Original subtitles

♪

As long as I live and participate in public affairs,

I will make sure that Wagner is not played in Israel

and his operas also will not be performed.

♪

We've hired the orchestra,

there are people from all over

who are flying in especially for this historic event

so plans are going according to plans

and we're going to have, I'm sure,

a beautiful event on the 18th of June.

♪

I saw it coming.

I, I was afraid that that's gonna happen

and uh, so I wasn't surprised,

I was disappointed because we put a lot of work into this.

The head of the Wagner Association,

he hired our largest hall here in Tel Aviv University

and when the university found out

that this is for the performance of Wagner

and got letters from survivors then it,

it was cancelled.

You cannot ignore it that he was declared

an anti-Semite.

♪

For Hitler and his uh, friends

he really symbolized the ideal of anti-Jewishness

and anti-Semitism.

Richard Wagner once said,

"The Jew is the shape-shifting demon

behind mankind's downfall."

And these pictures prove that he was right.

♪

Richard Wagner:

composer, musical giant, anti-Semite.

To some, a Wagner Society in the Jewish state

may seem strange,

but in fact the story of Jews supporting Wagner

dates back to Wagner himself.

There were always Jews around him.

The Jews in Germany were some of the greatest

admirers and backers of Wagner.

He was already accused of being part Jewish himself

because he had so many Jewish friends.

They used to call him the Rabbi of Bayreuth.

Copying, coaching, conducting

and they all did it for nothing, of course.

♪

Psychologically he needs Jews around

to feel better, to feel superior to them.

For us to look back and say how could German Jews

embrace Wagner,

they embraced Wagner's great music.

And it was a theatrical experience

which was better than 3D and "Avatar".

It was more thrilling than the latest video game.

Do I not buy the video game because it's made by

an anti-Semitic manufacturer?

♪

There's something very appealing to Jews of Wagner.

I mean, what he most absolutely classic

Jewish fantasy is "Lohengrin".

♪

What better myth that I,

without having my name known or where I came from,

I'm gonna rescue this country.

That fantasy is the fantasy of the outsider

coming into the center in triumph

and that's the fantasy of "Lohengrin",

appeal to every aspiring young Jew.

So Wagner understood the aspiration

that he himself felt because he himself

felt himself excluded as an outsider,

as a rebel,

gaining entrance into the center

by redefining it.

Well, one theory is that Wagner thought

he himself was Jewish.

First of all, he wasn't quite sure

who his father was,

and his stepfather was Ludwig Geyer.

He may have been his real father.

Geyer is considered like a German Jewish name.

And Nietzsche during that famous

walk on the beach with Wagner

brought up this question of the Jewish descent

of Ludwig Geyer.

And Wagner confides about his fear that Geyer

was Jewish.

This would have solidified in Wagner's emotions

this real fear he was Jewish.

It was some-, something evil in himself

he had to expurgate, destroy, cleanse out.

♪ You shall never ask me ♪

♪ Where I began my journey ♪

♪ Nor shall you ever ask my name ♪

♪ Or that of my people ♪

Do not ask me my name

and my race.

I don't think you can find a more dramatic exposition

of the problem as Wagner may very well have seen it.

Wagner's first Jewish patron was Giacomo Meyerbeer,

the most successful opera composer of his day.

Meyerbeer was German,

but he lived and worked in Paris.

There he wrote gripping dramatic spectacles

that took the opera world by storm.

♪

Meyerbeer was doing what Wagner dreamed of doing.

Meyerbeer was the most successful opera composer

in Paris.

Then Paris was the center of the operatic universe,

but that's what Wagner wanted for himself.

♪

Wagner's early opera, "Rienzi",

was a deliberate homage to Meyerbeer's own grand operas.

♪

This young man interests me.

He has both talent and enthusiasm,

but fortune has not smiled on him.

He has written me a long and very touching letter

and it is because of this that I am asking you

to ensure that he receives the help

contained in this letter.

Meyerbeer gave Wagner money and introduced him to members

of the musical establishment.

Meyerbeer saw "Rienzi",

saw a tremendous talent

and Meyerbeer arranged for the Dresden premier

of "Rienzi" itself.

