I Predict A Riot – Part Twenty Five
Tannhauser and Paris 1861
The music of Wagner is not everyone’s tasse de the. It is certainly not mine ever since I shared a flat with someone who insisted that the perfect antidote for a hangover was a bit of Wagner at full blast. It never seemed to work for me. We have seen elsewhere in this series how music in general, and classical music in particular, can rouse wild spirits in the breasts of mere mortals and the story of Wagner’s Tannhauser is one which illustrates the dangers of meddling with established conventions.
In mid 19th century Parisian society, a sign of having made it was to be a member of the Jockey-Club de Paris. As well as horse racing, the members had an interest in the Opera and many had boxes, described by Marcel Proust as “many little suspended salons”, where they would enjoy the spectacle after a sumptuous repast. As you might expect, the delights of the kitchen outweighed anything that Apollo and his muses could conjure up. It was their custom to occupy their boxes at the start of the second act – they would still be tucking into their meal when the first act started – and to accommodate this, convention was that the ballet piece in every opera would begin when they were safely ensconced in their seats. Part of their enthusiasm for the opera was that it gave them the opportunity to gaze upon their favourite ballerinas.
In 1861 Richard Wagner was invited by Napoleon III at the request of Princess Pauline von Metternich, to stage a version of Tannhauser at the Paris Opera. Anxious to establish himself in Paris after being forced into exile after playing a minor part in the unsuccessful May uprising in Dresden, Wagner accepted the invitation. The Parisian tradition of having a spot of ballet in the middle of an opera allowed him to carry out extensive revisions to the piece of work which had first been performed in Dresden in 1845.
I won’t bore you with all the changes but the principal one for the purposes of our tale was the insertion of a ballet piece into the score. For artistic reasons, Wagner chose to insert it into Act One. After some 164 rehearsals, the first performance was given at the Salle Le Pelletier of the Paris Opera on 13th March 1861. The first act of the opera was well received but trouble started during the second part, once the well-oiled members of the Jockey Club had taken their seats and realised that they had missed the ballet. The second act was greeted with catcalls and whistles and the adverse reaction from the audience continued and grew in intensity during the third act.
For the second performance Wagner made yet more changes, dropping some of the bits that had provoked the most adverse audience reaction, but, if anything, the disturbances from the opera goers were worse. It is alleged that the Jockey Club members distributed whistles to the audience to signal their displeasure at the breaking of the ballet convention. Another casus seditionis was the unpopularity of Princess Pauline and the Austrians in general.
Wagner, perhaps wisely, chose not to go to the third performance where that audience gave vent to their feelings with gay abandon. On several occasions the performance was disrupted and it took upwards of fifteen minutes a time for order to be restored. The disturbances spilled out into the streets. Wagner gave up his attempt to establish himself in Paris and withdrew Tannhauser from public performance.
It might have been all so different if he had put the ballet piece into the second act but that’s artists for you.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Jockey-Club de Paris, Marcel Proust, Napoleon III, Paris Opera, Princess Pauline von Metternich, Richard Wagner, Salle Le Petellier, Tannhauser, Tannhauser the Paris version
