Intelligence² Debate Verdi vs Wagner: the 200th birthday debate with Stephen Fry

Thank You audience and thank you everyone out there who's watching the livestream and welcome to the paul hamlin hall here in the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden I'm so proud and happy to introduce you to the Valley versus Varna the 200th birthday debate here it's an event I've been looking forward to for a long time and it's just part of the Deloitte ignite very vogner 200th birthday festival we have two August and eminent advocates for this debate each passionate about their chosen composer and determined to persuade you that theirs is the greater genius first we have Norman abreast he is one of Britain's leading cultural commentators and critics and novelist author of 12 books on music and he will be advocating tonight the cause of Giuseppe Verdi or Joe Greene as we know in English you will know Joe Greene of course he's the man who wrote this [Music] [Applause] [Music] that was across vApp pensiero better known as the chorus of the Hebrew slaves from Navajo by Verdi and in the vogner corner we have philip Henshaw novelist critic journalist who writes for The Spectator and the Mail on Sunday you may think you don't know much Varna but you'll sure as heckfire know this [Music] there was of course the Val cure right the ride of the valkyries from act 3 of of well you could either call it the first or the second of the Ring cycle depending on how pernickety you are about the order in which Varley prefer them to be described thousands of people are watching us here through the magic of live streaming all around the world now as with all intelligence squared debate suite oook a straw poll we asked people on the way in whether they were more disposed towards Wagner or towards Verdi and they will have the chance to vote all over again once they have heard the advocates for the respective composers and the debates and the arguments that they've put forward to illustrate their points and help persuade you out there and you in the hall in particular as year the voters naturally we need to hear some of the music and wouldn't it be great if we could hear it live so please welcome the Southbank Sinfonia and their conductor Philip Winn Griffiths Paul regulars have a guitar jubilee finish and this group of young professionals have a long-standing relationship with the Royal Opera House and we are very very grateful they've given up a Sunday evening to be with us tonight but of course we need more than orchestral colors to get a sense of the true power of these operatic beer mouths we need to hear the sung words so it's a huge pleasure to welcome soprano do shet Sabir 'glitch who is a yet a parker young artist here at the Royal Opera House and one of this country's finest international singers the great bass Sir John Tomlinson before we start gentlemen I just wanted to ask each one of you if you could say in a few words which was perhaps what we might call your epifanov moment the moment at which this particular composer struck most deeply into your soul I'll ask you first Norman about Verdi difficult to pinpoint one moment but I think I'm about 11 years old and I've just started at grammar school and the music teachers also the choir master demonstrates how the pensiero which you've just heard which was the defining anthem of Italy fits perfectly to the original Hebrew words of the psalm and I was gobsmacked that Verdi from a peasant background speaking nothing but Italian and possibly a little Church Latin had intuited the original Hebrew of the Bible do you want to know how it fits yes what should I say it your God maestro court can we ever a shot give me a man a shop Muppet 0 in Hebrew right oh no wrote ablution yershov no schambach e noobs afraid no Ezio oh very good I I can now say I'd some at the Royal Opera kappa so philip when when did bug the first first touch you well it was on the rates really because the Sheffield the Sheffield city librarian where they still have they used have a wonderful record library and in it they had the old Eno recordings under original good all of the ring with Rita hunter in a vast soil rock and for about six months I would just kind of come home and play a side of the the ring and then contemplate it and then a little bit later I'm old enough that a shameful moment in in British public life that students could claim the doll in summer holidays once summer holiday is incredible one summer holiday I spent my dole money on all of our dinners offers including them the great Carlos Kleiber recording of Tristan which for me is still the the transcendental thing but so I it was it was a kind of LP experience first before was a theatrical thing but they fantastic it was a theatrical experience too well thank you both very much I think it's time to move on now no Norman I'm going to give you enough time I think for you to be able to convince us all that Verdi is the greater of the two and so if you'd like to stand and begin your address maybe I'll start from a seated position ladies and gentlemen thank you for coming um I am operating here against several very considerable disadvantages first of all my distinguished opponent who proposes to play the entire ring for you on the piano until you surrender then my chair who is as you know a card-carrying Vardhan area that is only society's offices the day is long very possibly but I took a look at his party card and its number is almost as low as Michael Portillo against these two very considerable disadvantages I also have your own inner feelings as you entered these these premises this hall the former Alberto Villar Hall as you as you entered you were asked which you preferred Verdean or vogner and if you were sure that nobody was listening you said Verdi but if you wanted to impress your partner you said Varner didn't you I could see a lady in the fourth row yes you did didn't you because you thought that's going to make me look a better person it again made me look more intelligent more appreciative I can do the big things where whereas Verdi has been the object of a vicious propaganda campaign and written off as just another Italian to instance myth an organ-grinder to to to vogner's pantheon of sound so we're operating against that prejudice as well and he did very himself was operating against that Paris even though he enjoyed success before vogner in 1842 with Nabucco he started earlier he was the first to get going from the middle of his life from the 1860s we'll come to that in a little while he was forever being berated by his own Italians for not being more like vogner Wagner was the monkey on his back so in a