Many years ago, my stand-partner in the second-violin section of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra—an elderly Neapolitan gentleman—leaned over and whispered to me during a particularly grueling rehearsal. If a doctor informed him he had only one week to live, the old violinist confided, he would wish to play the Wagner Ring cycle. Every act, he said, would feel like a few years, and by the time he got to Seigfried’s funeral (instead of his own) it would seem like an eternity.
I was in my first Met season then, and though I found his gloomy outlook amusing, I scoffed at the notion that Wagner’s music could be anything less than thrilling to play. I had not yet been baptized, so to speak, by any Wagnerian opera. Moreover, my mother was a self-taught, amateur pianist who loved opera, particularly Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, and Wagner—not a bad selection, I think, for one whose first language was Yiddish and who never had a music lesson in her life. She preferred excerpts to complete operas, however, so our collection of LPs consisted mostly of arias, overtures, and preludes, (and of course, many early Heifetz, Elman, and Zimbalist recordings), which we played on our trusty but somewhat nasal Victrola day and night. It was an inspiring soundtrack for a brat learning to play the violin.
But now let us peek, for the nonce, into the musty pit of New York’s old Metropolitan Opera House on 39th Street in the year 1961. My first Wagner opera performance was Lohengrin, on Oct. 28. (Thank you, Met archives department.) Joseph Rosenstock, our venerable maestro, was on the podium, a short, bald man with flip-up lenses on his glasses that when turned upward made him resemble a cricket.
Rosenstock’s baton technique was clear, and the prelude was transparent and dream-like. I was in a Wagnerian paradise, to coin a phrase, and the orchestra sounded magnificent. The string section consisted mostly of seasoned Italians and Germans; some were Holocaust survivors from the Vienna Opera and the Berlin Philharmonic who could play Wagner operas from memory. (We young Americans were actually in the minority in those days.)
The first act was a pleasure to play, despite the ordeal of sitting under the stage apron (the tip of my bow hit the low ceiling whenever I played too vigorously). Yet by the middle of the third act, my back ached, my eyes burned, and my neck felt stiff. My stand-partner gave me a sardonic smile whenever I glanced at my wristwatch and squirmed in my chair (ever watch the string-players during a Wagner opera, folks?), and after the curtain finally fell, Ben Gay ointment and a heating-pad became my best bedtime friends.
Somehow, I survived the Lohengrin marathon with equanimity—only to be confronted in December with an uncut version of “The Ring Cycle.” Erich Leinsdorf plunged into the long rehearsals like a madman. Leinsdorf was a terrific conductor, but with his booming voice and intolerance of mistakes, we were somewhat terrified, particularly when he would rebuke some hapless culprit for a premature entrance with gems like, “Why the hell don’t you go back to conservatory!” or, at the top of his lungs, “Do you know how to count, mister?”
Later, after a few tortuous but beautiful “Tristans”—during which I was privileged to hear Birgit Nielson for the first time—I was just beginning to settle in with some mollifying Bel Canto operas, when Parsifal—whose first act is two hours long—arrived in March. Our distinguished guest conductor was Dr. Karl Boehm. The maestro, despite our dubbing him “Uncle Karl,” had the musicians arguing heatedly about whether he was a Nazi, since Rudolf Bing had previously banned him (as well as a few other famous German artists who had murky associations with Hitler).
Actually, we admired Boehm, and respected him; he had been a personal friend of Richard Strauss, had a fantastic ear for musical errors and an incredible memory. His tempos and cues were dependable, and he rarely lost his temper. (When he did, we would hear whispers from the refugees, like, “Uh-oh! That horn player will be sent to the Russian Front!” or, “The snorkel is jammed, Kapitan Boehm!” or, “Another lampshade coming up!”) But I must admit, he was particularly pleasant to those of us who were Jewish, and he helped many Jewish musicians escape from the Nazi regime.
Can you imagine such a season? (Wagnerians, don’t reply.) True, the Met season nowadays seems even more arduous than in 1961, and it is. Back then, however, we played seven performances a week, whereas now we play only four. Also, rehearsals in the old days began at 10:30 a.m., not 11, and sometimes ended after 4 p.m. Before long, with every Wagnerian act weighing in at more than an hour, I began to be haunted by my colleague’s fantasy about his limited life span. During Wagner operas, I found myself glancing at my watch ever more frequently, painfully aware of the passing of time. And after opera performances, ensconced in bed with a heating pad on my back, plodding through seven volumes of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time did not raise my spirits.
