Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

Who cares if Wagner’s 200? The plague of the anniversary

Centenaries now seem to be the only reason that publishers and concert planners do anything at all

Photo by Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images

Back in the 1960s, the producers of the Tonight programme had a running joke for linking the show’s segments. They would use lines like: ‘And that item commemorated the 23rd anniversary of….’ Or: ‘On Tuesday Mr Jones would have been 73.’ There is something about anniversaries, however audaciously crowbarred in, that always gives the illusion of order amid the chaos and relevance among the accidental.

But today anniversary-itis has not only stopped being a gag. It has become a bore. What are, after all, merely accidents of the calendar have in some places become the dominant factors in our national life.

Sometimes it is anniversaries of major world events, at others a coincidence of an individual birth, marriage or death. What may be significant for a living monarch does not automatically matter for a dead artist.

For some years the BBC Proms have led this trend. Still the world’s best festival of classical music, they are nevertheless increasingly clogged by this laziness of programming.

For instance, apart from the 50th anniversary Prom for Doctor Who, the current season’s programme has paid special tribute to Richard Wagner. To commemorate the 200th anniversary of his birth, this year’s Proms programmed a whole Ring cycle as well as complete performances of Tristan, Tannhäuser and Parsifal.

Aside from the fact that none of these works are being heard and seen as their composer envisaged — as fully staged dramas — that is one-tenth of the Proms season taken up right there. Which is not to say that the performances have been bad — most have been excellent so far — but why the hook and why the glut? It is not as though Richard Wagner has been doing badly prior to his 200th birthday.

It is the same with Verdi, whose 200th also lands this year, and Benjamin Britten, who would have been 100 had he not — like Verdi, Wagner and everyone else — died.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in