♪

On Meyerbeer's recommendation "Rienzi" was accepted

for production in Dresden,

Wagner's first operatic production,

and "The Flying Dutchman" was accepted in Berlin.

Meyerbeer put him on the road, as it were.

You have to understand that for someone

of the personality of Wagner

the last thing you want to be is debted,

to have to feel grateful to someone.

You feel it's your own doing, you're a self creator,

self created man.

And if that person is a Jew

then that just intensifies the whole resentment.

1848.

Democratic revolutions sweep across Germany.

The idealistic Wagner joins the fight.

He plots with revolutionary agitators

and heads to the barricades for street warfare in Dresden.

♪

But the revolution is crushed by the king's troops.

Now Wagner is forced to escape Germany

to avoid arrest for treason,

an offense punishable by death.

Homeless and desperate he turns his steps to Paris.

There he finds his patron, Meyerbeer,

more successful than ever.

A friend says that I must have money here,

like Meyerbeer, or rather more than Meyerbeer.

Or I must make people afraid of me.

Well, I have no money but what I do have

is an enormous desire to commit acts

of artistic terrorism.

In order to create the myth of the misunderstood genius

who reaps success with no one's help

he now had to erase Meyerbeer,

he had to demonize him.

Now a new answer emerges in Wagner's mind.

The reason that he, not Meyerbeer,

is the next great German composer

is that Meyerbeer is Jewish

and a Jew can never write real music.

This is the message of his essay,

"Judaism in Music", published in 1850

under a pseudonym, Freigedank,

Free Thinker.

He creates a whole ideology

about race and creativity

showing that in order to be creative

an individual has to be rooted in a society

and have a kind of historic relationship

to landscape and language and to the social life

of the community.

Jews as outsiders are denied the basic roots

of creativity.

They are parasites, they're wandering,

not truly connected.

Therefore their best suit as artists is imitative,

but they have no real creativity.

The Jew speaks the language in whose midst he dwells

from generation to generation,

but he speaks it always as an alien.

The important thing is that he's the first person

to popularize the idea that what's dangerous about the Jew

is the capacity to assimilate.

Because the Jews want to look creative,

they want to look like everybody else,

and they actually do it very well

because they're very good at the imitation

and therefore they're an invisible poison.

We have to explain to ourselves

the involuntary repellants possessed for us

by the nature and the personality of the Jews.

...feeling of the greatest revulsion,

repugnance against the Jewish nature.

In particular the purely physical aspects...

...creaking, squeaking, buzzing, snuffle,

yodel, cackle.

His first wife Minna, could never come to terms

with this anti-Semitism.

I used to be happy in the knowledge that you

were close to me while you created

all the beautiful things.

You always made me so happy,

sang and played almost every new scene for me.

But since two years ago when you wanted

to read me that essay in which you slander

an entire race which has been fundamentally

helpful to you I could not force myself to listen.

And ever since that time you have borne

a grudge against me and punished me

so severely for it that you never again

let me hear anything from your works.

She was very insightful.

I mean, she understood there was something wrong

and she picked it up.

After that he lost all this respect for her

as a judge, as a companion even.

So there was that emotional break

and new affairs and all the rest of it.

In "Judaism in Music" Wagner attacked the Jews

for being wandering nomads.

But he himself was a wanderer,

a wanted man with a price on his head.

He would not be able to return to Germany

for 12 more years.

♪

Wagner's next home was here in Switzerland

where he was supported by wealthy friends.

He was now separated from his wife.

♪

One day an unexpected visitor knocked on the door.

Carl Tausig.

He was 16 years old from Warsaw

and already gaining a reputation

as one of the greatest piano virtuosos in Europe.

He was also Jewish.

He was a student, I would say a protégé,

of Franz Liszt.

He had a letter of recommendation from Liszt.

I send you today a wonderful fellow,

dearest Richard.

Receive him kindly.

Tausig is to work your Erard thoroughly

and to play all manner of things for you.

♪

And the fact that Wagner was swept off his feet

by the youngster's playing I guess

wouldn't be any surprise because he was,

by all accounts, a wonderful pianist.

♪

More important than that he took a paternal interest

in the boy.

He just took him under his wing,

practically adopted him.

