Running Rings
Sir: It is one thing for Rodney Milnes (Arts, 27 August) to be particularly against a Wagner production at Bayreuth, but then to declare that he will never go to the place again and couple it with thoughts of burning the theatre down, seems merely a form of cop-out. What is he trying to imply in his 'Bayreuth brutalism'? That the Ring production at this year's festival, which he labels as 'deconstructing' the work in the interests of robbing it of dubious past association, is a part of a failed post-war process?
This appears a tenable point of view, but he quickly goes off the rails in spectacular style. Consign the whole Bayreuth tradi- tion to oblivion? It won't happen in his lifetime, he says, and you are tempted to add — nor in several lifetimes after, if he dupes himself that Meyerbeer might come to the rescue!
What a critic should be addressing is the central challenge that these music-dramas present in our time: how their presentation should be devised in modern context, without bringing in an intolerable amount of distortion. Nowadays, when you listen to broadcasts of the Ring from some theatres on the Continent, it's usual to hear determined booing mixed with the ap- plause at the end, and this after the singing may have sounded fine and enjoyable. You know it's likely that the production is being booed — and with good reason you feel later, if you get to see one of these monstrosities on stage. A critic of a Wagner performance should be trying to shed light on this artistic problem and ways of resolv- ing it; and not just run away.
J. Millar
110 Upper Richmond Road West, London SW14
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