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German opera confronts Wagner's antisemitism head-on

Angela Merkel attended the opening night of the Mastersingers of Nuremberg.

merkel German Chancellor Angela Merkel (third from right), with Wagner's granddaughter Katharina (third from left) at the Bayreuth Festival Nicolas Armer / DPA/PA Images Nicolas Armer / DPA/PA Images / DPA/PA Images

A NEW OPERA production by Australian-Jewish director Barrie Kosky tackling Wagner’s anti-Semitism head-on won rave reviews after it premiered at Germany’s renowned Bayreuth opera festival last week.

An audience including German Chancellor Angela Merkel cheered the four-and-a-half-hour staging of the Mastersingers of Nuremberg on the opening night last Tuesday.

The Bayreuth festival is dedicated to the works of Richard Wagner.

Critics said they were impressed with the first production ever by a Jewish director at Bayreuth, now in its 106th year, and called it chillingly relevant.

Spiegel Online said Kosky’s “remarkably entertaining and convincing” staging effectively used Wagner’s notorious anti-Semitism to take on “hatred of Jews in general” in today’s Europe.

National German daily Die Welt said Wagner’s toxic ideology had always been an “elephant in the room” which Kosky had opted to make “the actual subject of his staging”.

Wagner’s musical and artistic legacy from the 19th century is infused with anti-Semitism, misogyny and proto-Nazi ideas of racial purity.

His grandiose, nationalistic works were later embraced by the Third Reich, and Adolf Hitler called him his favourite composer.

Nevertheless, in purely musical terms, Wagner’s achievements are undeniable and his operas figure in the standard repertoire of houses around the world — apart from Israel which maintains an effective ban on public performances of his work.

The Bayreuth festival, still run by the Wagner family, long tried to separate the works from their murky origins. But reviewers said the pairing of Kosky with one of Wagner’s most iconic operas marked a bold break with that tradition.

First performed in Munich in 1868, the Mastersingers is essentially a hymn to the supremacy of German art. It was one of Hitler’s most-loved operas and its music was misused for propaganda purposes by the Nazis.

‘Frankenstein creation’ 

In the production, Kosky embeds the opera’s setting of Nuremberg in the city’s grim 20th century history as the birthplace of the Nazi race laws, the setting of the party’s giant torchlit rallies and, after the war, the scene for the trials of Hitler’s henchmen.

An entire act is set in the Nuremberg Trials’ wood-panelled courtroom, and a key character, the town clerk Sixtus Beckmesser, is presented as a grotesque Jewish caricature recalling Nazi smear sheets.

barrie Barrie Kosky pictured in 2013 XAMAX / DPA/PA Images XAMAX / DPA/PA Images / DPA/PA Images

“I am the first Jewish director to stage this piece in Bayreuth and as a Jew that means I can’t say, as many do, that Beckmesser as a character has nothing to do with anti-Semitism,” Kosky told public broadcaster 3sat.

Of course it does. In my opinion Beckmesser is a Frankenstein creation of everything Wagner hated — Jews, the French, the Italians and critics.

Kosky has run Berlin’s Komische Oper for five years and introduced a little-known repertoire from the turbulent 1920s and 1930s by Jewish composers later forced to flee the Nazis.

He admitted in an interview with AFP last year that he has “many contrasting emotions” about Wagner’s masterpiece.

“Can you just portray the work as just being a simple fairy story, (given) the history of the piece?” he asked.

The Bayreuth festival runs until 28 August.

© AFP 2017

Read: A teenage girl suspected of leaving Germany to become an ‘Isis bride’ has been arrested in Iraq

Read: Holocaust survivors more at risk of developing cancer

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    Mute reg morrisey
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:04 AM

    Wasn’t the last one a once in a lifetime event as well?

    181
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    Mute Gearóid MacEachaidh
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:09 AM

    @reg morrisey: which one? This is the largest Hurricane to ever hit this area of Florida. That qualifies as once in a lifetime, no?

