Wagner & Me

In this engaging BBC-aired documentary, British writer, actor, and raconteur Stephen Fry takes viewers along on his dream excursion to Bayreuth, home of the acclaimed festival devoted to the performance of Richard Wagner's music in the theater built according to the composer's specifications (but with other people's money). Much of the footage follows Fry, a devoted Wagnerite, as he wanders around Bayreuth in 2009, visiting rehearsal halls and talking with Eva Wagner-Pasquier, who is Wagner's great-granddaughter and the festival co-director. But a substantial portion is devoted to a biography of Wagner that Fry narrates while visiting relevant sites. Emphasis is placed on Wagner's notorious anti-Semitism and Hitler's embrace of his operas, a reality that Fry—himself a Jew—has to confront in justifying his own love for the music. Fry clearly takes the issue seriously, although some interviewees here offer observations that sound like rationalizations (one scholar suggests that Wagner's anti-Semitic rants resulted from his jealousy of Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, who were more popular than him during his early years and happened to be Jewish). Fry's concluding conversation is with an Auschwitz survivor who was saved from death only because the camp orchestra needed a cellist—this woman actually dislikes Wagner more for aesthetic than moral reasons. Thanks to Fry's ebullience, Wagner & Me never ceases to be entertaining even as it offers an instructive overview of the controversial composer. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)