Lohengrin as Dramatic Theodicy

Lohengrin as Dramatic Theodicy

The myth Wagner set to music in the opera Lohengrin is a marvelous portrait of romantic chivalry. The mystery of the enduring power of this story may be explained by analyzing it as a dramatic theodicy. A philosophical theodicy poses an answer to the problem of evil in a world supposedly controlled by a God who is good. How atrocities can be permitted under the sun by a benevolent and omnipotent God is a question that does not completely relent under logical analysis. Dramatic renderings of the issue have had wider appeal and greater staying power. One of the oldest examples of dramatic theodicy is the story of Job in the Bible. Job suffers even in his innocence, and his complaint reaches the court of heaven where God permits the ordeal to continue, apparently to negate Satan’s taunt that Job is faithful only because God rewards him for his virtue. Making Job into an object lesson does little to relieve him, but, eventually, there is a thunderous conclusion in the firmament, more in resonance with operatic crescendo than philosophical abstraction.

Elsa, the heroine in Wagner’s Lohengrin, is accused of fratricide and trysting with an illicit lover by her antagonists, Telramund and his sorceress wife Ortrud. These two conspire in a plot as nefarious as that of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Their intent is to usurp headship of the Duchy of Brabant, which rightfully belongs to Elsa’s brother, Gottfried, heir to Brabant’s Christian dynasty. Gottfried, now strangely absent, is presumed dead, and Ortrud is progressively corrupting her husband by her false testimony that Elsa has murdered him. The collapse of Telramund’s nobility under the influence of his wife is a significant subplot of the opera.

When King Heinrich arrives to investigate the strife attending succession of the Duchy of Brabant, Telramund has bought Ortrud’s lies wholesale and takes up her false witness against Elsa. Elsa is called upon to defend herself, but she only replies by relating a dream of a knight who has promised to defend her cause. A herald calls repeatedly for the defender, but none appears. Elsa prays that the chivalric knight of her vision will now come to her aid. At last, transcendence breaks into the world of human injustice. In the romantic illumination of Wagner’s music the knight Lohengrin appears on the River Scheldt in mythic splendor in boat drawn by a swan.

Lohengrin betroths himself to Elsa and answers her prayers for aid on the condition that she will never ask his name or lineage. He announces that he will prove her innocence in mortal combat, and King Heinrich prays that justice will be established in the ordeal. Lohengrin and Telramund draw their swords. The contest that follows is brief and decisive. The virtuous knight subdues Telramund. With blade poised above Telramund’s heart, Lohengrin says he will spare the accuser’s life. He exhorts him to spend his borrowed time in repentance for the evil he has perpetrated against Elsa.

The first act of Lohengrin has established the basic premises of a theodicy. Elsa’s innocent suffering poses a dilemma of the sort that, left unresolved, casts doubt on God’s goodness. The premise that God is powerful is assumed. A transcendent being unable to overcome the actions of human malefactors would not be God. Even in absence of Elsa’s prayers, God must act in her defense, or there must be a satisfactory explanation, should God permit the injustice to continue. Theology in a Calvinistic vein that sustains the inscrutable sovereignty of God against human comprehension does not play well on the stage. Sending the defender of Elsa’s virtue shows God’s benevolent intentions, but resolution of the problem in Act I would not provide sufficient time for Wagner’s music to elaborate.

Ortrud and Telramund plot in the night to reverse Elsa’s good fortune. When the opportunity arises, Ortrud attempts to dissuade Elsa from trust in the heroic virtue of her betrothed: if Lohengrin comes anonymously and inexplicably from a place that must remain a mystery, will he not someday depart as abruptly, leaving bereft both Elsa and the Duchey of Brabant of which he now has been proclaimed guardian? Magical in her own right, Ortrud calls upon her spirits to deceive Elsa and overthrow her defender. She invokes the ancient Gods, Wotan and Freia, of the Norse pantheon. Telramund listens to her oaths of vengeance and her invocations in service of the betrayal of trust she is building with Elsa. Telramund now understands that he was deceived by Ortrud’s lies about Elsa. He laments the loss of his virtue and recalls his valor in defense of land and people who gave him honor, now lost. Yet in full cognizance of the deception that, with Ortrude, his actions sustain, he enlists four nobles to strive with him against his new rival.

To compound the pathos of Elsa’s innocence, she tries to befriend Ortrude, even as Elsa is being undone by Ortrude’s insinuations. She pities Ortrude’s destitution, assuming that her husband invented the accusations from which Elsa was miraculously delivered. She invites Ortrude to join with her in the wedding procession at the cathedral and makes Ortrude her maid of honor. In return, as Elsa’s bridal procession is entering the cathedral, Ortrude and Telramund block the procession and demand to know the name and origin of the groom. Lohengrin’s enigmatic reply is that he is bound to no one, save Elsa, for an answer. Since she, in good faith on her agreement, refuses to ask the forbidden question, King Heinrich and the people of Brabant conclude that the wedding is legitimate and that it shall proceed.

