No: 217 April 2015 Wagner news Number 217 April 2015 CONTENTS

4 From the Committee Andrea Buchanan 5 2015 Wagner Society AGM: a reminder Andrea Buchanan 6 The Karlsruhe Wagner Singing Competition 2015 Andrea Buchanan 7 Dame Gwyneth Jones Masterclasses, 11 th May Andrea Buchanan 7 2015 Wagner Society Singing Competition Andrea Buchanan 8 Dame Gwyneth Jones: A new portrait 10 Climbing Mount Tristan Rachel Nicholls 12 Tokyo Parsifal Michael and Christl Long 14 DVD: Silent Wagner Tony Palmer 15 Fulham Opera Siegfried Act III Katie Barnes 16 Tristan und Isolde at The Royal Opera Katie Barnes 20 Met Opera Meistersinger live relay / Royal Opera Tristan Hilary Reid Evans 21 Berlin Tristan und Isolde Richard Phillips 24 The Rake’s Progress : Joint meeting with Bury Court Opera Katie Barnes 25 Simón Bolivár Orchestra: Highlights from The Ring : Katie Barnes 26 The Masters of Nuremberg at English National Opera Katie Barnes 31 The Masters of Nuremberg at English National Opera Hilary Reid Evans 32 Der fliegende Holländer at The Royal Opera Katie Barnes 34 Der fliegende Holländer at The Royal Opera Hilary Reid Evans 35 An Evening with Iain Patersen Katie Barnes 37 Secret Opera: Die Walküre Richard and Sylvia Lemon 38 Wagner and Human Sacrifice Professor Derek Hughes 40 Book: Beethoven by Wagner Richard Highland 41 Book: Wagner’s Visions Chris Argent 45 The oldest surviving symphony orchestra in the world? David Woodhead 45 Tristan und Isolde Act II at St Albans on 31 st May 2015 Roger Lee 46 Cosima : The author introduces his new play Robert Mansell 47 Wagner Society Contacts 48 Wagner Society Forthcoming Events Andrea Buchanan

Cover picture: Rachel Nicholls (page 10) as Eva with Iain Paterson (page 35) as Hans Sachs in The Mastersingers of Nuremberg at English National Opera (pages 26 and 31) Printed by Rap Spiderweb – www.rapspiderweb.com 0161 947 3700 FROM THE CHAIRMAN

I am delighted to announce that Gillian Wyn Thomas has agreed to take on the role of Events Manager for the Wagner Society with effect from early April. Gillian has a background as a management consultant, and is a highly knowledgeable, experienced and enthusiastic opera-goer. She has been co-opted to the Committee and will formally stand for election at the AGM in May.

Since the last issue of Wagner News we have had two excellent events, both reported on more fully in here. First, a talk on Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress – previously unknown to me, but currently being staged at Bury Court Opera and starring two singers well known to us: Rhonda Browne and Andrew Dickinson. The talk was delivered by Dr Harriet Boyd-Bennett of Christ Church, Oxford, in St Botolph's Church Hall, with musical excerpts then sung by Andrew, Rhonda and Joanna Foote.

Secondly, Iain Paterson – Hans Sachs in the ENO's current, excellent Mastersingers, gave us a talk followed by a Q&A. The life of an opera singer, the development of his career and his future plans, and the work that Iain himself put into making the English translation workable and singable, were all brought most entertainingly to life. Iain revealed the sheer scale of imagination that a singer puts into understanding Sachs – which includes a thorough imagination of his “back story” (his past friendship with Beckmesser? The loss of his inspiration since the death of his wife and children? The return of his inspiration on hearing Walther sing at the trial?). All in all, a most successful event which perfectly complemented the audience's enjoyment of the performance itself.

The venue itself – The Gresham Centre, in St Anne's & St Agnes' Church – was another “find” for us – no space here to discuss its work, but please look them up. www.greshamcentre.com

Forthcoming events include the President's Masterclasses on May 11th and the AGM on May 12th. More details to follow.

Finally, we are still looking for someone to take on the Events Manager role, but since my last mention of this, we have had some indications of interest. All fingers are crossed. We are also still looking for someone to act as Webmaster: we envisage a student, possibly looking to make a name for herself or himself in musical journalism, who would enjoy the intellectual challenge, the chance to start and contribute to debates, and the opportunity to take the content of our website to a higher level.