He found a place for the boy to live

in a small cubby hole, as he calls it,

near his own home.

♪

Tausig is gradually worming his way into my heart.

Small bad habits apart he is really

a very intelligent, sympathetic,

and good hearted youngster.

♪

This was a new experience for Wagner

and it's really amusing to read it

because he must have thought the boy

was something exceptional, but in his behavior

he was just a normal 16 year old.

He sits down to table every day

stating that he has no appetite at all

which pleases me all the less

because the reason is the cheese and the sweets

he has eaten.

He hates walking,

and yet declares that he would like to come with me

when I propose to leave him at home.

After the first half hour he lags behind

as if he had walked for four hours.

My childless marriage is thus, suddenly blessed

with an interesting phenomenon.

And I take in in rapid doses

the quintessence of paternal cares and troubles.

♪

At the same time it touches and moves me

when this boy shows such deep, tender feelings.

Such large sympathy that he captivates me

irresistibly.

♪

Wagner was a terrible,

terrible pianist.

He never really learned.

Which is one of the reasons he very often had,

when he could afford it, a young man nearby,

always at hand who could play the piano for him.

This is at the cusp, Wagner's at the cusp,

of the development of real racial anti-Semitism

which means you're Jewish, I'm Jewish,

we're all alike, nothing we can do.

By the same token there was a long tradition

of exceptional Jews.

Jews, because of their wealth

or their education who were accepted

in Christian society.

I don't like your relatives, but I like you.

Three years later he's living in Vienna.

♪

He meets Tausig again there, he's living in Vienna.

By now Tausig had a major career as a pianist.

He helped Wagner meet wealthy supporters

and put on concerts to introduce Wagner's music

to the Viennese public.

♪

In 1863 Wagner embarked on a tour across Europe

to earn much needed income as a traveling conductor.

Many of his concerts were organized by Tausig

and two other Jewish musicians:

Leopold Damrosch, and Heinrich Porges.

Such demoniac personalities cannot be judged

by ordinary standards.

They are egotists of the first water

and must be so,

or they could never fulfill their mission.

On his travels Wagner found that some of

his most loyal audiences were Jews.

To my amazement I found almost the entire room

at all events, the front seats

filled with Jews.

And in fact I owed such success as I obtained

to the interest excited in this section

of the population.

Jews were deeply invested in the music of their time.

They were the leading sector in most cities

in the population of audience and of students.

Being a musician didn't require that you give up

your ways as a Jew.

It was compatible with remaining very traditionally

Jewish.

So music had a place in a way that let's say,

imagery, painting, sculpture never had

as part of Gentile culture to be assimilated

into the Jewish home.

So that there are Jews that flocked to Wagner

it's because there were a lot of Jews in music.

Ideologically you could conjure up anti-Semitism

out of nowhere but what decides whether

a person becomes an obsessive anti-Semite

or an active one depends on their emotional persona,

the personality.

Usually whether they have paranoid traits.

Every time something negative happened

where a Jewish person was concerned

he would say, "A-ha.

This happened because he's Jewish."

This happens even today.

One uses the opportunity to hate Jews

by circumstantial evidence.

Wagner's wife, Minna, had spoken out against

his anti-Semitism.

But they were now permanently separated.

He had a new lover, soon to be his second wife,

Cosima, the young daughter of his friend, Franz Liszt.

♪

His second wife treated him as a curator

treats a rare object.

Well, she worshipped him, she utterly worshipped the man.

But she became, if it's possible,

a greater anti-Semite than he was.

Despite his Jewish supporters

Richard and Cosima were convinced

that he was being persecuted by the Jews.

Behind every setback and disappointment

they saw a Jewish plot to take revenge on him

for his anonymous article on Judaism in music.

When his opera, "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg",

received a scathing review in Vienna

Wagner had had enough.

He decided to republish the essay,

this time under his own name

with some revisions.

The early Wagner probably doesn't mean

murdering the Jews in 1850, I'm sure he doesn't,

but in 1869, later on,

you're seeing the ambiguities exploited

and it's intimated maybe a physical death,

or at least the destruction of the Jews as a community

would be desirable.

Whether the downfall of our culture

can be arrested by a violent ejection

of the destructive foreign element,

I am unable to decide,

since that would require forces

with whose existence I am unacquainted.

