No: 209 April 2013 news Number 209 April 2013

CONTENTS

6 From the Committee Andrea Buchanan 7 A new Committee Member Emmanuelle Waters 8 Wagner Society 2013 Annual General Meeting Andrea Buchanan 10 Wagner Society 2013 Singing Competition Andrea Buchanan 11 Wagner Society Ticket Ballot Winners Mike Morgan 12 : The Chosen Ones on Rachel Nicholls Neil Fisher 13 Paul Dawson-Bowling’s book launch Ken Ward 14 The Unreachable Star Ken Sunshine 16 Inside The Ring David Edwards 18 News of Young Artists Roger Lee 19 Seattle Competition 20 Film review: Katie Barnes 22 Quartet : the joy of music, friendship and fun together Dame 24 Wagner 200 Festival Programme 28 Fulham Opera Robert Mansell 31 Siegfried in the Suburbs Irene Richards 32 Erda: discovering a character Rhonda Browne 34 Opera on your new iPad Kevin Stephens 36 CD: The Gergiev Die Walküre Kevin Stephens 38 CD: Jonas Kaufmann: Wagner Keith Richards 40: Book: Wagner and Venice Chris Argent 43 in Canada Frances Henry 44 Pleased to Meet You Katie Barnes 46 Rudolph Sabor Remembered Michael Bousfield

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–2– EDITOR’S NOTE

At the beginning of the end of the Napoleonic era in 1813 Beethoven’s seventh symphony was first performed, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was published and , who would change the course of music history and exert a greater influence than any other artist upon the culture of our age, was born on 22 nd May. On the threshold of Wagner’s third century we announce in this issue of Wagner News a superlative programme of Bicentenary events of whose involvement and support by the Wagner Society its members can be justifiably proud. The Wagner 200 Festival of which the Wagner Society is the Founder Sponsor opens on 22 nd May with the Wagner 200 th Birthday Concert at the Royal Festival Hall with Susan Bullock and James Rutherford. The Wagner 200 Programme on pages 24 to 26 details a 30-event Festival which runs until the end of the year. Dame Gwyneth Jones, Sir , Janice Watson, Ll r Williams, Sir Andrew Davis, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Aurora Orchestra, tŷhe BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra are among the dazzling array of artists who will deliver concerts, recitals, masterclasses and even (on 28 th June) a dramatized recreation of the events which surrounded the first performance of the . In November and December Sir will conduct a new production of at Covent Garden with Simon O’Neil, René Pape and Gerald Finley. We are offered more than a dozen opportunities to enhance our understanding of Wagner’s all-pervading impact upon the history of music as well as of the man himself with interviews, lectures and symposia at the Goethe-Institut, the British Library Conference Centre, Kings Place and at the London Jewish Cultural Centre from such Wagner luminaries as John Deathridge, Keith Warner and Barry Millington In addition to this cornucopia, the Wagner Society has also commissioned David Edwards and The Mastersingers to present a programme of some 17 events designed to complement Longborough Festival Opera’s three Ring cycles from 17 th June to 11 th July, the only fully staged Ring production which will take place in Britain this year. This is the Inside the Ring Festival which is described by Artistic Director David Edwards on pages 16 and 17. Whether you have secured tickets for Longborough or not, a sumptuous Wagnerian feast awaits on the evenings between the performances at the opera house. Inside the Ring draws upon artistic resources developed over the years among young artists and eminent performers alike by The Mastersingers Company under the direction of Malcolm Rivers so as to be able to provide masterclasses from Dame Anne Evans, Kim Begley and Gwynne Howell, plus discussions and presentations with John Deathridge, Anthony Negus, Bryan Magee, Alan Rusbridger, Tony Palmer and Martin and Lizzie Graham. Such riches come our way thanks to the sphere of influence which has been developed by our Society among a huge range of Wagnerian practitioners and theorists. May the 2013 Bicentenary provide something for everyone by introducing Wagner’s work to new audiences whilst extending and deepening our appreciation of the artwork of the future.

–3– BICENTENARY LUNCH CANCELLED We regret to announce the cancellation of the celebratory bicentenary lunch, planned to take place on 22nd May. This is due to the fact that very few people showed any interest and we would have incurred a substantial loss on the event. All monies paid to date will be refunded.

THE BÄRENREITER TRISTAN UND ISOLDE FACSIMILE SCORE OFFER Bärenreiter are making a special offer to Wagner Society members for their facsimile edition of the autograph score of Tristan und Isolde , details of which have been mailed out with this issue of Wagner News. The offer represents a saving to members of more than £60 on the retail price of £557.50. Bärenreiter are willing to honour the price of £499 plus free postage until the end of April 2013 for all orders placed on 01279 828 930 or by post or by emailing [email protected].

Wagner news mini reviews CHELSEA OPERA GROUP Ann Denton Die Feen was delightful! It played to a full house; I thoroughly enjoyed it and everyone else seemed to enjoy it too. We were swept in with a wonderful overture and you could hear the Wagnerian style there. The singers were great. Indeed, Kirstin Sharpin who sang Ada was a bit of a young . Lora sang about her heaving bosoms and they certainly did! I felt that it would make an enchanting staged opera and would certainly go and see it again. It was lovely and casual. At one point the Conductor stopped and announced that they could do that bit better and so they started again! Geoffrey Griffiths A most enjoyable evening with wonderful orchestral climaxes at the end of each Act. Quite a clever and complex story, and if the music is not in the fully developed Wagner style, one wonders why he allowed it to survive, but I am glad he did not destroy it.

–4– WAGNER, LISZT, ALKAN AND BERLIOZ SOCIETIES DINNER An exciting new collaboration Catherine Dobson and Ursula Sullivan It is always an interesting experience to take part in something new, and the event we attended on 24 th January 2013 was no exception. Ten Wagner Society members joined fifty from the Liszt, Alkan and Berlioz Societies for a concert and dinner to inaugurate, celebrate and promote a working partnership between our respective memberships. Our Chairman Richard Miles and Secretary Andrea Buchanan had met last year with officers of these societies and agreed that a dinner would give their members an opportunity to meet one another and exchange views in a celebratory atmosphere. This might encourage the forging of closer links between the societies at a time when we are all aware of the need to attract younger members and increase attendance at the events of our favoured composers. We met, rather appropriately, at The Forge Restaurant in Camden Town, a music and arts venue with an attractive small concert hall and restaurant. We were welcomed by Jim Vincent of the Liszt Society who had undertaken all the administrative arrangements for this first venture very efficiently. He had organised a seating plan for dinner that enabled members of the four societies to mingle and chat in convivial surroundings. The recital opened with a soloist, Cara McHardy, who would have been familiar to those Wagner Society members who had attended Susan Bullock’s recent masterclasses. She sang the same aria that had impressed Susan and her audience: Einsam in trüben Tagen from Act I. This was followed by a soaring rendition of Mild und Leise from Tristan und Isolde Act III. Her accompanist Ben Woodward (an accomplished repetiteur and Music Director of Fulham Opera for their current acclaimed Ring Cycle) was another familiar face to Wagner Society members as he had been a popular participant in our December Bayreuth Bursary Fund competition. The evening continued with an amazingly assured performance by the young pianist Mark Viner of two of Chopin’s Nocturnes and his Fantasie Impromptu, Etudes by Alkan, a Fantasie by Thalberg, a contemporary of the composers featured and the monumental Hexameron , a series of variations by six famous pianists of the nineteenth century with an introduction, connecting links and a finale by Liszt. Mark is a dazzling virtuoso and he performed all of the works without a score. He was rewarded with a standing ovation and we all went into dinner singing his praises. The food and wine were excellent and lively conversation was heard on all sides. The Wagner Society plans to host the next event for the combined societies. What better way of achieving fruitful collaboration than to join forces on informal occasions like this, where ideas can be shared and friendships made. The success of this first venture should encourage all our members to come along to the next one, to meet like-minded people and have fun! SAVE THE DATE The next Annual Dinner of the Wagner, Liszt, Alkan and Berlioz Societies will be held on Thursday 23 rd January 2014 Venue, cost and programme to be announced

–5– FROM THE COMMITTEE Notes from the Committee Meeting held on 30 th January 2013 in London Andrea Buchanan Apologies for absence were received from Roger Lee and Charlie Furness Smith. The Committee welcomed new member Emmanuelle Waters. The meeting began with a discussion regarding the proposed rates for new members for 2013 onwards. As communicated earlier, the price of membership was to be raised to £30 for new members, while last year’s prices had been held for existing members in 2013. The Committee is also investigating options for payment of membership by Direct Debits and other methods, along with a facility for Internet Banking, to improve access for designation officers to current information in the Society’s bank account. The Committee discussed the Wagner Society lectures arranged under the Wagner 200 umbrella by Gary Kahn. Details of these are to be found on the website and in the leaflet enclosed with this edition of Wagner News. Thanks were given to Gary for organising such prestigious speakers in such a great venue (The Goethe-Institut). In order to maximise exposure of the Society at Wagner 200 events, it was decided to reprint an up-to-date version of the leaflet that had been issued last year. It was also agreed to hold an event to honour the publication of Paul Dawson Bowling’s new book. Discussion took place regarding pricing of events and whether refreshments should be charged separately. It was decided to maintain the normal price of events at current levels and not to charge extra for refreshments. Organisation of the forthcoming ballot for paid and free tickets was discussed in detail and the Secretary, along with Emmanuelle Waters assumed responsibility for this. By now members will have applied for and many lucky ones will have won their tickets. The Secretary proposed some changes to the Bayreuth Bursary competition. As it was clear that many of the winners had not sufficiently appreciated the prize of a trip to Bayreuth, as this trip was very expensive, and as the current age limit was considered too low for many promising Wagner singers, she proposed that the Bursary be changed to the Wagner Society Annual Singing Competition, for which the prizes would be money to be spent on coaching in Wagner roles. The Society is proud of its work with young singers and confident that we can maintain the high standard without necessarily participating in the Bayreuth Bursary programme. Please see the article on page 10 for further details. The Committee voted in favour of these proposals. Ed Hewitt updated the Committee on progress with the new website, which was almost ready for initial content to be loaded. The Committee agreed that the proposed home page was very impressive and approved the design costs associated with development of this site. In the meantime Twitter and Facebook accounts had been opened for the Society. Various Committee members were now tweeting regularly and we are slowly acquiring a number of followers. The meeting ended with the Committee endorsing various sponsorship that had been awarded to young singers Oliver Hunt and Mike Bracegirdle for studies and coaching and to Fulham Opera to support their production of Siegfried . The next Committee meeting will be held in April.

THE WAGNER SOCIETY 2013 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING WILL BE HELD ON WEDNESDAY 1 ST JULY (see details on page 8)

–6–– 6– DAS ENDE? NO, A NEW BEGINNING! Emmanuelle Waters

French by birth, I have been living in London for the past fifteen years and I have been a member of the Wagner Society for over 10 years. I was brought up in Paris and studied at the Ecole du Louvre where I gained a Master’s Degree in History of Arts. I then moved to London where I worked for many years in the Arts industry, which I left to pursue other avenues. I am now working as an Office Manager in a research economic consultancy based in central London. My love of music was passed on to me by my grandmother and my mother, with whom I went to concerts as a teenager. My love of opera was probably triggered through snippets I could hear from my mother’s bedroom and took serious root upon attending a course on the history of opera at Christie’s Education, followed by a distance learning course with the Rose Bruford College. The London music scene did the rest with its vast array of choices, venues and high quality programmes and performers. More learning and more listening led me to the music of Wagner, which I particularly treasure. After years of dutifully completing the booking form I was able at last to get tickets to Bayreuth last summer and had a memorable time (notwithstanding the rats!) listening to Lohengrin and Tristan . It was a truly exceptional time and the start of, I hope, many more to come! My husband and I love travelling, combining cultural discoveries with beauty of landscapes as well as the all-important food and wine! I am also a very keen reader. I am delighted to be joining the Wagner Society Committee and to be having the opportunity of letting other people discover or improve their knowledge of the music of Wagner. Surely, a never-ending task!

