolph Hitler may have had a little skin problem. Or maybe a fetish. Or both. Either way, he did so like the feel of satin against his skin. Perhaps Wagner should have gone with thevelvet. In any case, this news will make Fritz Freleng appear even more brilliant for having cross-dressed Bugs Bunny in the 1945 cartoon Herr Meets Hare (where Bugs appears as a Wagnerian heroine dancing with Hermann Goering).
posted by scblackman (23 comments total)

Hare Meets Herr (1945)^WP
posted by cenoxo at 8:18 AM on March 1, 2007 [1 favorite]

Herr Meets Hare
posted by cenoxo at 8:20 AM on March 1, 2007

Ah. The power of YouTube. Nice find, cenoxo. Lest we forget ... Kill the Wabbit.
posted by scblackman at 8:40 AM on March 1, 2007

I had heard this before, but it's interesting to see some actual evidence (kind of; it's still conjecture, but I'm convinced).

A meticulous diarist, Cosima never mentioned the arrival of these items in her daily journal entries, "fuelling speculation that Wagner may in fact have ordered the dresses for himself," according to Stewart Spencer, writing in the Wagner Journal.

I was going to make a crack like, "Cosima was an early blogger," but then I started digging around on Wikipedia... and the Wagner family is really interesting:

Wagner's bisexual son Siegfried, an opera composer himself, became conductor of the Bayreuth Festival. Siegfried eventually married Winnifred Wagner (née Klindworth), who would become an early admirer of Hitler; while he was imprisioned after the Beer Hall Putsch, she sent him stationary on which he may have written Mein Kampf. Winnifred's friendship with Hitler no doubt caused some friction between her and her daughter Friedlinde, who did radio brodcasts of anti-Nazi propaganda from the US during WWII. (Friedlinde, a conductor herself, would go on to teach Michael Tilson Thomas, currently the Music Director for the San Francisco Symphony).

Wolfgang Wagner (son of Siegfried and Winnifred, grandson of Richard Wagner, great-grandson of Franz Liszt by way of Cosima Wagner) is still the artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival. Tickets are allocated by lottery, and there is a five- to ten-year wait. I should order mine now.
posted by the_bone at 8:43 AM on March 1, 2007 [2 favorites]

How anti-semetic was this guy? In my hazy memory I remember a big debate on how he was held up as this symbol of nazi hate because of the Fuhrer's taste in music but probably wasnt more of an anti-semite than any of his contemporaries.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:47 AM on March 1, 2007 [1 favorite]

Great Horny Toads! There's a Bugs Bunny In Drag forum on Yahoo!
Takes off hat to comb hair back. Bouquet in hand, clicks on the link...
posted by hal9k at 8:48 AM on March 1, 2007

I think Wagner's anti-Semitism is overplayed. Certainly he was very critical of Jewish culture for artistic reasons. He was also in debt most of his life in an economy dominated by Jewish money. He publicly had very close Jewish friends, so it isn't a simple situation.

More than anything, it is the Wagner worship in the Reich that created and maintains the anti-Semitic aura that surrounds Wagner.

For the most part, stick to his operas to understand him. If you do this you won't end up anti-Semitic, but you will worship him like everyone else.
posted by ewkpates at 8:55 AM on March 1, 2007

(It's Adolf.)
posted by muckster at 9:31 AM on March 1, 2007

For the most part, stick to his operas to understand him. If you do this you won't end up anti-Semitic, but you will worship him like everyone else.

I know his operas fairly well, and don't worship him. They're mostly pretty overwrought, IMO, though brilliantly crafted. And a few are downright terrible (I mean, Tristan? Aside from the Prelude & Liebestod, UGH).
posted by LooseFilter at 9:43 AM on March 1, 2007

From the Guardian article:

A meticulous diarist, Cosima never mentioned the arrival of these items in her daily journal entries, "fuelling speculation that Wagner may in fact have ordered the dresses for himself," according to Stewart Spencer, writing in the Wagner Journal.

Gasoline, indeed: absence of evidence is not evidence. As detailed as Wagner was with the appearance of his operas...

Many of Wagner’s own meticulous stage directions are scrupulously observed. In the first scene, Sieglinde, exactly as Wagner specifies, "with quiet deliberation opens the cupboard, fills a drinking horn and then sprinkles some herbs into it from a box." Then, just as indicated bar-for-bar in the score, she looks around to see Siegmund, who all the while is watching her. This precise choreography continues until "with a final look at Siegmund she goes into the bedroom and shuts the door behind her." The effect of such traditional staging is that we are untroubled by interpretative incongruities and find ourselves increasingly vulnerable to the insidious spell of the music.

