'The Decision To Play Wagner in Bayreuth Was Unanimous'
The Israel Chamber Orchestra plans to play music by Richard Wagner, the composer revered by Hitler, during the annual Wagner Festival in Bayreuth next year. The move is controversial in Israel, where the composer's work has been shunned for decades.
The music of Richard Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer, is hated in Israel and has been unofficially banned there for decades. But the Jewish Austrian conductor Roberto Paternostro, the musical director of the Israel Chamber Orchestra, is breaking new ground with a plan to perform Wagner's Siegfried Idyll along with works by the Jewish composers Gustav Mahler and Felix Mendelssohn and a contemporary Israeli composer next year in a public hall in Bayreuth on July 26, 2011, one day after the annual Wagner opera festival opens there.
"I realize that parts of Richard Wagner's weltanschauung and Bayreuth's relationship to the Nazi regime can neither be justified nor whitewashed," Paternostro said in a statement. "Yet I am convinced that it is possible to convey the musical significance of Wagner in a new and sophisticated way to the generation which is now coming of age without having to ignore the burdens or historic responsibility."...
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The music of Richard Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer, is hated in Israel and has been unofficially banned there for decades. But the Jewish Austrian conductor Roberto Paternostro, the musical director of the Israel Chamber Orchestra, is breaking new ground with a plan to perform Wagner's Siegfried Idyll along with works by the Jewish composers Gustav Mahler and Felix Mendelssohn and a contemporary Israeli composer next year in a public hall in Bayreuth on July 26, 2011, one day after the annual Wagner opera festival opens there.
"I realize that parts of Richard Wagner's weltanschauung and Bayreuth's relationship to the Nazi regime can neither be justified nor whitewashed," Paternostro said in a statement. "Yet I am convinced that it is possible to convey the musical significance of Wagner in a new and sophisticated way to the generation which is now coming of age without having to ignore the burdens or historic responsibility."...