Talk:Siegfried Wagner

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Illegitimate son[edit]

This - a review of a book by F. Spotts- may be a citation for the claim that Siegfried had an illegitimate son, Walter Aign (1901-77) but it is subscription access for people at participating institutions. (Alternatively, go to the article it reprints, Cambridge Opera Journal, volume 7 no. 3, Nov. 1995, pp 277-84. I have not read it yet, but will attempt to soon, since I do belong to a participating university.) Schissel | Sound the Note! 04:50, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Peter P. Pachl [de], one of Siegfried's biographers, asserted that Siegfried had sired an illegitimate son, Walter Aign (1901–1977). Nonetheless, several recent authors, such as Frederic Spotts and Brigitte Hamann, have taken it up. Does this mean that they have contested the claim, or supported it? Valetude (talk) 19:40, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Homosexual?[edit]

It seems to me that a man who managed to father five children by two different women couldn't have been completely homosexual. I think a classification of "bisexual" would be more appropriate here.

It seems to me you're applying definitions learned in one time and place to another. In the Germany in which Siegfried Wagner lived, he could have been prosecuted and jailed for being homosexual, regardless of the number of children he had. - Nunh-huh 15:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But we are writing to explain to today's audience in today's language.

Siegfried fathered four children. The fifth is a myth. He married Winifred for dynastic purposes after having refused to marry a number of other prospects during the previous two decades. The Bayreuth Festival was desperate for male heirs. Siegfried produced them - with a teenager at a time that he was almost 50. His activities in bed with Winifred were the sort of thing practised in the beds of monarchs for centuries. The stud does his work as needed and then goes off somewhere else to enjoy himself. After marrying, he remained an active homosexual. Those authors, like Spotts and Hamann, who have presented the legend of an illegitimate son as fact, have lifted the story uncritically from Siegfried biographer, Peter Pachl, who is unreliable and quite often tendentious. Pachl never gave any evidence for the story. Nor did he give any evidence for a supposed love affair of Siegfried's with the singer Nuovina. This is yet another invention, one that is easy enough to disprove. During the time that Siegfried was supposed to have sired Aign, the so-called illegtimate son, he was an avid devotee of male prostitutes at the casino in Monte Carlo. Only a year or so later, he was blackmailed by a male prostitute who plied his wares in Monte Carlo. Aign was almost certainly a younger flame of Siegfried's, a fellow who earned his ticket to work at the Festival by offering up yeoman service on the Bayreuth casting couch. He was not the first to do so.Schnappauf 04:12, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that Siegfried was having gay affairs at the time does not "disprove" the claim that he was also having straight ones. That's what bisexuals do. Your disproof is nothing more than assertion. Whether his biographer had some ulterior motive for portraying him as bisexual, or whether you have some personal reason to want to believe he wasn't, doesn't alter the fact that assertion isn't evidence. Paul B 21:19, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In the brief reference to Siegfried's bisexuality (agreed that this should not get top billing for a musician), there's a lack of clarity inherent in the final phrase ("but Siegfried fought off all these increasingly desperate urgings"). Which urgings? --Blcasey (talk) 21:09, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Homosexuals cannot have children. Also, even if he were gay...who cares? Why do we have to say that everyone in history was or may have been gay, but the people who are straight have no mention?119.92.93.84 (talk) 19:33, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Homosexuals cannot have children - utter rubbish! Not with each other, no. But with a member of the opposite sex, well the examples would fill a huge book. And that would include gay men having sex with lesbians. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:32, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Section Order[edit]

Why on earth does the very first Section of this composer's biography deal with his sexuality? Shouldn't his Career & Works come first? -- Michael David (talk) 17:29, 28 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I moved the "Sexuality" Section to a more appropriate position in the overall view of Wagner's life. --- Michael David (talk) 14:03, 30 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good choice--how very appropriate! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blcasey (talk • contribs) 15:25, 15 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Antisemitism?[edit]

Should there be any mention of Siegfried Wagner's antisemitic views? He and his mother had both welcomed Hitler to Bayreuth warmly prior to his death in 1930. And apparently a fundraising trip to the US during that same period did not go over well due to his open antisemitism (as well as that of his wife, who openly embraced National Socialism and Hitler).— Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.9.160.114 (talk) 02:17, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly the Hitler link merits a mention. He invited AH to stay as soon as he was out of jail, and if you check his wife Winifred's wiki page, you'll see all about her closeness to the Fuhrer in widowhood. Valetude (talk) 22:37, 6 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment[edit]

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Siegfried Wagner/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Comment(s)

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==Rating by Richard Wagner Project==

Start class. This corresponds to the definition of start class as "moderately useful but still obviously far from definitive" . The article deals with Siegfried as a member of the Wagner family, and with his sexuality - but says nothing about him as a composer. -- Kleinzach 07:36, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Stub class, i.e. "a rough collection of information that will need much work to bring it to A-Class level". The article is ridiculously unbalanced, giving the impression that his sexuality is the most important thing about him. And as well as saying nothing about his operas apart from listing their names, the article has only the briefest of mentions of his 22-year stewardship of the Bayreuth Festival. --GuillaumeTell 10:30, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Stub class I wavered on this, but if we think of this as ratings for him as a member of the Wagner clan, then I would expect discussion of what he conducted at Bayreuth, how his running of the festival compared with his mother's etc. Treating this article as concerning a professional musician, I would expect some mention of his compositional or conducting style, but there is none.--Peter cohen 17:58, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Last edited at 17:58, 5 October 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 06:07, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

His works[edit]

There ought to be some assessment of his operas. Even though they are overshadowed by his father's, they are not negligible, and some are still performed today. Valetude (talk) 21:14, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]