It is clear in the story from which the composer began that Elsa’s faith is the critical factor in her relation to the figure of her redemption. She has every reason to trust the man who confounded the lies of her accusers and saved her from death or exile. As long as she doesn’t waver on her agreement, the romance continues. Ortrude and Telramund are now again in disgrace. The bride and groom retire to their nuptial bed. All is well until Elsa’s trust gives way to the suspicions planted in her by Ortrude. She begins to probe his anonymity. He first evades her queries then reminds her of her vow. She persists, and her inquisitiveness becomes more intent on having an answer. At the critical moment, when she finally insists on knowing her husband’s name and lineage, Telramund and his cohorts storm the house. Telramund’s sword is of no avail even in ambush, and Lohengrin slays him. Instead of the sexual evocation of a Wagnerian climax, this thrust disgorges Telrumund’s entrails on the bridal bed. A determined foe has been slain, but Elsa’s question has dislodged the balance that secures her place of safety in the universe of this drama. Her husband sadly tells her that he will publicly give answers to her questions.

In the morning, the assembled people of Brabant learn the name and status of their guardian. His song begins as the strings evoke the transcendent realm of his origin. “In far off land, to mortal feet forbidden, there is a castle, Monsalvat by name.” In the ethos of medieval chivalry Monsalvat is the sanctuary of the Holy Grail, the sacred challis Jesus shared with his disciples when he instituted the Eucharistic memorial of his death. The Holy Grail appears from the world of Celtic myth in Welsh legendary tales of The Mabinogion. Sir Thomas Malory continued the rich tradition in English literature with his tales of King Arthur’s Round Table. On the European continent the grail legend had a life of its own. An unfinished 12th-century poem by the French poet Chrétien de Troyes, describes the discovery of the grail by Parsifal. Wagner’s interpretation of the Grail motif comes from an epic by the 13th century German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach. In Spain Cervantes began writing a parody of chivalric ideals in Don Quixote only to find himself captivated by chivalry in the end.

So, in the first utterances of his song, Elsa’s defender and the acclaimed guardian of Brabant identifies his nobility as transcendent in origin. He is a knight of the Holy Grail. His strength comes from participation in a divine order that shares the mystery of the blood of Christ in the castle Monsalvat. “A gleaming temple therein is hidden, so rich as nothing on earth could frame/ Therein a cup most holy powers possessing/ Is guarded as a gift of heaven’s love/ To be to sinless men a boon and blessing/ It was brought to us by angels from above/ And every year a dove descends from Heaven/ The mystic might within it to resolve/ It’s called the Grail/ And purest faith it lendeth to all the knights who in its service strive/ He whom the Grail to be its servant chooses/ It arms with holy supernatural might/ Opposed to him deceit its magic loses/ The powers of darkness he can put to flight/ Though in distant lands the Grail may send him, the cause of injured virtue to defend/ Holy might will attend him, while unknown to all he can remain/ The art that in the Grail is hidden/ Its light no mortal eye can gaze upon/ From every doubt its knight must be protected/ If recognized, he must at once be gone/ Thus compelled, now I reveal my sacred story/ The Grail’s servant to you I hither came/ My father Parsifal reigns in his glory/ His knight I am/ And Lohengrin my name.” The crescendo in the brass and trumpet flourish that attends this revelation leaves no doubt of Wagner’s intent. He understood this story very well and the effect it would have on his audience. King Heinrich sheds a tear, and Elsa laments paradise lost. Aware that his hope of love in this world is also lost, Lohengrin grieves with Elsa that her sincere remorse is vain. The people of Brabant are bereft of their guardian. Against King Heinrich’s entreaty Lohengrin explains that should he, in disobedience, seek to remain, his power would be gone and his cause would fail. He reassures Heinrich with a premonition: the Eastern horde will not prevail against German lands.

To everyone’s dismay, the swan returns on the River Scheldt. In Lohengrin’s greeting another mystery begins to unravel. If Lohnegrin had been able to remain one year in Brabant, Elsa’s brother Gottfried would have been released from the servitude to which he is bound by Ortrud’s magic. Lohengrin gives Elsa his sword and horn and a ring, which, should Gottfried ever return, will give him strength in battle, succor in danger, and remind him of the one who took up their cause. With this, it is time to say, “Lebwohl”. In the tradition of Knights errant, and rangers in American Westerns, Lohengrin must depart to find service elsewhere and to others. As he heads up the riverbank to the boat, Ortrud explicates the mystery of Gottfried’s fate. She verifies, by the gold chain around the swan’s throat, observable to all, that this swan is Gottfried transformed. The true heir to the throne of Brabant is now engaged hence. This, she says, is vengeance from the gods of the Norse pantheon on apostasy by the Christian dynasty of Brabant. But the Grail has one final consolation. Lohengrin kneels in silent prayer, and the white dove of Monsalvat hovers over the boat. Lohengrin perceives it with gratitude and springs up to unfasten the chain from the swan’s throat. The swan sinks into the water, and Lohengrin lifts to the bank a youth in gleaming silver garments. Ortrud collapses with a shriek, and Lohengrin steps onto the boat. The dove seizes the gold chain and draws it off Gottfried’s neck while Elsa gazes on him with rapture. He makes obeisance to King Heinrich. The men of the community kneel in homage to Gottfried. He hastens to Elsa’s arms, and she, in joy, turns hastily toward the shore, but Lohengrin is gone.