–7–– 7– THE Wagner SOCIETY

NOTIFICATION IS HEREBY GIVEN TO MEMBERS OF THE 59 th ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF THE WAGNER SOCIETY To be held at 7pm on Wednesday 31 st July 2013

5th Floor, Portland Place School, 143 Great Portland Street, London W1W 6QN (Lift access)

The agenda, a summary of the annual accounts, some proposed amendments to the Constitution and any other relevant information will be mailed to members in June 2013 If there are any items that members wish to raise at the AGM, or if anyone would like to stand for the Committee please submit these in advance to the Secretary, preferably by email to [email protected] or by post to: 7 Avenue Mansions, Finchley Road, London NW3 7AU Members are cordially invited to attend the Annual General Meeting and to join the Committee for drinks afterwards. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible. Richard Miles (Chair) Andrea Buchanan (Secretary) Mike Morgan (Treasurer) Margaret Murphy Geoffrey Griffiths Emmanuelle Waters Charlie Furness Smith Edward Hewitt

–8–

A NEW SINGING COMPETITION FOR THE WAGNER SOCIETY Annual Wagner Society Singing Competition December 1 st 2013 at The , London NW1 Andrea Buchanan The Bayreuth Bursary has been a long-standing and high-profile event in the Wagner Society’s annual calendar. Since 1983 this competition for young Wagner voices (and occasionally accompanists) has been held almost annually. The winners have been fortunate enough to go to Bayreuth and to participate in the Stipendienstiftung Programme. For the past few years this has perhaps not worked as well as it should. As you may appreciate, the age limit (set by the Stipendienstiftung ) of 35 has been a limiting factor, excluding some very promising Wagner voices by virtue of the singers being too old to qualify. Many Wagner voices do not develop until singers are in their late 30s and more secure about the direction they wish to take. Rachel Nicholls, the wonderful new soprano destined for greatness in Wagnerian soprano roles, is a prime example of such a singer, deemed too old for our Bursary when she began to prosper in the Wagnerian . Additionally, not all the winners have gained a great deal from their trip to Bayreuth. While it is always a wonderful experience to see and hear Wagner’s performed in their spiritual home, the introductory talks are always in German, and few of our winners have a sufficient degree of competence in the language to gain much from these. It is also noticeable that the English speaking singers all tend to group together and there is not as much networking taking place as might be desirable. Finally, the trip to Bayreuth is costly. In short, the Committee are now not convinced that this offers the best value for money as a prize. We have therefore voted to try something different this year, and to hold the annual singing competition under our own, rather than the Bayreuth, banner. We will aim for the cost to the Society to be the same as the Bayreuth Bursary (plus any additional sponsorship we may be able to raise), with the money previously spent on travel, subsistence and accommodation now channelled directly into coaching with eminent Wagnerians in the UK and into German language lessons. The competition will have an upper age limit of 40 and we will offer a prize for the most promising singer under 35. We are delighted that Malcolm Rivers and the Mastersingers are going to work with us on this, and Malcolm, David Edwards and Ludmilla Andrew have graciously consented to adjudicate the auditions and nominate the finalists. The Mastersingers team will also decide on the most suitable coaching and will assist in developing a programme for the winners. We are very excited about this and will publicise the event widely among young singers in order to attract the best possible candidates. We are also putting together a panel of distinguished judges and will report back once we have further details. In keeping with tradition we will hold the finals in early December, and I am sure you will be pleased to hear that we will return to the Royal Academy of Music for this event. The finals will take place in the David Josefowitz Hall on December 1 st and the competitions will be augmented by a Wagner event devised by David Edwards. This was not a decision taken lightly and we are confident that we will make a success of this new venture. The support of our members in this is crucial to us and we hope you will back us and that as many of you as possible will come along to the finals.

– 10 – We will also be seeking sponsorship as a contribution towards the prize money and we invite you to consider donating to this cause. Any sponsorship received will be used to increase the value of the prizes. I will send regular updates by email, in Wagner News and on Twitter to keep you all informed of progress.

We need a great name for this competition and we thought it would be good to invite our members to submit suggestions. The Committee will then vote for the best name and the winner(s) will receive a bottle of champagne. Suggestions please to [email protected] or by post to Andrea Buchanan, 7 Avenue Mansions, Finchley Road, London NW3 7AU to arrive no later than 5pm on Friday April 26th. The winner will be announced in the July edition of Wagner News

WAGNER SOCIETY BALLOT WINNERS Mike Morgan In addition to the usual ballot for tickets to Bayreuth, we were this year able to offer our members something rather different. We held a free ballot (ie free tickets) for all those who had signed up to the option and paid an extra £5 when they renewed their membership. In addition, we had a greater variety of tickets on offer in the Annual ballot. Between the two, members could enter to win tickets for the Wagner Birthday Concert at the Royal Festival Hall, Lohengrin at , The Ring at Longborough Festival Opera and Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Der fliegende Holländer and the new Ring at Bayreuth. There was considerable interest in the ballot in the main, although some of the offerings were more attractive to members than others. It was notable that the number of applicants for The Ring at Longborough was considerably less than expected. The draws for both ballots were carried out under the supervision of a non- participating committee member and the winners were as follows:

Free Ballot: Elaine Day, Katie Bradford, Emmanuelle Waters, Ken Sunshine, Donald Rich, Andrea Buchanan, Robin Duval, Robert Garnett and Peter Fenn.

Annual Ballot: Robert Garnett, Douglas Summers, Roger Thompson, Erna Angus, Stephen Taylor, James Flattery, Mrs M Forbes, Richard Poole, Geoffrey Caseley, Elizabeth White, D F A Davidson, Steve & Ruth Leman, Jane Maloney, Katie Bradford, Martin Sturgess, Patrick Allen, Elaine Fairless and Peter E Howard

A reserve list has also been drawn up in the event of tickets not being taken up.

Thank you to all who participated.

– 11 – 4th January 2013 THE CHOSEN ONES: NAMES TO DROP IN 2013 Neil Fisher A Wagner year needs Wagner voices. So step up the latest addition to the elite crew capable of these superhuman roles. Rachel Nicholls will sing the gruelling role of Brünnhilde in the UK’s only complete Ring Cycle taking place during the Wagner bicentenary celebrations: at the little Longborough Festival in Gloucestershire in June and July. These performances, alongside Nicholls’s first Senta in Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman (at in April), mark a huge leap for the Bedford-born soprano, who had been more associated with lighter fare such as Bach or Handel. “I’ve always had a big voice,” Nicholls says, “and I’ve reined it in to sing Baroque music. So letting it out is free and fun.” This is the first time Nicholls will sing all three of the Ring operas in which Brünnhilde appears, after the singer’s triumphant appearances at Longborough in the final part of the cycle, Götterdämmerung last summer. “So I’ve broken the back of it already – there’s more singing in Götterdämmerung than in the other two operas put together.” Nicholls is also lucky to have the retired soprano Dame Anne Evans, once a formidable Brünnhilde herself, on hand for intensive Wagner study. “You don’t get better than her,” Nicholls says. “She’s very keen that Wagner should be sung like Mozart – you don’t just hurl it out the whole time.” Nicholls had a dream start to her career: fresh out of the Royal College of Music, she was scooped up by House and given a variety of small supporting roles. “That was absolutely amazing, and absolutely terrifying. You’d go to rehearsals and meet all these famous people, and then suddenly you realise: ‘Oh, I’m on stage with Plácido Domingo at Covent Garden.’ It’s mind-blowing, but it was the best possible training.” Not everything has gone to plan since then: for some years opera took a back seat to concert rep, partly because Nicholls knew her voice was outgrowing its old limits but hadn’t yet settled into its new character. “It’s taken me until I’m 36, so I wouldn’t say it’s been plain sailing. But now I’m just getting to the stage in my career where I can choose what I want to do.” ® The Times 04/01/2013 MAHLER SOCIETY EVENT Conducting Mahler: A View from the Podium Peter Fender describes the experience of conducting Mahler’s Wunderhorn Symphonies on Sunday 14 th April at the Austrian Cultural Forum, 28 Rutland Gate, London SW7 1PQ from 11am to 4pm. Tickets £18 (Students £10). email [email protected]

– 12 – THE WAGNER EXPERIENCE AND ITS MEANING TO US A new book by Paul Dawson-Bowling Ken Ward

This 1,000 page book in two volumes is richly illustrated with over 70 colour plates. Before taking us through the ten great dramas themselves Paul Dawson-Bowling discusses Wagner’s formative experiences, his aspirations and his mentality as well as the immense but unrecognised influence of his first wife, Minna. This sets up better lenses through which to view not only Wagner the man and his less appealing aspects, but more importantly his stage works since, as Dawson-Bowling insists, the best encounter with Wagner’s dramas is the direct one. Uniquely drawing on a lifetime’s experience in general medical practice, the author brings an understanding of psychology to his study of Wagner’s life and work with special reference to the thought of Carl Jung. Above all the book draws out the vital lessons which Wagner’s extraordinary didactic dramas can offer us. It reveals their lessons as life- enhancing and quite capable of transforming our society, our lives and ourselves. Ken Ward is Editor of Bruckner Journal BOOK LAUNCH The Wagner Experience and its Meaning to Us by Paul Dawson-Bowling Paul Dawson-Bowling will introduce his book on Wednesday 15 th May, 7.00pm for 7.30pm. Portland Place School, 143 Great Portland Street, W1W 6QN Free entrance and refreshments Copies of this two-volume work will be available to buy on the evening for £30 rather than the recommended retail price of £35.

– 13 – THAT 1844 “WAGNER” IMAGE: THE UNREACHABLE STAR? Ken Sunshine “This is my quest / To follow that star / No matter how hopeless / No matter how far” 1 It all started innocuously enough when I received an email from an Albert Kaplan stating that he had acquired a daguerreotype of Richard Wagner dated March 1844. I obtained Mr Kaplan’s agreement for details of this apparently amazing find to be published in Wagner News 208 (January 2013). I established that there was no copyright problem and on that basis the Editor and I had conversations about being the first to publish in print details of this amazing find and possibly to feature the image as the January front cover. Fortunately rational judgement overcame emotional excitement and we decided to pursue provenance as a priority. So we showed the image and posed the question: “Wagner at thirty?” This generated much interest and resulted in an article in The Wagnerian as well as a new record of over 100 hits in a single day on the Wagner Society website. All attempts to prove that the image could not be that of Richard Wagner have been batted away by Mr Kaplan and the question still remains unresolved in my mind. As I explained in Wagner News 208, Albert Kaplan bought the image from a bookseller who had acquired it from a “Mr X”. Kaplan has so far failed to identify Mr X who, according to the bookseller, says that the image is not of Wagner but is in fact of Mr X's grandfather. This has been disputed by some as unlikely but if we assume grandfather was born in 1825 (30 when he was daguerreotyped in 1855) and further assume that he and his son both fathered a child when 50 we can easily accept the possibility. With this avenue closed we turned our attention to image comparison. A poll on our website gave readers the opportunity to express their opinions. Early voting showed that a roughly even split was disrupted by a single user based in Nürnberg casting 100 “NO” votes in one day. This was corrected and measures taken to avoid a repetition. The poll today stands at a 70% “YES” vote. An email sent to 55 German Wagner Societies asking if they might publicise the image amongst their members meanwhile elicited not a single reply. The past three months have seen a series of reasons put forward which appear to prove that the image is not that of Richard Wagner; each reason being overturned by Kaplan, thus preserving the dream; keeping the unreachable in reach. A major setback was evidence that Rudolph Turnau, the daguerreotypist whose name appears on this plate, was not in business in 1844, indeed not until 1855. Albert’s response was that he possessed a copy, made 1855, of an original, made in 1844. Many comments followed as to how various facial attributes differed between Albert’s image and a known 1871 photo of Wagner, lots of technical input on camera angles and head tilting and how the ‘dag’ process produces a laterally inverted image (left ear becomes right ear) so a copy comes out the right way, but a copy of a copy? Anything based on apparent feature differences cannot be relied on. An analysis by Peter Bassett shows that there is no evidence of authenticity, but neither does it positively prove the opposite. Grant Romer 2 subsequently removed the image from its casing in the hope of finding evidence that it was a copy. He concluded: “The characteristics of this daguerreotype are commensurate with copy daguerreotype work. The technical qualities of the image: soft focus, compressed tonal scale, suggest a possibility of a copy but are in themselves not positive proof of it being a copy. It is still a possibility, nothing absolutely conclusive either way”.

