A Führer row erupts in Bayreuth
NewsGerman and Austrian media are reporting that a conflict has flared between Katharina Wagner and conductor Christian Thielemann over the use of the word ‘Führer’ in a production of Lohengrin.
According to Der Standard in Vienna:
After this year’s dress rehearsal, Katharina Wagner asked tenor Klaus Florian Vogt, who sang the title role, to replace the word “Führer” with “Schützer” at the end of Richard Wagner’s opera about the Swan Knight. “It’s a common substitute,” Wagner said on Wednesday. “A lot of houses use the word ‘Protector’, and we in Bayreuth should be particularly sensitive because we have a special political background and therefore a special responsibility.”
Thielemann reportedly told Die Welt: ‘Then you can no longer play ‘Tosca’ with the attempted rape, murder and so on.’
‘Führer’ or ‘Schützer‘, what‘s the difference? In a typical Wagner tenor‘s diction, both sound like ‚Chüoohüoo‘.
“Schützer”
– pronounced “shit-s-her”
You’ve created a new abnormal behavior Infantile misogyny. Congratulations but hardly surprising.
Political correctness comes to the House of Wagner…by a Wagner. Richard would not have approved. A great granddaughter cancels her great granddaddy who enabled her to get her job to begin with. With heirs like that who needs enemies.
This is another tempest in a teapot. The classical music universe is already ahead of the game and unapologetically at home in a post-politically-correct world, which it has conquered through the labor and sacrifices of its most prestigious, fearless leaders.
Think about it: the legendary Muti-Alexander-CSO trio received accolades from its base for refusing to change the racial line “immondo sangue dei negri” (“filthy n**** blood”) in a Verdi libretto. Muti bragged about it in interviews, pointing out with pleasure that he even hired a Black singer to sing the line, and the Black singer “did not have any problem with it”.
Why would “Führer” be incensing, and to whom? To the opposite, screaming it in Bayreuth will cement the notion that classical music does not need to apologize for being itself and does not owe anything to anyone. If, on top of it, Klaus Florian Vogt happened to be a Jew, this situation would be even better and the defiant fidelity to text more compelling.
In our battered, suffering world, classical music is delivering integrity. That is quite an achievement. And Thielemann-Muti … heavens, I am already getting goose bumps. A passing of the baton that may really be written in the stars.
Thielemann would fit right in as the next music director of Chicago, which somehow allowed Muti to hire a black singer just to make him sing “dell’immondo sangue dei negri” in Un Ballo in Maschera (only to sneakily change the translation in the supertitles without informing the maestro).
At least Thielemann didn’t hire a Jew to sing Lohengrin just to hear him sing “Führer”, right?
(By the way, what “murder” in Tosca? Tosca acted in self-defense so it’s not murder. And Cavaradossi was executed under the legal system of state-sanctioned capital punishment. But I digress.)
A Scarpia defender? ‘Thin end of the wedge, etc., if you ask me! (Ha, ha!)
Technically, Tosca does not qualify as attempted rape.
Extortion, maybe? Scarpia extorted a contract, and then she reneged on it when delivery was due, and stabbed him.
Clearly Thielemann should stick to German operas.
I am pretty sure that in every (many!) productions I have been to they have used Schūtzer and I had always thought that that was the original word. It sounds better and in the context “protector” seems to fit perfectly after the Ortrud/Telramund shenanigans: it’s protection Brabant needs!
Certainly, but ‚führen‘ (to lead) and ‚schützen‘ (to protect) describe very different things.
Wagner meant ‚führen‘.
Having said that, if the problem is a few ‚Westentaschennazis’ in the audience still getting mental erections by just hearing the word ‚Führer‘, then replace it by all means with something not triggering their fetish. I wonder though, if that really is (still) necessary, almost 80 years after WW2.
Just to say that “Führer” is authentic. See the 2007 Eulenburg score based on an intensive scrutiny of original sources. In Wagnerland you have to be careful what you wish for!
“we in Bayreuth should be particularly sensitive because we have a special political background and therefore a special responsibility.” Gotta love this sanitized lingo. Similar to a “special military operation” !
What’s sanitized about it? Germans used to called Hitler “Führer”. Remember Hitler? The guy who wanted to genocide everyone “non-Aryan”, especially the Jews? Yeah, a lot of Germans aren’t comfortable with that word and I think it’s understandable. Thielemann is simply like that one white friend who constantly demands to be able to say the N-word without being called a racist because
“otherwise it’s unfair”. What a loser…
Another ignorant nitwit . The Waffen-SS was mainly composed of non-Germans . Have you forgotten Emil Maurice – Hitlers Jewish driver ? How about Field Marshall Milch ? There were blacks in the Wehrmacht…etc.
Learn a little before you post ignorant comments…
Regarding the “n” word – blacks use it constantly – where do you live – under a rock ?
Could this be a good-girl-bad-boy strategy to woke-wash themselves?
What a great comment! Gustavo should have a column somewhere to remove the bored stare with which I usually regard the internet.
Führer means Guide.
Führung means Guidance.
Then the Prussian Army hijacked a single word, ages later, and it may not longer be used.
Now, why does that remind me so much of “Military Operation” versus “Invasion”?…
Fremdenführer, Reiseführer, Bergführer, Führerschein, bitte alles ersetzen mit Schützer.
The GDR had indeed replaced Führerschein by Fahrerlaubnis. And Americans can be pretty startled when realizing how “leader” translates into German.
My father was a “Lokführer”.
Verführer: Verschützer
Führungskraft: Schützerkraft
Stimmführer!!! (eieieieiei): Stimmschützer!
welcome to Neusprech.
Neither of them seems to know their history: this would not be the first time this was done at Bayreuth. For instance in Wieland’s production from the early 60s it’s clearly “Schützer” instead of “Führer” (as is documented in the 1962 Sawallisch recording).
One cannot judge history by today’s standards. Let the libretto stay as it was written.
Only allowed if they slip in, “Anything further Führer?”
It has always been ‘Schützer‘ each time I’ve heard Lohengrin at Bayreuth, so one wonders how or why it would have been changed back now – a mistake on KFV’s part?
Boring discussion – How about discussing why there are no tenors who can sing the title role today ?