Wagner didn’t invent this story, but it is his rendition that endures in the modern world. The opera is one of the standards of companies with the resources to mount a production. Singers still aspire to the vocal challenges it presents. The familiar motifs of an inspired quest in defense of the powerless continue in modified form in cinematic drama, and, of course, every film score uses techniques Wagner invented or adapted for his purposes. In the productions of Lohengrin being mounted, however, many directors try to mute the clear demarcation between good and evil evident in the work. In an unsigned essay in a subscribers booklet circulated prior to Seattle Opera’s 2004 production, the author calls Ortrud a “rationalist”. Ortrud is clearly the force for evil in the drama, yet this writer asks, under the heading Wagner’s Moral Complexities, “How do we know Ortrud is so wicked? Her questions about Lohengrin are perfectly sensible. And if her tactics seem ruthless, remember that Ortrud truly believes that the throne is rightfully hers, that it was usurped from her family by Elsa’s. And why do we believe Lohengrin is so wonderful? The trial-by-combat scene in which he defeats Telramund, although sanctioned by King Henry’s medieval government, was as barbaric and foreign to Wagner’s audience as Ortrud’s black magic. By putting this scene onstage, Wagner was asking: Does might make right?”

This analysis is missing a salient theme in medieval literature. At the heart of the Grail legend and the chivalric code is the idea of might for right. If Ortrud is fighting for what she thinks is rightfully hers, she has no moral compunction about destroying the innocent in her ambition. In this vein one might also say of Lady Macbeth that she is fighting for what she thinks is rightfully hers. The opera Lohengrin is not morally complex. Though the composer certainly was morally compromised, he found truths in his art that were probably beyond him. The essayist, still anonymous, unlike Lohengrin, says “Wagner’s Lohengrin uses this popular pattern, and this old story, to talk about a central issue of the day: the crisis of faith in nineteenth-century Europe. During Wagner’s lifetime, the rise of science, technology, and industry were shaking to its foundations people’s faith in the church, long the mainstay of European society. Wagner shows us how Elsa’s pure faith in Lohengrin’s virtue evaporates when she listens seriously to the intelligent questions of Ortrud, who is competing with Lohengrin for power over the community. Ever the rationalist, Ortrud demands proof, and Lohengrin’s powerful mystique, penetrated by her piercing light of logical inquiry, turns out to be airy nothing.” Ortrud the rationalist! This is akin to calling her invocations of the Norse deities Logical Positivism—absurd. Elsa’s fragile faith is an important element of the story, but in this drama, at least, the church isn’t in crisis. The crisis is, indeed, correctly identified as within the human soul. It is a crisis of finding the spiritual resources to continue living in an unjust world, not a crisis of the church. In the world of this opera injustice is perpetrated by Ortrud and Telramund as he becomes complicit in Ortrud’s lies. You couldn’t find a less ambiguous case of false witness in the book of Leviticus.

Nietzsche admired Wagner, and for a while they were fellow travelers, but analysis of this medieval plot will be better served by leaving the Nietzschean will to power and its moral ambiguity aside. The profound and truly human question is why the innocent suffer while God remains inaccessible? The answer, in a bald-faced abstraction of the sort that is not consoling in absence of myth like that of Lohengrin, is that supernatural assistance, transparent and clearly evident to all observers, would irrevocably compromise human freedom. Despite the weight of postmodern ideology and the theory of evolution, there are moral truths, and there is some help to be found in transcendental categories. Suffering, when it has meaning, ceases to be unbearable suffering. This is a reasonable literary explanation for Lohengrin’s extraction of the promise that Elsa never ask his name or lineage. If he were to remain in Brabant after everybody knows that his strength is divinely ordained, his authority would be unquestionable, and human actions could never, for long, diverge from virtue as established by the community. The Christian Dynasty of Brabant would be eschatological. In this sense the story says the same thing as the Genesis account of the fall, and Elsa’s part resembles that of Eve under the influence of the serpent. A clearer case for archetypes in the collective unconscious could scarcely be found. Thankfully, Wagner is better dramatist than Carl Jung. Whether Wagner accepted the tale, as truth, is certainly questionable; the substance of the issue involved isn’t. Listen to the music with suspension of judgment, and draw your own conclusions. In contemporary productions, you might have to close your eyes to what they put on the stage.

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Beethoven in Buenos Aires

It was the audience that made this performance remarkable.

I attended a performance of Beethoven’s 9th symphony this evening, presented by the Symphonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires and the National Polyphonic Chorale, at the Facultad de Derecho (University of Rights) in central Buenos Aires. I learned of the performance from a 1-inch ad in today’s La Nacion. The admission was free. (I was unable to pick up a program at the end of the concert and so cannot list the name of the conductor or soloists.)

I arrived at the Facultad de Derecho by cab at 7:40 for the 8:00 performance. The cab dropped me off at the side door to the University building and I entered a maze of hallways covered with huge, handwritten signs: “Crisis in the Proletariat”, “Down with All Laws” and filled with students milling about. I walked upstairs and found myself in a polished lobby featuring over-sized Greek statuary and two concentric circles of about 400 people, double file, waiting to enter the auditorium. I joined the queue, suddenly concerned that I might not make it into the auditorium. The line moved quickly, though, and within ten minutes I was within sight of the one door opening into the performance space. There were another 400 people still behind me in line.

