The Indianapolis News from Indianapolis, Indiana • 32

"Pga4 THE INDIANAPOLIS NEWS Soturdoy, April 1 0, 1 976 It's Time For 'Helter Skelter' IIP I 'Parsifal1 Meant As Sacred Music ill Show vtf Time By CHARLES STAFF Rarely content with the commonplace. Richard Wagner chose to call his operas "music dramas," but even this term did not satisfy him when itcame tohis last musical monument, "Parsifal." To emphasize the fact that he thought of the work not as theater but as a sacred service, he called it "a stage-consecrating-festival drama." For many years "Parsifal" was an annual Palm Sunday tradition at Indiana University, Bloomington. The Music School again will produce it at the Musical Arts Center today with repeats next Saturday and April 24. All performances are sold out. It remains, with the possible exception of Wagner's penultimate "Die Goetterdaemmerung," the longest operatic work ever written.

The I.U. performances, conducted by Wolfgang Vacano, staged by Hans Busch and designed by the late Mario Cristini, will begin at 4 p.m. with a dinner break after Act I. They resume at 7:30 p.m. to continue through the second and third acts until approximately 11 p.m.

Today's cast features mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Mannion as the bedeviled temptress, Kundry; tenor Michael Bal-lam as the "pure fool" turned heroic knight, Parsifal; baritone Richard "look out' Helter skelterl She's coming down fait." "Heifer Skoltor" by John lonnon ami Pawl McCartney. "You say you wont a revolution wll, you know we all want to change tha world." "Bevolwtlon by lennonMtCartnoy. "All your lift you war only waiting for this momont to arise." "Blackbird" by tennonMcCartnoy. "Have you soon thoto bigger plggios In their starched white shirfj?" "Piggies" by George Harrison. By ZACH DUNKIN It those lyrics had never been written and sung by the Beatles on their classic White Album, would the merciless massacre of seven people ever have occurred? The question probably will never be answered.

But to Charles Manson, the man convicted of engineering the so-called Tate-LaBianca murders of '69, the Beatles' lyrics contained a message a message to ignite "Helter Skelter." "Helter Skelter" was just one of 30 songs on the double-album released in December '68. The album was a musical bible to Manson. He believed nearly every song on it contained a secret message directed to him. "It's the Beatles," Manson told Vin- cent Bugliosi, the special prosecutor for the murder trial. "It's the music they're putting out.

These kids listen to this music and pick up the message. It's subliminal." And according to record distributors and stores in town, people are beginning to listen to the White Album again. After the recent success of the best-selling book, "Helter Skelter," by Bugliosi and Curt Gentry, and the two-part television special last week, sales of the album have rapidly picked up. Definite Increase When asked if a recent surge in orders for the White Album had occurred. Karen Stewart, order desk clerk for Wholesale Record Sales in Indianapolis replied: "There sure has! There's been a definite increase." "I stocked up heavier on them," admitted Jay Hansen, who runs the Stone Balloon record store in Greenwood.

"The album has always been a steady seller, but I noticed an increase this week." The White Album (Apple SWB 101) was named so because of its solid white cover. The early pressings had the words "The Beatles" embossed on the front cover. The newer ones have the words stamped. It never really had a name, so it became known as the White Album, one of the group's finest, and weirdest productions. According to the testimony of Gregg Jakobson, who never joined the Man-son Family but was a frequent visitor, Manson often quoted the Beatles from lnl-Ming near A al beMd tm CMh to, MoantifV'l itoliofwid rr 1 "Lonely Night," Captain Tennille.

2 ''Disco Lady," Johnnie Taylor. 3 ''Dream Weaver," Gary Wright. 4 "Right Back Where We Started From," Maxine Nightingale. 5 "Sweet Thing," Rufus. 6 "Dream On," Aero- 7 "Money Honey," Bay City Rollers.

8 "Let Your Love Flow." Bellamy Brothers. 9 "December 1963," Four Seasons. 10 "Only 16." Dr. Hook. Museums To Get Aid WASHINGTON (UPI) -The House Education and Labor Committee has approved a bill to give $1 in Federal money to museums for each $3 contributed privately.

The new program is part of a four-year extension of aid to arts and humanities. The bill authorizes $288.5 million the first two years. The measure also would create an "institute of museum services" to provide aid to museums for exhibits, educational programs, curator training, storing of collections and operating expenses. Migration Halted "Because past volcanic action closed the channels through which fish might migrate, life in Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika has been isolated, and now 98 and 99 percent (respectively) of the fish fauna in these lakes is endemic. Kappy Sprenger listening session before making its decision.

To Manson, Skelter" meant the black man rising and eliminating the white race. Manson and his chosen few, however, would escape by hiding out in the desert and living in the "bottomless pit" (Revelation 9, again). He figured the black man then would need his intelligence and leadership once the white race had been wiped out. Manson's plan was to ignite Helter Skelter by making the Tate-LaBianca murders appear to be the doings of blacks. Best Description The lyrics to the song "Helter Skelter" had no racial connotations, but Manson thought the words "helter skelter" best described his envisioned uproar.

"Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these broken wings and learn to fly All your life You were waiting for this moment to arise," went the song "Blackbird." According to Jakobson's testimony, Manson interpreted this to mean the moment had arrived for the black man to rise and overtake the white man. The word "rise" also was written in blood at the scene of the murders as was "death to the piggies." Manson believed anyone belonging to the establishment was a "pig." The song "Piggies" describes piggy couples dining out, clad in their starched finery, eating with forks and knives. Rosemary LaBianca died of 41 knife wounds and husband Lno was punctured with a fork seven times; one fork was buried in his stomach. One line in "Revolution 1" goes: But when you talk about destruc- -tion don't you know that you can count me out," but immediately after the word "out" one can hear the word "in." Manson took this to mean the Beatles, once undecided, now were for revolution. But it was "Revolution 9," a concoction of whispers, shouts of "rise," clas- sical music, machine gun fire, football yells and babies crying that intrigued Manson the most.

According to Jakob-son, Manson thought the song was telling the listeners what was going to happen in skelter." The interpretations go on and on. The Beatles? They have denied any intentions of causing such a holocaust. But one has to wonder if the murders ever would have happened without the White Album. and the orchestration, with a little help from Engelbert and Humperdinck in 1882. In the meantime, Wagner had deserted both Mathilde and Minna and taken up with and finally married Cosi-ma Liszt von Bulow, illegitimate daughter of Franz Liszt and the wife of Wagner's best friend, the conductor Hans von Bulow.

The theme of "Parsifal" might be called "salvation through suffering, renunciation and compassion." Wagner, of course, knew something of suffering. For one thing, he couldn't stand anything coarser than silk next to his skin, which must have caused him considerable anguish in his impoverished youth, but renunciation and compassiqn, as his sexual caprices indicate, were stran-' gers to him. There is reason to believe that he even "crossed over" and had a dalliance with the young and handsome King Ludwig of Bavaria and during the composing of "Parsifal" he had a love affair with a woman 40 years his junior, Judith Mendes, daughter of French author Theophile Gautier and wife of French poet Catulle Mendes. And this was done at Wagner's home, Villa Wahnfried, right under the long and prominent nose of Cosima, who pretended not to notice. Also while working on his "sacred service" of "compassion," he wrote a number of racist treatises expressing an anti-Semitism that approached madness.

He claimed in one of his tracts that the Aryans had sprung from the gods, that the Jews had deprived the Aryans of their godhead and that Christ was not a Jew. As critic Harold Schonberg wrote, "Small wonder that Hitler was to say: 'Whoever wants to understand National Socialistic (Nazi) Germany must know Wagner." Yet a Jew, Hermann Levi, conducted the world premiere of "Parsifal" in July, 1882, at Wagner's own opera house in Bayreuth. His racial theories be damned, Wagner knew a good thing when he saw it and Levi was the best and Wagner wanted, more than anything else, a success for "Parsifal." To many patrons, "Parsifal" re-: mains a mystical, religious experience. Others find it a moral mess. But almost all agree that the music, at least in part, is sublime: The Prelude, the scenes in the castle of the Holy Grail; the "Transformation" music; the "Her-zeleider" scene and the "Good Friday" Spell.

As Joseph Wechsberg wrote in "The Opera," "Perhaps he isn't the composer for logical-thinking people and thus will always be assured of a worldwide audience and perennial popularity Richard Wagner raises the philosophical, ethical question whether genius makes badness permissible in Richard Wagner Haile as the long-suffering Amfortas; basso Ralph Appelman as the long-winded Guernemanz, and baritone Edward Crafts as the evil magician, Kling-sor. Some parts are double cast and will be sung by others at future performances. Though the score was not finished until 1882, the year before Wagner's death in Venice, the idea for "Parsifal," according to his own words, first came to him in 1857. That spring he and his first wife, Minna, were staying at the Wesendonck estate near Zurich where Wagner busied himself with the "Wesendonck" Songs, "Tristan and Isolde" and the seduction of his host's wife, Mathilde, to whom the songs were dedicated. Later poor Minna wrote to Mathilde, "I hope that you are happy knowing that my heart is bleeding." In any event, Wagner wrote, "I looked out of the window and the birds were singing and suddenly, I realized that it was Good Friday and I remembered the great message it had once brought me as I was reading Wolfram von Eschenbach's This is the same 13th century poet, Wolfram, who figures in Wagner's earlier "Tannhauser" and who sings that opera's "hit," "The Song to the Evening Star." To carry this relationship of "Parsifal" to earlier Wagner works further, the character, Parsifal, was the father of none other than Lohengrin.

Wagner completed the first draft of the libretto in 1865 and published it in 1877. He completed the music in 1879 A Bicentennial Calendar the White Album. He also quoted from the Bible, especially the 9th chapter of Revelation. To Manson, the "four angels" of Revelation were the Beatles with "their faces as the faces of men" and "hair of women," according to Verses 7 and 8. 'Fanatic Obsession' In the people's opening statement, Bugliosi explained he would offer evidence that "will show Manson's fanati-.

cal obsession with Helter Skelter, a term he got from the English group the Beatles. Manson was an avid follower of the Beatles and believed they were speaking to him across the ocean through the lyrics of their songs. In fact. Manson told his followers he found complete support for his philosophy in the words of those songs." was used as evidence in the case and the jury even requested a We Have All of the Top Records Tapes Readers Call Free Time "A splendid service." April 10, 1776 Gen. Washington's request for enlistments to stay for the duration of the war.

instead of 2 or 3 months, is resound 113 N.liHik SpaWway Cntar lafoyH Squr foitgota Shopping Cntr Southern Plaza Castlotan Pimmm HI STMES IK SIM. ingly vetoed by Congress. 1.