What are you doing to yourself, you may ask.

He charges into this nest of,

he creates these enemies.

He tells these people you are vile,

you're not German, you may speak German,

but it's not really German.

You are totally, totally worthless creatures.

And he was, at the same time,

raising money from them.

In 1871 Wagner announced that he was planning to build

a special theater in the Bavarian-Franconian

town of Bayreuth

to stage his monumental new work,

"The Ring of the Nibelung".

He had the financial support of the King of Bavaria,

Ludwig II who was a passionate Wagnerian.

Even the Bavarian treasury couldn't pay

for the whole thing.

It was a very expensive proposition.

He needed somebody in charge of trying to raise funds

and he turned to Tausig.

It was Tausig who probably first got the idea

of the patron certificate,

where you do that all the time today,

you pay a certain amount of money up front

and for that you get a lot of privileges

including, maybe, free tickets

or something like that.

And the buyers were those people for whom

culture was very important.

Culture in 19th century Europe was the ticket

for recognition and equality for Jews.

But Tausig's fundraising work did not last for long.

While he was on a concert tour in Leipzig

he suddenly fall ill with typhus fever

and died a few days later.

He was 29.

♪

To be ready for death

life's fruit slowly ripens.

To earn its ripeness early in the sudden blush of spring,

that was your fate and your daring.

Now we must grieve both your fate and your daring.

♪

But Wagner was about to meet two young Jewish men

who would mean even more to him.

The year after Tausig's death Wagner met

the new conductor of the Royal Opera in Munich.

Hermann Levi.

♪

♪ I came down through the woods and saw my old house ♪

♪ There sat my lost love, glancing through the window ♪

He was a very, very famous man.

One of the great German conductors of his time.

He had one of those German apprenticeship careers

where you went up from smaller towns

to progressively larger towns

and you ended up in Munich.

♪

Levi was descended from a proud Rabbinical family.

The last 14 generations of Levis were rabbis,

including his father, Benedict Samuel Levi,

chief rabbi of the town of Giessen.

Most people who wanted to get somewhere in the arts,

they converted if they were Jewish.

Levi didn't and that was unusual

and he got what, probably everybody considered

to be fun needling about that for years.

It's said that he took these things

with a kind of pained smile.

♪

How much pain was there, one can only imagine.

♪

Levi was one of the best conductors around

and Brahms, to a degree, needed him.

Not just as a conductor, but for his knowledge

of the orchestra.

Levi became his sort of advisor in orchestration.

Levi knew the orchestra inside out in a way

that maybe even Brahms didn't.

It was almost like the Hatfields and the McCoys,

or the Montagues and the Capulets.

You were either a Brahmsian or a Wagnerian in those days

and there was not a lot of crossing.

Wagner declared the symphony to be dead

and that new forms of music, such as his own operas,

were the future of music.

Meanwhile the conservatives believed in the old forms

especially genres like symphony and string quartet,

and Brahms believed that those things were

what music were about,

that those things were eternal.

It was a bitter, bitter divide for a long time

that seemed mutually exclusive, though,

of course now Brahms and Wagner

cohabit concert programs with no problem.

Like a good Brahmsian Hermann Levi

always kept his distance from Wagner.

But then he conducted Wagner's

"Tristan und Isolde" in Munich.

Levi became mesmerized by Wagner's music.

Soon he began to visit the Wagners

at Wahnfried, their new villa in Bayreuth.

♪

A few months after Wagner met Levi

he received a letter from a young pianist

in Kharkiv, Russia.

♪

I am a Jew.

By telling you that, I tell you everything.

All those characteristics noticeable in

the present day Jews, I too possess.

My condition largely worsens

since I recognize that the Jews have to perish.

How should I, however, not also perish

since I am, myself, a Jew?

I cannot perish by baptism.

Only death is left to me.

I've already tried to commit suicide,

but I still decided to write you.

Could I not be useful to you

with the performance of a "Nibelungen"?

I believe that I understand this work,

even if not completely.

I look to you, then, for help.

For the help I urgently need.

The letter indicated that he suffered

from terrible loneliness and terrible depression

and he was a Wagner fan.

