Coming to DVD today, Tuesday, October 7: WAGNER’S JEWS
Hilan Warshaw’s exploration of the legacy of the composer’s anti-Semitism premiered at the University of South Carolina’s WagnerWorldWide bicentennial symposium last year. Beyond European television outlets, it’s gone on to screen at DocAviv, and at various Jewish fests in San Diego, Houston, Miami, East Bay, and Seattle.
Warshaw’s film uses as its starting point the boycott of an Israeli Wagner concert, prompting an understanding of the complicated relationship the composer had with Jewish people in the 19th century, and, of course, why and how he was embraced by the Third Reich. Viewers with only a casual understanding of Nazi history may be surprised to learn that Wagner wasn’t simply innocently elevated as some nationalistic paragon, but instead had propagated virulently anti-Semitic essays, first under an alias and later under his own name, in his own day. Complicating matters, he paradoxically counted among his patrons and ardent admirers several Jewish people, apparently willing to ignore his beliefs – and later his paranoia about a Jewish conspiracy out to destroy him – because they loved his music. He also initially was mentored and introduced to important music circles by accomplished composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, a Jew, who he later went out of his way to criticize, and also took on self-loathing Jewish assistants who he treated with affection. While the information provided is interesting, Warshaw’s approach is utterly pedestrian, with stentorian narration and a surfeit of talking heads suited most to history-focused TV outlets than to a theatrical setting.
what (not) to doc 