"Bayreuth vs. Beirut" (was Re:TOKYO WALKURE"
JanRosen
Falparsi <jim...@ibm.net>
Date: Thu, Nov 13, 1997 12:54 EST
Message-id: <346B3E...@ibm.net>
wrote:
> the story about the first (1876) Siegfried dragon. It
was built in London and part of it wound up in Lebanon. I've often wondered
if this oft-repeated story is really true.
Jim Dunphy
<
I have wondered about that story too. Another spelling of the city of Beirut,
Lebanon is "Beyreuth" (yes, I saw that spelling of Lebanon's capital city on
a can of Lebanese beer, and thought the beer had been mislabeled... Hoped it
was really from Wagner-town, but nope, no such luck!) . Seriously, that
("Beyreuth") may have been how the crate with the Seigfried dragon was marked.
Maybe we should be asking what was on that crate? How was it marked? Even if
Bayreuth, Germany had been mispelled ( I am only guessing here) , it is hard
to believe anyone could have made the mistake of sending it to the wrong
B-reuth... First of all, the two cities aren't/weren't even PRONOUNCED the
same way, even though the spelling is sometimes similar. Seems conceivable to
me the shippers would have been told orally to take it to "By-roit". Even if
not orally told, and they had only the written word -- B-reuth -- to go by,
Wagner was such a famous personality at that time, and it should have been
well known that those sets were for the first Ring production, the first
Wagner festival, in GERMANY. Didn't they know where Wagner established the
Festival?
---
Janice Rosen
JanR...@aol.com
Hans C Hoff
JanRosen wrote:
< The facts of the mis-sent dragon snipped as already known >
> Seriously, that ("Beyreuth") may have been how the crate with the
> Seigfried dragon was marked. Maybe we should be asking what was on > that crate? How was it marked?
> Even if Bayreuth, Germany had been mispelled ( I am only guessing
> here) , it is hard to believe anyone could have made the mistake of
> sending it to the wrong B-reuth... First of all, the two cities
> aren't/weren't even PRONOUNCED the same way, even though the
> spelling is sometimes similar. Seems conceivable to me the shippers > would have been told orally to take it to "By-roit". Even if not
> orally told, and they had only the written word -- B-reuth -- to go
> by, Wagner was such a famous personality at that time, and it should > have been well known that those sets were for the first Ring
> production, the first Wagner festival, in GERMANY. Didn't they know > where Wagner established the Festival?
It seems to me very much credible that the people responsible for
loading and dispatching the crates with the dragon inside had never
heard of Wagner, to say nothing of the impending festival; his was
obviously not a household name even in educated circles in contemporary
England.
As Bayreuth was then a small, anonymous principality in land-bound
southern Germany it seems rather probable that it was completely unknown
to the sea-faring Brits. As the only place with a name that had some
similarity to the name of this little principality was Beirut, the
rather well known capital of Lebanon, a great port with which the
British were well acquainted, it is hardly a wonder if the
dragon-dispatching people regarded 'Bayreuth' for a palpable misspelling
of 'Beirut'. So consequently, that was where the dragon went.
> ---
>
> Janice Rosen
> JanR...@aol.com
Mike Scott Rohan
The message <346EF57F...@online.no>
from Hans C Hoff <hch...@online.no> contains these words:
> JanRosen wrote:
> Regards
> Hans
> hch...@online.no
It's a funny idea, Hans, but I don't think it stands up to
examination. You seem to have rather a primitive idea of the shipping
business in the late 19th century -- and perhaps of British culture too.
At that time Britain had the world's largest volume of trading, and
companies regularly shipped to and from Germany as a matter of course
-- including the company the dragon was ordered from. It specialized
in the pantomime effects for which the British theatre of the time
was famous (and in whose cause, some years earlier, Weber's Oberon
had suffered!). They were a kind of Industrial Light & Magic of their
day, and regularly supplied continental theatres. So it's unlikely
they "wouldn't have heard of" Bayreuth.