sense some of the argument that I have to present tonight is the argument that there Lee himself was presenting against the Vark Marion tendency against the Varden Aryan superiority so these these are quite considerable opponents ladies and gentlemen I don't underestimate them and you know if I will be happy to get away with the two-to-one majority tonight I think we need to define terms what do we need mean by Verdi versus Wagner you can't actually say one's music is better than the other because they are so different in anyway you can't compare music at this level you work what are you comparing or comparing apples and peaches aren't you I mean if one was going to be a little unkind to vogner you would say was Granny Smiths against some luscious Italian a fruit but no let's not be unkind to vogner it's not that kind of revenge will be very polite to him studiously polite what are the terms then by which we can judge these two great summiteers of their art because there is no greater figure in Italian opera than Giuseppe Verdi and no greater figure in German opera than than the Rashaad bark now what I would prose I hope my distinguished opponent will agree is that we look at two criteria one is how each of them changed the course of music certainly if they're in art form and the other is how each of them changed the world let me perhaps begin with a little bit of biography just to get us up and running I don't I don't suspect the evil you've all swallowed growth before you came in both are born in 1813 Wagner in May Verdi in october Vagner is a city boys born in leipzig therapy is born in a village practically scrubland a really nondescript place called LaRon Kalle and he is born into a family that as they say has seen better times and there's probably nothing worse than to be born into a family that feels itself on the slide they once owned a lot of property night they now earn very little and they are practically living a peasant existence dependent too due to some degree on charity for their survival this is not a good environment in which to grow up but fortunately catches the eye of a man called Antonio Barret see in the nearby town of Bor Seto and he Barret C sees his talent and supports the boy and puts him through school and then puts him through conservatory and then Verdi goes and marries Barret sees daughter Marguerite ax and is looking forward to live happily ever after and to settle down and write operas and he starts doing that without any impact at all he's 26 practically a grandfather in Italian terms before his first opera gets take every major Italian poseur has had an opera onstage at around 20 or 21 there he waits until 26 before he gets there and it is of course a flop so he decides to take the family to Milan because that's clearly where opera is going to be where his fortune is going to be made or broken and three fateful things happen first of all his little boy 17 months old dies of a childhood illness they come to Milan and his daughter falls sick and his wife pawns her few jewels to try and keep the family together the daughter dies finally the worst blow of all his wife dies he is in his late 20s now and he's totally bereft and he has two choices he can go back to the village or he can write never go well we know what he did he wrote Nabucco and the effect in 1842 of Nabucco is enormous it resonates still to this day because with Nabucco with a pen CRO he defines the Italian aspiration of nationhood but not in a nationalist sense the key thing to remember about Verdi is he is never a narrow nationalist and the proof of it is the story that he takes for Nabucco which is the story of the Hebrew slaves in Babylon they've been expelled from their land they were scorned they are in Handel's term despise it and rejected and they are they are the downtrodden equally of Europe they are constantly railed against in church pulpits the Jews are are the Jews are our misfortune Verdi is the first European composer to make an opera of the fate of the Jews and to use that as a paradigm for the fate of all oppressed people in Europe and in the world and this is what takes off in 1842 only handle in the entire history of music only handle has presented Jews as heroes on the stage and that is in oratorio on the last occasion it was judas maccabees it's exactly a hundred years before that Handel wrote judas maccabees a hundred years until Verdi comes along and says the Jew is the oppressed in us all what is he doing here in famine zero what is he saying to us he's saying Italy and Italians have the right to self-determination they have a right to stand up tall among the nations they have a right to be like the English to be like the French the Germans didn't yet exist to be free people in their own land but not in any narrow sense they need to respect other cultures they need to recognize that the Hebrews who are so scorns also have a similar right and that if Italy is ever to be a state which will earn world respect it will be a state of Tolerance it will be a state of multiculturalism ladies and gentlemen how modern how 21st century is that I might act how stark is that in contrast to Rahad Wagner who at the time that Verdi is presenting Nabucco is starting to write his notorious tract on Jewishness in music in which he proposes that minorities and Jews in particular are excluded from European culture the first known case of cultural ethnic cleansing why Verdi that's one very good reason we look on at the developing the unfolding career of this astonishing musician 1842 we said Nabucco after that it's one or two operas every year there are 40 altogether nobody remembers them all except possibly the late Edward Downes Don Tom you'll remember him the late Edward Downes who tried valiantly to perform all 40 in this place let me give you some highlights a 10:42 Nabucco 1847 an absolute 'unless mirabilis macbeth which rarely considered his greatest to date maserati airy in November - Ruslan three major operas in a year and then we come to March 1951 and over the next three years Rigoletto Trovatore Traviata unbelievable the summit's of Italian opera some of the most performed operas of this day Steven you were saying which is the most correct reveal who has performed five hundred and fifty three times since 2000 right up to this date and and Rigoletto up there up there pretty close is there pretty close writing in the 1850s he is still speaking to the Vox Populi of the 2000 and teens impossible impossible to imagine the effect that these operas had on their audiences in one of the lesser-known operas there is a scene where the hero jumps off a balcony and people in the audience got so