As I approached the door the ushers opened all of the entrances into the auditorium at once and the 400 people behind me pushed laterally into the concert hall. It was chaotic, as all of the seats in the auditorium were already filled and I sought to assess the situation and make a quick decision as to where to go. The front aisle was closed since the stage abutted up against the front seats. The back aisle was clogged with people sitting on the floor. I crawled across people’s feet and winter coats in an effort to reach the side of the auditorium. All three empty seats I had seen and sought out turned out to be “reserved” for family members. I pushed out again into the hallway and ran up the stairs to the balcony only to find all of the seats and aisles there filled as well. I managed to push into the auditorium, however, and stood, facing in the direction of the stage.

As people “settled in” I gradually was able to find a 10-inch space at the bannister overlooking the stage where I could stand sideways and look over my right shoulder at the orchestra. I considered how long the concert would seem to my feet since I’d already spent 5 hours before the concert walking the streets of Buenos Aires as a tourist. I decided to stay, however, thinking that, as might happen in the United States, after about 20 minutes of the concert, some of the audience might leave and there would be room to sit. (It turned out I was mistaken).

Eventually I had enough room at the bannister to hop up and sit down. It was a precarious perch, as the crowd in front of me moved in to take over the floor space I had vacated. Should I lose my balance backwards, it was a 5 1/2 foot drop to people sitting on the stairs below. Fifteen minutes into the first movement my left leg fell asleep. I considered the wisdom of sitting for an hour and a half with a leg asleep and decided that the concert might end with my having a blood clot. I bumped 5 people as I stepped down again off of the bannister.

The orchestra gave what was, in many ways, an unremarkable performance.

But it was the audience that made this performance remarkable.

Midway through the first movement, I turned my head away from the stage to rest my shoulders and neck. I looked straight ahead of me out into the stairwell. People were standing as far as I could see into the blackness of the wings, facing a stage they could not see, some of them with their eyes closed, listening attentively and with intention, rapt in the music. I turned back toward the rest of the balcony. 50% of the audience was between the ages of 15 and 30. 9- and 10-year olds (and 70- and 80-year olds alike) stood at the bannisters overlooking the orchestra.

No one was “dressed for the occasion.” All were dressed in everyday clothes, women in velveteen pant suits, men in sports coats with no ties, teenagers in jeans and sweatshirts, many in work clothes. They stood, holding their winter coats and scarves or sat in the aisles and on the stairs, jackets in their arms — a 5-year old, dressed in a blue nylon jacket and white tennis shoes was perched, stage right, on a covered 9-foot piano pushed to the side of the stage, her back (and pigtails) to the audience. (Only in the fourth movement, when she became restless, did her grandfather stand her on the stage. She faced the audience and, silently, danced to “Freude, Freude”.)

The orchestra played as a good, regional professional orchestra in the United States would. Their conductor, in his 70’s, guided, rather than commanded, them (although he conducted the work, accurately, from memory.) The tempi were unremarkable, the interpretive decisions “middle-of-the-road”. (There were even a couple of distressing moments in the scherzo when the ensemble was doubtful.) The slow movement was straightforward and direct, not artful or even overly expressive. Even the last movement seemed craftsmanlike and sincere, not enthusiastic or driven. (The Chorale was very fine indeed — 70 voices — strong, disciplined and comfortable with the score.)

But it was the audience that made this performance remarkable.

This was a knowledgeable working class audience. This was the audience Beethoven would have intended the symphony for. Crowded in a university lecture hall (probably 1100 people in a space which would legally seat 750), heavy with old drapes, wooden seats with old upholstery, over-varnished bannisters and floors — a fire trap with two small exits on stage. A multi-generational audience of common people, drawn to the common experience of a live performance, come straight from work on a Friday evening — quiet, disciplined, intent.

As the performance ended I was caught off guard by the emotion — a roar of humanity, shouting bravo and applauding for a 4-minute ovation. I was surprised to find tears in my eyes and on my face. This was not the slightly patronizing ovation of a “family” audience applauding their well-meaning neighbors — this was the ovation of an audience moved by the straightforward, workmanly performance of a masterpiece — and audience that shared the emotions of the masterpiece and valued its art form. This was an audience that was, unintentionally, passing its appreciation on to the next generation — an audience where class was not the distinguishing factor and where there was no artificiality. It was the audience that made this performance remarkable.

Beethoven spoke directly to their hearts.

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Beethoven on Justice, Human and Divine

In the year of the premier of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro Beethoven was sixteen years old. The innovator who took classic musical forms into new territory only wrote one opera, and it has been eclipsed by the brilliance of his nine symphonies. In contemporary productions the opera is known as Fidelio, after the pseudonym of the courageous wife of Florestan, who is a political prisoner under a corrupt administration. It can be seen as visionary art on Schiller’s model wherein art leads in the creation of a civic religion undergirding human rights and freedom. Leonora finds a way to subvert Governor Pizarro’s intent to murder her husband, whom Pizarro has unjustly imprisoned. Like Mozart, Beethoven lived during the birth of the modern era. Beethoven’s Third Symphony, Eroica, was originally dedicated to Napoleon before the general, on the success of his wars of liberation, became a tyrant himself. Beethoven then withdrew the original dedication of his music.