All the more so, because in educated circles in Britain, just as in
France, Austria and Russia, Wagner was very much a household name,
the most controversial figure in contemporary arts. He had visited
London more than once and conducted a series of concerts there as
early as 1855 to which people travelled from all over the country,
his music was played regularly there at a time when London offered
more concerts than anywhere else in the world, and the plans for the
Bayreuth festival were reported regularly in the press, along with
discreet accounts of the scandals in Munich a few years earlier.
Don't forget that British musical culture was thoroughly
German-oriented, so much so that Mendelssohn was Britain's favourite
composer, and a personal friend of the Queen and Prince Albert.
Less educated people, of course, wouldn't have been so aware, but the
despatch clerks of any international freight shipper would not have
come into that category; many of them would have had to speak German,
for one thing, and would have been used to funny-sounding addresses.
"Bayreuth, Franconia" would not have been taken for "Beyrouth,
Lebanon" without a lot of checking. And they could not just have been
"orally" told -- there would have been a huge amount of paperwork
involved, probably more even than today. In any case, it's unlikely
they made a mistake in making out the labels, bills of lading,
customs documents, and so on -- otherwise the whole dragon, and not
just one crate out of a batch, would have ended up in Beirut.
It's also unlikely one crate went astray along the way, either. The
means of getting packages to these two destinations would also have
been completely different. Lebanon freight would have been despatched
directly by sea, probably straight onto a ship out of the Port of
London, while freight for the Continent would have been directed by
rail to a quayside freight depot in Folkestone or another of the
Channel ports, and across to France, or possibly Belgium, on a ferry
to be picked up again at a similar freight depot on the other side.
From there the cases containing the dragon would have gone, probably
in the same wagons, directly to Munich, the major terminal for that
part of the world, to be put on a service northward. The
opportunities for just one to go astray to Beirut at any point are
fairly slim, and it was most likely at or after Munich that it
vanished. Probably the crate lost its label, was buried under a
delayed shipment or left in an unused wagon; and when it was later
found, it was hastily done away with, to dispose of the evidence!
Which still happens today...
So, though it's a nice story, the Beirut mistake is probably a joke
somebody thought up afterwards. After all, we don't even know for
sure that the neck never turned up. Maybe it just trundled in three
weeks late, after the festival was over, and Wagner just swore and
forgot about it. There seemed to be little chance of reviving the
festival then, and too late was as good as never.
Cheers,
Mike
--
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
Hans C Hoff
Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
> So, though it's a nice story, the Beirut mistake is probably a joke
> somebody thought up afterwards. After all, we don't even know for
> sure that the neck never turned up. Maybe it just trundled in three
> weeks late, after the festival was over, and Wagner just swore and
> forgot about it. There seemed to be little chance of reviving the
> festival then, and too late was as good as never.
By pure coincidence I leafed a bit in my much maligned Gutman biography
yesterday, and found that Wagner did indeed visit London in the spring
of 1877, about three quarter of a year after the dragons neck was due in
Bayreuth. There is no information as to whether he went searching for
the missing vertebraes !
Hans
大塚俊一
Otsuka, Sapporo, Japan
--
q...@mx2.meshnet.or.jp
Hans C Hoff <hch...@online.no> wrote in article
<347C4D39...@online.no>...
> Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
>
> > So, though it's a nice story, the Beirut mistake is probably a joke
> > somebody thought up afterwards. After all, we don't even know for
> > sure that the neck never turned up. Maybe it just trundled in three
> > weeks late, after the festival was over, and Wagner just swore and
> > forgot about it. There seemed to be little chance of reviving the
> > festival then, and too late was as good as never.
>
> By pure coincidence I leafed a bit in my much maligned Gutman biography
> yesterday, and found that Wagner did indeed visit London in the spring
> of 1877, about three quarter of a year after the dragons neck was due in
> Bayreuth. There is no information as to whether he went searching for
> the missing vertebraes !