Now you'd think this would be exactly

the kind of letter Wagner wouldn't reply to.

Richard sends him a very friendly reply.

As soon as Rubenstein received Wagner's reply

he traveled from Russia to this house in Switzerland

where the Wagners were staying.

♪

In the evening Herr Joseph Rubinstein

suddenly arrives from Kharkiv,

a curious spectacle and experience.

Richard is infinitely kind to the young man

and advises him to take things easy,

offers him access to Bayreuth.

And the visit turned out to last ten years.

For most of the next ten years

Rubinstein lived with the Wagner family

as part of the household.

Wagner put him to work as a musical copyist

and arranger.

♪

Rubinstein, I mean,

Wagner recognized from the start this was a crazy chap

and I think he took him in like he would a stray dog

to begin with.

♪

Then he found he was very useful,

he was entertaining, an admirable pianist.

♪

Wagner more and more loved to lecture,

he loved to lecture his guests.

And he always had Rubinstein there to play

whatever was needed to exhibit.

If Wagner wanted to show a portion of

what he had composed in the last ten days

or two weeks there was Rubinstein to play for him.

And also it's someone you can look down on

when he's out of the room.

Or even when he's in the room,

come to think of it, even better.

After one of the final piano rehearsals

Wagner tries to thank Joseph Rubinstein

for the work he has done.

He starts off very amiably and then

says something along the lines of,

"If we never really drew closer on a human level,

the fault is not mine, but yours.

You are a member of a foreign race

with which we have no sympathy.

Jewish".

By the end he gets quite worked up

so that his planned speech of thanks

turns into an expression of anger and ill feeling.

♪

Something underneath caused them

to get along with each other

despite some flare-ups, despite his religion,

despite Wagner's short temper.

Wagner had his own problems

and he must have known that his man really suffered.

I think he probably, without ever expressing it,

saw something of himself in this man.

♪

As the opening of the Bayreuth Festival

drew closer,

Wagner was surrounded by Jewish helpers.

Joseph Rubinstein was the accompanist

for piano rehearsals.

Hermann Levi took time off from his duties in Munich

to work with the Bayreuth orchestra.

Heinrich Porges kept an official record

of all Wagner's stage directions to his cast.

The soprano, Lilli Lehmann,

coached the women's choruses

and premiered several different roles

in "The Ring Cycle".

♪

He did very, very good things for these people.

They got recognition, they got to deal

with a genius.

I mean, if anybody knows about Hermann Levi now

or Joseph Rubinstein now it's thanks to Wagner

and the Wagnerian connection.

It's complicated,

but you can't take these Jewish friends

and say, "Look, this is the alibi.

He wasn't anti-Semitic, he's got Jewish friends."

I mean, this is absurd.

You have to look at the quality of the friendships

and so on.

He needs Tausig for piano reductions,

he needs Porges and the others

for screen help,

Rubinstein for helping out.

I am too old to fool myself

about anything anymore and I am telling you

that what is going to happen in Bayreuth next year

will produce a radical change in our artistic world.

Levi was getting closer to Wagner

and Brahms knew it.

And they had a visit and that meeting ended badly

and Brahms left without saying goodbye.

And they met after that, but it was never quite the same

and Levi was, in fact, pulling away from Brahms,

being a champion of Brahms, really,

to being Wagner's acolyte and conductor.

And part of the cult in a way, I think.

♪

♪ Now I shall see her no more ♪

♪

Levi had now lost his closest friend

because of his support for Wagner.

But he also knew that the Wagnerians

would never completely accept him

because he was a Jew.

He did his best to fit in at Wahnfried.

He even began to echo Wagner's ideas

about the Jews.

Friend Levi speaks of a great movement

against the Jews in all spheres of life.

In Munich there are attempts to remove them

from the town council.

He hopes that in twenty years they will be extricated

root and branch and the audience for "The Ring"

will be another kind of public.

Certainly one of the moments when things began

to go sour between Brahms and Levi

is when Levi wrote Brahms, I think,

a really remarkable letter about Wagner

and about Wagner's, even at the time,

infamous article "Judaism in Music".

Levi wrote "I've never been able to join in

with the general howling about Wagner's foolishness

and questionable character.