excited by this that two of them jumped off the balcony into the orchestra fortunately no no musicians were harmed in the making of this production we're told you can't be too sure about the reporting from Italy he was the most extraordinary perfectionist for Macbeth there were hundred rehearsals unheard of in 1847 there were three months of piano repetitions before he was satisfied that the sleepwalking scene was right there were a hundred and fifty sing throughs of the soprano baritone duet I brought the house down of course he was the ultimate professional he was the complete non compromising musician who knew the value of everything that he was doing who felt every time almost every time he has a premiere and you look in his letters he writes afterwards on grand Fiasco failed again I'm gonna have to go back to village no I'll get her back to the desk tomorrow morning and write another one every time he thought he was a complete failure and every time that he did think he was so complete fare failure his operas were being taken up in London in Paris and across Europe in fact he was very fond of London much preferred it to Paris but let's leave don't let that influence your but please delete that milord from the record let me give you a little demonstration if you want to tune up underneath that's all right because you'll be playing in a second let me give you a little demonstration of just how far he advanced the odds what I'm going to give you what the Britten Sinfonia south thanks Antonio is going to be giving you is under Paul wind Griffiths is the over to the over territorial force Adela steno which is finally presented after several revisions in 1862 so it's middle period Verdi and he gives us an eight-minute overture of a kind that would have been inconceivable before this time you could not imagine his predecessors in Italian opera Rossini Bellini daunted Sethi writing something like this what they were giving you in their overtures were little snippets of the arias to come they were giving you a precis of the delights that you can expect Verdi is doing a bit of that but he's doing much more he's writing atmosphere he's writing character he is a novelist and he's also writing music that anticipates the art of film score writing my son [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] thank you very much all right thank you very much the South faction phobia ladies and gentlemen and they conduct a poll with British and for those of you that vote those of you are thinking now why do I know that tune it's a Jean de florette you might have been thinking of or if you're a lower order of being the Stella Artois advert with you I could almost dress my case right yeah he's writing for the future without Verdi there's no Hollywood where would John Williams be and remember also there he is writing these eight-minute over choose shows for Italians with the attention span of a butterfly you know Italians know what they like and if they don't get it they walk they're not Germans you know Germans have quite happily prepared to sit for an hour waiting for a verb yeah have you ever heard an angular miracle speech so vogner had time on his hands as it were to get to the point value didn't he had to hit them right there and if he didn't they walked so he knew what he was doing and yet in within those circumstances he's able to create a little masterpiece of an overture in which is a whole world in itself it's at this point in his life that the very D versus vogner competition begins there in Paris and Wagner has been living there in exile and verily goes there to do Vespa I think of this and let's just give a little comparison of where they are in their lives vogner this oops I might still lurk no I'm not I've lost sound very good very excellent very good okay oh there's this a partner Ian at work here alright vogner at this time has written has staged dutchman Tann Heuser loin green and he's talking up the ring but nobody's seen anything of it Verdi by now the 1860s being staged all over Europe Verdi in his operas is always concerned with the individual he's always taking you to the heart of the matter you're always feeling for that man that woman vogner is dealing with princes noblemen they're the scorns power when when he's offered it when he's been when they tried to give him titles in Italy Russia sit aside doesn't like it vogner since the monarchy vogner Wiggles up to the King of Bavaria and finally gets the means to stage Tristan if Vera d-does Kings it's generally to have them killed googling vogner idealizes power and identifies with it so Verdi is in Paris staging Don Carlo and what are the critics say the next morning why can't he be more like vogner and he replies what luck to end up after 35 years hard work as an imitator of vogner if the critics have paid attention they would have seen the same kind of trios in their nanny the same sleepwalking scene as in Macbeth he is himself critics huh what do they know he then adds there's nothing wrong with admiring vogner note so long as admiration does not degenerate to imitation vogner has been done and there's no point in doing him again he's not a wild animal as the purists claim nor profit as his apostles maintain he's a man of great gifts who likes the roughest roads because he does not know how to find the easy straight ones Verdi sees himself as continuing and developing that long path of tradition and he cries out he cries out leap are a chaotic West's solely a quest appear low to your brain potatoes livery in Tristano ooh on lateral obeah siamo italiano per meal in toto Antonia musica do you think then under the Sun and the sky I could write Tristan or the tetralogy we're Italian for God's sake in everything even especially in music vogner hardly makes reference to vote - to Verdi at all you pick up one or two tiny little things in the conversations and their dismissive and often rude he's he and one occasion he or Hunt's Rita stop talking about fairly trying saying well he's no worse than John it city and he hears in 1882 shortly before his death their bargain a here's a Verdi theme song on the Grand Canal in Venice and he says ha they call that a natural line there's nothing like that in Rossini so he's completely dismissive of Verdi whereas Verdi is always respectful of vogner he attends the Italian premiere of the first vogner work to be staged there which was Lohengrin bologna 1871 and he brought and in February 1883 just just that Belgium ideas you've got two bits left including your yep yep yep okay February 1883 reading a vogner's death in the newspaper he writes to his publisher Ricordi Trista Trista Trista Vardhan er a