– 14 – Albert Kaplan goes further than this: “I suspect that Grant Romer is right, that it is a copy.” He then pinned his hopes on a video being put together by facial recognition expert Bob Schmitt of Biometrica (http://www.photorestorics.com/article-312.html). This appeared onYouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMznhdlpj9w) and reached the definite conclusion that the two images were of the same person: “There is absolutely no doubt that this is a daguerreotype of Richard Wagner”. While Peter Bassett's reaction was: “My views haven't changed. It is still not Richard Wagner, and the video doesn't change this” other doubters, though not persuaded by the video, did admit a certain degree of “maybe there's something in this” which the poll reflected by gradually accumulating more YES votes. Albert Kaplan indicated that he was looking to sell his whole collection of daguerreotypes and he sought the Wagner Society's help in approaching London auction houses with the ‘young Wagner’ image; a request which was comprehensively turned down. He is of the opinion that with verification it would sell “for millions” but I don't believe this is his driving force. He speaks with passion about being in the same room with the image and the feeling it gives of being with the actual person although he admits that because this image is so small it does not have the full degree of presence. A complete telling of this whole story encompassing all the efforts made by Kaplan to identify the Munich bookseller and Mr X, the scientific (real or pseudo) evidence, the arguments and counter-arguments would fill a complete issue of Wagner News. We have been fortunate to have received well-considered input from Australians Peter Bassett and Trevor Clarke. Bassett showed conclusively (based on the introduction of stereoscopic images) that Kaplan’s daguerreotype could not pre-date 1855. Their contributions, with technical arguments on camera and head angles, comments from Albert Kaplan, a transcript of the video commentary, plus an analysis of angles etc may be accessed at www.wagnersociety.org/kaplan.html Just when we thought the situation had stabilised with most participants in their entrenched positions and just as I was composing an obituary for Albert Kaplan’s dream I received a remarkable email from Trevor Clarke who had stumbled across Volume II of Ernest Newman's biography of Richard Wagner sporting a cover drawing of Wagner by Rudolph Lehman dated 1850. Clarke describes “a kind of involuntary instant recognition”. “Just compare this 1850 face with your daguerreotype. It's breathtaking. And there's the dimple in the chin!” What joy to Albert Kaplan’s ears: a chin dimple. Unfortunately further investigation by Clarke throws considerable doubt on the provenance of the drawing. He concludes: “information about this dimpled image is a total contradictory mess”. Other early Wagner images are known. Three of interest have been unearthed by Peter Bassett in the Leipzig City Historical Museum and are available along with further images on our website. What strikes me more and more as I look at all these is the question I raised in January: Is it significant that the Kaplan head is roughly rectangular whereas the 1871 head is more trapezoidal? All the verified images, unlike the Kaplan, seem to exhibit this narrowing of the lower part of the face. We have arrived at a point where the question remains unresolved. The star has seemed tantalisingly in reach one moment, frustratingly drifting away the next. On the Wagner Society Website can be found the excellent summary by Trevor Clarke and Peter Bassett as to where we are and in which direction Albert Kaplan needs to proceed.

1 “The Impossible Dream” from MAN OF LA MANCHA (1972) music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion 2 See Wagner News 208, January 2013 – 15 – INSIDE THE RING David Edwards Approaches to Wagner’s Ring tend to focus on singers (“Who does she think she is – Nilsson?”), conductors (“Has he never listened to Knappertsbusch?”) and the people you all love to hate: those much-reviled directors. But in many ways these are attitudes that help to keep Wagner’s monumental music-dramas in the forefront of operatic public discussion. The audience craves the division between vitriol and adoration; to take sides with the traditional against the innovatory (or occasionally the reverse); to wonder what will happen at Bayreuth next year, who will sing in the next Ring at the Met or whether that inexperienced idiot will direct a totally misconceived production of Die Feen in Vienna in 2020… No other composer provokes such extreme responses. Debussy, Bruckner, Berg, Elgar, Adès – love ’em or hate ’em, nobody really minds either way. Janá ek, Britten, Shostakovitch, Ligeti and Berio – not very “PC” openly to speak against thčem but how often do you actually listen to their music? Mahler must be adored (or else you’re clearly a Philistine) and Brahms is at least a demi-god, if not at the pinnacle of symphonic achievement for all time. Now if only he had written an opera…but fortunately we’ll always have Wagner instead. Why does the Wagner industry inspire such extreme and passionate polarities? Is it the man or his music? Oh yes – let’s not forget to listen to the music sometimes too – that could be a clue. But we also shouldn’t neglect the serious personal and historical background to Wagner’s music-dramas without which his magnum opus, The Ring of the Nibelung , has so much less meaning. When Mastersingers were invited by Longborough Festival Opera to programme a series of events related to the Ring , running in tandem with their full cycles in this Bicentennial year, I wanted to cast my net wide. Obviously there had to be specifically- related Ring material: Anthony Negus on conducting Wagner (it would be hard to better Anthony’s knowledge and experience in this repertoire), Jakobi’s Longborough understudies’ rehearsal and John Deathridge tackling the climax of the cycle in the finale of Götterdämmerung – these all offer potential revelations on how to perform Wagner. Connected to that, I wanted to present some great British practitioners who have sung Wagner internationally and show them passing on their knowledge to the next generation. Hence we are very lucky to have three fantastic masterclasses from Dame Anne Evans, Kim Begley and Gwynne Howell, members of the most distinguished panoply of British Wagnerians. They will each work with some of the young singers who will hopefully fill their remarkable shoes one day. The third strand of the Inside The Ring programme is intended to draw on wider influences and stimulate interest in related topics. I was overjoyed (and overawed) when Professor Bryan Magee, not only a Wagner expert but one of the UK’s most distinguished philosophers and writers, agreed to appear in discussion with Alan Rusbridger, editor of . In other sessions, virtuoso pianist Julian Jacobson explores Wagner’s relationship with his father-in-law , Mike Ashman examines Wagner production around the world (and he surely cannot fail to be controversial) and the great film-maker Tony Palmer introduces two films which reveal much new material about Wagner, his family and his much contested legacy.

– 16 – An interview with the remarkable duo Martin & Lizzie Graham, who have created “the English Bayreuth” in the Cotswolds at Longborough, Oscar Straus’ 1904 operetta spoof on the Ring: The Merry Nibelungs , given a rare performance (in English), Michael Portillo’s BBC film on Wagner, Barry Millington talking about his new book: The Sorcerer of Bayreuth and myself with two talks on Wagner illustrated by young singers from Longborough Festival Opera complete the programme. Something for everyone? I hope so, and some things perhaps to tempt you to explore for the first time. And of course plenty of opportunities to exchange your fiercely held and irrefutable opinions with misguided fellow-punters who clearly haven’t grasped the point that what Wagner really intended was…

David Edwards is Artistic Director for Inside The Ring

INSIDE THE RING A programme of events exploring aspects of Wagner’s masterpiece alongside performances of The Ring by Longborough Festival Opera June 17 th to July 11 th 2013 St. George’s Hall Blockley Moreton-in-Marsh GL56 9BY PRESENTED BY THE MASTERSINGERS IN ASSOCIATION WITH LONGBOROUGH FESTIVAL OPERA WITH GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM THE WAGNER SOCIETY Full details available at: http://www.wagnersociety.org/inside%20the%20ring.pdf and: http://www.lfo.org.uk/inside-the-ring/ Tickets for packages and single events are available from: Mike Morgan 9 West Court Downley High Wycombe HP13 5TG

– 17 – NEWS OF OUR YOUNG ARTISTS

ALWYN MELLOR’S DIE WALKÜRE BRÜNNHILDE AT OPÉRA DE PARIS Alwyn stood in for Janice Baird in February at Bastille. Here is a selection from her reviews in the French press. The British soprano lacks nothing in technique or strength. The high tessitura of her Battle Cry causes no more difficulty than the medium range of her scene with Siegmund. Neither does she lack the youthful, naïve presence too often overlooked for a character who is almost an adolescent. Clément Taillia: Forum Opéra As for the excellent Brünnhilde of Alwyn Mellor, she sings perfectly, with a welcome vocal stability, a strong, clear timbre, and the necessary intensity for Act III Pierre Flinois: Altamusica What a lovely, valiant girl. One to watch. Jean-Charles Hoffelé: Concert Classic

HELENA DIX AS ELETTRA IN AT LÜBECK Helena writes: “The experience was thrilling. This was not only my debut Elettra but also my German opera house debut. Lübeck hosts some outstanding house singers, so the cast were very talented. We had quite a demanding schedule working morning and evening six days a week. However I really enjoyed this challenge. I will be working there over the next five months and I hope this will bring other opportunities.” Helena Dix was a true highlight. You do not want to meet her in the light! She sings with a secure voice and with very dramatic expression shz.de Especially in the finale the furious coloratura of Helena Dix as Elettra raised goosebumps. Schleswig Holsten am Sonntag Helena Dix was a highly dramatic disdainful Elettra showing us where it’s at in every respect. Unser Lübeck Her entrance was spectacular and she shone brilliantly in the final, furious “vengeance” aria. Lübeckische Blätter

– 18 – INTERNATIONAL WAGNER COMPETITION 2014 The third Seattle Opera International Wagner Competition will take place on 7 th August 2014. Sebastian Lang-Lessing will conduct members of the Seattle Symphony in a programme of two arias from each of the finalists. Two prizes of $20,000 and two of $5,000 will be awarded and there will also be the possibility of engagement with Seattle Opera. The competition is open to candidates of between 25 and 39 years of age who have already sung or covered a Wagner role but not those, as they put it: “with several performances in major theatres”. CD recordings of performances with piano or orchestra must be submitted by the end of June and auditions will be held in London and Munich in September as well as in NewYork and Seattle in December. Finalists will be announced in January 2014. Interested candidates should contact www.seattleopera.org. For the first ever Seattle Competition in 2006 The Wagner Society / Mastersingers helped James Rutherford, Miriam Murphy and Paul McNamara to prepare for the Competition by providing them with coaching and the opportunity to sing in a recital with Lionel Friend. This support paid off handsomely with both James and Miriam winning First Prize, James also winning the Audience Prize and Paul being Highly Recommended.

GODS AND HEROES AT EASTBOURNE David Edwards Wagner Society Vice President and Patron of Mastersingers Sir John Tomlinson has played his fair share of gods and heroes – and one or two notable villains – in his illustrious international career. One of the remarkable things about Sir John is his incredible stamina and he has generously found the time in his hectic schedule to spend a weekend in Eastbourne from 3 rd to 5 th May giving public masterclasses, private coachings and singing with some of the next generation of younger artists. This is a Music Club of London event in association with Mastersingers and it promises to stimulate and entertain in equal measure. There will be plenty of Wagner, of course: masterclasses on Siegfried with Michael Druiett and Richard Roberts (both of whom feature in ’s performances this summer), Rhonda Browne (the current and destined, it seems, to be the last in a long line of Bayreuth Bursary winners) and Neal Cooper, Britain’s most promising new heldentenor in a long while There is also important billing for the other two composers with major anniversaries this year: Verdi (Sir John and Michael Druiett battling it out in Don Carlo ), arias and duets from , and ; and Britten, who is represented in a variety of music (did anyone else write for such a wide spectrum of musical forms?) with song, opera and the rarely heard Suite for Harp Op.83 . Other artists taking part will include Lee Bisset, Cheryl Enever, Adam Tunnicliffe and Stuart Pendred, all under the musical direction of Kelvin Lim (himself a former Wagner Society Bayreuth Bursary winner). Of particular interest on the Sunday morning is the opportunity to hear music critic of The Observer Fiona Maddocks interview Sir John Tomlinson on his career. Expect some probing questions on the opera business from one of its most perceptive and well- informed critics. Download full details of the programme from the website: www.mastersingers.org.uk Book tickets via Michael Bousfield on 01323 653 009