Richard Miles –3– REMINDER THE 61 st ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF THE WAGNER SOCIETY To be held on Tuesday 12 th May 2015 at 7.30pm

St Botolph’s Church Hall, Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3TL Liverpool Street

Please note that this time, the agenda, the annual accounts, biographical information about Committee members standing for election or re-election and any other relevant information will be posted on the Wagner Society website not less than 21 days before the AGM and will be available to members who log in. We trust that you appreciate the significant savings in the cost of postage that this will generate. If you do not have an email address, and you would like a copy of the papers by post, please inform us in advance – by post to address below. If you do not specifically request the papers, we will assume that you do not wish to receive them. We also ask that any members who have not yet sent us their email addresses or who have updated their contact details in any way please inform [email protected]

If anyone would like to stand for the Committee please submit a minimum of two nominations from members in writing in advance to the Secretary, preferably by email to [email protected] or by post to: The Secretary of The Wagner Society, 7 Avenue Mansions, Finchley Road, London NW3 7AU. These must be received no less than 28 days before the date of the AGM. If you have any items that you wish to propose for the Agenda, please also send these to the Secretary at least 28 days in advance of the meeting.

Members are cordially invited to join the Committee for drinks after the meeting. We look forward to seeing you on May 12 th and we hope that as many of you as possible will attend.

Richard Miles (Chair) Andrea Buchanan (Secretary) Neil King (Treasurer) Cameron Burns Charlie Furness Smith Geoffrey Griffiths Edward Hewitt Roger Lee Margaret Murphy

–4– FROM THE COMMITTEE Summaries of the meetings held on January 28 th and February 25 th 2015 Andrea Buchanan

January 28 th • The Chair’s report noted that we were still in need of an Events Secretary to replace the excellent Peter Leppard. The Secretary was caretaking the role for the time being. He also reported that the joint dinner with the Alkan, Liszt and Berlioz societies in January had been a great success and was very well attended.

• 11 new members had joined the Society over the past two months, many via the website, so this was clearly working well.

• The Treasurer reported that we were now claiming Gift Aid on a regular basis. The December accounts were ready and had been circulated in draft. 2014 had ended with a healthy surplus in the bank, allowing us to deposit some funds with Charifund.

• The Secretary was working with the website provider to improve some aspects of the site. Online ticket purchasing for our events was a high priority.

• A Memorandum of Understanding with the Mastersingers had been drawn up and signed for 2015 for the provision of artistic services to the Wagner Society.

• The Committee voted to hold the Singing Competition for 2015 in the Duke’s Hall at the Royal Academy.

February 25 th • Five new members had joined the Society since the end of January.

• The Treasurer was now working on the annual accounts and preparing these for the auditors.

• The Secretary had met with the website provider and plans were being drawn up for the proposed modifications to the site to improve functionality.

• Plans were going ahead for the Singing Competition and 2 out of 3 judges had now been agreed. The Secretary reported that the 2014 winner would spend some of his grant travelling in Germany and would arrange some coaching there, along with deepening his understanding of the language, the culture and of the opera world there. The 2014 runner-up had been entered for the Karlsruhe singing competition for Wagner voices. She was currently based in Berlin.

• The President’s Masterclasses were being arranged for 11 th May (See: page 7).

• The idea of a purely social event to be held in December for members was mooted. The Treasurer nobly volunteered to assist with this. –5– Advance notice of two important dates for your diary THE WAGNER SOCIETY SINGING COMPETITION 2015 Andrea Buchanan The 2015 Wagner Society Singing Competition will be held from 2pm to 6pm on Sunday November 22 nd at the Duke’s Hall, Royal Academy of Music, Marylebone Road, London NW1 5HT. We can announce that two of the three judges are already in place, and we are honoured that Mark Wigglesworth , the incoming Music Director of English National Opera, and Scott Carlton , Director of the Young Artists’ Program for the New York Wagner Society and a previous long-standing member of the Bayreuth chorus, will be joining us. We hope to announce the third member of the panel shortly. The overall winner will receive a sum of money for coaching in Wagner roles, plus the opportunity to participate in the Bayreuth Stipendienstiftung (scholarship programme). We are very pleased that Dame Gwyneth Jones will once again present the Presidents’ Award of a Masterclass given by her to the singer(s) of her choice. Roger Lee is also delighted to announce the second year of the Carole Rees Awards for Advanced Musical Studies in honour of his late wife. These prestigious new awards to promising Wagner singers provide significant bursaries for coaching in Wagner roles. Finally, the audience will once again have the opportunity of voting for their favourite artist to receive the Audience Prize. Please do come along and support the singers. This competition is at the heart of the Wagner Society’s charitable remit and means a great deal to the singers involved. It is also a fantastic afternoon out. If you haven’t been before, do give it a try.