morte when I read the news as Verdi I was totally crushed a great personality is gone a name which will leave a huge imprint on the art that's Verde that's the grandeur of Verdi with Vardon are gone in 1883 he can be himself what follows is extraordinary February 1887 Othello February 1893 at the age of 80 Falstaff we're going to hear another piece of music we're going to hear the Willows song and it's going to show there are these very different approach to an immolation scene Desdemona a beauty but a bit brainless all bling in handbags she knows she's going to die but she can't figure out why the man she loves the great general has changed he's gone offer maybe found someone else maybe got to close in a manly way to that oleaginous Iago she's desperate alone helpless and still in love she's the abandoned love in each and every one of us and verily right sir an aria that rejects every stage convention she does not sing a glorious melody or one of those glass shattering riffs from Donizetti she sings music that at times makes our skin crawl we feel for her at the stand at the same time we want to put a great distance between ourselves and her terrible situation and when she's through with the meditation there's m'hona turns in a most unveiled Ian way to God Verdi is of course anti-clerical but he gives her the Ave Maria he allows her that consolation before the consummation of murder the two arias together is 15 minutes of pure intuition unmatched in the whole of opera [Music] [Music] sorry [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] two sheets a village ladies and gentlemen thank you very much that's before but with everybody thank you thank you guys a 1-minute summary Giuseppe Verdi dies in the Grand Hotel of Milan on January the 27th 1891 14 months later in the room below a brash young tenor walks across from La Scala and records the first best-selling record ever his name is Andrew Enrico Caruso and the arias Latif sang were jst Aida and quillo cuesta from Rigoletto that is Verdi the beginning of popular music so here's the case of rarely hear outs about you and me his characters adapt readily to our times he pushes Italian opera to its limits and yet makes it accessible to future media on record on film on line on intelligence squared he is a populist vogner is an elitist he is an inclusive East vogner is an exclusivist Verdi leads to mass culture vogner leads to cults Aviva dirty congratulations Sherman congratulations during the break for buddy a very good case for Giuseppe Verdi and I have just a few seconds to give him some tweets that have been coming in we have one from Kate Dunham that they're all coming in through the hashtag Deloitte ignite personal opinion Verdi speaks to my heart but viola speaks to my head Todd Templeton what need for a debate enjoy both and rejoicing the differences Silva DeRusha they make me feel completely different things it depends what my heart yearns for at the moment I get from viv gross cop doorman Labrecque is adorable gutsy - cig Verdi in front of professional opera singers how did you pray there is nothing better than Verdi's Rigoletto David Oliver DOS well would have us think of wine vogner is expensive round and deep like a Bordeaux Verdi is supple less tannic and gorgeous like a burgundy well if you could decide for yourselves of that but now we need to hear the case of course for Ricard vogner and to bring that Thank You Philip and shot I'm going to take a slightly different approach to its Norman in talking about what Wagner has to recommend himself to interest because after all the 19th century was absolutely full of German nationalists some of whom runned out the extremely nasty it was also full of Italian nationalists some of whom are undoubtedly extremely nice but we're not really going to meet either of them so I don't really see that that should be at the forefront of our concern some of the worst operas in the world were written by extremely nice people I think I will come round to devolve this character and what he actually did I'm going to start with what I think ought to be at the front of our concern when we talk about these people which is what's actually in their work and the quality of their work I'm going to talk first about vogner as what I think he's simply supreme at as a psychologist working in opera and then secondly I'm going to talk about what Norman didn't really have time to get around to which is his music I think I think what I think there's striking moments of our dinners psychological penetration everywhere Norman said that Verdi was a novelist talking about the thoughts del destino overture of course he was talking metaphorically if you try and imagine the plot over Verdi opera talk told from the point of view of one of his minor characters or even one of the major captures it falls apart instantly if you think try and think of what Rigoletto looks like from the point of view of the Duke it makes no sense at all he hasn't really thought it through in the way that a novelist would he's not that sort of artist partner really is that sort of an artist if you think of the end of Goethe demerol there's a tiny scene with 'get Runa waiting for zigfried who's actually been killed to come back from the hunt she's on her own she knows that she's been she's been betrothed to Siegfried she's not worthy of him she knows that he really belongs to Brunhilde and she's afraid in the night she can hear the noise of Ezekiel's horse neighing in the stables she's very frightened she can hear a noise of laughter somewhere is it brünnhilde is terrifying to her and suddenly we see the whole action of ghosts emerald through the eyes of this minor character buttless threw himself into her might in exactly the way that a great 19th century novelist would is a great novelistic moment is also a novel moment of dense humanity these sort of insights into psychology they're everywhere in varga room despite the fact they're about gods and heroes and myths they're very they're very truthful to human experience there was a very striking moment recently you remember in Rhine got the two giants kidnapped Freya and when they bring her back from her from from from the from a brutal experience it turns out that one of them fussn't has actually fallen in love with her and he thinks he seems to think that she might actually be happy with him in rather a pathetic he says but I love her do I really want all this gold it's a very strange moment but recently in real life we saw how accurate vogner was there was a case of a couple who were kidnapped by Somalian terrorists pirates they were called Judith and David Tepper and David a boat was killed