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    Mute Ciaran Foster
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    Aug 30th 2023, 10:05 AM

    @Gearóid MacEachaidh: unfortunately it is unlikely to be a “once in a lifetime” scale event as more of these storms will rage as the seas get warmer due to global-warming.
    We’ll likely look back on this storm as a regular event in the coming decades.

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    Mute Colette Kearns
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    Aug 31st 2023, 12:45 AM

    @Gearóid MacEachaidh: NO! It’s all BS

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    Mute Playmisty4me
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:19 AM

    Hopefully everyone who could evacuate has, and those who can’t and stayed behind will be safe. I saw footage on YouTube of a man removing a child from his 4×4 to stand beside waves that were over his head, to take a selfie. He had the toddler in his arms but stumbled a few times under the strength of the wind and waves before returning to the car. It doesn’t take intelligence to become a father unfortunately.

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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Aug 30th 2023, 8:05 PM

    @Playmisty4me: MAGA, no doubt.

    That’s dumb, even for an American.

    12
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    Mute Tricia G
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:44 AM

    For all the Climate Change deniers, take a look at the Insurance Industry.

    Look at the Reinsurance Industry (the companies that Insure the Insurance Companies).

    “Prices for reinsurance rose as much as 40 percent on Jan. 1 2023 from a year earlier, according to a report by Gallagher Re, a brokerage firm that puts together reinsurance coverage deals. The price increases jolted insurers, which then made changes to where and for what they offered coverage.”

    Climate Change is real. And the Insurance companies know it. And they’re either refusing to insure people or their massively increasing their premiums.

    If you refuse to believe the science, you should check out how much extra it’s gonna cost in Insurance.

    64
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    Mute John Doyle
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    Aug 30th 2023, 10:06 AM

    @Tricia G: ALL forms of insurance have skyrocketed in the last few years, including car, event insurance, etc.
    Answer this question please Tricia; Why are mortgage providers still providing mortgages for “at risk” properties, such as seaside properties? Do they not carryout risk assessments on their investments / liabilities?

    63
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    Mute Tricia G
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    Aug 30th 2023, 10:16 AM

    @John Doyle: You can get a mortgage but you’ll need a Flood Risk Insurance policy as well and that will cost you FAR more today now that floods have become far more common.

    This isn’t a scam. Insurance companies have gone bankrupt due to the increased number of Climate events.

    “Allstate and California’s largest insurer, State Farm, announced that they would hold off on writing new policies for homes in the state. From 2019 to 2022, payouts to homeowners there more than doubled, but premium revenue from customers increased by only a third, according to industry data reported by The Wall Street Journal.”

    From an article in July 2023 – “Farmers Insurance this week to stop renewing almost a third of the policies it has written in Florida, becoming the latest insurer to pull business from a state as the industry grapples with the rising costs of covering damage tied to floods, hurricanes, wildfires and other climate-related disasters.”
    “In May, State Farm, the country’s largest insurance company, said it would stop selling homeowners’ coverage in California. Last month, Allstate said it had stopped selling new home and commercial policies in the state, citing the worsening climate and rising building costs. Farmers itself said this month that it would limit new homeowners insurance policies in California, citing rising inflation and risks from worsening climate disasters as among the reasons.”

    You can bury your head all you want, the reality is, Climate Change is real and it’s going to have a huge impact on the world. And it WILL comet to our doors whether it’s Climate refugees, food prices, more flooding, lack of plant and animal diversity etc. etc. etc.

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    Mute John Doyle
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    Aug 30th 2023, 11:04 AM

    @Tricia G: Climate Refugees …hahahahaha……you mean Africans fleeing their countries because they’ve been raped or destroyed by western powers.

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    Mute Tricia G
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    Aug 30th 2023, 11:22 AM

    @John Doyle: Interesting that in the list of issues, you focused on refugees……

    Hhhmmm

    30
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    Mute John Doyle
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    Aug 30th 2023, 12:01 PM

    @Tricia G: because it’s the most ridiculous part of your comment. If you are trying to infer that I am xenophobic by referring to refugees, I was literally stating how the Climate Change fanatics are allowing the elites use “Climate Migration” as a cover for their mass murder and plunder.
    You should be ashamed of yourself :)

    31
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    Mute Science
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    Aug 30th 2023, 2:27 PM

    @Tricia G: No one can deny something that isn’t true. The climate changes but man-made climate change, global warming/cooling/boiling…whatever you want to call it has not been proven to be true.