THE PRESIDENT’S AWARD 2014 Masterclasses to be given by President of the Wagner Society Dame Gwyneth Jones to the singers chosen by her at the Wagner Society Singing Competition held in November 2014 Those of you who attended last year’s Singing Competition at the Royal Academy of Music will recall that we invited Dame Gwyneth to choose a singer or singers from among the finalists that she felt would most deserve and benefit from a Masterclass to be given by her on singing Wagner roles. Her chosen winners in 2014 were tenor Andrew Dickinson (also the overall Winner of the Singing Competition) and mezzo-soprano Mae Heydorn. (See: opposite page.) The singers will be accompanied by Dame Gwyneth’s husband, Adrian Müller. The Masterclasses will take place from 7pm to 9.30pm on Monday May 11th in the magnificent Princess Alexandra Hall of the Royal Overseas League (details on page 48). There will be a cash bar open both before and after the event. We look forward to welcoming you to this very special occasion.

–6– THE INTERNATIONAL SINGING COMPETITION FOR WAGNER VOICES Karlsruhe, 1 st to 4 th October 2015 Andrea Buchanan The Richard Wagner Verband International and the Wagner Society of Karlsruhe are delighted to announce the 2015 Singing Competition for Wagner Voices which takes place in Germany every three years. Thanks to generous support from the city of Karlsruhe, LBS and the Badisches Staatstheater, the competition has found a permanent home in the delightful city of Karlsruhe, which celebrates its 300 th anniversary this year. We have entered the runner-up of our own recent Singing Competition, Kirstin Sharpin for this competition and we wish her every success and lots of luck for the forthcoming selection rounds. The initial selection, to choose the singers to take part in the qualifying round in Bayreuth this summer, is made on the basis of the application forms, recommendations and references, along with a CD example of the singer’s work. Up to 18 singers will then be chosen to take part in the semi-finals in Karlsruhe, and six will compete in the finals. Some of us attended the last competition in 2012, in which The Wagner Society was represented by Helena Dix, who made the semi-finals. We all enjoyed the event greatly and found plenty of interesting things to do and see both in Karlsruhe and its environs. Strasbourg, for example, is only a short train ride away – with all the joys of Alsatian cuisine and importantly, wines…. Palco Reale, the German arts travel company, has put together a very attractive and modestly price package for the event, offering a choice of hotels, some local tours, and tickets for the semi-finals and finals of the competition, along with a performance of Der fliegende Holländer at the opera house. Participants need only arrange their own travel. If any of you would like to go, please let me know ([email protected]) and I will send you the brochure and order form. I am also happy to offer any advice on travel if required. WINNERS OF THE 2014 PRESIDENT’S AWARD Photography by Richard Carter

Andrew Dickinson Mae Heydorn

–7– NEW PORTRAIT OF DAME GWYNETH JONES Wagner Society President honoured at Munich State Opera’s new portrait gallery

–8– A new portrait gallery has been created to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the re-opening of the National Theatre Munich. This portrait of Dame Gwyneth Jones photographed, hand coloured and signed by Karl Lagerfeld is one of the portraits of 21 selected illustrious singers from the last five decades who are or have been closely associated with the Bayerische Staatsoper. These works are on display in the Foyers of the National Theatre, where they will form a fascinating dialogue with the historic portraits, as part of the Bayerische Staatsoper's collection and will be on permanent display there. Gwyneth Jones studied at the Royal College of Music, London, the Accada Chigiana Siena, the International Opera Studio in Zurich and with Maria Carpi in Geneva. She made her debut at the Zurich Opera House in 1962, at the Royal Opera Covent Garden in1963 and has been a member of the Vienna State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the Deutsche Oper Berlin since 1966. At Bayreuth she sang Sieglinde, Eva [CD] , Orfeo , Senta [CD] and Kundry [CD] and she was the first to perform both Elisabeth and Venus ( Tannhäuser ) at the Festspielhaus [DVD] . In 1976 she was Brünnhilde in the Boulez/Chéreau production of Der Ring for the Centenary celebration of the Festival [CD] [DVD] . In Vienna, Munich, Dresden, London, Paris and at the New York Met she has sung Isolde [DVD] , Ortrud [CD] , Donna Anna ( Don Giovanni ) and the Richard Strauss roles of Salome [CD] , Helen of Egypt [CD] , Ariadne, The Dyer’s Wife ( Frau ohne Schatten ), Octavian [CD] , Marschallin [DVD] , Chrysothemis and Elektra [CD] . She sang the role of Leonore ( Fidelio ) in the theatre of its original production Theater an der Wien with Leonard Bernstein for the celebration of Beethoven’s 200 th birthday. She has also recorded and filmed Fidelio Leonore with Karl Böhm. Her Italian roles included those of Amelia ( Ballo in Maschera ), Lady Macbeth [CD] , Santuzza ( Cavalleria Rusticana ), Leonora (Il Trovatore) ROH Heritage Series, Aida , Madam Butterfly , Elisabetta ( Don Carlo ), Tosca , Desdemona ( Otello ) [CD] , Cherubini’s Medea [CD] , Poppea ( L’Incoronazione di Poppea ). Turandot , which she studied with the legendary Dame Eva Turner, proved to be one of the greatest successes of her career at the Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles 1984 and thereafter in London and elsewhere. In 1991 she added Minnie, La Fanciulla del West (Puccini) [CD] . In 1979 she sang Hanna Glawari ( Merry Widow ), 1989 La Voix humaine (Poulenc) in Paris, which was filmed by Cameras Continental, 1990 Erwartung (Schönberg) and later Kostelnicka in Jenufa , Kabanicha in Katia Kabanowa (Janá ek), Bellini’s Norma, Herodias and Klythämnestra. Her next new role will be The Coučntess in Pique Dame (Tchaikovsky). Dame Gwyneth has received the highest honours at home as well as in Austria: Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1 st Class; France: Commandeur de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres; Germany: Verdienstkreuz 1 Klasse; Shakespeare Prize Hamburg and Italy Pro Puccini Prize in Torre del Lago and was awarded the title “Kammersängerin” in both Austria and Bavaria and twice the Hon Degree of Doctor of Music by the Universities of Wales and Glamorgan, among others. She is particularly thrilled and grateful that she has been able to sing her repertoire in the countries of origin: Wagner in Bayreuth and Munich, Strauss in Munich, Dresden and Vienna, Verdi and Puccini in La Scala, Rome and Maggio Musicale Firenze and Verona, and Poulenc in Paris and she sincerely hopes that she will now be able to pass her knowledge and experience on to the next generation of singers.

–9– CLIMBING MOUNT TRISTAN Rachel Nicholls

As many of you may know, I am a very keen hiker. I am lucky enough to live in the middle of some of the best walking country in the UK. We only have one actual mountain (Kinder) but plenty of steep hills. In the autumn of 2014 I could often be found wandering along with my headphones on (to the chagrin of other more purist walkers) singing along with my karaoke piano accompaniment and periodically (when not looking at my map or eating my sandwiches) taking time out for a coffee from my flask and checking my text with the libretto and translation to Tristan , desperately trying to remember whether it was Der, Die or Das, Den or Dem . Often I swore in the middle of a long section, pressed rewind and back I went to the beginning. I have spent a large proportion of 2014 and 2015 immersed in Tristan und Isolde . Longborough’s rehearsals start in April for what will be a hugely exciting project for all concerned. But in the latter part of 2014 I had a mission which was to get Isolde learnt off by heart before cover rehearsals started at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden where I had the enormous privilege of understudying Nina Stemme. Covering (even somewhere as prestigious as Covent Garden) is an exceptionally demanding job. It has its compensations (watching the best singers in the world day after day and seeing what makes them the iconic figures they are), but as the lowest in the pecking order, covers get very little attention until the premiere has been and gone. We watch each stage rehearsal and write down the moves. We attend the Sitzprobe and take note of breaths, tempo changes and tricky moments. We then have studio rehearsals, often without many of the characters. In this case we put together a version of the piece which had taken the main cast five weeks in five afternoons. On a piece like Tristan , that’s equivalent to spending less than three hours on each hour of the piece. That means that we only ever get to run some parts of the opera once. Theoretically, after these studio sessions we might have to go on and

– 10 – perform alongside the main cast. Because everything has to be done so quickly, it’s absolutely vital that everyone turns up knowing the music really, REALLY well. As well as being the superlative Isolde of our time, Nina Stemme is also one of the most reliable and least-likely-to-cancel singers in the business. Of course had she been ill, assuming there was time to fly someone in, the opera house might very well have tried to get someone as well-known as she is to go on in her place. But there isn’t always time. Because emergencies can and do happen we can’t be blasé, and we have to be ready. Each company has different rules about covering, but at the Garden, for each performance we have to remain within six miles of the opera house from five hours before the show until curtain down (that’s more than eleven hours, including the intervals). Although I could have spent that time Christmas shopping or going to the cinema, actually it’s a very nerve-racking time. You simply can’t relax until the show comes down, you check your phone obsessively and when it rings you panic, even if it’s your mum calling for a chat. So I sat with my score in the Opera House for quite a lot of the time and did a lot of knitting! Fortunately I was in the excellent company of Longborough’s Brangäne (Catherine Carby) and what could have been an ordeal was actually really fun. Longborough’s Tristan (Neal Cooper) had a doubly demanding role as he was playing Melot in the main cast but also covering Tristan. Our rehearsals culminated in a run of the opera and I was massively proud of my colleagues. We had managed in a very short space of time to get ourselves ready enough not to let the side down had we been needed, and although that phone call would have been terrifying for all of us, we could have done it; the show could have gone on and the tickets would not have had to be refunded. Of course, although I was figuratively all-dressed-up and nowhere to go (Nina remained predictably healthy for the whole run) I am now delighted that I had to get Isolde ready for the end of November 2014 because it means my job of getting her ready for April 2015 is much easier. I also hope I picked up some tips and tricks along the way. In February I started work with Anthony Negus on honing our interpretation. One of the (many) things which so impressed me about Nina was her tremendous stamina and physical fitness. She cycled to work every day (in fact we parked our Bromptons next to each-other each morning at the stage door; cycling to work means you avoid nasty germs on public transport and get toned legs) and she ran effortlessly around the stage, held difficult crouching positions for ages while singing and was vocally tireless. This brings me back to my hiking. My Isolde regime will involve practice most days for a couple of hours, and then I’ll be off into the hills with my headphones and libretto. Revising Isolde will completely take over my life. I could happily concentrate on the music at home for 12 hours a day, but that won’t do anything for my cardiovascular system, and I find that the countryside both stimulates and relaxes my mind. Actually trying to remember these long passages of music and text while being distracted by mud, blisters, nettles and the odd curious sheep is a bit like trying to remember them while being distracted by lights, costume, props and the audience. (No, I’m not saying you’re sheep…) I think Isolde is a bit more Himalayan in scale than the Peak District but I’m not going to over-extend myself. Maybe I’ll treat myself and my walking boots to a couple of little excursions to Ireland and Cornwall for inspiration. Oh, and I’ll be cycling to rehearsals. maybe if I follow in Nina Stemme’s tyre-tracks some of her genius might rub off… Text reproduced with the kind permission of Longborough Festival Opera: www.lfo.org.uk

