Verdi and/or Wagner.VERDI AND/OR WAGNER: TWO MEN, TWO WORLDS, TWO CENTURIES
By Peter Conrad
Thames &Hudson, A$49.95
GIUSEPPE Verdi and Richard Wagner are the Fafner and Fasolt of 19th-century opera. F&F, the fraternal giants of Riesenheim, commissioned by Wotan to build Valhalla, appear in Das Rheingold (the first opera in The Ring) and cause a lot of trouble: Fafner, true to the accursed ring, slays his brother, carts away the golden hoard and changes himself into a dragon, only to be slain in turn, two operas later, by Siegfried.
Whereas The Ring is about power and corruption and the rebirth of civilisation through love and redemption, the lives of Verdi and Wagner, who were both born in 1813, are more to do with their individual power in refashioning opera through astonishing creative genius and uncompromising tenacity. Giants they indeed were but, unlike F&F, they constructed their intricate operatic architecture by their own designs, not those of the gods.
Their differences, however, were as deep and profound as to ensure the two composers never met, let alone expressed anything other than grudging acknowledgment of the other.
What divided Wagner the Gemini (born Leipzig, May 22) and Verdi the Libran (born Le Roncole, near Busseto, October 10) is the subject of Peter Conrad's involving book. The vital ingredient in its title is that oblique in and/or. This bet-hedger, by which it is assumed there is a choice or no choice, emphasises the at once separate and complementary existences of the composers and their legions of supporters and/or detractors down the ages. My view, for what it's worth, is similar to Conrad's: that there is always a place for both but, please, not in the same room at the same time.
Yet, here are the two old devils sharing the same book, in a compare-and-contrast exercise of the utmost fascination and breadth that takes the story into contemporary fields to demonstrate modern artistic and audience attitudes.