immediately by the Pirates and Jews Herbert had six months of great misery and privation at the hands of these wicked wicked people and when she came back she said that one of them said said this to her towards the end of her imprisonment he said to her do you think I'm a bad man if I came to London would you say hello to me and I thought that's result that his fault deluding himself but who had noticed that before Varma who thought himself into these situations characters in Varna are faced with decisions to which there's no right or wrong answer when Val Trotter comes to Brunnhilde she says to her gift ring back and then vote and vote and won't come to an end Valhalla won't be destroyed and she says no but is she right to do that but we wonder about that watching the Opera you know her decision leads not only to the end of the Gods to the death of everyone including herself but what should she have done we engage with that we wonder about it from her angle from the point of view of our outer from the point of view of vote on who's not even in the Opera why should Hands acts have done in my sister thing what should Tristan have done we wonder about all of these things and the situations are very often much simpler much less simple than we think they have the kind of novelistic range and complexity it's often forgot you often forget if you're just listening to the end of Rainbolt with a triumphal progress into Valhalla that this is taking place with a with a murdered with a murdered person lying on the stage we worry about that murdered person we worry about the violence that lies underneath this and this triumph from Vardhan is full of calm moments like that in most operas characters are revealed in their true nature that's the most that happens to them they're faced with right decisions about right or wrong they make that decision and that's the end of it we feel we know what their true nature is Varner's are like the characters in novels they develop they change they make make choices they're never definitively revealed and they're quite different from at the end of the journey from the beginning if you think of the difference between Brunhilde when she first appears the school girl bounding on high or too high and the disillusioned woman at the end of Gerta Demerol it's an extraordinary journey it's like a character in Tolstoy almost no I think one of the things that you can say about vogner in the in defiance of the nice composer theory of who ought to be allowed to write operas is that one of the things that he did gain from not being a very nice person was that he understood what lay behind people behaving very badly he seems to me that Verdi who was it undoubtedly a very decent person his villains I think there's a kind of blackness I don't think he understands why I somebody like the Duke in Rigoletto might behave like that now when we go to Varga there's no doubt that he understands very well why an al Buraq would behave like that why a Mima would behave like that he has a great deal of sympathy and understanding for even the worst of his characters and they because they remain very very convincing they become more and more convincing as it goes on his nature might have been bad for his friends and his family and his patrons but it's very good for posterity I think the the single reason why these psychologies are so convincing is that wagner consistently finds a means of embodying them through the music they're not just it's not just accompanying music the music enacts these psychologists and the orcs just going to play a section at the end of Valkyrie in a moment and I just want to demonstrate something about how the the music is embodying an important truth about Votan now the there's a theme that runs through the the ring for vote hands power and at the end of the Valkyrie vote am is exerting his power he's showing he's showing what his power can do in banishing brünnhilde and this is the theme that's the spear now the whole action of the ring turns on the moment when the father's power in the in the form of the spear meets the sword which is given to the children and subsequently to the grandchildren it meets twice the first time the father's power prevails and the sword is broken the second time at the end of the creed this is sort the the power of the grandchildren prevails and the spear is broken but spear vote hands power is broken long before is broken in real life that's broken in the music if we take that that theme and we push it into a major key it sounds like this Bhuvana at this point was broken it in the music and we get a theme which is about vote hands love and his love lies in the breaking of his own power and he goes like this you see how the the octave transposition breaks the power in half I'm just going to ask the orchestra now to play that extract with the greatest ajahn Tomlinson before this before would play them and seek the first part of the famous circle vote on this farewell we are just doing the first part only the joyous part the triumphant part now Volta is saying farewell to this most beloved daughter Brunhilde he plunges her into a deep sleep on the mountaintop he conjures up using this power that Phillip was talking about the fire to surround her to protect her and she stays like that for another perhaps 18 years until the young ziegfried comes along braves the fire and wakens her obscene feed of course being the grandson of Vorta on earth now it's a farewell but why is the music so joyful as I said why is it so triumphant it's almost ecstatic the music you're going to hear unlike a Verdi farewell which probably would be very very beautiful a deal exquisitely some form in a very simple in the best use of that word and pure form this is Phillip also said is more common complicated complexity is important with Vardon so it is ecstatic because votin has been working out plans for years to correct what the damage that he has done to the world he has made mistakes the world is in need of rescue because the ring is out there the notorious ring and it needs dealing with and water and himself cannot deal with it for all sorts of reasons in this moment after hours of desperation and crisis in the ring in this moment there's an explosion of optimism and joy because thought and sees the plans working z creat the true natural liberated human being will wake and Brunhilde together they will take the ring it will end up at the bottom of the Rhine the River Rhine where it belongs the world will be once more at peace and the gods will be finished and will die perhaps just one word of the very last phrase where a little bit of nostalgia creeps in there eine Noir