As I write this, I can imagine the reaction of that intrepid species of opera buffs, the standees: “Hey, if we can stand through five-hour Wagner operas on our poor aching feet, then why is this lazy fiddler, slumped comfortably in his well-padded typist’s chair, kvetching?”
Bravo! You are the sort who will try to climb Mount Everest. You will be rewarded with the Iron Cross and go to Valhalla—or wherever the hell Wagnerians go when they croak. I recall one Wagnerian standee who, when President Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, was inconsolable. When I tried to comfort her, she whined, through her tears, “They cancelled Gotterdamerung tonight—and I have a standing-room ticket!”
One angry Wagnerian once reminded me that Rheingold is a mere two hours and 40 minutes long. Yes, I replied, but there is no intermission—which is not a problem, if you have a bladder like a horse! Let me add that we used to sail through The Flying Dutchman in three hours, with two intermissions, a breeze under the swift baton of Karl Boehm. Yet some genius, for the sake of “artistic integrity” (or some such nonsense), dispensed with the two intermissions, restored the cuts—and what was formerly the easiest Wagner opera to play became another non-stop marathon, like Rheingold, making it essential to limit one’s intake of fluids beforehand. (Maestro Erich Leinsdorf, seeing us standing in line outside the backstage men’s room during a Tristan intermission, disclosed his secret for retaining fluids during long operas: “Eat a bag of salty pretzels or chips,” he shouted, “and no coffee!”)
But time is passing. The year is 2004, and the once shiftless student is now a full-fledged denizen of the pit, with 43 seasons under his cummerbund. My God, where did the time go? I am playing Seigfried, and mortality is on my mind. Every plodding half note is a few heartbeats, while every fast tremolo (Maestro James Levine’s pet obsession) is sapping the muscles of my tensed right arm, which now burns like the dickens in the bursa region, and tendonitis (the fruit of tremolos!) is setting in with a vengeance. My bladder is bursting, yet I’m thirsty. (That bag of pretzels didn’t help.) Ouch! There goes my neck, the C5 and C6 vertebrae grinding together to pinch a nerve, and now my leg is falling asleep—needles and stinging—or is that my old sciatica creeping in again with a new, exquisite pain? In short, if there is a Hell on Earth, dear opera lover, I sure found it in the travertine entrails of Lincoln Center, fiddling my frail life away enmeshed in the sheer physical torture of a five-and-a half-hour Wagner opera.
Thus, when some young standee or familiar face from the Family Circle crowd asks me which operas I most enjoy playing, I point to my wristwatch and mention Salomé and Elektra, the two shortest operas in our repertoire. If the inquirer does not smile or nod, then I know I’m confronted with a Wagnerian—and I flee. If, on the other hand, my inquisitor is sympathetic and reminds me, with a sigh, that each of those entire operas are the same length as one act of a Wagnerian opera, then I know I have a soul mate—and I promise a free standing-room pass or a ticket for a dress rehearsal.
Incidentally, all this makes me wonder why, during the reign of Sir Rudolf, we always got free tickets for Salomé and Elektra operas. Is it simply because bigger is better to most folk? Or maybe intermissions were sorely missed—a glass of champagne and a visit to the bathroom, or just roaming the grand halls of the old Met, their maroon velvet walls lined with photos and memorabilia of dead composers and singers? Yet nowadays, I notice, perhaps because of the higher hourly fees for parking lots and baby-sitters, the shorter operas seem not to do too badly at the box office.
Someday a sociologist who is also an opera buff might enjoy researching this paradox for a thesis. Meanwhile, as I get older I have my own personal thesis about playing Wagner’s monumental operas: Even though the music is sublime and has moments that make the notes in front of me swim through tears of sheer musical ecstasy, even though I still adore playing the magnificent prelude to “Meistersinger” or Parsifal or Lohengrin, or the thrilling third act of Die Walküre, at a gala or a concert, I truly dread the pain inflicted by the tortuous hours and hours of redundant motifs—and pages of endless tremolos—of those operas in their entirety.
Call me a curmudgeon if you must, but for this weary veteran of the pit, happiness consists of playing my old fiddle, and loving my young wife, two daughters, and two cats. And when it comes to Wagner, I will enjoy playing excerpts in the Met—and listening to the Wesendonck Lieder anytime.
