Ours is an era when canceling people for dissenting against fashionable woke shibboleths has become an inevitable and often lamentable aspect of contemporary culture. That’s true not just in politics, but also in the arts, where virtue-signaling about various causes is commonplace.
But, while the practice of shunning those whose beliefs run afoul of prevailing orthodoxies is considered abhorrent when it involves people we agree with, most are not so broad-minded when it comes to those with whom they disagree.
Though positions on this issue often hinge on partisan differences, they also raise the age-old debate about whether great art, however entertaining, profound or enlightening, can justify the bad or even criminal behavior of the artist.
That is the context for a new Off-Broadway play by Peter Danish that premiered earlier this month at New World Stages. The work attempts, among other things, to explore how we should think about the life of one of the giants of 20th-century classical music: German conductor Herbert von Karajan.
The conceit of the play is the supposed meeting between von Karajan and fellow musical superstar Leonard Berstein late in their lives at the bar of the famed Sacher Hotel in Vienna. The encounter between a former member of the Nazi Party and a proud American Jew is an opportunity for the two characters to hash out what we should think not only of von Karajan but of a rivalry that was also an unlikely collegial friendship.
Can a Jew and an ex-Nazi be friends?
The answers that Danish provides to those questions in approximately 90 minutes of sometimes tedious dialogue—punctuated by histrionics, a musical soundtrack and the occasional intervention of the waiter serving the duo—are far from satisfactory. The fact that the two main characters are portrayed by female performers in drag (with actress Lucca Zuchner’s von Karajan far more convincing than Helen Schneider’s Bernstein) is, though described in the program as German director Gil Mehmert’s attempt at “impressionist fantasy,” both pointless and mostly distracting.
Still, the discussion this play addresses is nevertheless important. That’s not just because the controversy that surrounded von Karajan is interesting in and of itself. It’s also due to the discussion it engenders has some bearing on contemporary arguments about how to think about the past and the intersection between art and politics.
When it comes to our favorite artists, musicians, actors or athletes, the less we know about their personal lives, foibles and politics, the better off we usually are. That’s as true for those who are no longer with us as it is for contemporary stars.
Once the fourth wall between performers and their audiences is broken, and we discover that their personal lives are disreputable or their views reprehensible, continuing to enjoy their work requires a certain degree of obliviousness that not all of us are capable of or willing to undertake.
The fascinating thing about von Karajan was that his artistry and appeal as a musician were such that over the course of a career that began in 1929 until his death in 1989, he was able to transcend a past that ought to have rendered him a pariah.
An Austrian musical wunderkind who made his debut at the prestigious Salzburg Festival at the age of only 21, von Karajan rose in his career like a rocket during Germany’s Nazi era. He joined the Nazi Party twice, once in a still-independent Austria in 1933 (it would be annexed to Germany in the 1938 Anschluss), and again in 1935, while he was serving as director of the opera in the German city of Aachen.
A regime supporter
He would later assert that he only did so to advance his career. An Allied denazification tribunal declared him as merely a Nazi sympathizer and innocent of personal involvement in atrocities. But it’s also true that throughout the period of Nazi rule, he was, to all outward appearances, an enthusiastic supporter of the Adolf Hitler regime.
Many other musical stars of that period, non-Jews as well as Jews, left both Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, rather than be compromised or be used by those tyrannical governments.
But von Karajan stayed and prospered, becoming a favorite of Nazi propaganda minister and war criminal Josef Goebbels (though von Karajan claimed that Hitler was not one of his fans), who installed him as the head of the Berlin Opera in competition with the older Wilhelm Furtwangler, the head of the Berlin Philharmonic in that era.
Though the latter chose not to leave Germany (allegedly because he feared that von Karajan, whom he despised, would replace him), he was a public critic of Hitler and the Nazis. Unlike von Karajan, he never joined the party and helped Jews escape the Holocaust.
Furtwangler also refused to begin performances with a Nazi salute and the playing of the vile Nazi anthem, the Horst Wessel song, as his younger rival did. His status as a preeminent artist in a country that venerated classical music served to protect him against retaliation by the regime. But that was not the path von Karajan chose.
