The Bayreuth Wag: Chris Walton is diverted by a study of the lighter side of Wagner

Review of Joachim Köhler, Der lachende Wagner: das unbekannte Leben des Bayreuther Meisters (Heyne, 2012).

July 2014, Volume 8, Number 2, 95–6.

A book about Wagner and humour – for such is ‘The Laughing Wagner’ – is something rather uncommon, as Joachim Köhler points out in his opening chapter. After all, there aren’t a lot of laughs in his operas, and even his only mature comedy, Die Meistersinger, isn’t very comedic. With its treatment of poor Beckmesser, it’s more of an Ode an die Schadenfreude. But there are enough anecdotes about the composer himself, committed to paper by friend and foe alike, to prove that he most certainly had a sense of the absurd, not least when it came to his own absurdities. Köhler has brought many of these together to form a highly entertaining book that details a Wagner not just laughing (and laughed at), but smiling, joking, and generally having a rather jolly time.