The subject of Beethoven’s opera was derived from a play by Bouilly called Leonore, or, Conjugal Love. The opera was first performed in Vienna on November 20, 1805. The vocal parts are so difficult that the first cast complained they were impossible to sing. The city of Vienna was in disarray because the French had occupied it several days before the premier, and most of the city’s music patrons had fled. The plot of the opera turns on the rectification of injustice by a noble woman who disguises herself as a boy called Fidelio. She gains employment in the prison where her husband Florestan is incarcerated and held in solitary confinement. Under threat of the impending visit of a prison inspector who might discover Pizarro’s plot, Pizarro tries to persuade the warden Rocco to murder Florestan. Rocco refuses but agrees to dig his grave if Pizarro will commit the crime.

Leonora overhears the rudiments of the plot and suspects that her husband is the intended victim. Her plight is made clear in the aria she sings after Pizarro and Rocco exit. Pizzaro’s fury is incomprehensible to her, but she clings to transcendent hope beyond the darkening clouds.

Come to me, hope, let not the last star
That guides the weary fade from sight
Be it ever so far, light my goal,
Sweet love, that I may reach it

I follow my inner desire
I waver not
I am strengthened by the duty
Of true married love

To make sure married love is understood for the courage and vigor it inspires in Leonora, Beethoven repeats and extends the phrase and the word Gattenliebe through the final thirty two bars of the aria.

Ich folg dem innern Triebe
Ich wanke nicht
Mich stärke die Pflicht
Der treuen Gattenliebe

Leonora persuades Rocco to allow her to accompany him to the darkest cell. Before they descend, however, the prisoners are allowed briefly into the sunlight for exercise in the prison yard. The prisoners’ chorus is another expression of spiritual perseverance against injustice. The singing as prisoners come out of the darkness of their cells into daylight is like a chorus of souls liberated from hell. A solo tenor voice accentuates the only basis for hope.

Trusting we shall ever
Count on help from God
Hope whispers softly
We shall be free
We shall find peace

Pizarro is informed by an officer that the prisoners have been granted this moment of air and sunlight, and he comes in to angrily interrogate Rocco for taking this liberty. Rocco deflects his anger, telling him it is in celebration of the King’s festival and that it will keep everyone occupied while the man still in his cell dies. Pizzaro tells Rocco to go down and dig his grave. As the act concludes, the prisoners are sent back to their cells, and Rocco and Leonora prepare for their descent.

The final act begins in the darkness of Florestan’s cell. Florestan’s aria is among the most difficult in the repertoire. For most of the dramatic tenors in the world in any generation it is impossible. Beginning on a sustained G with the words: God, what darkness here! it is the contemplation of a man who has had the courage to speak truthfully against evil and now finds himself in chains. He takes consolation in having done his duty and commits his fate into God’s hands.

Oh painful trial!
But God’s will is just
I complain not
This allotment of sorrow
Is in thy hands

A key change signals the vision of Leonora coming to console him, light in the darkness, the breath of a murmuring breeze, an angel like Leonora in rose colored mist. The new theme ascends repeatedly into the upper extremes of the tenor range. Stentorian B naturals accent the phrase. My angel Leonora, my wife, leading me to freedom in the heavenly domain.

Ich seh, wie ein Engel im rosigen Duft
Ein Engel sich tröstend zur Seite mir stellet
Ein Engel Leonora, Leonoren, der Gattin so gleich
Der, der führt mich zur Freiheit ins himmlische Reich
Der, der führt mich zur Freiheit ins himmlische Reich
Zur Freiheit ins Himmlische Reich
Zur Freiheit ins Himmlische Reich

The exultation of the vision dispels the gloom for while before the prisoner sinks back down on the floor.

During the interval Leonora and Rocco have been descending into the darkness of the prison. Florestan sees the visitors as another hopeful sign and calls to them. While Leonora tries to determine if this is her husband, he sings, You will be repaid in a better world. Heaven has sent you to me. Once inside the cell, Leonora recognizes her husband, even while helping Rocco to dig the grave being prepared for him. Rocco gives Florestan a little wine and a piece of bread.

Pizarro descends into the dungeon brandishing a knife. He tells the prisoner he will die, but first he must recognize the man whom his testimony was intended to depose. Pizarro throws off his cloak and says, “The avenger now stands before you.” He attempts to stab the prisoner, but Leonora throws herself between Pizarro and Florestan, declaring that she is the wife of the prisoner who will expose the plot. Pizarro in rage is about to kill both of them, but Leonora draws a pistol and threatens to use it. At the critical moment the inspector arrives heralded by trumpets. Pizarro runs out to meet his superior officer. Florestan and Leonora embrace.

The ensuing dialogue leaves little doubt about the outcome. Rocco recognizes his freedom no longer to serve the tyrant Pizarro and cries, God be praised! Leonora and Florestan sing, the hour of retribution has come. Unspeakable sorrows now end in overwhelming joy!

The high ranking inspector liberates the prisoners, all victims of Pizarro’s tyranny. They sing, Justice, arm in arm with mercy, appears at the door of our grave. The inspector recognizes his lost friend Florestan, now in chains. He begins to unlock the shackles, but then turns to Leonora. The woman who saved her husband’s life should be the one to set him free.