You'll remember that I, myself,

defended the Jewish brochure insofar as I believe it

to come from serious artistic conviction."

♪

The Jews feel sense, in a guilty way,

that Wagner has got some, a germ of truth

which is why he's so wounding to them, I think.

You know, if it was completely bogus,

they didn't feel that bit of insecurity

they wouldn't be affected.

But they know he's got something.

That they're outsiders.

That they're German is not naturally

the proper high German of the artist

and you get this self doubt coming up

as a result.

The Wagners knew that Jews like Levi

were the most devoted helpers they could find

because they had the most to prove.

If you come we shall be able to talk about your people.

Do you think that you and Rubinstein could serve

as typical examples of the species?

I do not think so.

♪

The opening of the Bayreuth Festival in 1876

was a major international event.

From nearly every part of the world

audiences streamed up to the theater

on Bayreuth's Green Hill to see the world premier

of Wagner's "Ring Cycle".

Few people in the audience were as struck

by what they saw as Angelo Neumann,

a young Jewish tenor turned opera impresario.

I was incapable of speaking to a soul,

so deeply sunk was I in all I had seen and heard.

Angelo said, "I got an idea.

What do you say I tour this all around Europe?"

And Wagner says, "Great, do it.

I support you, I'll sign the contracts."

And that's exactly what Angelo Neumann did,

he brought it to Italy, to different parts of Germany,

to Paris, to London.

I think he, more than Bayreuth, made "The Ring Cycle" famous

all over Europe because he was bringing it

to all these other European capitols.

He is Angelo Neumann, a man of Jewish extraction

and strangely energetic and extremely devoted to me

in a way which, oddly enough,

I find now only among the Jews.

♪

Since anti-Semitism was so commonplace

it's very hard for us to understand

that the Jewish audience paid as little attention as possible

to his anti-Semitism.

We look back always at Jewish history

through the lens of the Holocaust,

as if everything led up to Auschwitz

and that's a distortion.

People were flabbergasted

by what happened in 1933.

There were still flabbergasted when the anti Jewish laws

were passed in the '30s.

They were still flabbergasted when Kristallnacht happened.

They were still flabbergasted when they were taken to camps.

Now they were not stupid people.

And they thought, "This can't be true.

We've lived in this place for hundreds of years.

We speak the language.

We are an integral part of this community.

So, yeah, there are a lot of people who don't like us."

Do we think that Barack Obama

and that African Americans in the United States

should consider their life in American unstable

because of the ubiquity of racism?

There's racism every corner where we live.

Does that make this an unstable place?

♪

Now, to some of them Wagner's anti-Semitism

was a cause of distress,

especially as the century wore on.

Because there began to be real tensions

between Jews and non-Jews that had

real political significance.

You find the birth of political anti-Semitism.

And then Jews began to have qualms about,

you know, there's something about this

which is not right.

What produces political anti-Semitism

is the reaction to 1871,

the final full emancipation of the Jews as citizens

in the United German Empire.

It's not a cultural anti-Semitism,

it's a racial anti-Semitism where you were being tarred

because of who you are, because of your very existence.

The leaders of the new movement

all corresponded with Wagner and considered him

an inspiration.

I read a very good speech by the preacher, Stoecker,

about the Jews.

Richard is in favor of expelling them entirely.

We laugh to think that it really seems as if

his article on the Jews marked the beginning

of this struggle.

As Wagner became closer with the anti-Semites

his Jewish friends were becoming a liability.

There's a lot of German anti-Semite didn't think

that Wagner was anti-Semitic, they thought he was Jewish

because he had so many Jewish friends,

there were cartoons in the paper about him.

The newspapers used to write articles to that effect.

Richard wishes all Jews would drop off of him like warts

for which there is no known remedy.

In 1878 Wagner had signed a contact

with King Ludwig II stating that his new work,

"Parsifal", would be performed at Bayreuth

with the orchestra and chorus of the Munich Royal Opera.

Using the king's opera company

was the only way Wagner could afford to hold

another Bayreuth Festival.

This meant that Hermann Levi, the king's court conductor,

was the natural choice to conduct "Parsifal".

It would be an overwhelming hardship to me

if "Parsifal", this all Christian work,

should be directed by a Jewish conductor.

