#annarussell

Wagner parody is almost an industry. There’s nothing like poking fun at someone with an outsized ego and notorious political views. Jibes flooded in almost as soon as he opened for business. There was Rossini’s celebrated observation that "Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour" to Woody Allen’s "I can’t listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland" (Manhattan Murder Mystery). And the jibes continue.

In the early part of 20th Century, French music hall humorist Betove made a series of recordings ("Pastiches Musicaux") sending up the musical style of various composers. In this recording, ironically, Wagner is followed by Rossini. Tristan chords abound in the piano introduction as Betove starts singing melodramatically.

In 1943, silent screen vamp Pola Negri made a late career appearance in a talkie called Hi Diddle Diddle as a Wagnerian singer. The comedy storyline is a hotchpotch of swindlers, mistaken identities and stolen diamonds, ending with a happy sing song from Tannhäuser. There’s a sweet little cartoon of Wagner throwing a tantrum. It's delightfully surreal:

Talking of cartoons, surely the most famous of all Wagner parodies is Chuck Jones’s 1957 What’s Opera, Doc?: Bugs Bunny is disguised as Brunnhilde, dodging the hunt of Elmer "Kill the Wabbit" Fudd. Tannhäuser’s Pilgrim Chorus is again adapted with bits of Die Walkürethrown in.

Lastly, the indomitable "musical cartoonist" Anna Russell, who looked like Benny Hill in drag. Masquerading as serious lectures, Russell delivered an "analysis" of Der Ring des Nibelungen, her comic masterpiece, to concert-hall audiences. She disentangled the complicated plot, boiled it all down to a 20-odd minute routine, and at the same time slyly acknowledged the impenetrability of the 16-hour long cycle. Her  catchphrase "I’m not making this up you, know" eventually became the title of her autobiography.

Here’s Anna Russell in fine form, on Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen: