Supervisor cites Wagner’s anti-semitism, use in propaganda.

Controversy looms as the Los Angeles Opera continues preparations for Ring Festival LA, a celebration of Richard Wagner’s four-opera magnum opus, the Ring Cycle. Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich is questioning the choice of Wagner, an anti-Semite whose work figured prominently in Nazi propaganda, in a letter to LA Opera Chairman and Chief
Executive Officer Marc Stern.

“To specifically honor and glorify the man whose music and racist anti-Semitic writings inspired Hitler and became the de facto soundtrack for the holocaust in a countywide festival is an affront to those who have suffered or have been impacted by the horrors of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialistic Worker Party,” Antonovich said.

Seeking balance and historical perspective, the supervisor suggests the festival be reworked to headline other composers, such as Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, Schubert, Schumann, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, and others.

On July 21, Antonovich will move that the County Board of Supervisors send a five-signature letter to LA Opera requesting such changes.

The Ring Cycle is scheduled to be performed three times in its entirety from May 29 through June 26, 2010. Accompanying and preceding the productions, Ring Festival LA will include a series of exhibitions, performances, symposia, and special events aimed at enriching audience understanding and appreciation of this work. More than 75 cultural and educational institutions across the county will participate.

LA Opera addresses Wagner’s controversial character on the webpage for the festival, noting:

“… while Richard Wagner is considered one of the most important and influential of all composers, he is also rightly reviled as having been an anti-Semite. Wagner’s writings on the subject percolated into German politics and popular culture and, decades after the composer’s death, were celebrated by Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich. It is the Company’s belief that opera has value not only as musical and theatrical entertainment, but as a way to gain important historical insight and to explore moral issues. Ring Festival LA will specifically address the subject of Wagner’s anti-Semitism in several contexts, including seminars, panel conversations and performances.”

Wagner productions routinely grace the stages of other major U.S. cities, including New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Seattle hosts a similar Ring Festival every four years and is now known as the Wagner capital of America.

The Ring Cycle was originally produced 1876 in Bayreuth, Germany. The city, where the composer was buried in 1883, continues to host Wagner productions and festivals to this day.