– 19 – “QUARTET” : A TALE OF HOFFMAN Katie Barnes At 75 sprightly years young, makes his directorial debut with this enchanting, life-enhancing and poignant film adapted from Ronald Harwood's 1999 play of the same name. It is set at Beecham House, a fictional retirement home for singers in the heart of the English countryside which is clearly based upon the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti in Milan. The lightweight plot tells of the arrival of new resident Jean Horton (a magisterial ), a one-time diva whose career ended when she lost her nerve. The residents include her former husband Reg Paget (a touchingly dignified ), incorrigible lothario Wilf Bond (a beautiful performance from ) and lovably daffy Cissy Robson (the adorable Pauline Collins). Together they were once celebrated for their performances of the four leading roles in , and the three friends, helped and hindered by the other residents, help Jean adjust to her new environment and regain her confidence in singing so that the Quartet can sing onstage again as the high point of the home's annual fund-raising Verdi gala (an obvious nod to the Casa di Riposo ) while Jean and Reg slowly repair their shattered relationship. But principally, the film is a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit and of the power of music in all its forms. Although they are all retired, the residents perform and practise constantly, partly to rehearse for the all-important concert on which the financial future of Beecham House depends, but mainly through their desire to continue singing and playing to the very best of their ability. We see how their shared love of music continues to inspire, sustain and invigorate them, and how they can communicate that love to others, especially in one spellbinding sequence where Reg, lecturing on opera to a class of stroppy, pop-obsessed teenagers, gradually wins them over until they sit fascinated, hanging on his every word. Yet the film is bittersweet too. The lives of the residents of Beecham House may appear almost impossibly idyllic, but the pain and suffering of ageing are not glossed over: Jean awaits a hip replacement, Wilf has a touch of Tourette's and toilet troubles, Cissy's daffiness is rapidly progressing to early stage dementia, one resident is in a wheelchair, another is borne to an ambulance while his horrified friends look on from the breakfast room, and another's heart attack rules him out of the concert. We see how the residents' shared love of music is also something which helps them to face the approach of Das Ende . Several other major roles are played by actors, notably Michael Gambon as an insufferably egotistical director; Andrew Sachs as a gentle, unassuming conductor; David Ryall and the wonderfully shameless Trevor Peacock as a duo who, to the director's horror, recreate Flanagan and Allen's music hall act for the concert. Michael Byrne appears in a touching cameo as an ailing , one of Jean's former flames; and the delightful Sheridan Smith (the only leading performer who does not qualify for a bus pass) as the perceptive young doctor in charge of Beecham House. Her moving speech in praise of her charges before the concert is one of the film's most moving moments: “Their love of life is infectious. They inspire us.” But it is utterly fitting that so many roles are played by singers and musicians, some retired, some still professionally active, all with a wealth of experience behind them. – 20 – Most prominent is our own President, Dame Gwyneth Jones, who looks as though she is having a whale of a time playing a gloriously bitchy diva whose rivalry with Jean provides some of the most delicious moments of the film. When Jean first arrives at Beecham House, the residents give her an ovation, and Dame Gwyneth's basilisk gaze and ironic slow handclap create something to remember for a very long time. At the very beginning of the film she is shown opening her day by warming up with a flood of sound which would put many younger to shame, and in the closing gala she sings a heart-stopping, fragile, perfect Vissi d'arte , a moment of hushed wonder. Other singers credited include John Rawnsley, ENO's unforgettable Rigoletto in the Miller production, as the irrepressible leader of a Gilbert and Sullivan-singing coterie, who sings a mean Tit Willow ; his wife Nuala Willis; Cynthia Morey, a great D'Oyly Carte soprano of the 1950s; former ENO chorister Melodie Waddingham, who joins Morey and Willis in singing Three Little Maids from School ; D'Oyly Carte legend Jill Pert; the glorious Catherine Wilson, my ultimate Merry Widow and Rosalinde, who was Scottish Opera's Freia and Gutrune in the 1970s; Justin Lavender, a memorable belcanto tenor; Royal Opera stalwart John Winfield; and soprano Patricia Varley. I found it very touching that the credits include photographs of the most prominent singers and musicians in the cast at the height of their careers alongside pictures of them in the film. Hoffman's direction is sensitive and visually lush. House, the splendid pile cast as Beecham House, is virtually a character in its own right, and its extensive, lovely grounds give rise to some exquisite photography. In one shot which lingers in my memory, Reg crosses a bridge over a small stream, while an amateur artist sits on the bank, painting a small canvas. It is a Monet come to life. Long tracking shots of the corridors behind the scenes during the gala evoke the thrill of the performance out front and the controlled chaos backstage, especially in a tense moment when Cissie has an “episode” just before she is due to sing. One feels that everyone involved must have thoroughly enjoyed making this film, just as much as I enjoyed watching it. See it if you can, and if you can't catch it in the cinema, grab the DVD as soon as it comes out. This inspirational celebration of life and music is not to be missed. – 21 – QUARTET : THE JOY OF MUSIC, FRIENDSHIP AND FUN TOGETHER Dame Gwyneth Jones One morning my husband Adrian woke me with a kiss and the words “Good morning, my film star!” I thought he was playing one of his usual jokes and laughed, but he said “No, I am serious! You have just received an email with an invitation to make a film with Dustin Hoffman!” This was the beginning of a totally new experience for me in the world of the film industry, which is so very different from the world of opera. I felt very honoured to have been chosen by Dustin Hoffman to play the role of Anne Langley in Quartet ; but also quite nervous because this was a character who was a rather bitchy prima donna. Adrian (who was playing the piano for me and others in the film) and I were staying in the famous and very beautiful Hotel Cliveden. Close by was Hedsor House, which was renamed Beecham House for the film. The days were very long as we had to be in make-up by 7am and there again at 7 or 8 in the evening to take the make-up and wig off. This meant a very early rise, no breakfast at the hotel, and a quick meal at the local pub before going early to bed. On the first morning I had a very strange feeling entering the breakfast room on the set. I felt as if I was truly in a home for old people and I had hardly sat down when the lady behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said “Who are you?” I returned the question and she said “I’m Catherine Wilson”. “Catherine! I didn’t recognise you! I’m Gwyneth Jones”. “What! Why did you die your hair?” I explained to her that I was wearing a wig, as I didn’t want to be myself in the film. Catherine and I had not seen each other since the days when we studied with Ruth Packer and Maria Carpi in Geneva, so this was a lovely surprise to meet again. Dustin wanted to have real singers and musicians in his film and this is what makes it so very special. Old friends were reunited and there was always a wonderful atmosphere on the Set. It is such a privilege to be able to do what you enjoy and love most. Music unites, inspires and uplifts you. It is nourishment for the Soul. It also seems to help keep you young, because although many taking part in the film were advanced in age, their energy and enthusiasm were boundless. Dustin knew exactly how to keep people in a good mood. One day he even entertained us by playing the piano whilst we were waiting for the set to be prepared. He is a fantastic actor with enormous experience and this, together with his kindness, understanding, patience and endless energy, was a constant inspiration. An opera singer must come to rehearsal with the role prepared and memorised, often in a foreign language, and because there is usually an orchestra, or piano accompaniment, one has to be absolutely correct musically. In film one receives a script; but this can be subject to change at the last minute and instead of doing whole scenes or acts, as in opera, one has very short scenes which are then repeated from many different angles for the camera. Every tiniest detail on the set has to be exactly as it was before. I was fascinated to learn that there actually exists a large number of people who try to spot mistakes in films, like for instance whether objects have been slightly moved. This is why our lovely Welsh trumpet player, Ronnie Hughes, who had a tooth missing, was not allowed to have a new one put in until the film was completed. The Gala Concert in the film was in many ways just like doing a real concert. The room was actually very small and because it was packed with a real audience, plus cameras, lights, smoke effects etc., it very quickly became extremely hot. The audience were squeezed in very tightly and were really enjoying themselves. The atmosphere was unbelievable. It was a great success! It’s such a pity that so much of the programme,

– 22 – including “Run Rabbit, Run”, “Underneath the Arches” by Trevor Peacock and David Ryall, “Tit Willow” by John Rawnsley, a large amount of “Three Little Maids from School” by Nuala Herbert, Melodie Waddingham and Cynthia Morey and the climax of my aria, had to be cut; otherwise the film would have been much too long. The scene where we were all having a fabulous time dancing (I with Michael Gambon) also landed on the cutter’s floor; but Dustin promised that lots would be put back into the Director’s Cut. My work didn’t stop with the end of the filming, because I decided to do the dubbing. I did it in German in Berlin, in Italian in Rome and in French in Paris. I am the only one of the cast who has done this and it has been a very interesting experience. You have to speak very fast, in order to synchronise the lips, which is not so easy, but I thought that it would be nice for my Public in these countries to hear my voice when they see the film.

When the film was finally finished came the excitement of the famous red carpet film premières , so very different from opera premières . I found the masses of screaming reporters and flashing cameras quite amazing. I attended the premières in London, Torino and Berlin. The latter was held at the Deutsche Oper, where I have sung regularly since 1966 and was quite incredible, because although London and Torino were enormous successes, both with long standing ovations, the opera public in Berlin went totally crazy. There were endless standing ovations and the public’s reactions made one realise just how special the film is. Dustin flew over from Los Angeles and was very moved. Today old people are often put into homes that are not as beautiful as Beecham House, sometimes far away from their families, lonely and forgotten. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they were able to spend their last days, sharing the joy of music and friendship in such beautiful surroundings, and having fun together like they do in Quartet ?

– 23 – FESTIVAL PROGRAMME

22 nd May: The Wagner 200 th Birthday Concert at the Royal Festival Hall. Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis with Susan Bullock, James Rutherford and Giselle Allen. Prelude to Die Meistersinger , Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde and Act III of Die Walküre preceded by an afternoon of free Wagnerian events featuring young singers and musicians on the balcony, terraces and foyers of the Festival Hall.

23 rd May: London Song Festival at St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden. Recital of Wagner songs with some rarely heard curiosities. Gidon Saks and Elisabeth Meister

24 th to 27 th May: Screening of the Bayreuth Centenary Ring at the Barbican Cinema. Directed by Patrice Chéreau for the centenary of the in 1976. With associated talks and interviews involving cast and production members. Patrice Chéreau will be on hand to discuss his work and Dame Gwyneth Jones, who starred as Brünnhilde, will also be present to share her memories of the production.

28 th May: Dame Gwyneth Jones Masterclass at the . The reigning Wagner soprano of her day will afterwards talk to Humphrey Burton about her legendary career.

8th June: Wagner the Writer at the British Library Conference Centre. Distinguished authorities speak about Wagner’s immense literary output, both the prose essays and the poetic texts, with discussion of the issues arising from translation. A study day presented by the British Library to coincide with the digitisation of its Wagner holdings. In association with The Wagner Journal .

9th June: Wagner’s Ring Cycle: a Complete Reading at the British Library Conference Centre. A rare reading of the entire Ring cycle in English featuring Sir John Tomlinson and a company of young actors from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

– 24 – WAGNER 200 EVENTS AT KINGS PLACE Since it opened in September 2008 in an award-winning complex at King’s Cross, Kings Place has established itself as a thriving hub for music, art, dialogue and food, and has been described as one of Europe’s leading cultural landmarks. Kings Place provides the venue for a five-day feast of Wagner 200 activity from 26 th to 30 th June.

26 th June at Hall 1: a recital by one of Britain’s leading dramatic sopranos Janice Watson with Joseph Middleton piano of Wagner’s and some of his less frequently performed songs, as well as examples by his father-in-law Franz Liszt.

27 th June Hall 1: A recital by the outstanding Welsh pianist Ll r Williams of Wagner rarities including the Sonata for and suchŷdazzling transcriptions of Wagner’s music by Franz Liszt as Isolde’s Liebestod .

28 th June Hall 1: Aurora Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Collon, with Harriet Walter and Henry Goodman. A dramatised recreation of the events surrounding the first performance of the Siegfried Idyll , plus a performance of the Beethoven Septet.

29 th and 30 th June Hall 1: Wagner in Performance . Three symposia in association with The Wagner Journal featuring an international roster of Wagner experts examining Singing, Conducting and Stage Production aspects of performing Wagner’s work. Each symposium will consist of three presentations (six for Stage Production) followed by a round table.

29 th June, 10 am–1pm, Hall 1: Vocal Style in Wagner from the Golden Age to the Present . What can be learned about Wagner singing from the great artists of the past? Why is it so difficult to cast Wagner operas today? What can be done to rectify the matter? Speakers: Mike Ashman, David Breckbill, Neil Howlett. Chair: John McMurray

29 th June, 2–5 pm, Hall 1: Conducting Wagner . Lithe, fluid and gestural styles of conducting Wagner (Bülow, Böhm, Pappano) have contrasted with more monumental approaches (Knappertsbusch, Goodall, Levine). Which is more faithful to Wagner’s intentions? How is Wagner conducting likely to evolve in the decades to come? Speakers: Roger Allen, David Breckbill, Raymond Holden. Chair: Peter Franklin

30 th June, 10am–5pm, Hall 1: The Challenge of Director’s Opera . Opera production has come to be dominated by ‘director’s opera’ or Regietheater . Does contemporary stagecraft represent a travesty or a triumphant fulfilment of the ? Will traditional stagings ever return? Or is director’s opera here to stay? Speakers: Edward Bortnichak, Ingrid Kapsamer, Hugo Shirley, Tash Siddiqui, Katherine Syer, Simon Williams. Chairs: Patrick Carnegy, Nicholas Payne

29 th and 30 th June, Hall 2: Wagner on the Big Screen . Screenings of Tristan und Isolde (Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s Glyndebourne production) and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (’s Bayreuth production) from the Opus Arte catalogue 29 th June, 6pm: Tristan und Isolde 30 th June, 6pm: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

– 25 – WAGNER 200 AUTUMN PROGRAMME

6th October, 2pm, London Jewish Cultural Centre: Wagner and the Jews . A discussion about the issues raised by Wagner’s anti-Semitism. Speakers to include Mark Berry, Cori Ellison, Erik Levi and Barry Millington. Chair: Trudy Gold.

November and December, Royal Opera House: Parsifal . New production by Stephen Langridge conducted by Antonio Pappano with Simon O’Neill, René Pape, Gerald Finley and Angela Denoke.

25 th November 7.30pm, Royal Opera House: Sir John Tomlinson Masterclass . Afterwards Sir John Tomlinson will talk about his international career and the challenges of singing Wagner.

28 th November, 7.30pm, Barbican: London Symphony Orchestra . Concert to include Tristan und Isolde Act II conducted by Daniel Harding with , Peter Seiffert and Christianne Stotijn.