Beethoven rewrote the overture to the opera Fidelio, entitled Leonora, four times. It has such nobility in its own right that it is often played as a concert piece. Yet none of the early performances of this opera were successful. Weber tried to revive it in Prague where it was again badly received. During Beethoven’s lifetime it was never recognized as the masterpiece it is now acknowledged to be. Beethoven said God never deserted him. Apparently, in faith like that of Florestan in chains, he was able to accept God’s will.

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Mozart on Civility and Civil Rights

Mozart’s operas were a cultural force at the beginning of the modern era. He began work on The Marriage of Figaro in 1785. The first performance was May 1, 1786 in Vienna. Between the American and French Revolutions, Beaumarchais’ comedy about servants outsmarting their aristocratic masters was already creating controversy in Paris. Mozart’s operatic setting premiered against elaborate intrigues. Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte had to remove much of the social satire of Beaumarchais’ play in order to get it past the Viennese censors.

The music begins as Figaro measures the bedroom he and Susanna will occupy after their forthcoming marriage. To Figaro’s dismay the chamber is within easy earshot of their master’s bell, which Figaro suspects will provide opportunities for the Count Almaviva to summon Susanna anytime of day or night, particularly while Figaro has been detained by some other obligation in his duties as the count’s valet. The feudal right of a lord to sleep with a servant girl on her wedding night, the notorious droit du seigneur, has been abolished by decree of the Count, but innuendo is strong that he will reinstitute it in this case. Sexual conquest by aristocratic men of women beneath their cast is a theme that recurs in Mozart’s operas. Don Giovanni is, of course, a prototype of the philandering menace. Count Almaviva is well married, but projecting his own immoderate desire, he is jealous of the Countess in her relations with her page, Cherubino. The Countess is innocent, but the Count does have amorous intentions regarding Susanna. The story of this opera turns on what would today be grounds for a sexual harassment lawsuit. It is some measure of progress that the kind of predatory attention that the Count pays Susanna is now illegal. In a time when servants were powerless against it, they resorted to wiles like those of Susanna.

As is evident, musical drama has, by this time, come a long way from liturgical metaphysics. Yet this comedy defies all attempts to turn it into a romp around the bedroom. Mozart’s most poignant music dramatizes the emotions of people contemplating the consequences of unfaithfulness. The aria Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro—Grant, love, some comfort—in which the Countess laments her husband’s infidelity is moving beyond words, even while Marcellina, Bartolo, and Basilio conspire in slapstick antics, attempting to marry Figaro to Marcellina, who is, in fact, his mother. Again in Act 3, the Countess ponders the loss of happiness in the aria Dove sono i bei momenti—Where are they, the beautiful moments? The lengths to which Susanna goes to maneuver the Count into a predicament in which he realizes his folly creates the appearance of complicity in the Count’s designs. Figaro feels this as betrayal for advantages supposedly to be gained by her place in the Count’s affections. The parallel emotions of the Countess and Figaro are provocative in their portrayal of humanity that transcends social status. That this comedy could succeed as entertainment among the aristocracy three years before the French Revolution is an indication of the optimism of an era. The implication is that many people understood that nobility is more a matter of character than the status lavished on one by birth or refinement, a lesson civilized people seem to have to relearn at intervals. Mozart’s sympathies with the liberals then contending for limits on the powers of governing classes may be a function of his own dependency on patronage, despite the fact that he was doing very well by it.

The layers of significance in this opera, which is only one of Mozart’s numerous compositions for the theater and the church, depend on musical craftsmanship in a tradition spanning many centuries. It may have been possible to artistically render social commentary on so many important issues in a play without Mozart’s music, but it is Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro that has survived, not Beaumarchais’. Is the meaning in the music or in the text? This is a question that never goes away in disputes about art. Those who have never heard the Countess’s arias sung by a soprano who has spent her life learning classical technique tend to reply that the same meaning can be conveyed without her thirty years’ study. A deeper question is whether there are sublime themes that cannot be contemplated in absence of music like this. The theology of the ancient Nicene Creed set to music by Mozart in the eighteenth century and sung by a choir in the twenty first compounds the impact of millennia of enculturation in the historic faith. Artistry and tradition, especially when used to illuminate virtue, or its absence, can be the impetus to sudden illumination, in some cases revelation of transcendent reality.

Mozart is full of overtones on universal moral themes, some of them in astonishing contexts, as when the Roman Emperor Titus, who destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE, turns up incongruously as the compassionate monarch in an opera titled La Clemenza di Tito—The Clemency of Titus. There are also interesting vestiges of Biblical lore. A tragedy from the French lyric theater provides the story for Mozart’s Idomeneo. Idomeneo, King of Crete, was among the most celebrated heroes in the Punic Wars. After dealing the death blow to Troy, he is returning to his own territory by sea. The opera finds him near the port city of Sidon as his ship is overtaken by a storm. In terror for his life he vows to the god Neptune that if he and the crew survive, he will sacrifice whomever he first meets on landing. Readers of the Biblical story of Jephtha quickly recognize the hazard in this vow. The sea god grants Idomeneo’s plea, but it is his son, Idamante, who comes to meet him at the port. The heir to Idomeneo’s throne and beloved of Trojan princess Ilia is now a potential sacrifice to Neptune. In bitter remorse Idomeneo laments the deity’s claim on his son. The aria Fuor del Mar—Fury of the sea, declares his misery in music that tests the limits of the tenor’s virtuosity: Stern God! Tell me, if my body was so close to shipwreck, for what cruel purpose was that wreck abated? Saved from the sea I have a raging sea more fearsome within.

