Kunstwerk der Zukunft: Richard Wagner und Zürich (1849-1858) (review)

During the last couple of years there has been a surge in publications devoted to the nexus of Wagner and Zurich in particular, and Switzerland in general: Chris Walton's Richard Wagner's Zurich: The Muse of Place (Rochester, NY, 2007) and Eva Martina Hanke's Wagner in Zürich — Individuum und Lebenswelt (Kassel, 2007). Eva Rieger and Hiltrud Schroeder have just published Ein Platz für Götter: Richard Wagners Wanderungen in der Schweiz (Vienna, 2009). Both Walton and Hanke are also involved in the present volume. This current offering is a collection of essays based on a 2008 Wagner exhibition of the same title at the Museum Bärengasse in Zurich. Since it is first and foremost an exhibition catalogue, the volume belongs in every library that wishes to maintain its Wagner collection, if for no other reason than that the expensively produced, full-colour illustrations include some never-before-seen images. But even the more familiar images have rarely, if ever, looked this good. The volume's strength is also its weakness, because it tries simultaneously to be a documentation of the exhibition, to contribute to Wagner scholarship, and to promote Zurich.

The fervency with which Zurich is advocated, and the insistence on its overall significance beyond Wagner's vitally important years there, is one of the volume's most annoying characteristics, underscored by the first two chapters, which barely even mention the composer. This is already a problem in Walton's otherwise excellent monograph, and it is repeated here in Eva Hanke's opening essay, 'Limmatathen im Aufbruch', as well as in Ute Kröger's 'Die ganze Grundsuppe grossstädtischer Verhältnisse'. Both read as if they had been commissioned, if not actually written, by the Zurich Tourism Bureau. I would have stopped reading at this point, had it not been for my great interest in the contributions of the noted scholars later in the volume.

Urs Fischer's contribution on the AMG (Allgemeine Musik-Gesellschaft) and the so-called 'Aktientheater' is a bit more interesting, especially because this theatre was financed privately by a consortium of shareholders. No doubt this example of an operational theatre provided Wagner with an important model as he was developing the ideal scenario for his own festival space. A pity that the essay—which is so rich in non-Wagnerian detail—never really establishes this particular connection.

By contrast, Sven Friedrich begins the next chapter, 'Die Kunst und das Kapital', with an extremely interesting suggestion. Did Wagner's stay in Zurich serve to transform his attitude towards money from the extreme and revolutionary anti-capitalism of the late Dresden period to the view that being rich did not eliminate the possibility that one was sensitive to art: that money and art are not in fact mutually exclusive? I would have been fascinated to see how he proceeds with this line of thinking. Sadly, after this most promising opening gambit, Friedrich completely drops the question and instead offers a survey of the familiar wealthy patrons and fans that Wagner was able to draw to his cause: Jacob Sulzer, the Willes, and of course the Wesendoncks.

Far more enlightening is François de Capitani's intriguing overview of the folk festival tradition in Switzerland as a possible model for Wagner's own thoughts on the issue. He also cites passages from Wagner's Theater in Zürich, which refer to such events. I still think that the German music festival tradition from earlier in the nineteenth century, with its emphasis on reviving Ancient Greek culture, provided a more significant impulse for Wagner. If nothing else, however, de Capitani helps us to understand the rich festival traditions that were going on around Wagner at the time. It should also be noted that Appia's first name is Adolphe, not Alphonse (p. 84).

Klaus Döge offers an 'overview' (Überblick) of Wagner's theoretical...