The Rienzi Overture

Is it possible for a work of art to be a life-changing experience?

How is it possible? 

Richard Wagner's Rienzi (pronouned 'Ree/on/zee' by the upper classes, btw, and not 'Ry/en/zee') Overture, widely-regarded as very beautiful music, is of course also forever notorious as the piece that Adolf Hitler said was the cause of everything, the source that motivated him to put into action previously vague plans.

Nicola Di Rienzi was a certain gentleman who lived at the time of the Italian poet Petrarch, and who overthrew the effete aristocracy of the day and successively won and then lost rulership of Rome. His story, for whatever reason, had already become romanticized even by the time Wagner himself further added his gleam to it.

Wikipedia goes on at great length, in its discussion about Stanley Kubrick's “Eyes Wide Shut” (why the hell am I going on about this movie in this blog all the time?!!) about Kubrick's references to anti-semitism in this film. I don't see them being there prominently myself – even when I look for them. However I do fancy I hear the Rienzi Overture drifting in and out of the piano music... And that would be interesting if correct. It is subtle, but I suspect it is indeed there – and there on purpose too. (The pic on the left is by Einar Einarsson Kvaran, and appears on the Wikipedia entry.)

I find commentary that Kubrick speaks out against anti-semitism in his movies as utterly crass. He does no such thing. Kubrick is doing what so many normal people also do, and that is appreciate things as they are and as they exist on their own merits. Under virtually every Youtube clip of the Rienzi Overture or Movement there is argument this way and that about the Hitler/Nazi connection to this piece of music and most ordinary music lovers rightly complain about making such connections.

Oh yes but of course there is a style that defines the 'Germanic' ideal. I can't explain why it is so. As far as so much of the commentary, review and argument goes, about these sorts of things that you see so much of all over the internet – even including so-called 'conspiracy theory-thinking' – it's all so predictable, you can see it all coming from a mile away...

Delusional thinking comes in many forms. You can't make money being deluded, and you can't hold onto stuff that you have grabbed from others when you slip into a state of self-delusion. But empires can fall when they are in the state of deluding themselves into believing there is never an adequate opposition, and money moves from those who take it for granted, to those who know how to control the delusions it brings with it.

Death comes to all on the face of the earth. Three things will happen in the next two years: old dictators will face their own death from old age, old politicians will face their own death from old age, and the public will begin to follow nascent delusions. These things are certain and cannot be altered.

Calvin J. Bear