On the recommendation of a confidant, the king decides to send Idamante to Argos rather than sacrificing him according to the vow, but soon after his departure a new storm arises. The ocean swells, and a monster emerges from the deep. This is but the beginning of suffering for people whose monarch has offended Neptune. The monster devours many inhabitants of Crete. The high priest of Neptune demands to see the king and tells him that he must render to Neptune that which is his. Idomeneo relents and concedes that his son will be surrendered. The priests and chorus make lamentation and plead for mercy. Finally, Idamante appears, willing to submit to his fate. Let the blow fall that will give relief in the present distress. I do not fear death, ye Gods, if your love bestows peace on my country and father. Ilia, Idamante’s betrothed, offers to take his place at the altar of sacrifice, but these displays of self abnegation move Neptune to compassion. His voice from the deep declares Idamante king and Ilia his queen. The sea god in this act seems more merciful than Jehovah in the similar plight of Jephtha.

This is a dramatic phrasing of a question those schooled in the Hebrew Bible still ponder. The God of the Bible commands holocausts against Canaanites and smites the children of Egyptians. These literary reflections of the ancient world seem alien to people heir to a civilization born of the amalgamation of Hebrew and Greek culture in Christianized Rome. Handel composed a setting of Jephtha’s story, and he couldn’t end it as the Bible does. In his improbable resolution, God intervenes using a deus ex machina, which isn’t convincing either. The conclusion of the matter in the book of Judges, after Jephtha’s daughter comes back from her lamentation in the mountains, is conveyed in the words: It came to pass at the end of two months that she returned unto her father who did with her according to his vow. This account is the kind of thing that makes people put the Bible back on the shelf, but the alternative, in Neptune’s irenic dismissal of the case against Idamante, is pagan. In the biblical metaphor of radical freedom God does not ask for Jephtha’s vow or compel him to keep it, but neither does God save him from a moral atrocity of his own making. Mozart’s affinity for an alternative ending alongside his opera of a completely fictional, compassionate Emperor Titus seems to confirm an image of Mozart as a prodigious youth evading the enormities of the real world.

The composer seems to have been a vulnerable soul. Peter Shaffer’s play, Amadeus, is as much a fiction as Mozart’s Emperor Titus, but it may have found some truth in its dramatization of Mozart’s psychological condition as that of a man plagued by guilt. The story attributes the hellish retribution on the philanderer Don Giovanni in the composer’s setting of the legend to Mozart’s feelings of terror about his own moral failings. It’s hard to imagine Mozart as, actually, depraved as the ravishing baritone who has no compunction about attempting to seduce a peasant girl on her wedding day. It’s not especially surprising to find in this opera that Don Giovanni, whose catalogue of conquests includes hundreds of women all over Europe—1003 in Spain, it is said—remains desirable to women in spite of his vices. Leporello’s Catalogue Aria is humorous, but this story, in its entirety, is not very funny. In the opening scene Giovanni kills Donna Anna’s father in a midnight confrontation. From this beginning, the motivations of the women in the opera are confusing or confused. Anna’s shrieking alerts the servants and her father that things are amiss, but before she calls for help, her first words are, in fact, You won’t escape; you will never get away from me. The ambiguity of these opening lines persists through the ensuing action. Anna makes Ottavio, her fiancé, swear vengeance on her father’s assassin, but, to the end, she is in thrall of Giovanni. After his demise, when the virtuous Ottavio wants her to follow through on their engagement, she puts him off for a year, saying she needs time to grieve her slain progenitor.

Another woman is also pursuing the unrepentant rogue. His next attempted seduction turns out to be Donna Elvira, an earlier conquest who is still on his trail. Giovanni escapes again, and Leporello tries to dissuade her from following him. This is the ostensible reason for the Catalogue Aria, a detail that tends to be overlooked in the interpretations rendered by most Leporellos. The valet’s dilemma is that of a man compelled to explain that his boss is an incorrigible cad. The fact that Don Giovanni is a nobleman is set in stark contrast by a scene in which he attempts to lead the peasant bride Zerlina astray. The groom is, of course, belligerent, and it is Leporello’s unsavory task to remove him. Giovanni in on the verge of success in the seduction, but Donna Elvira has not taken Leporello’s advice to go home. She snatches Zerlina from the clutches of the predatory “nobleman”. Donna Anna and Ottavio come in at this moment, and Elvira returns to expose and renounce Giovanni. He deflects Elvira’s rants by claiming she is deranged. Donna Anna recognizes him in this ruse, but the wedding feast continues. Apparently Giovanni is paying for the festivities. He sings his famous Champaign Aria still with an eye on Zerlina. Leporello distracts the groom while Giovanni draws Zerlina out of the room, onlythis time she screams for help. Ottavio and the women corner the Don and he narrowly escapes impalement on Ottavio’s sword.

