Stephen Fry has been in love with the music of Richard Wagner since he was 11 years old, which would be a case of 'so what?" if the German composer hadn’t been an avowed anti-Semite and thus an affront to Fry’s own Jewish faith.
Wagner & Me is the English actor-writer’s deeply personal account of his quest to try to reconcile his passion for Wagner’s musical genius with the man’s anti-Jewish beliefs, compounded by Hitler’s veneration of Wagner.
If you’re an opera fan and an admirer of Fry’s talents, this documentary will be a must-see, an entertaining and insightful blend of biography, political history and music. However his lack of experience as an interviewer leaves several key questions unanswered and his child-like awe and enthusiasm for his subject can be a bit grating.
Fry’s search starts in the opera house in Bayreuth in southern Germany, home of the annual Wagner festival, where he watches rehearsals of The Ride of the Valkyries, part of the famous Ring Cycle. That’s followed by visits to Switzerland, where the composer spent 12 years in exile after supporting a left-wing protest movement that was crushed by Saxon and Prussian troops; Russia, where he meets conductor Valery Gergiev and attends a performance at the renowned Mariinsky Theatre; and to Nuremberg in Germany, where Wagner’s opera was played at rallies on Hitler’s orders. Fry, whose relatives died in the Holocaust, can’t bring himself to stand on the podium there where Hitler once strutted.
There’s a marvellous, spontaneous moment when a pianist allows Fry to play the final note of the opera Tristan and Isolde on Wagner’s own piano and, to his embarrassment, Fry hits the wrong key.
Director Patrick McGrady lingers on the performances at the expense of fleshing out the composer’s colourful life. We learn nothing about his childhood or parents; there are brief mentions of his two marriages, multiple affairs and his long struggle with debt, and only fleeting references to his offspring. A professional biographer would have paid more attention to the subject’s domestic life.
Fry refers to Wagner’s writings including the essay Jewishness in Music, which accused Jews of being a harmful and alien element in German culture. He talks to experts who point out such beliefs were not uncommon in Germany in the mid-19th Century and that Wagner may have been motivated, at least in part, by his jealousy for Jewish composers Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer.
Fry is granted an interview with Eva Wagner-Pasquier, the composer’s great-granddaughter, who is joint director of the Bayreuth Festival with her half-sister Katharina. It should have been an ideal opportunity to explore this delicate topic but Eva appears uncomfortable, the interview is rushed and Fry neglects to ask about Wagner’s anti-Semitism. Only afterwards does he relate that the sisters have called for an independent inquiry into the Wagner’s family’s links with Hitler.
In the most moving sequence, he talks to London-based Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a highly eloquent woman in her mid-80s who survived the gas chambers at Auschwitz because she was a gifted cellist who belonged to the Women’s Orchestra.
In the end, Fry likens Wagner’s music and legacy to a beautiful silken tapestry that is forever stained.
