Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology by Michel Foucault

Author:Michel Foucault [Foucault, Michel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780141991399
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

The Imagination of the Nineteenth Centuryfn1

The Ring of the century, conducted by Pierre Boulez and directed by Patrice Chéreau, ended in its fifth and last year. One and a half hours of applause, as once again Valhalla went down in flames. Again and again the artists are called back on the stage. The boos of the first year, the departure of some of the musicians, the unwillingness of the orchestra and of some singers are forgotten; forgotten are the Action Committee for the Preservation of Richard Wagner’s Work, the leaflets and the anonymous letters calling for the head of the conductor and director.

To be honest, there are still some unsuccessfully conspiring ghosts left on the green hill. This unexpected Ring, produced by foreigners, probably upset them. But they were pale enough, just like the fallen gods. In the bookstore windows of Bayreuth there is, among hundreds of works about, for, or against Wagner (it seems that after Jesus Christ, Wagner has the most extensive list of annual bibliographies) a thin volume whose cover bears a curious photograph: Winifred, Wagner’s daughter-in-law, raising her hand above a small man, who is bowing his head to give her a respectful kiss. One can only see his back, but even though his face is turned away, the little mustache is clearly recognizable. Who is doing whom the honor: Is the heiress-directress honoring the painter-dictator, or is he honoring her? I had the impression that very few were interested in such problems.

The times have changed. Don’t they want to know what those who had sent the race of blond warriors, the massacred slaughterers, into the slaughterhouse, have made out of Wagner? Instead, they want to know what to make out of the unavoidable Wagner today.

Most of all, what to do with this tetralogy which dominates and is the most sullied of Wagner’s entire work. If it weren’t for the Ring, the life of the directors would be simpler. Simpler, too, would be our relation to the culture which is nearest to us.

There was an elegant solution immediately after the war: Wieland Wagner’s symbolic purge, the motionless forms of ageless and outcast myths. There was Joachim Herz’s parsimonious, political solution for East Germany: he anchored the Ring to the historic shores of the 1848 Revolution. And finally there was Peter Stein’s “ingenious” solution, discovering the secret of the “Ring” in the theater of the nineteenth century: his Valhalla was revealed as the center of dance of the Paris opera. In all of these solutions a direct encounter with Wagner’s mythology, this inflammable, dangerous, and also somewhat ridiculous content, is avoided.

Boulez, Chéreau, and the scenic designer Peduzzi took a more daring approach. They wanted, quite correctly, to revive this mythology. Against all expectations the old guard of Bayreuth screamed of treason, whereas in reality it was a return to Wagner, the Wagner of the “music drama,” something that has to be clearly differentiated from opera. Back to the Wagner who wanted to give an imaginary to the

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