– 11 – PARSIFAL IN TOKYO 8th and 11 th October 2014 Michael and Christl Long Having seen many mediocre and even downright ghastly productions of Parsifal all over the world in Tokyo we were rewarded with the best production we have ever seen. Perhaps the Parsifal ‘problem’ has been solved at last. The Tokyo Opera has already established a significant track record in Wagner. It is housed in the New National Theatre which was inaugurated in 1997 and despite its name was not a government project but a private undertaking. It has 1,810 comfortable seats and a warm, wood-panelled interior. Japanese surtitles were displayed vertically at either side of the stage.

This production was Wagnerite heaven with Harry Kupfer and his team (set designer Hans Schavernoch, lighting designer Jürgen Hoffmann) at their very best. The set and lighting were doubtless very expensive, but the magnificent results were there for all to see, just like in the golden days. (Contrast that with the gimmicky, audience-unfriendly staging and inappropriate costumes in the recent Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde at Covent Garden, which were typical of what we have to put up with nowadays). A great soaring pathway of changing light, images and colour dominated the stage, moving and changing form as the fortunes of the protagonists rose and fell. A fantastic gauze of Gothic architecture represented the temple of Montsalvat. The theme was the Buddhist attainment of Nirvana , and herein lay the solution to the problem. Ernest Newman (as quoted by Bryan Magee in Wagner and Philosophy ), writes: “In the late 1850s Wagner’s whole thinking about life and the cosmos took a

– 12 – mystical, metaphysical turn, the result partly of his study of Schopenhauer, partly of his contact with Buddhistic literature, partly of his own tortured broodings upon the nature of the world and the destiny of man and beast, partly of the flood of new emotion set coursing in him by the sorrowful Tristan subject. The centre of his ethic now was pity for everything doomed to carry the burden of existence and it was from the centre outwards that he had already come to survey the Parzival subject afresh.” Not only the theme but the superb staging and lighting carried seamlessly through all the acts. Has anyone seen the second Act work as part of the whole before? The opera began with orange-robed figures at the pinnacle of the pathway, and ended with them handing orange robes to Parsifal, Kundry and Gurnemanz, as they ascended the pathway to enlightenment.

All the major protagonists were experienced in their roles, and under Kupfer’s expert direction and his rightly famous Personenregie they were all intimately involved in the action and were allowed to shine. Sir John was, of course, in top form. No-one else since Hotter can do justice to Gurnemanz. Christian Franz was a vocally and dramatically rock- solid Parsifal and Evelyn Herlitzius a passionate and believable Kundry without the over- the-top histrionics so often encountered in this part. Egils Silins (Amfortas) and Robert Bork (Klingsor) sang well but were perhaps a shade bland. The Japanese chorus was a revelation. The orchestra was perhaps a little slow, but all the notes were clear. We hope the Tokyo New National Theatre will repeat the production, but other companies and DVD makers should be rushing to buy it. It is too precious to be lost. It was interesting to note that at the two performances we attended the audience was 99% Japanese. But from our experience Tokyo Opera is clearly of international class and we would urge all opera and Wagner fans to put Tokyo Opera on their itinerary. To cap it all, the spear trick worked. We still can’t figure out how they achieved it! – 13 – SILENT WAGNER – WITH MUSIC!! A new edition of the famous Carl Fröhlich silent film of 1913 Tony Palmer

