{"id":64558,"date":"2018-10-19T17:00:17","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T15:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=64558"},"modified":"2018-10-18T14:22:24","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T12:22:24","slug":"18-00-32","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=64558","title":{"rendered":"New Off-Broadway Play Examines a Fascinating Jewish Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>New Off-Broadway Play Examines a Fascinating Jewish Story<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Alice Burdick Schweiger<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

A scene from \u2018My Parsifal Conductor.\u2019 Photo: provided.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

For years, playwright and screenwriter Allan Leicht had wanted to tell the story of composer Richard Wagner \u2014 a known antisemite \u2014 and his Jewish friend who conducted his opera,\u00a0Parsifal<\/em>. (Parsifal\u00a0<\/em>is a\u00a0three-act Christian opera based on the 13th-century poem \u201cParzival\u201d\u00a0by Wolfram von Eschenbach, about Arthurian knight Percival and his quest for the Holy Grail.)\u00a0But Leicht was busy with his acting and writing career, and had to put creating his dream play on hold.<\/span><\/p>\n

But five years ago, the time seemed right, and Leicht penned the play\u00a0My Parsifal Conductor<\/em>. After teaming up with a production company, and putting together a stellar cast and director, the play is now running Off-Broadway in New York City at the\u00a0Marjorie S. Deane Theater\u00a0<\/em>through November 3.<\/span><\/p>\n

Leicht, a native New Yorker who has written for numerous television shows including\u00a0Kate and Allie, Mariah<\/em>,\u00a0The\u00a0Thorns,<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Ryan\u2019s Hope,\u00a0<\/em>and who wrote the acclaimed TV film\u00a0Adam<\/em>, about the kidnapped Adam Walsh, had been curious about Wagner growing up. \u201cYears ago, I read about Hermann Levi, who was the son of a rabbi and one of Wagner\u2019s most important conductors,\u201d he says. \u201cI was fascinated about their longtime friendship. Some thought Levi was disloyal becoming one of Wagner\u2019s conductors, but the relationship between Wagner and Levi was complicated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When King Ludwig ll of Bavaria insisted that Levi conduct Wagner\u2019s final masterpiece,\u00a0Parsifal<\/em>, Wagner\u2019s wife, Cosima, was very much opposed. Levi was a huge star in the 19th\u00a0century, a very fine pianist and composer himself, comparable to Leonard Bernstein, but Cosima felt strongly he should not be the one to conduct it. \u201cCosima didn\u2019t mind that Levi conducted her husband\u2019s other operas, but\u00a0Parsifal<\/em>\u00a0was different,\u201d says Leicht. \u201cCosima was a deeply religious woman and was tormented by the idea of having a Jew conduct an opera that she considered to be an expression of the mysteries of Christianity. It was no mere music-drama, but \u2018a festival play for the consecration of the stage.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, in 1882, Levi did wind up conducting the opera. When writing the play, Leicht, who is Orthodox, thought the best way to portray the story was through humor. \u201cI thought because of its incongruity\u00a0\u2014\u00a0antisemitism, Judaism, and German opera\u00a0\u2014\u00a0that\u2019s the stuff of comedy: a comedy about antisemitism, about the irrationality of antisemitism,\u201d says Leicht, who has won Emmy and Writer\u2019s Guild awards.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Leicht\u2019s play, Wagner and Cosima find themselves in a moral, political, and musical dilemma, and Cosima spends her last night on earth reliving her past and contemplating her after-life. Levi causes Cosima and Wagner to try and control their antisemitic views.<\/span><\/p>\n

When asked what he hopes the audience will walk away with after seeing his play, Leicht says that he hopes they ask questions.\u00a0\u201cI hope audiences leave with questions. What is prejudice? Bigotry? How do we tolerate it? In this case it\u2019s antisemitism, but it could be any kind of prejudice. It\u2019s very difficult to admit that we admire people like Wagner or Dostoevsky, or poets Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, who were gifted artists and at the same time genuine antisemites. We like bad guys to wear black hats. But in this case, we have Mr. and Mrs. Wagner, who were both very intelligent, sensitive people. He was arguably the most important artist in the Western world, but had this bad side. Where did it come from?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When Leicht, who lives in New York City and is also an Israeli citizen, isn\u2019t working, he is busy with his family. He has three children and two grandchildren. His wife, Renee Lippin Leicht is an actress who appeared in the Woody Allen films\u00a0Stardust Memories<\/em>,\u00a0Celebrity,<\/em>and\u00a0Radio Days<\/em>, starred in the 1972 film\u00a0Portnoy\u2019s Complaint,<\/em>\u00a0and was on the\u00a0Bob Newhart Show.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

After the Off-Broadway run, Leicht hopes his play will get moved to a production in a larger theater.\u00a0\u201cI think it\u2019s a fascinating story that people can relate to today,\u201d he says. \u201cFor one thing, Richard Wagner was not exactly monogamous and left many an affair in his wake. He would be a candidate for the \u2018Me, Too\u2019 movement, except that most of his conquests seem to have been quite willing. It may not be for me to say, but\u00a0My Parsifal Conductor<\/em>\u00a0is a very funny play. Look, two unapologetic antisemites in close friendship with the descendant of a long line of rabbis. As Cosima says, \u2018Twelve rabbis conducting Parsifal.\u2019\u201d
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

My Parsifal Conductor\u00a0runs through\u00a0<\/span>November 3\u00a0at the\u00a0Marjorie S. Deane Theater\u00a0at the West Side YMCA\u00a0(<\/em>5 W. 63rd St<\/em><\/a>).<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Tickets for\u00a0My Parsifal Conductor\u00a0are available here<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/em>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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New Off-Broadway Play Examines a Fascinating Jewish Story Alice Burdick Schweiger A scene from \u2018My Parsifal Conductor.\u2019 Photo: provided. For years, playwright and screenwriter Allan Leicht had wanted to tell the story of composer Richard Wagner \u2014 a known antisemite \u2014 and his Jewish friend who conducted his opera,\u00a0Parsifal. (Parsifal\u00a0is a\u00a0three-act Christian opera based on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64558"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64558"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64575,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64558\/revisions\/64575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}