...so may he have been with the appearance of his second wife Cosima (note satin dress.) Nothing more, nothing less.

If you had a patch of Erysipelas somewhere on your body (with no antibiotics available), would you prefer to cover it with wool, cotton, silk, or satin?

And, although it's obvious that Bugs Bunny knew Wagner — What's Opera, Doc? (1957)^WP — there's no evidence whatsoever that Wagner even met Bugs Bunny.
posted by cenoxo at 9:58 AM on March 1, 2007

Nietzsche contra Wagner.
posted by clevershark at 10:38 AM on March 1, 2007

He publicly had very close Jewish friends, so it isn't a simple situation.

I read Toulmin and Janek's 'Wittgenstein's Vienna' a while back and there's a discussion in there of this general situation. Poor/working class Jews were much more subject to anti-semitism than Jews who were members of Vienna's cultural and economic elites. Presumably the latter were seen as Jews-but-okay-if-you-know-what-I-mean.

Theodor Herzl (father of modern political Zionism) was a big Wagner fan, being particularly fond of Tannhauser, which he saw in Paris while writing Der Judenstaat.
posted by carter at 11:25 AM on March 1, 2007

I also heard a segment on this on the BBC World Service this morning, with the editor of The Wagner Journal. The interview was backed with what the Beeb probably thought were some very butch excerpts of Wagner, against which the Wagner Journal guy struggled to make his point.
posted by carter at 11:45 AM on March 1, 2007

mr.loosefilter, perhaps your soul is a cold dead thing...
posted by ewkpates at 11:48 AM on March 1, 2007

(It's Adolf.)

Most of the time, but not always (text links).
posted by cenoxo at 12:14 PM on March 1, 2007

there's a lot of news like this coming out(?) lately: ... Chagall liked to wear makeup ...
posted by amberglow at 3:07 PM on March 1, 2007

How anti-semetic was this guy? In my hazy memory I remember a big debate on how he was held up as this symbol of nazi hate because of the Fuhrer's taste in music but probably wasnt more of an anti-semite than any of his contemporaries.

And his contemporaries were...... the Nazis, whom as we all know weren't anti-semitic at all. They were just Good Germans.
posted by Afroblanco at 3:28 PM on March 1, 2007

Afroblanco: !?...

Wagner: 1813-1883

Nazi Party: 1920-1945

Not contemporaries by any means.
posted by Pallas Athena at 5:42 PM on March 1, 2007

He was also in debt most of his life in an economy dominated by Jewish money.

Do expand on this, ewkpates.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:34 PM on March 1, 2007

just remember: Charlie don't surf!
posted by CCK at 9:01 PM on March 1, 2007

Afroblanco: !?...

Yeah. Umm, I guess I was wrong.

The point I was trying to make was that "no more anti-semitic then his contemporaries" isn't really much of a compliment if the people around him were anti-semitic. That said, I really don't know what the conditions were like in 19th century Germany.
posted by Afroblanco at 11:25 PM on March 1, 2007

>>How anti-semetic was this guy? In my hazy memory I remember a big debate on how he was held up as this symbol of nazi hate because of the Fuhrer's taste in music but probably wasnt more of an anti-semite than any of his contemporaries.
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:47 AM EST on March 1 [+ 1 favorite]

the fact that you can't even spell "anti-Semitic" correctly shows exactly how close you are to the pulse of this issue.

(btw, your memory is pretty fucking hazy if this is what you remembered about Wagner and anti-Semitism).
posted by naxosaxur at 6:43 AM on March 2, 2007

I think Wagner's anti-Semitism is overplayed.

"One sentence that Wagner wrote shocked me deeply... Wagner wrote that one day the German people would not shrink from their sacred duty to find a 'great solution to the Jewish problem.'".

Wagner's writings -- like the appallingly savage Das Judenthum in der Musik or the equally shameful Deutsche Kunst und Deutsche Politik -- are a blueprint for the Shoah; his music -- with its childish fascination with Ubermenschen and his cartoonishly bad theories on Christianity (such as his insistence that Jesus was most certainly not a Jew) -- the perfect soundtrack for the destruction of the Jews he hated so.

the irony being of course that he stole a lot of what's good in his music from Meyerbeer, who was Jewish.


Certainly he was very critical of Jewish culture for artistic reasons.

???

He was also in debt most of his life in an economy dominated by Jewish money.

tell us more about the "economy dominated by Jewish money", Herr ewkpates.
posted by matteo at 9:44 AM on March 2, 2007