Finding a good print of this hitherto elusive film took an enormous amount of time (and money). Although we knew that the star of the film, Giuseppe Becce, had also composed (actually, more arranged the collected works of Beethoven, Mozart and even Wagner himself) a score for full orchestra to accompany the first screenings of this silent film, locating the manuscript of that score and then having the music especially recorded proved an even bigger problem. But here we are, finally. The Life and Works of Richard Wagner , directed by Carl Fröhlich, first released on 20 th November 1913, now on a DVD complete with the music that would have been heard at its first screenings before the First World War. It was also the first ever ‘bio-pic’, and as such who else could it be about but Wagner? What is extraordinary, however, is that it pre-dates DW Griffiths and Birth of a Nation , usually described as the first ‘long silent’, at a time when most ‘silents’ ran for 10 minutes at most. Fröhlich’s film runs for over 80 minutes. Fröhlich went on to have a chequered career. A member of the Nazi party from 1933, he was eventually appointed President of the Reichsfilmkammer , the Nazi trade organisation which controlled access to all film activities. At the end of the war he was arrested and, although de-Nazified in 1948, his studio having been badly damaged during the war, he never resumed production. His films were subsequently confiscated by the Federal Republic. Becce went on to write the scores for over 60 films, most famously The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Das Blaue Licht for Leni Riefenstahl. He survived de- Nazification but died, forgotten, in 1973, aged 96. No wonder it has taken me an age to get their film to its present state, but I believe it has been well worth the effort. The music track is mad, but for me it works wonderfully well with the subject matter, itself mad when you think about it.

Wagner Society members can buy the DVD at a special discount of £10 (including Postage & Packing ) from Tony Palmer direct on [email protected]

– 14 – SIEGFRIED ACT III Fulham Opera Orchestral Study Day, All Hallows Gospel Oak, 7 th Dec 2014 Katie Barnes Aside from giving small scale productions of the grandest of operas (most recently a hilarious Falstaff which included a number of their Ring personnel), the other focus of Fulham Opera's work is their orchestral study days which, like the Rehearsal Orchestra, give musicians the opportunity to play operatic music and give FO's singers the chance to perform with an orchestra. All Hallows Church, far larger than St John’s, Fulham, can accommodate a Wagnerian orchestra with ease and its flat timber ceiling creates a warm acoustic free of echoes, except at the rear, where the horns, backed by the stone-arched box of the chancel, resonated very effectively. It is a measure of the amazing Ben Woodward’s ability to inspire and motivate an orchestra that he could, in a single day, draw such a result from them when playing such difficult music, which, before the final run-through, he justly characterised as some of the finest Wagner ever wrote. The Prelude, which can daunt even an experienced orchestra, sounded a little imprecise, but the players clearly gained in confidence as they progressed, and their playing of the Magic Fire music, Brünnhilde’s awakening and the final duet was thrilling. I especially liked the violins' caressing of Brünnhilde's sleep motif and their sense of wonder as Siegfried emerged on the mountaintop, and the bright horns as he released her from her breastplate. It was good to see three stars of the unforgettable Fulham Opera Ring cycle repeating their triumphs, with a fourth member of that wonderful cast assuming another role. Ian Wilson-Pope once again encompassed the Wanderer’s anguish in his final encounter with Erda, thawing into a great sense of release as he accepted his fate – yet his confrontation with Siegfried was fraught with pain, and the feeling of loss as his spear broke was overwhelming. Jemma Brown’s Erda, her deep voice as rich and fruity as a Christmas pudding, was surprisingly human, even flirtatious, the sidelong glance beneath her lashes at “bezwang ein Waltender einst” telling us much about the passion and, yes, earthiness of their relationship. Zoë South, as ever, moved the occasion to a whole new plane as soon as Brünnhilde awakened, with a “Heil dir, Sonne!” of such power and magnificence that we were all rocked back on our feet and the walls of the church seemed to expand. It was a privilege to hear her again, and I marvelled at being given the opportunity to witness such a performance in a suburban church on a cold, rainy Sunday night. She had a wonderful partnership with the immensely likeable Jonathan Finney, Fulham's recent Loge and Götterdämmerung Siegfried, who moved up a notch to sing the young Siegfried, lyrical, tender and powerful, filled with youthful wonder as he wooed his strange bride and managed to make the boy high-spirited rather than merely obnoxious in his encounter with the Wanderer. I would love the opportunity to hear him sing the whole role. It is good to know that more Wagner, most notably a fully staged Der fliegende Holländer , features in Fulham Opera’s future plans. Despite its small size, this company has become a notable part of London's Wagnerian scene.