    If the insurance companies and banks believed in climate change then no property on coastlines would be insured and banks would not provide decades-long mortgages and loans if they thought those properties would be falling into the sea in a few years as predicted by your climate change doom merchants.

    As for “the science” – natural science and the scientific method prove or disprove cause and effect relationships of naturally observed phenomena via experimentation in which an independent variable is manipulated to prove it is the cause of a dependent variable. There is NO scientific experiment in which humans can be an independent variable as the cause of climate change (dependent variable).

    29
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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Aug 30th 2023, 8:08 PM

    @John Doyle: Try get insurance in Florida.

    More and more insurance companies are refusing to quote, or pulling out of Florida altogether.

    The insurance business operates on facts.

    That should tell you something.

    10
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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Aug 30th 2023, 8:12 PM

    @Science: And yet more and more insurance companies are pulling out of Florida altogether.

    And what makes you think that man-made global warming has not been proven?

    It has been known for over 150 years that certain gases cause a greenhouse effect. Those gases are the ones we have been pumping into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, a period which has seen global warming.

    9
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    Mute Chris O'Brien
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    Aug 30th 2023, 1:51 PM

    The comments on here are largely abhorrent.

    Conspiracy minded people bragging that they’d happily risk trillion in damage and vast death of mostly poor people, in exchange for… Well that’s unclear.

    Playing Russian Roulette with your neighbours, because of some nonsense you read online, is sociopathic.

    42
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    Mute Gregory Daniel
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    Aug 30th 2023, 6:28 PM

    The climate cult acolytes remain strong. There are not many who deny the climate is changing, the fact the earths climate changes is not a new phenomenon.

    What the acolytes don’t like is that firstly there can be any further discussion that humans can control the climate to such a material extent as is claimed. It could be considered delusional to think humans can materially control the climate of a 4.5 billion year old planet.

    The “science is settled” – true science is never settled, it is and should always challenged.

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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Aug 30th 2023, 8:30 PM

    @Gregory Daniel:

    1) Certain gases have a greenhouse effect.
    2) The % of those gases in the atmosphere may have been higher in the past, and global temperatures may have been higher in the past. But mankind was not around then.
    3) Mankind has been putting those gases into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
    4) Global temperatures have been increasing since the industrial revolution.
    5) A human does not fare well when the temperature exceeds normal body temperature, particularly for extended periods.
    6) It is catastrophic for a human when the ambient temperature and humidity reach certain levels, levels that prevent the human body’s temperature control system to break down.
    7) Global warming also causes climate change.
    8) Examples: This is the southern hemisphere’s winter, a time when the antarctic ice should be recovering to its norms. It is not. There have been heat waves in South America. In its winter.

    To say that the world’s climate has always been changing simply ignores the fact – and it is a fact – that we would not have survived during those times.

    15
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    Mute Gregory Daniel
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    Aug 30th 2023, 8:53 PM

    @ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: isnt it good we can still have different views. The way parts of western society is heading is that your views are considered correct think, while mine are considered wrong think and should be cancelled as mis or dis information. Always try to keep an open mind.

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    Mute Chris O'Brien
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:05 PM

    @Gregory Daniel: facts are not a thing where keeping an open mind is clever or beneficial.

    “humans can’t hold their breath forever’

    “try and keep an open mind”

    Additionally, if climate activists are wrong, what happens? Money is wasted. Some person freedom is curtailed.

    If sceptics are wrong, what happens?

    Vast death – mostly poor people, and trillions lost.

    Risk/benefit.

    To look at every scientist telling you one thing, every metric pointing in one direction, etc, and think they’re all lying and/or less clever than something you’ve read on social media, isn’t clever. It isn’t open minded. It’s selfish and conspiratorial.

    Meh.

