Interesting that you seem to be making a case for AH’s anti-Semitism to have developed later in his life rather than something he believed in as a teenager.
Of course, there was another Jewish person involved in AH’s family life, the physician Dr. Bloch:
http://open.salon.com/blog/lost_in_berlin/2009/08/27/hitlers_favorite_jew_the_strange_case_of_dr_eduard_bloch
http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2013/05/i-defaced-richard-wagners-statue.html#comment-130668
Perhaps we can agree that RW was a flawed person who, in spite of his personal issues, managed to create music worthy of its still being performed 200 years after his birth. Perhaps that concept even gives hope to the rest of us…
http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2013/05/i-defaced-richard-wagners-statue.html#comment-130665
“German conductor Christian Thielemann, the Bayreuth Festival’s unofficial musical director, contends in his own recent book entitled “My Life with Wagner” that music is per se non-political and that a “C-major chord is just a C-major chord”.”
That may be so, but is beside the point when the music has been used and represented as a political vehicle, not to mention, when the composer himself is so wrapped up in false thinking that one can argue whether or not anti-Semitism was deliberately injected, not into the music, per se, but into the operas.
With all due respect to CT, I think he (still) has his head in the sand…
Are you implying that RW’s anti-Semitism did not apply to the arts? That is surely not impossible, but what exactly are you referencing as a source?
Ironically, AH’s anti-Semitism seemed to have taken a back seat to his love of Wagner’s music, in that he had nothing negative to say about Mahler’s conducting of Wagner’s works.
Plus, AH and GM happened to be in the same place at the same time on May 8, 1906, when AH attended a performance of T+O at the Vienna Opera with Mahler conducting. It is doubly ironic for me, in that May 8 is my birthday….
http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2013/05/i-defaced-richard-wagners-statue.html#comment-127623
Gottfried Wagner is a breath of fresh air. It takes courage to be in the middle of the Wagner family and yet stick to his own principles, especially in public. I imagine some of the other Wagners are just cringing at his honesty.
I have come to love Wagner’s music in spite of myself. For many years I refused to have anything to do with it because of Wagner’s anti-Semitism and the connection of his music to Hitler and the Third Reich. But his music to me transcends even the horrific connection, and some productions, such as the recent Francois Girard Parsifal at the Met, can help Wagner’s music to be understood in a timeless and universal manner.
http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2013/05/i-defaced-richard-wagners-statue.html#comment-126308
Le Chant du Rossignol...(song of the nightingale) 