– 15 – “DIES WUNDERWOLLE WEIB” Tristan und Isolde , Royal Opera House 5 th , 8 th and 21 st December 2014 Katie Barnes Photography: Clive Barda, Royal Opera House It has been said that it can take days to recover from a really good performance of Tristan . This revival of Christof Loy's controversial 2009 production, with an improved cast, provided a series of such performances. Tristan is surely unrivalled among operas in its ability to reach deeply into the emotions and overwhelm the senses, and these performances were utterly shattering. Adverse reactions to the production on its first outing centred largely upon its drabness and its awful sightlines which placed far too much of the action against the wall to the left of the stage and turned about a third of the theatre into restricted-view seating. Advance publicity for this revival stated that “sightlines have been altered”, but in fact little had been done and far too much of the action remained out of sight of too many paying customers. Many features of the production remain irksome. The corps of dinner- suited extras is vastly overused, especially at the horribly mishandled discovery of the lovers, where the ending of the great duet is upstaged by Isolde's and Melot's drawing of a curtain to reveal the crowd of gawping courtiers several minutes before Brangäne or Kurwenal raises the alarm. The ending of Act III, with the extras slaughtering one another in a variety of inventive ways, is more redolent of Elektra than Tristan . And I still fail to understand why the Shepherd (who here appears to be Tristan's psychiatrist) and the Helmsman, both sinister types in suits, appear at the end of Act II, and why the Helmsman haunts Act III long before he should enter. The sad thing is that these minor irritations can obscure how good, and how searchingly truthful, much of the production is. Each facet of the lovers' complicated, painful relationship is laid bare and Loy takes full advantage of having one of the finest singing actresses of the day at his disposal. I have never seen a Tristan which shows so clearly, how the incursion of Isolde and Brangäne into the male-dominated Cornish society upsets all existing relationships. Women are treated like second class citizens, with even the future Queen and her attendant exposed to insolence and, in Brangäne's case, outright sexual harassment. In Act I Tristan, Kurwenal and Melot are obviously extremely close friends, almost a Cornish Three Musketeers, and their relationship is deeply disrupted by Tristan's love for Isolde. Kurwenal, wiser than his brash exterior suggests, deals with it by appointing himself as Tristan's guardian (the tiny moment at the beginning of Act II when he prevents Tristan following Isolde, says volumes) and by embarking upon a doomed affair with Brangäne. Melot, younger, more reckless, less able to handle his emotions, lets his jealousy drive him to treachery and is then horrified by the fallout from his actions. I love the moment, just before “ O sink hernieder ”, when a brief discord sounds just as Melot is seen passing by, and reacting to the presence of the lovers, as he goes to alert Marke. The ending of Act II is merciless in its delineation of each principal character's reaction to the discovery of the lovers. There is a deep sense of how they have all individually and collectively betrayed the innocent, uncomprehending Marke. Every gesture means something: Isolde taking Tristan's hand to pull him back when he reacts, Brangäne and Kurwenal exchanging an intense glance, knowing how their own guilty passion has contributed to the disaster by taking them off their watch,