    11
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    Mute Gregory Daniel
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:19 PM

    @Chris O’Brien: its sad to see the impact this is having on peoples mental health. In the future (100-200 years) it will be taught and studied in schools how humanity went bonkers between 2000-2100

    13
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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Aug 31st 2023, 3:23 AM

    @Gregory Daniel: Which part of what I wrote is wrong,Gregory?

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    Mute Willie Marty
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:43 AM

    Governor De Santis will have to brace himself for another lifetime storm surge when he is finished with this one.

    19
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    Mute Crystal Clear
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    Aug 30th 2023, 10:30 AM

    @Willie Marty: Himself or Ramaswamy will be the next US President, Id say

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    Mute Willie Marty
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    Aug 30th 2023, 10:32 AM

    @Crystal Clear: thats not crystal clear.

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    Mute James Carroll
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    Aug 30th 2023, 4:04 PM

    @Crystal Clear: Both are cockwombles.

    8
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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Aug 30th 2023, 8:18 PM

    @Crystal Clear: DeSantis hasn’t a hope.

    Although it’s early days, and lots of things can happen, at this stage neither does Ramaswamy. His business practices and looming legal problems, not to mention his weirdo policies will probably bury him.

    It might be fine to get MAGA support.

    But MAGA will not elect a president.

    Any Republican contender will need to be able to draw support from the population at large.

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    Mute Pauline Gallagher
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    Aug 30th 2023, 12:50 PM

    The complacency and ‘Ah it’ll be a bit of wind and a wet butt’ attitude is laughably dangerous

    23
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    Mute John Doyle
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    Aug 30th 2023, 12:52 PM

    @Pauline Gallagher: no ones claiming that. They’re stating that natural changes or even perhaps manipulated changes in the weather are being used to take away humanities freedom

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    Mute Pauline Gallagher
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    Aug 30th 2023, 1:00 PM

    @John Doyle: manipulated? like a weather machine? and what freedom is being taken away? WHAT are you on about? these people are being asked to evacuate before the sea takes them 50 miles out and you’re taking about freedom what the actual f

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    Mute John Doyle
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    Aug 30th 2023, 1:10 PM

    @Alan B:

    hahahaha…genius

    14
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    Mute Chris O'Brien
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    Aug 30th 2023, 1:52 PM

    @John Doyle: so this isn’t an extreme weather event?

    Because all but a few knuckledraggers think it is.

    18
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    Mute James Carroll
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    Aug 30th 2023, 4:03 PM

    @John Doyle: You’ve been on the Kool Aid far too long!

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    Mute John Doyle
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    Aug 30th 2023, 4:26 PM

    @James Carroll: wow edgy :)

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    Mute F Fitzgerald
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    Aug 30th 2023, 5:10 PM

    @Pauline Gallagher: You’re right. I know people who were working there during a previous hurricane & while they were fine putting up shutters and sheltering in place on higher ground, they were completely unprepared for the waterless week of power cuts that followed. No power meant no petrol. I’d say that anyone who was a child in Ireland during the 70s rolling power cuts knew more about getting through an awkward week than they did.

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    Mute Diarmuid Hunt
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    Aug 30th 2023, 5:43 PM

    @John Doyle: My ‘Red Pill Bingo’ card is nearly filled out, don’t stop now.

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    Mute HisMastersAlibi
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    Aug 30th 2023, 6:01 PM

    @Diarmuid Hunt: Hahaha,twas a wild read all the way down. Tricia G deserves a big glass of wine having to deal with that donkey John Doyle. He doesn’t seem to be well in the head whatsoever.

    16
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    Mute Diarmuid Hunt
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    Aug 30th 2023, 7:13 PM

    @HisMastersAlibi: If he’s for real and not just an extremely well-versed troll/devil’s advocate then I wonder how he believes this cabal can control the world but not stop his super-sleuthing and ensuing revelation to the “sheep”…

    9
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    Mute Bopper Holland
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:57 PM

    My friend is there, having a blast today, parks still open with no one in them, raining heavy but very warm, going by the videos, he’s loving it

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    Mute
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    Aug 30th 2023, 10:53 PM

    @Bopper Holland: Cool story bro.

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