Following the end of the war and after a relatively brief period when he was unemployable due to his status as an ex-Nazi, von Karajan’s career was soon back on track. A brilliant and charismatic musician with a style unlike other conductors, by the 1950s he was an international star rather than just a German celebrity.
Not everyone was initially on board with his transformation. His concerts were picketed in New York and canceled in Detroit.
Eugene Ormandy, a Hungarian-born Jew who emigrated to the United States in 1937—and who, by the 1950s, was music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra—had a reputation as a musician equal to von Karajan. He famously refused to shake the ex-Nazi’s hand.
American-Jewish superstar tenor Richard Tucker went even further. Contracted to record Verdi’s opera “Aida” in 1955 alongside Maria Callas with von Karajan conducting, Tucker said he wouldn’t sing if the German were involved. Such was Tucker’s fame at the time that the recording company fired von Karajan.
Star power
Nevertheless, von Karajan’s star power soon overwhelmed the misgivings of other performers, as well as that of those who run the business side of the classical-music world. His recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic, which named him “conductor for life” in 1956, and the Vienna State Opera and Philharmonic, where he also performed, were bestsellers.
By the late 1960s, his performances in New York and everywhere else were no longer considered controversial. Though he had rivals with reputations and followings that were equal to, if not greater than, his—such as the Hungarian-born Jew Sir Georg Solti, whose recordings often outsold those of von Karajan—he reigned as one of the demigods of classical music for the rest of his life.
A flamboyant Boston-born Jew, Bernstein was nothing like the rigid von Karajan who, though his father’s family had immigrated to Germany from Greece in the 18th century, affected a Prussian mien along with the aristocratic “von” in his name.
Bernstein was the composer of Broadway musicals like “On the Town,” “Candide” and the immortal “West Side Story,” as well as film scores such as that of “On the Waterfront” and a great body of classical music that never achieved the same distinction. He was also a leading conductor and piano soloist.
During his long tenure as the music director of the New York Philharmonic, he became America’s music educator-in-chief, appearing on television to brilliantly explain the subject to a vast popular audience in a way that is unimaginable today, given the enormous gap that currently exists between popular and classical art.
Proudly Jewish, as well as a supporter of the Jewish state, he conducted in Israel during its War of Independence and composed a musical tribute called Halil (Hebrew for “flute”) to a young Israeli flutist killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
A pair of frenemies
He and von Karajan were what might be termed “frenemies,” in that they were outwardly cordial while occasionally engaging in one-upmanship. But it’s possible the story that Danish tells of their meeting, which he claims was told to him by a bartender at the Sacher decades after both died, is true.
The lengthy debate between the two in the play covers a lot of territory Von Karajan mocks Bernstein’s desire to be universally loved and the way he spread himself so thin among his various endeavors, often to the detriment of all of them. Bernstein mocks von Karajan’s sometimes mannered conducting style, leading orchestras with his eyes closed and, of course, his Nazi ties. That is, of course, of far greater interest to posterity than either musician’s style.
Both could be extremely eccentric, with Bernstein often playing familiar music like the operas “Carmen” or “Tristan und Isolde” at tempi so slow as to be at times almost unrecognizable. Anyone who listens to von Karajan’s recordings often needs to adjust the volume, since his approach involved frequently changing the sound dynamic in an annoying way that no other musician ever tried. Yet they were both supremely talented individuals in a field that nowadays is mostly made up of stars who embrace conformity.
For the playwright, as well as music fans during their lifetimes and even long afterward, the idea that we should shun von Karajan because of his sins is simply too much of a sacrifice. His portrayal of the conductor involves his eventually admitting both regret and shame over his unwillingness to question authority and be used by the Nazis. And the substance of the play involves a great deal of rationalizing and excusing the inexcusable.
Worse is the attempt to draw moral equivalence between von Karajan’s mistakes and those of Bernstein. In this way, Bernstein is forced to admit his guilt in not seeking to prevent protests of von Karajan’s 1955 New York performance at Carnegie Hall as a similar failure, which is as appalling as it is misleading.