King Ludwig makes it clear without my royal orchestra

or conductor, and conductor comes with the orchestra,

there is no way I can see that we can get "Parisfal".

Wagner is miffed.

He doesn't want Levi to conduct "Parsifal".

He makes it so impossible he,

he torments the man.

He says in a conversation with Levi

that he, as a Jew, has merely to learn to die.

This Levi well understands.

And when he tells Hermann Levi,

"As a Jew all you have to do is die,"

well, of course Wagner says "I mean it metaphorically.

You have to destroy the Jewishness in yourself."

But when you say that to someone, I mean,

it's a crushing statement even if you mean it metaphorically.

It's intended to hurt and then Wagner graciously,

in a German way, will pick up the humiliated Levi

from his knees and restore him.

Whether he wants to actually die, well,

of course he doesn't,

I don't think Wagner wants to actually kill anyone.

But then again it was 1881,

he reads of the Russian pogroms.

An article about anti Jewish demonstrations

makes him remark, "That is the only way it can be done,

by throwing these fellows out and giving them a thrashing."

That's very physical.

And there's that joke.

Wagner reads about the theater fire in Vienna

where some Jews were killed.

This was an operetta theater in Vienna.

A fire broke out and hundreds of people were burned to death

and trampled to death.

The fact that 416 Israelites died in the fire

does not increase Richard's concern over the disaster.

We, for example, do not talk of our feelings

about those Jews in the theater

in front of Rubinstein.

Four hundred unbaptized and probably five hundred

baptized ones.

He makes a drastic joke to the effect

that all Jews should be burned

at a performance of "Nathan the Wise".

This is the closest they've come to the incineration

of human beings in their fantasy of hate.

If it happened, if only it could be.

It's a matter of the, the wishes, the dirty wishes.

♪

♪ Over all the hilltops is calm ♪

♪ In all the treetops, you can feel ♪

♪ hardly a breath of air ♪

♪

♪ The little birds fall silent in the woods ♪

♪

♪ Just wait... ♪

♪ ...soon, you'll also be at rest ♪

♪

Wagner had confidence in Levi's conducting,

but the fact remained he was a Jew.

Richard and Cosima agreed that Levi

would have to get baptized before he could conduct

the opera, Wagner's most Christian work.

Time and again they tried to persuade him to convert,

but Levi knew that baptism would break the heart

of his beloved father, the rabbi.

What would become of me if I were to approach "Parsifal"

from a level higher than that of the arts?

I do not know.

For the time being I struggled not to let any such power

get a hold of me.

In 1881 Wagner received an anonymous letter demanding

that he keep his work pure and not allow a Jew

to conduct it.

The letter also hinted that Levi and Cosima

might be having an affair.

Wagner set it all up, he even looks at his watch

on the steps of Wahnfried and says,

"You're late, Levi, for this meal."

And then he sits him down and says,

"Someone has given me this letter

accusing you of an affair.

I, of course, don't believe it."

It of cour-, I mean, destroys the man.

Puts him into a state of breakdown.

I sat down at the table deeply upset and outraged,

but could not utter a single word.

In answer to the master's question why I was so quiet

I responded, "I don't understand why

you didn't just tear the letter into pieces.

Why did you give it to me to read?"

You know, the sun rose and set on Richard Wagner

as far as Cosima was concerned.

He was her whole life, I mean,

there was no possibility and he knew that.

My opinion is that he thought to show Levi

"Look at the trouble you're causing.

You see what's happening?

People are willing to say all kind of things

because you're Jewish.

And, you know, if you just go through a ceremony,

a simple little ceremony uh,

we won't have that anymore."

Levi had finally reached his limit.

After they finished eating he packed his bags

and left Bayreuth without saying goodbye.

The next day he wrote to Wagner

resigning the post of "Parsifal" conductor.

Wagner writes him and says,

"Look, we've got work to do here,

come on back."

And Levi writes him back and says,

"I'm sorry.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I think you need to get somebody else."

He said, "I'm over, finished with Wagner."

And, of course, Wagner has to come round

because without Levi

there's no Munich Orchestra,

there's no Munich Chorus.

There's no "Parsifal".