friar he brought their friar I'll see if ya got Z Crete as I said that liberated human being will you will be in his arms as a post to this old God untrammeled with laws and rules and virtues and morals and all the structures that are a need that are needed for a civilized world on the contrary you'll be with a natural free hero [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] and pull good visit adverse to perfection phobia so back to you Philip the key to kita Parkman Center involved why were interested in vogner is the music and no one has ever denied I think the power of Wagner's music and I think both proponents and opponents raised it as the cause of their feelings Debussy said in his music critic days it is hard to imagine the state to which the strongest brain is reduced by listening to four nights to the ring it's worse than obsession it is possession you no longer belong to yourself Wagner foresaw that when he was writing Tristan he wrote to Mathilde Bazin dong and said that he hoped that only bad performances of Tristan would take place because a good performance would drive people mad and they have people have been killed by Tristan including the first Tristan the Belgian composer Gyo will occur burst into tears the first time he heard the Tristan Prelude no he fainted it was Shabri a who burst into tears I'm so sorry a character in Buddenbrooks thomas mann's Buddenbrooks said years later when some another character asks him to play the Tristan Prelude he says that is not music that is chaos it is a perfumed fog shot through with lightning now what underlies all of this is a is a comparison between Wagner and another group of composers it might be B's a it might be Verdi and the idea is that those other composers a healthy partner is unhealthy is as old as Nietzsche who turned away from Wagner and said yeah and he went to - he wanted to go to Beezer Bea's a vogner I think just we feel that he just exerts too much control over us and this argument is still going on last year Peter Conrad published a book about Verdi versus Wagner in which he said I have a feeling that Verdi's music is for us an extraordinary thing to say about a composer I think one of the issues is that we don't observe this the evil that takes place in Wagner's operas we don't observe the transformations that are ceaselessly taking place in the characters we take part in it and that's because the art of transformation the art of change the art of corruption is at the heart of Wagner's and musical endeavor he said the art of transformation was his deepest art the drama happens in the music it happens largely in the orchestra it enables this music to take place on an unprecedented scale Vogler's or act Magners acts are not just music that happened to go on for an hour and a half two hours two and a quarter hours their whole musical structures that are put together on in an unprecedented ly skillful way through transformation the music often acts the orchestral music often acts as a sort of stream of consciousness it renders the character's thoughts even when it doesn't correspond to anything that's happening on stage the first time Votan thinks of a way forward at the end of Reingold which is to place the truth of the sword in the tree the orchestra plays what will become the sword motif nobody on stage is talking about the sword it is just going through votans mind at the end of Valkyrie he thinks of who the hero is going to be that's going to carry out all these all these deeds and what we hear in the orchestra is zigfried's zigfried's motif Z Creed is just a fetus in the in the belly of Z Glinda at this point we don't know his name we don't know anything about him but the orchestra knows all about him I want to explain with the single example which the orchestra's going to perform in in a moment how this formatic idea of the opera just to say we've got two birds okay we introduce that president okay it's the the thematic idea descends deep into the music and it's the tristan prelude and the great invention of the tristan prelude is the way it deals with discord now in music a discord classically resolves not in the tristan prelude it goes on from one discord to another it starts with this discord and it moves to this discord it moves to this discord it moves to this discord and so on and so on what's what it's doing is depicting the ongoing unfulfilled desire is never going to be fulfilled that thing is deep in the music and it's constantly being transformed at the end of the towards the end of the Opera at the beginning of the third act it begins like this apparently completely different much more painful sort of music [Music] you'd have to look at it very hard to see that that is the same cord [Music] the transformation of music and the action of the Opera are the same thing and that is why that we have to talk about vogner's music before we have to talk about anything else the Tristan Prelude is at the pinnacle of not only what he achieved that of what 19th century music achieved [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] Paul with Griffiths and the Southbank Sinfonia thank you so very much with you thank you well we have we have a few more tweets to read out if you'd like to hear them but first of all we have a video for Phillip to round up of course I just like to finish with a few thoughts about sand about vogner's political public like know a lot in recent decades a lot of attention has been paid to the undoubted anti-semitism I think that the one thing that is - it's too big a subject - to discuss in the remaining minute and one things I would say is that it's very doubtful it's greatly discussed it's not clear at all whether the anti-semitism goes beyond the pamphlet and into the music there is anti-semitic 19th century music it's not on the whole clearly by vogner but there are other aspects of vardhan's political thought that do get into the music when he was planning the ring in 1850 he said after the 3rd performance theater which he was planning was already thinking of by riod the theater will be demolished and my score burned to the people who enjoyed it I shall then say now go away and do it yourself the ring Norman said that it's all about kings and power it made me wonder whether he's actually seen in Opera by Wagner the ring is all about the demolition of power the destruction of the ring which is arbitrary power the handing over after the heroes and the gods and the kings have gone to the crowd we look at the crowd standing the wildered at the end of Gertrud emeralds and we try and find our own faces in that crowd partner was an immense person he was devoted to the ideas