Ignatz Waghalter - Biography

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Waghalter's Operas

Mandragola

In 1914, the Deutsches Opernhaus premiered Waghalter’s comic opera, Mandragola, a ribald tale based on Machiavelli’s Renaissance play. It is the story of an old rich man who, unable to consummate his marriage with a very beautiful young woman and produce an heir, is led to believe that the problem can be solved through the administering of an exotic herb (the Mandragola). However, the experiment is entrusted by the old man to a doctor - who, as it turns out, is really the ardent young lover of his wife. And so the opera ends with the young lovers in bed, while outside their room the old cuckold happily awaits the result of the “wonder-cure.” It was with some difficulty that the opera made it past the Kaiser’s censors, and it was received warmly by the Berlin audience and critics at its premier. The review published in January 1914 by the authoritative Signale was both appreciative and perceptive in its appraisal of Waghalter:

“One cannot avoid the conclusion that we have found in Waghalter the man who can compose for us an entire repertoire of this type of finely conceived comic operas, for which the public has yearned for so long. And he seems to be more capable of this than others for the following reason: While Waghalter has acquired from his training in the German school the most advanced and completed technical capabilities, he has allowed his melodic sentiments to be worked upon by other influences. It is these influences - especially that of the Italians - that enable Waghalter to protect his work against the bloated and clumsy qualities that characterize the German Meistersinger imitators. ...

“The musical lightheartedness of the work would not alone guarantee its success. What is decisive is that Waghalter has achieved real musical and rhythmic discoveries. And as he is not miserly in dispensing them, it appears that he is able to rely on having an immense supply in his possession.”

Mandragola seemed destined for a successful tour of the opera theaters of Europe. The Paris Opera initiated negotiations with Waghalter on the staging of his new work, but the outbreak of war between France and Germany in August brought these discussions to an abrupt halt.

Jugend

Waghalter’s next opera was based on a decidedly German work – the celebrated realist drama Jugend (Youth), which had been written in the 1890s by the renowned playwright, Max Halbe. It is a tragic opera, composed in the midst of World War I, of the destruction of young love. The opera was premiered at the Deutsches Opernhaus in February 1917. It enjoyed a tremendous popular success. During the next three years it was to be performed over 40 times.

Numerous critics noted in particular the extraordinary power of Waghalter’s melodic gift. The critic of the authoritative musical journal, Die Tonkunst, wrote rapturously of Waghalter’s capacity to convey profound emotional truth melodically, and proclaimed that Jugend’’s climactic love duet ranked among the great moments in opera, rising even to the level of Verdi’s Aida!

But while the critics acknowledged the exceptional beauty of the music, this very quality made Waghalter appear somewhat suspect, if not anachronistic in the midst of the atonal revolution that was sweeping German music.

It was not only changing musical fashions that affected Waghalter’s career. The political climate in the aftermath of the war became increasingly inhospitable. Waghalter was a Polish-born Jew; and this had become an issue once he attained a position of prominence in German music. Though he was a self-described “free thinker” and agnostic who neither attended synagogue nor observed religious holidays, Waghalter – in contrast to other important conductors such as Bruno Walter, Leo Blech and Otto Klemperer (to name only a few) — would not convert to Christianity. He was among the very few prominent Jewish-born conductors of his day in Germany and Austria who rejected conversion as a means of deflecting the continual pressure exerted by anti-Semitism.

Sataniel

In 1923 Waghalter’s opera Sataniel, received its premier. It failed with the critics, which Waghalter attributed in his autobiography to an increasingly nationalistic environment that was hostile to the Polish origin of the dramatic material. At about the same time, the bankruptcy of the opera house, a consequence of the devastating inflationary crisis that shattered the German economy, led to a dramatic reorganization of the Deutsches Opernhaus. The forced resignation of its long-time “Intendant,” Georg Hartmann, marked a significant change in the political climate at the theater. Waghalter, who had been Hartmann’s closest collaborator since 1912, suddenly faced a sharp reduction in his own influence on the shaping of the Deutsches Opernhaus repertoire. He decided to leave the opera house. Despite the unfortunate circumstances surrounding Waghalter’s departure from his beloved Deutsches Opernhaus, his achievements as both a composer and conductor during his more than decade-long tenure were substantial. The Opera house, in an assessment of its own artistic history posted on the organization’s web site, judges the premiers of Waghalter’s Mandragola, Jugend and Sataniel to be among the “weightier” (“gewichtigeren”) opera premiers of the house’s first decade.

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