10 th December, 7.30pm, London Jewish Cultural Centre: Wagner’s Jews . This event includes a screening of Hilan Warshaw’s new film Wagner’s Jews , which investigates the phenomenon of the anti-Semitic composer’s numerous Jewish friends, following which a panel discussion will examine the wider issues of Wagner’s reception by Jews.

20 th December, 7.30pm, Barbican Hall: BBC Symphony Orchestra . Conducted by Edward Gardner with Christine Brewer (soprano). Programme to include Wesendonck Lieder , Prelude to Tristan und Isolde and Overture

Royal Opera House: interview Please refer to the Wagner 200 website for details: http://www.wagner200.co.uk/

Wagner Society lectures Four events in association featuring high-profilespeakers. 24 th April: Keith Warner delivers the Dame Lecture at Queen’s College, 43–49 Harley Street, London W1. Tickets £10/£5 students. The remaining lectures will take place at the Goethe-Institut, 50 Prince’s Gate, Exhibition Road, London SW7. All at 7.30pm, tickets £12/£6 students. 11 th July: Tim Blanning Wagner and German nationalism 12 th Sept: Mike Ashman Wagner and modern productions 10 th Oct: John Deathridge Does Wagner still matter?

Wagner 200 also features a travelling exhibition of images from Barry Millington’s new book: Richard Wagner: The Sorcerer of Bayreuth .

– 26 –

THRILLING SIEGFRIED AT FULHAM OPERA Robert Mansell Photography: Richard Carter One is often disappointed by live Wagner operatic productions compared with listening to recordings in the comfort of one’s home played at full volume on superb sound equipment and with the best singers and orchestras; but on this occasion I was startled by the excellence of the performance at St. John’s Church in Fulham on 15 th February. While I do have one or two quibbles with the production the most outstanding feature for me was the discovery of Philip Modinos’ miraculously thrilling and powerful heldentenor voice as Siegfried. How admirably suited he is to this role, and I can only hope that he won’t have been swept up and away by some major international Wagner opera company before we have the pleasure of attending Fulham Opera’s Götterdämmerung at the end of this year when I hope and assume he will continue in the role. In my review last May of Fulham Opera’s fine production of Die Walküre I commented on how ambitious if not downright audacious it was of Ben Woodward to attempt to produce a Ring cycle at his local church. All credit must go to him for achieving this so outstandingly. Additionally I found his playing of the piano accompaniment to be superb and, surprisingly, hardly ever did I particularly miss Wagner’s wonderful orchestrations (in which I usually revel); nor could I detect any obvious wrong notes among the thousands which Woodward played. The piano was only briefly aided by some expressive flute playing for the Woodbird and a French horn for Siegfried’s horn calls. I thought it might have been a better balance if the piano could have been placed slightly further away from the audience, but the positioning was presumably necessitated by the fact that Woodward was not only playing but also directing the performance from the keyboard.

– 28 – My biggest problem with this production was the decision to use a long thrust stage. This ‘runway’ approach may well be suitable for fashion week modelling, but having the audience on opposite sides of the stage for an opera means that the singers are always only facing one half of the listeners. This makes understanding the words more difficult even if one knows them very well and significantly reduces the impact of some of the singing. In this church, because of its pillars, it also meant that from my seat I could not see Brünnhilde lying on her rock, even craning my neck to try and do so. The thrust staging also made the lighting rather awkward. The whole production was atmospherically gloomy (correctly so), but several of the stage lights were directly facing the audience, often making it necessary to shield one’s eyes and also making it hard to see what was happening on the darkened stage. The light on the piano music stand, while clearly very necessary, was also shining directly into the eyes of many in the audience. Apart from this irritation the staging was excellent. In Act I we even had a believable bear (although I must say that I have never understood Wagner’s request for such a brief and unnecessary complication). The sword forging scene at the end of the Act was extremely well done (and with a most impressive sword at that), even without consideration for the undoubtedly small production budget. I found Peter Kent’s performance of Mime generally a trifle stolid, for example in underplaying his joyful deviousness at cooking a poisonous brew and not scampering about as much as I might have wished. In the ending duet he was a little underpowered compared with Modinos’ ringing tones; but he sang this difficult role very well. At the beginning of Act II it was amusing to see Alberich peering through binoculars into the forest. The subsequent powerful confrontation between him and Wotan was very well done, particularly so because of Robert Presley’s excellent acting of Alberich and his powerful singing. I was disappointed by the rather inadequate Wanderer’s hat and also by his lack of an obvious eye patch (which I later realised during the curtain calls in fact appeared to be some sort of sticking plaster). Ian Wilson-Pope sang the part of the Wanderer excellently, but his dark overcoat and umbrella (which he sometimes partially unfurled for whatever reason I did not understand) was not as impressive as if he had had a regal cloak and a proper spear. Antoine Salmon was vocally splendid as Fafner, but I did think that the fighting effect looked rather more like a big spider than a dragon. The Woodbird was beautifully sung by Emma Peaurt and I enjoyed her flitting around to sing from different places in the shadows outside the audience. It was a nice idea having the Wanderer return at the end of the Act, after Siegfried has followed the Woodbird offstage, to survey the bodies of Fafner and Mime.

– 29 – The summoning of Erda at the beginning of Act III (which is one of my favourite moments in the entire Ring ) was not so thrilling without an orchestra (even though Ben Woodward was doing wonderfully on the piano). I could not understand why the Wanderer was staggering around at this point, as if extremely intoxicated; but all was magically transformed when Erda started singing offstage (in fact outside the auditorium) and slowly appeared looking wonderfully ethereal in a glistening diaphanous veiled Pre-Raphaelite gown; beautifully sung and acted by Rhonda Browne, gliding along in a slow stately manner. I thought that the Wanderer here was too beseeching rather than commanding; he is, after all, the chief god (and indeed has previously forced himself on her to father quite a few children). The business with the Wanderer carrying and examining a film reel baffled me, but I did think it was a very interesting idea for him to visit the sleeping Brünnhilde on her rock before Siegfried burst through the flames to awaken her. When I finally did get to see Brünnhilde after she had been awakened, she was very much in darkness and, being somewhat unattractively dressed all in black, not very easy to see. Zoë South is distinctly small for the part and physically rather overwhelmed by Siegfried’s commanding presence, but she does indeed sing beautifully. The high C of “ leuchtender spross ” was especially wonderful. I know that she is Siegfried’s aunt (even though he is not aware of this), but I didn’t feel that the passionate relationship which is supposed to develop between them was quite believable.

However, in summation one must say that any little quibbles such as those I have detailed quite pale in significance beside the astounding triumph that Ben Woodward has achieved here. I cannot praise him and his cast highly enough and doubt that I shall see a musically finer production in the near future other than, hopefully, their upcoming Götterdämmerung . There is no doubt in my mind that Peter Modinos has a glittering Wagnerian future ahead of him, and it is almost unbelievable that this is the first time that he has sung a role such as this (for which he was coached by Ben Woodward ). A true heldentenor rings thrillingly in the vibrant acoustic of any church, but I’m quite sure that Modinos’ marvellous voice would carry equally strongly even in the driest of opera houses. Congratulations to all! – 30 – SIEGFRIED IN THE SUBURBS!! Irene Richards The Fulham Opera production of Siegfried showed that it is not necessary to have the huge resources of a great opera house to tell the story effectively. The very nature of the setting means there are restrictions but also opportunities for the director to pare down to the essentials, to ask what is necessary in this or that scene: what do I need to put on stage to provide the cast with a setting that supports them and is believable to the audience? In many of the cycles I have seen I have been distracted by wondering what this or that bit of scenery is there for. If its meaning is obscure and does not communicate directly then do not use it! It also makes the onlookers use their imaginations to fill in what is suggested rather than realised in the round. Max Pappenheim’s stage direction makes this work. This production makes us concentrate on the interaction between the characters and on the music. Being so close up, almost cheek by jowl, the facial expressions are clear, the tension between characters apparent. The drama reaches out tangibly and takes us in almost as if we are part of the drama, which indeed we are. Although dressed up in saga and myth this is about our world! The cast were uniformly excellent. We have an up-and-coming Siegfried in Philip Modinos (pictured) who sang throughout with a ringing heldentenor and who showed that he can also act. His transformation from a lout to a lover was most believable. Peter Kent as Mime was most effective and affecting as was Robert Presley as Alberich. Ian Wilson-Pope’s Wanderer was powerful and beautifully enunciated. The Woodbird, Emma Peaurt, sang like a bird. Rhonda Browne as Erda brought to her part the necessary tone of fatal prophecy. For Zoë South as Brünnhilde, waiting backstage for four hours before being on stage cannot have been not easy (not to mention being enveloped in dense, dry ice fog) but her awakening Heil dir, Sonne! was with a pure, ringing and steady tone. Photo: Richard Carter Ben Woodward must have had blood coming from his fingertips after four hours or so of continuous playing on the ivories. Can a piano rendition give us all of Wagner? Of course not. What it did however, was to allow us hear the leitmotifs clearly and the interaction of music with voice which is sometimes obscured by an orchestra. He was ably supported by Jon Cooley and Annette Cox (horns) and Carla Finesilver (flute). The company bravely embraced the challenge and, in my view, succeeded triumphantly. I look forward to Götterdämmerung to be performed later in 2013. Don’t miss it!

– 31 – ERDA – DISCOVERING A CHARACTER Rhonda Browne

Rhonda Browne as Erda in the Fulham Opera production of Siegfried

Learning a new character/role is much like beginning and building a new relationship. It takes time to get to know each other, to discover if there is a mutual attraction and where the commonalities and understandings sit. I enjoy learning about our differences and embracing them. As an artist, in the learning process of discovering the character, I learn more about my past, what makes me tick, what makes me get up in the morning; by considering how the character responds to events, words, experiences and other people. Inevitably there is self-discovery. Travelling with the character, sharing experiences and creating memories, a bond starts to form. Slowly, slowly over time, an understanding, a more intimate knowledge of the role is formed and playing the character becomes like putting on comfortable clothes and sharing a past with an intimate friend. Time is spent asking questions, delving into the character’s history, viewing their interactions with others. Their motives are questioned, their responses and actions observed and remembered. All this is taken into account while attempting to find a way of connecting with the character by asking: how does this person make you feel? Is it someone you could build a relationship with? Is it someone who makes your blood curdle and your soul scream or is it someone who you want to curl up with and talk deep into the night until your very being is warmed by their presence?

– 32 – The search for a character can be as challenging, as frustrating and as rewarding as the search for a higher spiritual being, looking for a God, a source, an understanding. Hours can be spent exploring, debating, searching, but with very little back.Yet ultimately it is a search worthwhile, a search that can lead to a deeper understanding; a pleasant feeling of comfort, enjoyment and purpose or a realisation of complete disgust, a sense of abandonment and hopelessness or a sense of neutrality where the questions, the being, the reality is neither harmful nor beneficial; it just is. Of course it is easier to portray a character with whom you identify as opposed to one whom you abhor. How, when so few of us ever really get to the heart of ourselves, can we really ever rest in our attempts to understand and therefore portray another? If we ever stop this journey, the character, our character, dies. We can be secure in our knowledge of the notes, the words, the storyline, the production, but if we give up the search for our character’s truth, I believe we give up our belief in our art and its ability to move our audiences and ourselves. My journey with Erda has only just begun. My discovery of her external and her internal world is merely a few footsteps on the way of an epic adventure that I can only imagine will last my entire career. The depth of this character, who appears only twice in the literature, is both daunting and exciting. Erda who brings time and gods to a standstill, who commands the respect of even the most arrogant of men, whose understanding and presence surpasses all who were, are, and will be is a character of such complexity that I can only marvel at the fact that I am privileged enough to share this small part of the journey, and help others glimpse into her being. Erda: the mother of the Earth, the original wise woman, the Goddess of Wisdom and being who has appeared in so many guises through history, cultures and mythology. Erda, Urwala, Papat nuku, Gaia, Izanami-no-Mikoto, Terra, Jör , Toci, Yin… How does one begin to comūpā rehend the complexities of such a charđacter? These women, these goddesses of wisdom and creation have pervaded the thoughts of humanity and our collective consciousness since humankind first drew breath. Erda enters our literature, our music, our art and makes us stop and think about who we are and where we fit. Erda is a being that encompasses more than we can comprehend as mere mortals. Her depth of wisdom and understanding is as enticing as much as it is terrifying. So how does one capture this and portray it to an audience in the two 10 minute slots allotted to her by Wagner? The answer at this stage eludes me. Perhaps it always will. However, I know that the more time I spend with her, talking about her, exploring her, just sitting in her presence then the more I know that I will come to understand her and feel her and the more I realise that I will have the language to describe her and as a result show a bit more of her true self through my actions, voice and words. As humans we have within us a power that is both positive and negative that externalises in the way we interact with others and how we live our lives. As an artist I try to capture this in my performance. The portrayal and understanding of the truth of a character are always through the tools given to me in the forms of the music and the libretti that have stood the test of time. If we can remain open to new ideas, to developing the relationships with our characters and exploring their impact on us and our audiences they will continue to delight, inspire, frighten, move and enthral us for all the time Erda grants us. Rhonda's year ahead is particularly Wagner focused: Masterclasses with Malcolm Rivers and Sir John Tomlinson, covering Erda and Schwertleite for Longborough, performing Erda for the Mastersingers under David Syrus and of course her trip to Bayreuth in the summer.