of the the people of the nation-state of the individuals within that nation state having their say he made dramas out of that movement because of his immensity I think there are aspects of him that we can confidently revile after 200 years but I think before we let that block out Varga gnam should think of the third act to pacify which think of the quintet in master singers we should think of the prelude to Tristan bargain is not less human than anyone else his huge range his huge capacity makes him I think more human than anyone else who ever lived thank you [Applause] well we've had some supporting tweets in it has to be said it's hard to see how much ready how bad you could win it a debate such as this there's just so much more with Vardon bought everything that's from Ramona Mosley vogner the original bad boy rock star who arguably Nicholas Brown said that Varner by far the greater genius amazing orchestrations melodies James Stewart 3 both composers are outstanding but I've never known sheer power like the opera's of Varga now I have the honour to be able to tell you the result of the straw poll as you entered how did it go are most of your barbarians and most of you Verde most of you sitting on the fence it is unbelievably close this debate is going to be swinging on the smallest of margins so before anybody spoke thirty-two percent favored Verdi 37% vetted fancied Wagner and 31 percent were undecided so there's everything to play for to say the least now it's my chance to ask a question or two possibly one thing I just wanted to raise as a factual thing and that's you're claiming that Verdi was somehow the master of film music I think it's almost a disputed that that's Vargas role in fact there's a historic line from the second school of Vienna Schoenberg Berg and so on but particularly Max Steiner who was the genius who graduated from the Conservatoire there at the age of 15 went to London and then to war well to RKO where he scored King Kong and then to Warner Brothers and he brought with him and there was a VAX band and there was Dimitri Duncan and the greatest of them all the man that Marla instead let's don't forget that mama said there are only two Ludwig and Richard who as a 10 year old boy that Marla had said this is the greatest geniuses but cold dogs who went over they were all in a direct line of Iberian light motif composers who used the language of the the device the figure such as Philip was showing so I wonder how you could argue that in his sense had had that role that as always it's always a choice him to say the Vogler is the father of film music no it's the truest him to say mother is the father of film is music and Congo but let me let me let me underline the case then I'm barely in what he's doing in his service in the way that he's extending his servitors he's offering the possibilities offering the template for the future film score of course at the time that he's writing him there is no film in both cases involved now also there's nothing to be imagined there it's only what they make of them when Hollywood starts writing proper film scores which is of course with corn called who has been identified by Marla and then by Tim linski as the the future king of Opera and then departs in 1935 a Hollywood Chronicle is using a range of influences he's been raised in the Opera House and in that Opera House Vienna Verdi was performed much more than vogner much more regularly Mahler was a huge respecter of Araby he conducted the Austrian premiere of Falstaff not just once he conducted every performance of that series samara had huge respect for Vera P as he did for vogner I will readily acknowledge Marla's influence on the film score and indeed Wagner's indispensable influence on bergna but I make the case for Verdi because it hasn't been made before we do have to acknowledge those origins oh that's fascinating answer what do you want to say I know it says its popularity is in a sense meaningless it's it's it's how you feel and how one responds but it is indisputably true that Verdi is the most popular African composer in the world every year there are more Verdi performances around the world than there are of the second place who is Puccini the third place who is Mozart and the fourth place who is vark and does that sort of make a difference does that mean that his closing remark door was closing remark about it being some exclusive and you know just for a sort of little con flavor of intellectuals that vagaries is actually not really for the people elitist is the elitist you know in the in the culture we live in there's you ask the the man on the street to gauge the difference in in exclusivity in elitism between Don Carlos and go Demerol and they wouldn't really I don't think they would really be able to say well that's you know that's down with the kids and that's for rich people also I don't think that popularity is necessarily much of a guide to to anything much I mean you know five million people every afternoon eating McDonald's but the food is still I mean I'm not gonna sneer over devotees their great supreme composure in many ways but there is certainly a sense in which vogner's project has failed in that he dreamt of a world where everybody would see the ring and everybody would go away and think about their lives afterwards but you know who could start from the position I only want to write an opera for a few very rich and learned people was very interested in the whole human race I think this I hope to correct the concavity as well that did not go sniffling up to literally the second it was living the second to the other while I was the Vicks question perhaps you could do me the favor of casting your vote now you have here each I hope a card you can terrorism in half but don't tear it in half if you still haven't made your mind up if you've made your mind up tear it in half and put the composing you most value in the bag or box or in the collection that will be coming around so you'll put vodka in the collection if he's the one you want to win Verdi if he's the one you want to win you'll keep the whole card in one position if you wish to abstain and keep them both on an equal plane so while you're doing that I just I can I just come yes to cap on that on that point you say vogner is there for all people but in his writings has excluded certain people he's writing for the German masses he's writing for a false key mine shaft and that is that that is a very exclusive thing to do the most composers like all the others they're not just writing for checks well they precisely tried to define the music that is of their country they're trying to define the shakers