BAYREUTH’S PLIGHT.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 2633, 30 April 1923, Page 8

BAYREUTH’S PLIGHT.

SIEGFRIED WAGNER SPEAKS. FINANCIAL STRAIN BEING FELT. Politics and music are inextricably intermingled in Germany to-day, but never more so than in the case of tiie Bayreuth Fcstspiele and the plans of Siegfried Wagner, as laid down in an interview he has neon kind enough to give mo, writes a Berlin correspondent of “The Observer.’’ "The future of Bayreuth depends upon America—that is to say, upon a series of concerts which I am hoping to direct there this year. I won’t beg anywhere, but wc seem to have more friends in America than elsewhere. But, instead of stapling this'March, as I hoped, the movements of the French are too perplexing to warrant my leaving my old mother and my little children alone in Bavaria. We live under the shadow or rear that they may march in upon us at any time. This is much more actual Ilian any thought of separation, which I look upon as nonsense. The only thing that might happen—and that is a possibility more than remote at the present moment—is the dream of the Bavarian Catholics that the Catholic Empire, embracing the Rhinclands and Austria, might come.to pass after ail. But occupation is agrave thought, and I do not think the political situation warrants my leaving homo for more than a few concerts in different parts of Germany at present. So America and all that I hope to earn there must wait.’’ “Why America?’* "Sometimes we wonder, my wife and I, just a little, that nobody else, in England, Switzerland, or Holland, seems to want us! We find it impossible to live, leave alone organise the Bayreuth festival, without earning something a little more stable than the mark. Like all other Germans whose lives are devoted to music, wc too, are dependent on calls from abroad to augment our income. And Bayreuth! The costs of Bayreuth before the war were just 6 50,000 marks. That is when the mark was forth 20 to the English sovereign. What we need to-day can be calculated accordingly—or rather not calculated at all!”

THE LURE OF BAYREUTH. “Appeals?” "J’vo said I was too proud to beg, but wo did appeal to our own great financial magnates. I won’t mention names. One of them said he was a poor man in spite of his paper milliards, and another said he saw no "uturc in Bayreuth that warranted financial support. I think wc got about seven million marks altogether, but that won’t go so very far. They do not realise what Bayreuth means lo the reputations of singers. All our great ones made their names ;hcre. Bayreuth gave a cachet that nothing else could give.” “Do you still believe, after all that has been said about the flight of German opera singers to countries where the exchange is high and all the complaints made about the gaps in orchestras tor the same reason, that Bayreuth can lie maintained at its former glory ” "It is my absolute conviction that all asked to take part will come back to Bayreuth from all parts of the world. They always did. And T refuse to believe in any decay of Ger man musical life. For me there is no other country but Germany, where music is concerned; to me the least of our orchestras is a better interpreter of our great ones than the finest elsewhere —Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, my father.” “What do you think of the International Society for Contemporary Music?” “There is no such thing as contemporary music. Those were the last musicians” “Once the list di'd not include Richard Wagner.” “Wrong! The public accepted him, he press condemned him. To-day t is the other way round. The press nakes modern reputations; the public lo not take the new music to heart.” THE NEW WAGNER SCENERY. “What is your opinion of the mod>rn movement for simplifying the set,ings of Wagner opera The dragoncss ‘Siegfried’ and the swanless ‘Lohmgrin’? One wall and a tree for the tVartburg? Or the moon and a curain merely ” “Nobody will persuade me to believe hat the underlying idea, of cutting >ut my father’s elaborate stage direcions is any but desire for cheapness if production. I maintain that as it s written so it should be carried out. rlow is one to cxprscs the atmosphere if the different centuries without the scenery as well as the costumes? At i pinch I will allow that the smallness if a stage may set up a demand for itrictest simplicity of detail. But big stages want filling. At Bayreuth wo iball never alter in this respect. And, speaking of scenery, what has bo■ome of that wonderful Englishman vho left others on the Continent to •eap the fruits of his pioneer work? mean of course, Gordon Craig. Yes, ; am willing to admit that there may >e other wonderful Englishmen doing ;ood work at present. One was cut iff from so much. I was lost in Lonlon in 1912 —always glad to be there,. did not find there what one so often inds in musical life, what one can find n almost every German city where, fibre is musical impetus, one man mtting his stamp ou and tyrannising ,ver the whole. Such as, for instance, dengelberg in Amsterdam, who will ilay Mahler to the exclusion of every >ody else.”