The Nazis had turned the piece into a propaganda pageant.Īlthough malnutrition was rampant, and Paris was to be liberated two weeks later, Himsel, a butcher’s apprentice who was wounded five times and survived the Russian front, said for the last performance the backstage and catering crews were feted with a band, half a duck each and all the wine they could drink.Īdolf Hitler considered Wagner his favorite composer. It was Augand the cast performed “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg”, which contains the command “honor your German masters”. In this bicentenary year of Wagner’s birth, Himsel, 90, recalled the last wartime production at Bayreuth. Former German infantryman Hans Himsel lived through scenes in 1944 at the Bayreuth opera house worthy of the finale of Richard Wagner’s “Gotterdammerung” when Valhalla goes up in flames.
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