Ruthless as he is ravishing, Giovanni changes clothes with Leporello. He is not ashamed to put his valet at risk for his life in order to deceive his pursuers, while he amuses himself serenading Elvira’s maid. The aggrieved groom, Masetto, who is not amused at nearly being cuckolded on his wedding day, is leading a band of armed peasants in the attempt to capture or kill Giovanni. When the posse discovers the rake disguised as Leporello, Giovanni sends in them general direction of Leporello and then beats up Masetto. Leporello has a near miss with Giovanni’s other pursuers, Ottavio, Donna Anna, and Donna Elvira, but he unmasks and escapes.

Having evaded all of his natural enemies, Giovanni’s defiance encounters a supernatural adversary in the cemetery to which he and Leporello have fled. A stone memorial statue of Anna’s father begins to speak. The Commendatore’s voice terrifies Leporello while it intones a challenge addressed to the unrepentant Giovanni. The rake tells Leporello to invite the Commendatore to dinner, and, trembling, Leporello conveys the invitation. In the mean time, Anna is delaying and dismissing Ottavio’s pleas that they be wed. Elvira finds Giovanni and interrupts him while Leporello is serving him dinner. She makes another appeal to Giovanni to reform. He contemptuously refuses and sends her away. On the way out she encounters the Commendatore on his way to accept Giovanni’s invitation to dinner. The stone guest enters. Trying to remain unperturbed, Giovanni orders Leporello to set another place at the table. The guest is not amused. He says, Those who take the everlasting bread need no temporal sustenance. Other matters bring me hence.

Giovanni says, speak your message. The Commendatore has come to confer in a reasonable fashion with the rank offender. He asks if Giovanni will sit at table and consider the terms of his surrender. Giovanni says he’s no coward; he will confer. The Commendatore asks for a handshake on the agreement. Once Giovanni’s hand is in the stone fist of the Commendatore, he begins to note a deathly chill. The guest commands him to repent. This is his last chance.

Pentiti, cangia vita, e l’ultimo momento
Pentiti, scelerato, pentiti, pentiti

Unrepentant and unrelenting, Giovanni rages even as he is dragged into the vortex. Voices torment him with threats of worse terrors waiting in the unending fire. Leporello is left to tell Giovanni’s pursuers that he is far away. There came a giant made of marble through the door and seized the master. Smoke and fire came from the ground and took him down.

Anna’s repeated delaying in her commitment marry Ottavio, even after the rogue’s demise confirms the ambiguity of the moral of this story. Anna says she will retreat to a convent to fast, pray, and ponder, and then, she promises, she will be Ottavio’s faithful wife. None of this inspires comedic release of the tension that has been building. Zerlina and Masetto are happily reunited. They join in the chorus warning that debauchery ends in destruction as has the inglorious Don Giovanni. Of course, directors in contemporary productions don’t know what to make of this morality play at the conclusion of the opera. Some years ago in Seattle the local company staged a production that parodied the ethos of a Catholic parochial school, complete with flashing neon cross, against the libertine’s revels. Some of this is arguably in the libretto; Don Giovanni’s music is robust in contrast to that of the virtuous Ottavio. Something is undeniably wrong with the world, and it is as evident in this opera as in the cinematic extravagances of the present era. Virtue is often not so interesting as vice.

Whether or not Shaffer’s guilt-ridden Amadeus is complete fiction, there is a morality play on another level than that apparent in this opera’s retribution on the seducer. It’s a question about whether virtue is life negating. The idea, that it is, has had many advocates, among them Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and currently, Darwinists holding forth variously as scientists or economists. This opera’s examination of the question is not as inspirational as that of Plato and Aristotle who conceived virtue as the noblest and most satisfying of human accomplishments and an end in itself. The Hebrew Bible puts virtue on a plane with wisdom and indicates on many occasions that God’s worldly blessing are on the righteous. Other Biblical narratives concerning Job, Jesus, and St. Paul require the concession that suffering often accompanies virtue and that crowd pleasers are frequently in the company of a multitude on their way to destruction.

There is some evidence in filth-obsessed letters of Mozart that he suffered from Tourette Syndrome. Shaffer’s play makes the composer’s scatological jests the object of Salieri’s disdain for him. Despite the evident mirth in his music, Mozart was on his death bed at age thirty six. He worked on sections of his Requiem in the final weeks of his life. The work was finished by his pupil Süssmayr with some more recent emendations. Mozart’s Requiem, as it is now sung, balances the fury of the Dies Irae and Confutatis with the lyrical Recordare. It has been a consolation to many generations. After the atrocities at the World Trade Center in 2001, fifty thousand people filled a sports arena in Seattle to hear it again as a classic inquiry into the enigma of the world.

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A few words from the pope.

The pope’s US visit this week has had some musical repercussions. Jeffrey Tucker has distilled some of the issues. His piece ends with this quote from our distinguished visitor.

When the community of faith, the world-wide unity of the Church and her history, and the mystery of the living Christ are no longer visible in the liturgy, where else, then, is the Church to become visible in her spiritual essence? Then the community is celebrating only itself, an activity that is utterly fruitless. And, because the ecclesial community cannot have its origin from itself but emerges as a unity only from the Lord, through faith, such circumstances will inexorably result in a disintegration into sectarian parties of all kinds - partisan opposition within a Church tearing herself apart. This is why we need a new Liturgical Movement, which will call to life the real heritage of the Second Vatican Council.

The article is worth a few minutes to read in entirety and can be found here: http://thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/2008/04/music-for-dc-mass-end-of-era-and.html

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