>
> Hans
>
Otsuka wrote;
Thank you all for many jokes about my mistakes.
I read a local news at Bayreuth this summer that some mission from the city
of Beirut visited the city of Bayreuth, and have a Bayreuth Summit. Is
there anyone who read it, too? What is this news really mean? I also
cannot understand Germany well. It is not confirmed in English.
Thank you.
Mike Scott Rohan
The message <01bcff21$fdba9b40$5b85cd85@default>
from "大塚俊一" <q...@mx2.meshnet.or.jp> contains these words:
> Otsuka, Sapporo, Japan
> --
> q...@mx2.meshnet.or.jp
> Hans C Hoff <hch...@online.no> wrote in article
> <347C4D39...@online.no>...
> > Mike Scott Rohan wrote:
> >
> > > So, though it's a nice story, the Beirut mistake is probably a joke
> > > somebody thought up afterwards. After all, we don't even know for
> > > sure that the neck never turned up. Maybe it just trundled in three
> > > weeks late, after the festival was over, and Wagner just swore and
> > > forgot about it. There seemed to be little chance of reviving the
> > > festival then, and too late was as good as never.
> >
> > By pure coincidence I leafed a bit in my much maligned Gutman biography
> > yesterday, and found that Wagner did indeed visit London in the spring
> > of 1877, about three quarter of a year after the dragons neck was due in
> > Bayreuth. There is no information as to whether he went searching for
> > the missing vertebraes !
> >
> > Hans
> >
> Otsuka wrote;
> Thank you all for many jokes about my mistakes.
> I read a local news at Bayreuth this summer that some mission from the city
> of Beirut visited the city of Bayreuth, and have a Bayreuth Summit. Is
> there anyone who read it, too? What is this news really mean? I also
> cannot understand Germany well. It is not confirmed in English.
> Thank you.
>
Dear Otsuka,
Please don't think we're laughing at you. If we had to write in (I
presume) Japanese, we wouldn't do half as well, and you could have a
fine time laughing at us. But the coincidence of words did cause some
wonderful images to arise in the imagination. I hadn't heard this
about the Beirut delegation -- did they mean to go there, do you
think? Let's hope their local madness isn't catching; I can just see
a Green Line at the bottom of the Grune Hugel, perhaps with pillboxes
manned by fanatical Brahmsians.
Incidentally, a little research has just revealed that the dragon was
indeed sent in a series of cases, but they arrived at intervals; it
was a matter of looking in that morning's case and saying "Now where
does this bit go?"
And Hans, yes, the 1877 visit was a series of concerts to try to
raise funds to pay off the Festival deficit. I seem to remember Corno
di Bassetto complaining about Wagner leaving the podium and prowling
about the place, so maybe he did have the neck on his mind. As it were.
Cheers,
Mike
--
mike.sco...@asgard.zetnet.co.uk
ryszard
I just came across this thread and wanted to add a further bit of triva, since I, too,
believed the story of the Fafner's neck (as the dragon) mis-directed to Beirut to be a
Wagner legend.
In going through some Liszt letters I discovered that for some envelopes and return
addresses, in late 1876, he wrote "Bayreuth in Deutschland" (sometimes underscored).
Earlier he seems to have only addressed them "Bayreuth". While I have not done a
systematic examination of all envelopes, this leads me to believe that there was some
incident surrounding two "Bayreuths" (though spelt differently) and so letters were
more carefully addressed. (Newman thought the confusion "not at all improbable":
p.475 of his "Life of Richard Wagner", vol.4)
Richard Koprowski
riko...@leland.stanford.edu
Bookmisr
Frederic Spotts, in BAYREUTH: THE HISTORY OF THE WAGNER FESTIVAL, recounts an
incident in which sets or costumes produced elsewhere in Europe and intended
for the Festspielhaus ended up in Lebanon.
Stan Modjesky
Book Miser, Inc
Baltimore, MD
--specialists in performing arts, American history and politics--