yes Posner was determining trying to find German there is a what Faulkner wanted to do I regard this as just as sinister as what you're saying he wanted people to become German he didn't want people he didn't want people to be excluded from the Germans he really wanted to say why can't more people be German these people aren't German enough we want them to be more German he was idealistic and absurd position I think he had you know contemptible except for those who could never qualify to be German which he would she made a list of yeah let me just say the argument that we're happy is not a new one it goes back an awfully long way France fearful who was a best-selling German novelist very high-quality novelist and and indeed a huge admirer of Verdi he wrote a novelization of Eddie's life said how can you compare the two Verdi wrote this magnificent body of words and Varner created a universe so we're back to apples and peaches you're right there's one thing we can compare which is really build disputes and that is the effect they had not only on their art but on the on all art and on the world the piece we just heard so magnificently played by the South banks and family of the force field up there they've the the prelude to to Tristan is followed by the words fresh mate Dave inter hi Matt sue my name is kid from violets do some fans of poetry out there may recognize that from the first you might call modernist work of english-language poetry from the desolated fractured world of the wasteland declared mayor is also quoted as our the Rhine maidens there are more books written on if on the on the influence of Varga on Troost than there are books with not Verdi there are more books written on Varga than there are on Napoleon yep there is any digit that's this is not to say that that should make you vote for Vogler but there is something quite astonishing and the effect he had on so many other poets writers artists and musicians there's so much to talk about well in fact we argue about him is is just sign of his intrinsic vastness for instance you know he wasn't the only you know gross anti-semites in the nineteenth century you know Schumann Rose wrote appalling things to his wife she said Jews are always like that don't pay any attention Chopin was absolutely beastly about his his Jewish publishers we don't really care so when I've said the Jews should be excluded from the arts if I wrote an essay this is the point I mean if I wrote an essay to yet today talking about the pernicious influence on America of American culture on the world of the coca-cola relation as well Starbucks everywhere that makes everything uniform and homogeneous and and and and and it crushes down individual identities of Nations people would say it's very anti-american Stephen isn't you know well there you go that wouldn't mean anything but if fifty years after I died literally fifty years after I died there came a leader of the people who rounded up then ten years later all Americans or that he could and gassed them that people would look back on my essay on anti Americanism and say that students write me was one of those anti Americans it has a very different meaning anti-semitism council anti-semitism of the nineteenth century if you look through the black tunnel of the post-show world a very good question in from Twitter just now which is which work would either of you recommend as a first word for someone who has not heard a very or about the peace so you first really sorry Rigoletto it's just regular to is the first Verdi piece and there's a frog the piece well I actually I I think you start at the deep end I don't think you you say oh well you know I took I took my my husband to his first vogner I took him to see Parsifal and I said was we going in you just have to regard this as like watching an immense flower opening and that seemed to do the trick you enjoyed it good what would your answer be I think the Verity it would have to be a travail - I think one would have to go with the Vox Populi on that it does it hits you in so many places every time 26 time you've seen it you're still there and it's on you're on the third Hank because that wonderful journey because it starts with such light - the froth and yeah and and drinking yeah heads with such absolute devastation yes devastation and your ants and such feeling always for the most deprived vogner it's really difficult I mean one would want the tendency would be to go for the simplest to go for flying dutchman I certainly wouldn't do that it's my stepmothers favorite opera and I saw it more often than I can remember but I think it's very very daring of you Philip - to start with Parsifal and work your way backwards I think I would probably go for Lohengrin just somebody would never seen Wagner before - just expose them to the grandeur and the scope and see how they take it from there well you're probably wanting to know how you all voted you know how you individually voted but how did you vote on mass how did it change well it certainly changed in terms of the undecided 5% only and now undecided 5% only put in the one card covering both 42% prefer Verdi but 53 partner so I declare the vogner a winner by 11% so I just really want to thank you all for being a mamma's audience it's been a fantastic debate and to play us out I suppose we ought to hear from the winners so John Tomlinson has very kindly agreed to reprise liebe von Leeb volleyball ladies and gentlemen farewell ver turn [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Royal Opera House

Views: 99,063

Keywords: Royal Opera House, theatre, theater, Covent Garden, stage, Giuseppe Verdi (Author), Richard Wagner (Author), John Tomlinson (Opera Singer), Dusica Bijelic, Verdi, Wagner, Anniversary, Debate, Intelligence Squared, Norman Lebrecht, Philip Hensher, Southbank Sinfonia (Musical Artist), Paul Wynne Griffiths, debate, Deloitte Ignite, Verdi/Wagner, Stephen Fry, John Tomlinson, Guiseppe Verdi, Richard Wagner

Id: 16noW1H0yq8

Length: 110min 12sec (6612 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/BletchTheWalrus]

I listened to this a while ago, and I feel sorry for Verdi to have had such an idiot arguing for him. Giuseppe deserved better.

[u/spoonopoulos]

I love Verdi and Wagner and still found this to be unimaginably dull. It is as though journalists and critics are paid some special sum to speak entirely in platitudes.

With that said, I have a fair bit of respect for Hensher and think he was by far the better orator, despite being perhaps a bit partial to Verdi myself.

[u/felixsapiens]

Verdi and Wagner are both true masters of music-as-theatre. I don't think there's any competition.