{"id":2516,"date":"2013-06-11T17:27:20","date_gmt":"2013-06-11T16:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/?p=2516"},"modified":"2013-06-11T17:27:20","modified_gmt":"2013-06-11T16:27:20","slug":"wagner-dream-buddhism-from-ancient-india-to-wales-and-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2013\/06\/wagner-dream-buddhism-from-ancient-india-to-wales-and-england.html","title":{"rendered":"Wagner Dream: Buddhism from ancient India to Wales and England"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Opening<\/a>
Opening scene from Harvey\u2019s Wagner Dream<\/em> (June 2013, performed by the Welsh National Opera)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Before the opera begins, a solitary figure in white robes walks purposefully out on to stage from the right, turns onto a raised platform, and sits, facing slightly away from the audience.<\/p>\n

This is how Wagner Dream<\/em>, a modern British opera, begins. The opera is based in two worlds, that of 1883 Venice and the last day in the life of Richard Wagner, and 5th century India and the romantic entanglement of a young outcast woman and the Buddha\u2019s cousin and chief attendant, \u0100nanda<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The divide in time is rather creatively visualized, allowing both to exist on stage simultaneously by placing the scenes from Venice on a narrow strip of stage in front of (from the perspective of the audience) the orchestra pit<\/strong>. The scenes from ancient India, meanwhile, take place on and around the platform behind the orchestra. The divide is further accentuated by the Welsh National Opera\u2019s director\u00a0Pierre Audi\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0decision to have the sung dialogue of the Buddhists placed in Pali, which is commonly described as the language of the Buddha, but is actually a term meaning \u2018text\u2019 \u2013 referring to the recorded teachings of the Buddha and his disciples. Meanwhile the spoken dialogue of Wagner and friends is in German. Surtitles<\/a> (supertitles) translate both above the stage in English and Welsh. The use of the two languages helps move the audience both out of their own world and into the lives of the characters on the stage.<\/p>\n

As you would guess, this is a bit of a niche opera. Four languages, three time periods (if you include the very modern use of minimalist stage sets and electronic sound effects), and the clashing of two very distant cultures as a 19th century German composer encounters ancient Indian ideas and stories.<\/strong> Again we might add our own time period as a third culture, in some ways as distant from Wagner as he finds himself from the Buddha. And, to further complicate things, the story that was placed in Pali itself comes from Eugene Burnouf\u2019s\u00a01844 work, \u201cIntroduction \u00e0 l\u2019Histoire du Buddhisme Indien<\/a>\u201d (recently translated into English here<\/a>), which is based on a Sanskrit text, the Divy\u0101vad\u0101na (Divine Stories<\/em>)\u00a0an anthology of Buddhist tales dating to around the 2nd Century CE.<\/p>\n

The framing story, that of Wagner, his wife, a young English lover, and a doctor, has the great composer agonizing over an unfinished piece of work. Wagner had read Burnouf\u2019s work and was so fascinated by it that he planned an opera based on it. The opera was to be called\u00a0Die Sieger<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(The Victors<\/em>) and was composed \u2013 though never completed \u2013 between 1856 and 1858. As he is stricken with a heart attack he is visited by the Buddha\u00a0Vairocana<\/a>, who implores him to make the right decision at this oncoming moment of death. In his dying moments, Wagner retraces the love story of the outcast woman\u00a0Prakriti and\u00a0\u0100nanda, in which the Buddha eventually allows a chaste union, ordaining her into the community\/Sangha.<\/p>\n

As Stephen Walsh of the Arts Desk<\/a> wrote:<\/p>\n

To describe in detail the many levels of Harvey\u2019s score would take a much longer review than this. Both musically and dramaturgically the opera is a palimpsest: layer on layer, from Harvey\u2019s own culminating work and death, down through Wagner\u2019s, and on into the virtual world of the Buddha and the hidden reality of Schopenhauer\u2019s\u00a0noumenon<\/em>, the profound truth which, he maintained, we can only ever glimpse through music.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the movement between layers, one is drawn in to parallels, either real or imagined, between<\/p>\n