Music: Lohengrin Without Feathers

During a now notorious production of Lohengrin, Vienna’s late, famed Tenor Leo Slezak missed his entrance cue (so the story goes), and the swan appeared onstage alone, drawing an empty skiff. During the ensuing flap, Tenor Slezak’s voice was clearly heard from the wings, in the manner of an annoyed traveler addressing the stationmaster: “When does the next swan leave?”

The incident could not have happened last week at Bayreuth, where Richard Wagner’s grandson Wieland staged a Lohengrin so abstract that the swan was merely a sketchily suggested stationary prop, while the hero made his exit on a descending elevator platform. Since 1951. Wieland Wagner, 41, alternating with his younger brother Wolfgang, 38, has been staging the most effective Wagner productions to be seen anywhere. (He has now redraped all the standard Wagner operas with the exception of The Flying Dutchman, which he will stage in 1960.) Last week’s de-swanned Lohengrin was among the best of the lot.

Angelic Host. Quiet and intense, Wieland differs from his tempestuous grandfather in temperament, but not in artistic outlook. Both stagecraft innovators in their day, Richard liked his opera gorgeously colored and realistically detailed; Wieland likes to keep his decor schematic and sparse, consisting more of lines and lights than of wood and canvas. Traditionalist critics sometimes say that he keeps things simple out of a lack of imagination, or to save money. But his latest production looked as if it might convert the last holdouts among the traditionalists; almost certainly the Old Man would have been one of the converts.

To Richard Wagner, the shimmering strains of Lohengrin’s “Prelude” suggested a clear image: “Out of the clear blue ether of the sky there seems to condense a wonderful . . . vision; and out of this there gradually emerges … an angel host bearing in its midst the Holy Grail … It pours out exquisite odors, like streams of gold.” The opening scene of Wieland’s production duly provided a blinding cobalt blue sky against which was ranged a semicircle of knights in dazzling silver mail. The oak tree where King Heinrich holds court was reduced to a circular cluster of painted branches hung high over the stage. The castle itself was a fringe of Gothic-stylized overhangs.

Dead Faint. The whole production displayed the Rorschach-test symmetry of design which has become one of Wieland’s trademarks; e.g., in the bridal scene, when one chorister inclined his head toward the center, another on the opposite side of the stage precisely imitated him. For the first time anyone at Bayreuth can remember, cuts were made in a Wagnerian score; stage action was reduced to such bare essentials that the production was almost as close to oratorio as opera (Wieland prefers to call it a “Christian mystery”).

The production’s cast was youthful and predominantly non-German: Hungary’s Sandor Konya as Lohengrin, Austria’s Leonie Rysanek as Elsa, France’s Ernest Blanc as Telramund, the U.S.’s Astrid Varnay as Ortrud, and Keith Engen, who sang King Heinrich (wearing his 1944 University of California class ring). While the principals were vocally uninspired, the chorus was in splendid form—despite severe hardships. Wieland’s staging demands that the male chorus remain frozen—and conscious—for 70 minutes in the first act. In last week’s premiere, several members retreated giddily to the wings. One, in a dead faint, crashed to the stage with a thud that even towering Leo Slezak’s dying topples never rivaled for sheer dramatic impact.