– 33 – OPERA ON YOUR NEW IPAD Kevin Stephens The iPad is an amazing little gadget capable of all manner of activities. Increasingly opera companies and commercial companies are realising its potential for opera education and are releasing apps (short for applications) and podcasts (a bit like radio or TV shows in miniature) which use the technology in innovative ways. This is a growing market and I suspect that the potential is, so far, barely touched upon. ENO Wagner is a typical example of an app (all apps are available from the Apple App Store which has an icon on the main iPad screen). It focuses on The Flying Dutchman and begins with music extracts: the opening and part of the Norwegian Sailors’ Chorus. Then there are three main sections: the story told by an old sea dog with lots of hideous cackling, with Wagner playing in the background. Then a talking head of Edward Gardner tells us what’s so great about this opera, and finally (I suspect for the younger fraternity) an activity called WagneriseYourself .You can take a photo of yourself, then glamorise it with hats and hair, upper lip furniture (it says here) and chin fur, presumably all taken from the ENO production. You can then (if you can bear it) share the photo with friends or the whole world via Facebook. I sent my ridiculous effort to the editor of Wagner News and if he prints it he may be condemned to sail the earth forever. Finally there’s a Book Now button which takes you straight to the ENO booking page, which is fine, except that the production was on last year. I found this app to be little different from a podcast, with the exception of the photo activity, and I look forward to the time when ENO expands this idea into something more meaningful. Other opera companies have also produced apps with varying degrees of success. The Portland Opera Company has put a whole series of its programmes online as apps, though they are simply a reproduction of the printed job with no use of the iPad’s multimedia or interactive facilities, though I enjoyed reading about Philip Glass’ Galileo and Bernstein’s Candide . The Seattle Opera app similarly has programmes and Spotlight opera guides, but these do not extend beyond reproductions of print. The has two apps, one called Met Season which allows you to download the season’s brochure. This is not simply the print version but includes video or audio extracts of each opera by clicking a button on its page. For Nico Muhly’s Two Boys there are audio extracts and glimpses of the performance (from ENO) plus interviews with the composer and director, well worth a listen. This makes the opera, which was rated “bit of a bore” by one UK critic, sound intriguing and dramatic. The other Met app is Met Opera on Demand which gives, through subscription, access to hundreds of recorded performances and features. There are free previews of some of these including one called Wagner’s Dream , not about the Jonathan Harvey opera but a video preview of the Lepage Ring . “I don’t want to see a light show and pizzazz,” says one mature vox pop outside the theatre, whilst behind him a young German shouts Wagner’s own line: “Children, make something new”. An app simply called Opera Festival comes from Savonlinna and consists of a full programme of the season with fascinating articles about the productions, including an interview with singing Daland together with a link to a YouTube video of his aria. Once again good use is made of the interactive nature of the iPad, and once again the usefulness of the app is negated by the fact that this is all last year’s programme. The

– 34 – Opéra National de Paris has a similar overview of its 2012-13 season ( Brochure ONP ) starting with an atmospheric video of the Palais Garnier and the Opéra Bastille to the soundtrack of part of the prelude to . Each production has its own pages and its own video, including that to L’Anneau du Nibelung with scenic shots and interviews. Time to brush up your French: for Gallophiles there is also the app ( Journal ONP ) of En Scène , the journal of the Paris Opéra, a superbly illustrated and presented magazine with links to videos on many pages. Another Paris app called Journal DMEO gives an insight into ten months of the opera school in 2011-12. Where is the Royal Opera in all this? It doesn’t appear in the app store, but the company has not been idle. If you download an Apple app called iTunesU this will give you free access to thousands of university and other courses, lectures, etc. Here search for “opera” and you will find a huge series of Royal Opera audio productions, rather like podcasts or brief radio broadcasts. They cover a fascinating range with interviews with singers such as , Gerald Finley, Joyce di Donato, focus on the conductor or other important operatic roles, or experts discussing opera such as Roger Parker on Verdi’s . One very useful one is Wagner: an Introduction including Elaine Padmore talking to John Deathridge, and there are three about Das Rheingold plus an introduction to Lohengrin . Further down in the iTunesU search for “opera” you will find some older WNO audio previews including Die Walküre from 2006-7 – no that’s not Welsh but Washington National Opera (ie DC). Like all search functions iTunesU can throw up unpredictable results. If you search for “Wagner” you find the results dominated by the NYU (NewYork University?) Wagner podcasts on current affairs. As with all new high tech ideas the iPad has quickly generated huge amounts of what is these days called “content”, mainly for children and for those who enjoy playing mindless games. The world of opera can be a little slow to respond to these changes but when it realises its potential I am sure that much more will follow. If any company could produce something as hugely innovative and exciting as the Philharmonia Orchestra’s app, called simply The Orchestra I would be delighted. Most of the apps listed above are free, not surprisingly as they are mostly promotional. This one costs £9.99 but it is well worth it for a detailed exploration of eight orchestral pieces with synchronised score, multiple visual and audio tracks and other successful uses of the iPad’s supreme advantage: its interactive nature.

DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN AT Daniel Barenboim will conduct the Berlin Staatsoper with the Staatskapelle Orchestra in a concert performance of Der Ring on the following dates: Das Rheingold Monday 22nd July Die Walküre Tuesday 23rd July Siegfried Thursday 25th July Götterdämmerung Sunday 28th July

– 35 – CD: MARIINSKY/ GERGIEV DIE WALKÜRE Kevin Stephens

This is the beginning of a projected Ring cycle and a very warmly welcomed starting point it is. Gergiev’s absolute mastery of his orchestra is evident from the very start. The gradual build up from tentative beginnings to ecstatic outpourings in Act I is captured perfectly. The sombre conversations that dominate Act II are by turns angry, philosophic and highly intense, whilst the sheer sweep of rage and love that dominates Act III is overwhelming. His conducting reminds one of Solti, not the blaring raucous Solti of later years but the one who conducted that first defining recorded Ring cycle back in the 50s and 60s. Apart from an awkward couple of gear changes near the beginning of Act III Gergiev reveals himself as a true Wagnerian. The cast must be among the best available in the world today. Kaufmann’s Siegmund moves from terrified flight to radiance and on to steely determination in the Annunciation of Death with a dark, burnished tone that is a lyrical joy to hear. Pape as Wotan does brooding anger and resignation with powerful authority and rises to furious anger and desperate sadness at losing his favourite daughter in magnificent manner. There’s even a catch of the voice that deepens his sorrow as he realises he must say farewell to Brünnhilde, and his singing is simply awesome. Anja Kampe is a superb Sieglinde: soft and tender where needed but urgent and passionate as well, rather like the young Jeannine Altmeyer in her Bayreuth years. makes an imposing Brünnhilde, fierce in her war cries yet subtle in her understanding of what she sees as Wotan’s true will in Act II. Her two great scenes, first with Wotan then with Siegmund, are carried off with absolute authority, and in Act III she argues her case before her father with passion and dignity. The smaller roles are also cast from strength. Hunding, whose appearance in The Ring is pitifully small, is sung with grit and cutting incisiveness by Mikhail Petrenko. Ekaterina Gubanova’s Fricka, in many ways the true authority-figure of this part of the saga, is commanding in her big scene with Wotan. The eight Valkyries are as feisty a bunch as you are ever likely to meet. The singing throughout is absolutely excellent. The recording was made over a period of several months in June 2011 and February and April 2012 in the Mariinsky Concert Hall, St. Petersburg. I wasn’t able to sample the high definition stereo and surround sound that is available with an SACD player (the CDs are compatible with this standard as well as ordinary CD), but the normal CD sound was terrific, thrilling and warm. The recording was made with the support of Countess Yoko Ceschina, a Japanese lady who married a rich Italian and who, after his death, has spent his wealth freely supporting music and opera projects including much of what Gergiev has achieved. All Wagnerians must hope that her support continues long enough to ensure the completion of this wonderful recording project.

– 36 – WAGNER 200 FESTIVAL THE WAGNER SOCIETY DAME EVA TURNER LECTURE 2013

KEITH WARNER

“WAGNER IN PRACTICE”

24th April: 7pm for 7.30 Queen’s College, 43-49 Harley Street London W1G 8BT Tickets: £10 (£5 students) to include a glass of wine Keith Warner has directed all of Wagner's mature works with the exception of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, including Lohengrin at Bayreuth and Der Ring at the Royal Opera House. He will examine Wagner's own instructions about performing his music dramas and discuss their relevance to us today.

– 37 – CD: KAUFMANN WAGNER Keith Richards

This compact disc is a cause for celebration. I first heard Jonas Kaufmann in a Radio 3 transmission of a concert performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg during an Edinburgh Festival and the combination of lyricism and power gave promise of a great heldentenor. Although he has subsequently sung onstage only two of the operatic extracts included here it is clear that the promise has been realised.