Bernstein did plenty of foolish and even bad things in his life. As Bradley Cooper’s awful portrayal of Bernstein in the 2023 Netflix movie “Maestro"—which the actor also produced, wrote and directed—showed, he was serially unfaithful to his wife, largely because he was determined to engage in gay affairs even as he played the family man to the public.
His inane dabbling in far-left politics, such as the 1970 fundraiser he hosted at his New York apartment for the terrorist street thugs of the Black Panthers, inspired one of the most scathing takedowns in the history of journalism: Tom Wolfe’s epic New York magazine piece, “Radical Chic,” which skewered Bernstein and his wealthy liberal friends.
It’s also true that, as von Karajan’s character notes, Bernstein dodged the draft when the majority of American men his age were fighting in the war to save civilization from the German conductor’s patrons and their allies.
But the moment when von Karajan accuses Bernstein of being a “Jewish nationalist” and somehow like the Nazi variety during the 1930s and 40s, that goes too far. Despite the response from Bernstein about his pride in being Jewish and claim to be a “citizen of the world,” it is utterly appalling. That such a line is heard on a New York stage, at a time when antisemitism is on the rise and often supported by the city’s artistic elites, constitutes a red line the playwright should never have crossed.
Think what you like of Bernstein’s personal life and his political follies, but he was no Nazi, and the effort to pretend that he was no better than von Karajan is dishonest.
The play does better when it sticks to questions about music. When the two conductors’ mutual admiration for Callas is discussed, it is noted by the actor playing the bartender donning a dress and singing an excerpt from “Lucia di Lammermoor” in a passable counter-tenor’s soprano. This moment of high camp is the only time when the otherwise silly cross-dressing can be forgiven.
But it doesn’t answer the question of where to draw the line between art and politics.
Whom do we boycott?
The music of the arch antisemite, Richard Wagner, which was loved by both von Karajan and Bernstein, continues to hold the stage throughout the world, despite the composer’s terrible opinions and prejudices. That’s because music is, in and of itself, not inherently political, let alone racist or antisemitic, regardless of its source. And though they remain the subject of an ongoing informal ban in Israel, Wagner’s operas aren’t themselves antisemitic.
The association of that music with the Holocaust is inherently subjective. Eight decades after the liberation of Auschwitz, few think to link those music dramas written in the 19th century before Hitler’s birth with what the Nazis did, or even the Jew-hatred of Wagner’s era. And if we are to judge and condemn all works of art created by those with antisemitic views throughout the history of the last millennia, we’d have to abandon most of the masterpieces of Western literature, art and music.
Should the same principle apply to efforts to shun those performers who might support causes or political parties and leaders some of us despise? Again, the question is inherently subjective.
For example, many Jews might support a boycott of those artists who support boycotts of Israel. But it’s likely that the Jews who love film adaptations of Jane Austen novels, like the 1995 "Sense and Sensibility,” might find it hard to give it up. Actors Emma Thompson and the late Alan Rickman both engaged in vicious attacks on the Jewish state that arguably crossed over into antisemitism. But it’s not clear how shunning a movie set in the Regency era, in which, as is the case with Wagner’s operas, Jews and antisemitism are entirely absent, does anything to help Israel.
And when some on the left engage in efforts to boycott supporters of President Donald Trump, or when the right seeks to do it to those on the left, that is turning political differences into a culture war from which there may be no exit ramp. Such behavior only exacerbates existing divisions to a point where, like the post-Oct. 7 pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses, violence is not only imaginable but inevitable.
As much as possible, those who care about the arts as well as the preservation of civil discourse in democracies, should try to keep them out of our partisan debates. Weaponizing differences to the point at which political factions become warring tribes incapable of listening to or understanding each other does far more harm than any possible good that can come from any political boycott.
But excusing those who served the actual Nazi regime and acquiesced to discrimination against Jewish colleagues, and profiting from their being fired, as von Karajan did, is an entirely different matter from that involving how we might feel about contemporary left-wing actors or those rare artists who might be Trump-supporters.
Seen from that perspective, “Last Call” fails to shed much light on the subject. It's possible to assert that art transcends politics, but not membership in the Nazi Party.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
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