So Wagner sits down and writes him a letter,

rather than a telegram.

"You do not need to lose any of your faith.

Perhaps some great change is about to take place

in your life, but at all events

you are my "Parsifal" conductor."

Reading Wagner's letter Levi was finally reassured

that Wagner would no longer try to have him baptized.

He returned to Bayreuth and continued his work

with Wagner.

Levi did conduct the world premier of "Parsifal"

and nearly all the performances at that year's

Bayreuth Festival.

He continued to conduct "Parsifal" at Bayreuth

for the next 12 years.

He was never baptized.

So Hermann Levi is a little bit of an odd case.

I think more has been made of it than demands

because he did understand on some level

the conflict between genius

and this sort of, in a way,

humiliation that he had to suffer.

Listen, every Jew that dealt with Wagner

knew about his essay.

They knew the man was anti-Semitic.

He knew they were Jewish.

But the important thing to all of them was artistry.

He, it's no weakness on the part of Levi.

He was completely taken in by Wagner's music

which I can understand, so am I.

He was a Wagnerite.

He uh, he gave up a lot of friends.

There's nothing weak about Levi.

The year after the "Parsifal" premier

Wagner died in Venice.

♪

"God grant you the strength to withstand this heavy test.

Certainly consolation is impossible.

Please remember that a Richard Wagner does not die,

only his mortal coil is stripped off."

♪

With Wagner gone Joseph Rubinstein's

inner demons soon made life unbearable.

One year later he returned to Lucerne, Switzerland

where he had first met Wagner.

There, Joseph Rubinstein shot himself to death.

♪

He was a man who felt he couldn't go on living

once Wagner was dead.

What that was about, I don't know.

It was about genius, I suspect.

He couldn't imagine that this genius could die.

I think Wagner felt that Rubinstein was

an extremely valuable commodity for his social occasions.

Shame, isn't it?

Because it was so deep on the other side.

♪

Wagner passed away some six years

before Hitler was born in 1889.

So it wasn't that he planned any influence

on a person he never knew, of course.

Hitler said "Wagner is something divine.

His music is my religion."

In 1923 he went to visit Wagner's grave

and visited it many times after and Hitler said,

"When I was there for the first time on his grave

I understood what is my vocation,

what is my mission."

Okay, this is not anything that you can think lightly.

He understood there what was his mission.

♪

When we came to the ghettos and concentration camps,

hell is the garden of Eden compared

to what we endured there.

Blows, humiliation and death.

Whenever they spoke to us, they called us "dirty Jew,"

"Jew full of lice."

Who did this? Anti-Semites.

The hero of the anti-Semites was Wagner.

Wagner wrote it very clearly in his books.

That is essentially why we don't want (Wagner's music).

♪

Sooner or later it must happen.

To not play Wagner by an orchestral musician

is like a pianist not playing Chopin.

It's just, should be part and parcel

of their education.

♪

Whether you like his music or his personality

Wagner was a very important composer.

♪

You cannot live as a professional musician,

you cannot play a trombone or a horn

or a violin for that matter without playing Wagner's music.

I grew up in Israel, of course,

we had one record of "Tannhäuser" at home,

but that was about it.

And I was introduced in way of shock therapy

when I went to become Daniel Barenboim's

assistant in Berlin.

And my first task there was to prepare "Parsifal"

of all works and I was so taken by the music

and I was so, I've really cha-,

it has changed my life as a musician.

And since then I've been conducing as much Wagner

as I could.

In the coming years, regretfully,

we will not have any more survivors and,

and then another generation will listen to Wagner.

Wagner will become a legitimate composer

as any other composer.

It will take time, but I don't think this is

an everlasting curse or everlasting boycott.

Will there be ever a time?

I don't know.

I would think that the nation that respects itself

should keep some symbols sacred.

Even if "sacred" is a strong word,

should keep and respect some symbols.

Every nation does that.

Why, why not us?

You ask me whether I am still a Wagnerian.

After years of study and reflection I feel

I might really call myself that.

I don't know whether my change of view

compared to what I thought as a young man

means a lack of principles, a weakness or a crime,

or development and progress.

But it's as little use discussing Wagner

as it is discussing religion.

To each his own.

♪