Hearing him ‘live’, which was a matter of some urgency, proved a problem for me. Two Wigmore Hall recitals, both sold out and one cancelled anyway, a Don Carlos at Covent Garden from which he withdrew on the night I went, a performance of Carmen at the same venue when I did hear him but hardly saw him. I was in one of those seats from which about a quarter of the stage is invisible and this acted as a magnet to the principal singers. The sound was magnificent but the impact was lessened by my irritation. Then ‘live’ in its way came the transmission into cinemas of the current Metropolitan Opera Ring Cycle and here was the Siegmund of one’s dreams. So it was exciting for me to find that the new disc opens with Ein Schwert verheiss mir der Vater from Act I of Die Walküre . Susan Bullock was telling us in masterclasses recently of the joy of singing the German language and what struck me immediately was the joy of hearing it so well articulated. Kaufmann’s softening of the tone at Ein Weib sah ich is extremely beautiful, then follows the great crescendo leading to an overwhelming Wälse! Wälse! In the accompanying booklet the tenor cites Lauritz Melchior in his live recording from the Met as the standard here. I no longer have the equipment to play my old LP of Melchior and Lehmann but I am pretty certain that Kaufmann (aided I know by first class recording) is better still: more resonant, the tone deeper – the great moment is certainly ‘endlessly long and endlessly big’ as he says of his predecessor. The second extract is further confirmation of the status of this singer as a great Wagnerian tenor. Siegfried remains my favourite opera (if one can speak in such terms) of the Ring Cycle but I have never heard a completely satisfying rendition of the title role. Kaufmann’s stage performances may be some time away but it is clear from this wonderfully sung Dass der mein Vater nicht ist and the insights in the booklet interview: “This parlando must always emerge from the music, as though there were a giant legato slur over the text” that it will be worth staying alive to hear it. It would have to be staged in a small theatre (Glyndebourne?) for the subtleties of this performance to come across to an audience. I followed the vocal score and every p and pp marking is observed, notably in the heart rending passages during which Siegfried fears that every mother must die to give birth, and the longing to see meine Mutter, ein Menschenweib! is quite unforgettable. The plan was to trace a phase of Wagner’s development but Die Feen was dropped and the prayer from Act V of is the earliest work explored. I have never seen the – 38 – opera staged but the great melody from the overture first attracted me to the composer when I was young. Any listener with a similar early experience will be much moved by its reoccurrence here and Kaufmann negotiates its characteristic turns with grace and accuracy. He tells us though that the greatest revelation for him in the whole enterprise was the experience of learning and performing the Rome narration from Tannhäuser . He was initially anxious but it turned out to be ‘the greatest treat of the sessions’. This is the longest track on the disc and it was a wise decision to continue into the dramatic encounter with Wolfram (Marcus Brück) and the ecstatic return of the Venusberg music. After that Die Meistersinger , not the Preislied but Am stillen Herd from Act I sung so exuberantly that any Master rejecting it must have had cloth ears. Finally in the operatic section In fernem Land made me envious of the audience at Bayreuth when the current production of Lohengrin was new. A wonderfully hushed beginning leading to an exquisite pianissimo on the key word taube ; could this be the same voice which nearly an hour ago shook the rafters with Wälse! Wälse! ? The full version with two stanzas is performed because of its “beauty” and this time the earlier singer recalled is Franz Völker (1936). I have a recording of that live Bayreuth performance and the comparison is apt. What the leaflet describes as ‘a surprise bonus’ is the concluding performance of the Wesendonck Lieder described by the composer as “for female voice”. I had the illusion during the opening song – Der Engel – that Kaufmann had sung the whole thing in one breath as the legato is so immaculate, but even more enticing are the renderings of Im Treibhaus and Träume , the early studies for Tristan und Isolde . The first gives us another pianissimo at the very top of the voice on the phrase in die Luft and as the second comes to its ecstatic end another future role came into view. The inclusion of the songs is justified by that possibility alone but Kaufmann persuades us and his interviewer that Wagner partly related these texts by Mathilde Wesendonck to himself. No argument: this is just superb singing. The Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin under provides a beautifully balanced contribution to the many pleasures of this disc and the recording venue in what sounds like a rather remote suburb of the old East Berlin was an inspired choice. I felt that I was in an excellent seat in a smallish opera house which allowed the text to breathe. My only reservation is my fear that the booklet will be inadequate for newcomers to Wagner. The interview is fascinating but many will need to listen to the operatic extracts knowing their full context and it is these newcomers who need to hear this disc, especially if their knowledge has been tainted by Shaw’s phrase: “the Bayreuth bark”. This CD brought to mind the two artists who have sung Siegfried in the Keith Warner production at Covent Garden. I joined in the ovation which John Treleaven received at the end of the first night. I thought he had managed well both the lyrical and heroic dimensions and was amazed by the media reviews and the hostility of some later audiences. In Wagner News 208 Katie Barnes gave a very detailed account of Stefan Vinke's recent traversal of the role and others have commented on his “del Monaco like” high C and the excitement he generated. Perhaps the most relevant comparison is with Klaus Florian Vogt who took over the role of Lohengrin from Jonas Kaufmann in the revival of the recent production at Bayreuth. This beautiful singer is regularly attacked for 'crooning' by some British critics (not by Wagner News writers) and it will be fascinating to compare any future performances of Siegfried by him and Jonas Kaufmann. From the evidence of this CD the latter will provide much more of the required power but he is not alone in bringing what Christian Hopkins in his review of the Bayreuth Lohengrin DVD in the same issue of Wagner News calls “mellifluousness and musicality that illuminates phrase after phrase.” – 39 – WHOSE FINGER ON THE TRIGGER? Chris Argent After lunch on 13 th February 1883, Richard Wagner collapsed and died in the Palazzo Vendramin in Venice shortly after Cosima, alerted by Betty Bürkel (a servant in the master’s household and maybe more), had rushed to his room. Soon after that Dr Friedrich Keppler arrived and pronounced Wagner dead. Such are the incontrovertible facts. However, Wagner being Wagner and Cosima a past master at manipulation (of information as well as people), there has grown up around the basic details of Wagner’s demise a panoply of legends that are almost as intriguing as the Nordic myths that the Master used as the foundation of many of his music dramas. John Barker – an American academic and music critic with a particular penchant for Venetian history – has assembled a collection of literary compositions under the rather uncatchy title Wagner and Venice Fictionalized subjecting each to a detailed analysis while quoting from enough of the fictional works involved as to give the reader a close-up view of the thrust of each individual author’s thesis. The interest in most of the chapters (with logically enough one chapter per tale) is in the extent of the imaginative scenarios dreamt up by the authors, and the distance of the variations propounded from the facts as they are known. As one might guess, a great deal of mileage is made of Wagner’s fondness for the ladies, so that Mathilde Wesendonck, Judith Gauthier and figure in several of the stories though often just in the background. The author of the compilation underlines the absurdity of many of the propositions particularly with regard to Carrie Pringle, the young English singer but then recently recruited to the ranks of the flower maidens for the next Bayreuth production of Parsifal , who was not to be seen in Venice or even Italy at the time of Wagner’s death. However, that is not to say that Wagner’s infatuation with Carrie Pringle and his dalliance with others was not the catalyst for an almighty row with Cosima on that particular day, such events not being unusual in Wagner’s household despite the latitude that Cosima seemed to give her wayward husband (I use the phrase wayward in the context of the appearance of normal 19 th century marriages despite the fact that Richard begat children on Cosima before she had been divorced from Hans von Bulow and despite the adulterous behaviour of so many middle class Victorian fathers as likely to be the norm in Germany as much as in ). The book embraces 14 stories including one by Jean-Claude Carrière set as an opera by Jonathan Harvey as Wagner’s Dream – an imaginative elaboration of Wagner’s unrealized dream of writing a Buddhist-based opera nominally known as Die Seiger (The Victors) . They are all prefaced by a prologue entitled ‘The Seals of Fiction’ where John Barker sets out his stall: providing a cultural background to the fictional treatments embraced by the book (nowhere is it stated whether the survey is comprehensive; one wonders if there are more in print than are here reviewed). The author quite reasonably points out that many readers prefer fictional treatments of historical events where imaginary flesh is added purely at the whim of the writer which can help convey the underlying character of the story, and makes the additional ancillary point that poetic presentations often convey a deeper understanding than the bare bones. Be that as it may it seems a pity that on the very first page of the author’s text (page 1 of the ‘Seals of Fiction’) he refers to the “two and a quarter centuries since Wagner’s death” (and this by an author who points out that another author has Wagner dying on 13 December 1883).

– 40 – One might also take exception to the rather tepid description of the 1933-45 period as “the culturally noxious Nazi period in Germany”: the irony is that it was not a cultural desert in Germany during that period, music in particular having a golden summer with the likes of Furtwangler and on the rostrum, despite the barbarities perpetrated by the regime, its acolytes and by many of the German population who had welcomed the lifting of the Weimar depression. There is a pleasing symmetry between the inventive bravado of the authors whose expansion of the myths surrounding Wagner’s death is the subject of this book and the inventive genius of the composer whose exploitation of the Nordic myths led to his massive Ring cycle. Some names of those whose fictions are examined will be familiar to many; it is perhaps enough to cite Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel (Alma Mahler’s second husband), Gabriele d’Annunzio (the Italian Fascist with a literary bent), and Joachim Köhler (the author of The Last of the Titans ) as authors whose fantasies about Wagner in Venice in February 2013 are the focus of John Barker’s labours. John Barker acknowledges that he is by no means comprehensive in his survey of his chosen field. He cites a 65-page novelette that relates to the death of Richard Wagner on a park bench in Venice under the zany title Woof Woof or Who Killed Richard Wagner? (by Stefan Themersen and published in 1961): John Barker comments that this bizarre over-blown short story related by a narrator who is alternately human and canine need not detain the reader except for those who wish to devour anything at all pertaining to Wagner. One of the most noticeable aspects of Barker’s compilation which progresses in chronological order from the earliest writer vaguely dealing with the topic in hand (in 1890 by Vernon Lee under the pen name of Violet Paget) to the latest (in 2008 by Ray Furness) is the sheer imaginative powers displayed. Except for the first of the 14 authors whose fictions are examined, John Barker uses an overall dissection plan to analyse the anatomical construction of each story, citing extensive sections of the texts as published so that the reader of his compendium need not necessarily go back to the original unless fired up so to do, identifying wherever possible the potential sources of the building blocks used and commenting freely on the relationships between the imaginative webs of events and participants and the facts as known. In the very first of the chapters in the book, that on Vernon Lee’s tale, this procedure was not adopted primarily because her stories only tangentially touch on the subject matter and then only by implication at that. In reading the whole book, my first thoughts were (having got no further than Vernon Lee’s Winthrop’s Adventure and A Wicked Voice ) that it was going to be a hard slog, but nothing could be further from the truth as the inventive powers of the authors became progressively more and more interesting and certainly exploited aspects of Wagner’s and Cosima’s personalities to the full. Possibly the most interesting feature of the book to those who are unfamiliar with Jonathan Harvey’s Wagner’s Dream is an exposition and examination of this 21 st century composition. The opera, written in 2007 to a libretto by Jean-Claude Carrière, is based on Wagner’s own prose sketch for his long-envisaged Buddhist opera (The Victors) featuring two characters, Ananda and Prakriti, whose persona evidently intrigued Wagner with his fixation on redemption. Just as with Parsifal (and indeed Der fliegende Holländer ), Harvey exploits Wagner’s pre-occupation with the concept of renunciation through love (a renunciation noticeably always effected by ‘woman’) as influenced by Schopenhauer and the Buddhist message. This again is only tangentially concerned with

– 41 – the myths that have developed since February 1883, but is included with good reason in Barker’s magnum opus. The inclusion of Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice is more redolent of Mahler than of Wagner, but is suffused with Mann’s own pre-occupation with Wagner and his music, Mann having written and published several essays on Richard Wagner before the Second World War and two before the Great War, also seems thoroughly justified. It seems a little strange that Barker makes no reference to Nicholas Roeg’s film Don’t Look Now which deals with a death in Venice just as does Thomas Mann. For readers who do not dismiss the stories of those in the process of dying see themselves suspended above and viewing their own expiring bodies, Bernd Schünemann (1996) posits Richard Wagner hovering between life and death examining his own philosophy as influenced by Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, a conceit which has an intriguing resonance. The book is peppered with some fascinating flights of fancy such as the presence in Venice as a pall bearer of Gabrielle d’Annunzio who first visited Venice in 1887, as well as of Verdi in the early months of 1883 intent on meeting up with Wagner but reluctant to make the first overture (as imagined by Franz Werfel who builds his edifice on this fanciful fiction) and by Joachim von Kürenberg (1947) who envisages an encounter between Wagner and Oscar Wilde, the latter on a visit to Venice from Trieste. Of course, some mileage is made out of the appearance at the Palazzo Vendramin of Carrie Pringle as the catalyst for Cosima’s rage and Wagner’s subsequent heart attack. Egon Günther constructs his imaginary Valhalla of words and ideas on the proposition that Wagner has Wolfram von Eschenbach (died ca. 1225) in Venice as a dining companion! It also includes a few aphorisms which strike home; for example, in Gustav Renker’s Finale in Venedig (from 1933), the author has Wagner remark to Andrea Frick, a young man in Bayreuth who pines after a servant in , “Do not become a fanatic, Frick. The fault of most Wagnerians is that they are fanatics” which comment must surely reverberate down the ages and yet has been ignored by all those who keep the coffers at Bayreuth well stocked. I could have done without the occasional jibes at those of Jewish ancestry: Zdenko von Kraft writing in 1943 “anything scholarly (scientific) was held to be Jewish in impulse” and more disgraceful terms of disparagement in relation to Angelo Neumann, the Jewish impresario who did so much to promote performances of Wagner’s music-dramas beyond German lands. The above is intended to give a flavour of the book which, as one delves further into its 299 pages (complemented by copious notes, a selected bibliography and a competent index), becomes more and more unputdownable. It is littered with typographic, grammatic and syntactic errors (that a good editor would have rectified), but these do not distract from the overall enjoyment that the book imparts. The book has a clutch of portraits of some of the participants, albeit not printed on art paper and thus of rather poor resolution, including two of Judith Gautier whose physical appeal to Richard Wagner is only too apparent despite the poor quality of the reproduction (which had it been printed on art paper would have made the price of the book soar).

