Richard Wagner's strident anti-Semitism and Adolf Hitler's fervent embrace of Wagner's music have been the subjects of other documentaries (most recently, Wagner & Me, reviewed in VL-7/13), but filmmaker Hilan Warshaw takes a different tack, concentrating on Jews who were among Wagner's most enthusiastic supporters and collaborators during his lifetime. Wagner's Jews combines narration, artwork, location footage, dramatic re-enactments, musical examples, and interviews with such distinguished experts as conductor Zubin Mehta (who sparked controversy in 1981 by programming an excerpt from Tristan und Isolde as an encore for the Israeli Philharmonic in Tel Aviv despite an unofficial ban on public performance of works by Wagner) and Leon Botstein, president of Bard College and a noted conductor himself. Warshaw concludes that Jews often represented the largest segment of Wagner's audience simply because they were among the cultural elite of the time, and therefore most likely to champion new music. Warshaw also profiles such figures as Joseph Rubinstein, a Russian pianist so enthralled by Wagner that he committed suicide when the composer died; Karl Tausig, a Polish virtuoso who helped finance concerts that promoted Wagner; and Hermann Levi, a rabbi's son who became the chief conductor at newly built Bayreuth and remained devoted to Wagner despite a dispute over whether he had to be baptized before leading the premiere of Parsifal. DVD extras include extended interviews, a deleted scene, a Q&A with Warshaw, and a performance of Rubinstein's rarely heard piano version of themes from Parsifal. Serving up a fascinating study of the uneasy association between art and ideology, this is highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)
Wagner's Jews
(2013) 55 min. DVD: $24.95. First Run Features (avail. from most distributors). Volume 30, Issue 1
Wagner's Jews
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