George Lucas
I may be dating myself here, but I have a very clear memory of the impact of the opening sequence of the first “Star Wars” movie. George Lucas paired startling visual images with John William’s compelling music to set the stage for a new kind of movie experience, one in which the heroic narrative, visual style and power of symphonic sound demonstrated again that the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts.
Richard Wagner
That gives you some idea of what Richard Wagner did more than 100 years ago. He sought for the audience not a performance but an experience. He wanted more than an orchestra in the pit and singers on the stage. He wanted the audience to be carried away on a wave of simultaneous and multiple sensations. The term for this is “Gesamtkunstwerke,” which translates as “”complete work of art.”
And indeed, even in our own time, the noted mythologist Joseph Campbell (who served as the inspiration for George Lucas’ use of heroic mythology and culture) characterized Wagner’s music as a “perfumed sea of sound.”
How did Wagner attempt to do this without the technology we have today? To start with, he “through-composed,” which means there is no stopping at the end of an aria or scene. He wanted constant motion, constant advancement of the story. He wanted the audience propelled forward.
Secondly, he effectively doubled the size of the orchestra typically used in the mid-19th century, his equivalent of “surround sound.” And more surprisingly, he placed the orchestra under the stage so it could not be seen by the audience, forcing the focus of full attention to the visual and audio drama. The conductor stood at the edge of the stage, in view of the singers but not the audience. The pit was raked downward so musicians could see the conductor, and he had holes cut in the stage so the music could drift upward to the singers. Such drastic changes in theater design required him to build his own.
His story selection also supported the concept of “complete work of art.” He chose known Germanic myths of epic proportions. So the audience, which was familiar with the content, was free to focus on the experience as it unfolded musically and dramatically before them. In today’s terms, this would be like Tolkein fans experiencing the movie version of Lord of the Rings.
When he wrote “Das Rheingold” in 1869 he included no intermission. The collaborative production that Indianapolis Opera is staging with the Indianapolis Symphony on May 15th and 17th will have a 20-minute intermission, however. Next week we will take a look at the clever way Maestro Mario Venzago will insert the intermission. We also will get a preview of what we are doing to incorporate Wagner’s vision of Gesamtkunstwerke.
Bis bald!
Jim