– 42 – TRISTAN UND ISOLDE Four Seasons Centre Toronto, 29 th January to 23 rd February Frances Henry The Canadian Opera Company was fortunate enough to acquire the Peter Sellars / Bill Viola production of Tristan und Isolde for performance at the Toronto Opera House. Originally conceived as The Tristan Project , what makes this production unique is that Peter Sellars presents a very minimal staging of the live performers. The stage itself is empty except for a small raised platform and, occasionally, a lightbox. The performers are costumed very simply in black or dark colours with the exception of King Marke, who appears once in full uniform. Singers sometimes appear from various parts of the hall, both the Steersman and the Shepherd singing from the fifth balcony. The fanfare arrival of the King is played by brass instruments also stationed on the fifth balcony while King Marke walks down the centre aisle of the orchestra upon his arrival. The occasional sailors’ chorus and Brangäne’s Habet acht! are sung from the second balcony. However, the real visual experience is largely supplied by Bill Viola’s video projections which are played continuously behind the performers. Unlike the projections displayed in many contemporary productions, the videos here are not abstract; they don’t blink, flash, sparkle, twinkle or explode. They are very symbolic but often realistic and show ever-changing images of fire, water, wind and sun which are designed to complement the transformative quality of Wagner’s music and symbolize the transcendent nature of this powerful music. Human representations of Tristan and Isolde are embodied on the video undergoing various acts of purification. Although audience reaction to the videos was mixed, one cannot deny the power of these visual images in creating new methods of presenting opera. The production was also made the more outstanding by a truly magnificent cast starring in full and supreme voice and demonstrating his powerful dramatic and strong vocal intensity. In both the second and third Acts Heppner truly became the Tristan of our time. He was aided by Melanie Diener, a wonderful German soprano just bordering on the dramatic range who, remarkably enough, was making her first appearance as Isolde. She has a full but very lyrical voice and one wonders how much better she can become after such an outstanding initial performance. Another German import, Franz-Josef Selig who has sung King Marke in Paris, was outstanding. His resonant actually managed almost to weep as he expressed his sadness over Tristan’s betrayal. Alan Held was a resplendent Kurwenal who really conveyed all his many changing emotions without once looking at Tristan in the third Act. Daveda Karanas rounded out the main cast as a lyrical Brangäne. The Canadian Opera Company’s orchestra played brilliantly under the direction of Johannes Debus. What was also amazing is that, with one exception, none of the orchestra had ever played the Tristan score before and Maestro Debus had actually to learn the score at short notice having to take over from Ji í B lohlávek who cancelled due to illness. Debus’ slow but not too leisurely pacing brořughtěout all the beautiful orchestral details of the score. Our new opera house here in Toronto has wonderful acoustics and provides a very warm surround sound experience so one felt truly enveloped by the music. This production provided a truly transcendental experience, which I think is what Wagner wanted to achieve with his masterpiece. – 43 – Pleased to meet you KATIE BARNES Roger Lee Katie Barnes has contributed some 57 pieces to Wagner News since 1997 and it has been my privilege to “edit” a dozen of these. In fact working with this writer amounts to little more than receiving her copy. With such material an editor becomes essentially redundant. Her descriptive ability to convince readers that they have witnessed what she reports even when they haven’t is the envy of many of us who also attempt to cover events for Wagner News. Her work combines elegance and economy of expression with a level of skill in the art of musical description which is all but unequalled in my experience of producing this magazine. Photo: Richard Carter In the January 2011 issue of Wagner News a Contents page of no more than 14 items allowed space for “thumbnail” introductions of contributors and Katie described herself to readers as: “an opera lover by choice and a civil servant by necessity.” Music and the theatre have always been an integral part of her life. “My father was a theatrical polymath: actor, music hall performer, conjurer, escapologist and Pearly King. He met my mother in amateur theatricals” Katie was educated at Camden School for Girls, where she was in the same class as Emma Thompson. The school had very high musical standards, and she sang alto in the choir. “The two things I learned most from my time in the choir were, first, that I was not cut out for a vocal career and second, the mechanics of how individual musical parts, which can sound quite unrelated can combine into a harmonious whole – something which has stood me in good stead as a reviewer when mentally dissecting Wagner's work and appreciating what different conductors and players bring to it.” Her first great love in music was that of Gilbert & Sullivan, and they have retained their place with her ever since. “Sullivan is a much underrated composer, to my mind. His non-Gilbert works deserve far more serious consideration than they generally receive. (He thought Parsifal ‘gloomy, dull and ugly’, but he regarded Meistersinger as “not only Wagner's masterpiece, but the greatest comic opera that was ever written”. . Considering his own line of business, this was quite a compliment!) Did you know that in the first production of Iolanthe , the Queen of the Fairies (Alice Barnett, a massive contralto) was dressed as Brünnhilde, winged helmet, breastplate, spear and all – and that her Invocation in Act 1 bears a certain musical relationship to Wagner?” Katie saw her first opera at the age of six ( Hansel and Gretel , with Rita Hunter and Raimund Herincx as the parents), but she says that she did not discover opera “properly” until she saw at ENO in 1980. “I was hooked. My Wagnerian initiation came the following year with Tristan (also at ENO) conducted by . The experience was overwhelming. I remember that at that first hearing I could discern little of the structure, but when it was broadcast a couple of weeks later I sat by my radio for the whole six hours, following every line of music and text in my ENO Opera Guide. It was incredibly educational.

– 44 – “Highlights of my Wagner-going career since then must include my first Ring cycle: the Kupfer production at Bayreuth in 1991 (which remains my ultimate Ring ); my first Meistersinger at Covent Garden, with Norman Bailey stepping in to be Sachs at a few hours’ notice; René Kollo’s single, astonishing London Tannhäuser and Lohengrin ; Ben Heppner’s knockout Stolzing; Jeffrey Lawton’s farewell as Tristan, with Marie Lloyd Davies his unforgettable Isolde and at the helm; my ideal Siegfried Act 1 trio of Siegfried Jerusalem, Graham Clark and Sir John Tomlinson; Meistersinger at Covent Garden in 1997, on the night the house closed for renovation (the subject of my first contribution to Wagner News ), with the stage fairly awash with emotion and the rapport between John Tomlinson’s Sachs and ’s Beckmesser reaching new heights; Tomlinson’s last London Wotan in 2007, where his partnership with Philip Langridge’s Loge and Peter Sidhom’s Alberich was so perfect that they almost seemed to be floating above the stage; Nina Stemme’s divine Isolde; Christian Gerhaher’s silken Wolfram; and the constant sense of discovery at virtually every Mastersingers event I have ever attended, with David Edwards’ edgy productions creating a sense of excitement that frequently eclipses the major London houses, and the thrill of finding new voices in the Bayreuth Bursary, especially the revelation of hearing the then unknown Miriam Murphy, Simon O’Neill and Amanda Echalaz for the first time.” Katie’s first contribution to Wagner News took the form of a parody of Henry V's Feast of Crispian speech in 1997 to commemorate the Royal Opera's performance of Meistersinger before the house closed for rebuilding. “I got into operatic reviewing almost by accident. In 2002 I somewhat diffidently sent the then editor of Wagner News two reviews of performances in Edinburgh and Paris which no other members appeared to have seen. To my astonishment, not only were they published, but I was asked to do more. It snowballed from there.” How does she manage the prodigious feats of memory which her work for Wagner News demand? “I try to memorise as much detail as possible during a performance, and type up a “rough version” of the review during the intervals on my venerable HP Jornada 720 before transferring it to my laptop to be finalised and emailed to the editor. Wagner- length intervals are a Godsend as they enable me to get as much written up as possible during the performance, and for that reason I find the two interval-less operas: Der fliegende Holländer and Das Rheingold can be the hardest to review. The tightest deadlines are always for the Bursary competition in December, where for the last two years I have had to provide the finalised review the day after the event. So if you see someone at a Wagnerian occasion who is typing frantically away on something resembling a large spectacle case, it will probably be me!” Wagner News’ greatest asset is its writers. None can better Katie’s combination of musical literacy and descriptive facility. When, in April 2011 she was the first to report the arrival of Christian Gerhaher on the Wagner Scene she wrote: “His voice is indescribably beautiful, like listening to a rich silk scarf sliding slowly to the ground.” I am among those who are old enough to have enjoyed the work of a poet by the name of John Arlott. Employed by the BBC to describe the proceedings of test match cricket for three decades, he brought us the summer in words. His wonderfully evocative use of simile and metaphor provided we listeners with visual imagery so rich as to convince us that we had shared the experience of seeing what he had seen. Katie Barnes may be described as the John Arlott of Wagner News.

– 45 – RUDOLPH SABOR (1914-2013) REMEMBERED Michael Bousfield Until a few years ago Rudi Sabor was a regular lecturer for the Wagner Society with his study days on various operas and, my favourite, his two-day series on the leitmotifs of the Ring. When I first heard him about twenty years ago I was relatively new to Wagner, and Rudi’s passionate enthusiasm, deep musical knowledge and brilliantly communicative non-technical approach proved to be the perfect foundation for a beginner. Later I got to know him quite well and I was delighted to visit Glyndebourne with him on several occasions, including his 80 th and 90 th birthday “treats” as guest of the Wagner Society. (For the former, , he surprised me by stating that this was his favourite opera!) During a long and varied career Rudi was Director of Music for Surrey, Editor of the journal Music , an examiner for the Associated Board of Music and a regular reviewer at the Bayreuth Festival. His adult education classes in Kent were especially popular and, until a week before his death in February, he continued to welcome a small group of friends to his Orpington home to view and discuss Wagner operas. To me his greatest achievements were his own translation and commentary of The Ring : four volumes plus an accompanying companion which covered Wagner’s sources, performance history, etc. had considered using his translation for their 2005 Ring but to his great sadness this never materialized. The Real Wagner published in 1987 with forward by is again a highly readable, user- friendly, non-technical guide to the composer’s life and works. A traditionalist in matters of staging, Rudi once told me that he did not wish to see a particular production of the Ring “because the seats at Covent Garden face in the wrong direction.” In addition he had no time for some modern theories about anti-Semitism in Wagner’s operas such as Beckmesser, Mime and Klingsor being Jewish caricatures. As one who fled Germany after Krystallnacht one might have expected him to believe otherwise. On the contrary, he once claimed that, had Wagner been alive during the 1930s, he would have been so appalled that he would have emigrated along with so many others in the arts and music world. As a good friend and a brilliant music teacher many of our members will remember Rudolph Sabor with great affection.

WAGNER 100 IN TORQUAY Ken Sunshine Bicentenary West Country readers and those with happy memories of holidaying on the English Riviera might be intrigued to know that on 15 th and 16 th April 1913 the Torquay Pavilion presented three concerts for a Wagner Centenary Festival. Miss Carrie Tubb (Woglinde 1922 Proms), Mr Frank Mullings (tenor with British National Opera Company) and Mr Thorpe Bates () sang some 24 items from the Wagner repertoire in English. Today the Pavilion is a small 1813 – 2013 shopping mall. No mention of the Bicentenary here!

– 46 – the Wagner society

President: Dame Gwyneth Jones Vice President: Sir John Tomlinson CONTACTS

Chairman: Richard Miles [email protected] Court Lodge Farm, Bletchingley, Surrey RH1 4LP

Secretary and Bayreuth Andrea Buchanan [email protected] Bursary Administrator: 7 Avenue Mansions, Finchley Road, London NW3 7AU

Programme Advisor: Gary Kahn [email protected]

Treasurer: Mike Morgan [email protected] 9 West Court, Downley, High Wycombe HP13 5TG

Membership Secretary: Mrs Margaret Murphy [email protected] 16 Doran Drive, Redhill, Surrey RH1 6AX

Archivist: Geoffrey Griffiths [email protected]

Committee Member: Charlie Furness Smith [email protected]

Committee Member: Edward Hewitt [email protected]

Committee Member: Emmanuelle Waters [email protected]

Librarian (Books): Peter Curtis [email protected] 22 Orchard Lane, Hutton, Driffield YO25 9PZ

Librarian (Audio-visual): Andrew Burton [email protected] 18 Greville Road, Alcester B49 5QN

Director of The Malcolm Rivers [email protected] Mastersingers and 44 Merry Hill Mount, Bushey, Herts. WD 23 1DJ The Goodall Scholars:

Wagner News Editor: Roger Lee [email protected] 155 Llanrwst Road, Colwyn Bay LL28 5YS

Webmaster: Ken Sunshine [email protected]

Wagner Society website: www.wagnersociety.org Registered charity number 266383

– 47 – WAGNER 200 FESTIVAL THREE WAGNER SOCIETY LECTURES At the Goethe-Institut, 50 Prince’s Gate, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2PH All at 7.30pm (refreshments from 7.00pm) Tickets £12 (£6 students)

Thursday 11 th July WAGNER AND GERMAN NATIONALISM Professor Tim Blanning, Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge ‘I am the most German being, I am the German spirit’, wrote Wagner in The Brown Book . Many commentators, especially after 1933, have taken him at face value. This lecture will seek to show that in fact his relationship with German nationalism was a great deal more problematic and that even such apparently nationalist passages as Hans Sachs’s final address in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg have been misunderstood.

Thursday 12 th September WAGNER AND MODERN PRODUCTIONS Mike Ashman, opera director and music historian To put his new music dramas onstage, Wagner needed to invent a role in the theatre that hardly existed at the time – the opera director. In so doing, he helped return opera to being real theatre. His successors have taken up the challenge. New Wagner productions by directors such as , Patrice Chéreau, Ruth Berghaus, David Alden, Richard Jones and Keith Warner continue to lead the way in theatrical innovation.

Thursday 10 th October DOES WAGNER STILL MATTER? John Deathridge, Emeritus Professor of Music, King's College London Early in the twentieth century Wagner was a powerful voice in Western culture. Today he is compromised by a fraught legacy, even though performances of his works are frequently sold out. John Deathridge rejects the inchoate image of the ‘failed’ humanist and suggests we go back to the drawing board with some basic questions about sources, reluctant scholarship, radical philosophy and the feasibility of a fundamental overhaul in the way we see Wagner.

Tickets from Mike Morgan, 9 West Court, Downley, High Wycombe, Bucks HP13 5TG. Please send cheques in favour of The Wagner Society and enclose a sae. Tickets for all events should be available on the door, but please check [email protected] for availability.

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