– 16 – Melot's cocky self-righteousness thawing into bewilderment as he realises, too late, the damage he has done. In 2009 the production seemed unrelentingly dark, but this time around I was far more aware of the use of light, especially the spellbinding use of candles and the strong projections which threw shadows, some life-size, some gigantic, against the left-hand wall, as though this were a galanty show* or Lotte Reiniger film. As Tristan's huge shadow swallowed up Isolde's, I was reminded of Pelléas and Mélisande watching their shadows embrace. It was a pity that such striking effects were still denied to such a large percentage of the audience. *(See: note on page 44, Ed.) With a second set of Rings under his belt with this orchestra since this production was new, Antonio Pappano has deepened and enriched his interpretation of the score while keeping it on a scale matching that of the production. The Prelude was almost unbearable in its fragile loveliness and the swooping, rolling waves of the Liebestod complemented the unimaginable wealth of our Isolde's soaring voice. For all the size of the orchestra and the splendour of the sound it produces, this was a very intimate, chamber Tristan . With two exceptions, the cast is new this time, and one of those exceptions is the raison d'être of the whole show, the incomparable Nina Stemme, who is an opera house and a production in herself. Her voice has grown in size and scale since she last sang the role here in 2009, but this remains essentially a lyric rather than a heroic Isolde, yet one who pours forth a constant stream of glorious tone and sounds even fresher at the end than she did at the beginning. Like other great Scandinavian heldensopranos before her, she has such amazing resonance that she can dominate an orchestra in full spate without ever seeming to try. In Act I her rages were imperial but as fierce and uncontrolled as a forest fire (one wonders if there is Valkyrie ancestry in the Irish royal family), while at rest she seemed devoid of life, her face as blank as a polar shore, yet always we were aware of the passion seething beneath the emptiness and loss. At “er sah mir in die Augen” the sweetness in her voice was almost unbearable and a smile briefly illuminated her from within like a lamp, but at “Der Tod nun sag ihr Dank!” her voice became an unearthly thing, as though she were already dead. Her small figure seemed engulfed by the foaming skirts of her wedding dress, which swirled around her as she strode about the stage in tempests of fury, and when she changed to a simple black dress for her showdown with Tristan she looked absurdly small and young, like a hurt child. She could squelch Kurwenal's breezy insolence with a single look, and the slight movement of the hand with which she dismissed him was deeply satisfying to any feminist. During the Prelude, time seemed to stand still when she took up Tristan's place card from the table set for the wedding banquet and then put it down, relinquishing her last hope of him. This moment found a beautiful echo in Act II when she laid a small table just for the two of them – a brief, futile expression of a hope that they could have lived a normal life together. – 17 – The production dissects every nuance of the lovers' entanglement of love and hate. When Tristan trapped her against the wall, planting one hand either side of her, her voice seemed to float out of her prison and one small hand was seen reaching towards freedom. When he wrapped his arm around her, holding the potion in her free hand, her face contorted with mingled joy and pain and she pulled away, holding her arm and side as though they were burnt. In Act II she was glorious with her love, radiating a happiness so great that it seemed to shine from her like a light amid the darkness. Beside her tall, powerfully built Tristan, she looked younger and more childlike than ever. Their love was something so huge and august that it went beyond the physical, and their passionate kisses and embraces seemed but a trivial manifestation of a love too great for life. In Act III when she first saw Tristan she walked slowly towards him, smiling with the supreme, innocent confidence of a child. Now that she was there and they were together, everything would automatically be all right. I do not think that I have ever heard any soprano give so much to “Ha! Ich bin’s” , which she began quietly, gently, rising to such heights that one thought that she could not possibly top it in the Liebestod . Except, of course, that she did, rising so far above everything that even the drab, dark box of the set became a place of wonder, magic and light. She was transcendent . I am completely unable to describe her singing, except to say that I have never heard such wondrous vocal glory before, and cannot expect to do so again. As I said recently of Rachel Nicholls (surely destined to be the next great Isolde), you had to be there. Stephen Gould, a tall, powerfully-built, powerful-voiced Tristan, must be one of the best exponents of the role today. He could not quite match his Isolde in intensity or dramatic complexity (could anyone?) but they played off one another beautifully, moving from hopeless division to being two halves of a whole. The production gave him little help in Act III, in which Tristan initially appeared to be catatonic rather than wounded, then strode freely around the stage, and eventually ‘died’ in a hopelessly constrained and unrealistic position. His voice is powerful, if occasionally strident in the upper register, and he sang this killer role generously, musically and tirelessly.

– 18 – Sarah Connolly, the wondrous Fricka of the 2012 Ring , overcame the handicap of the dowdiest costume and wig to be seen on the Royal Opera House stage for years to create a marvellous Brangäne, in this production: a tense spinster who unexpectedly succumbed to passion. Her glorious, unfettered contralto complemented Stemme's soprano wonderfully and, as ever, her use of the words was sublime. She made the most of the production's slant on the Tower Warnings: instead of watching alone as specified by the text she was glimpsed in the afterglow of an encounter with Kurwenal, who caressed her lazily while the words flowing from her lips expressed not only her futile warnings but her own passion and regret for the swift passing of the night. We heard that matchless ascent of the violins through the veils of her rapture. Iain Paterson increased his burgeoning reputation yet further with his magnificent Kurwenal, a man with a world of sensitivity, understanding and pain beneath a bluff exterior. He too can give every small gesture and glance huge significance, and he sang this punishingly high-lying role with tremendous élan. It is fitting that he is due to make his well-deserved Bayreuth debut in this part, and in the meantime, Sachs awaits. Sir John Tomlinson, a king in every way, brought all his 33- year experience in the role to bear in his heartbreaking Marke. In past productions I have seen him bring out the character's anger more, but here the predominating emotion was the pain of a good man vainly trying to comprehend the reasons for a betrayal which has destroyed everything worthwhile in his life. I was glad that changes to the production since 2009 meant that he rejected Melot's incitements instead of ordering him to stab Tristan. That Melot was Neal Cooper, his bright, clear heldentenor pealing out the role's all-too-few phrases in a way which advertised that he is a future Tristan, and making the most of Loy's expansion of the role from a corner- skulking traitor to a rash, impetuous youth whose sense of rejection starts a rollendes Rad . The incomparably luxurious casting of Graham Clark in the tiny role of the smartly- suited, malevolent Shepherd, whose slow walk around the stage (with a single Mime-like skip to recall past glories) and penetrating gaze at Tristan gave the character an air of undefinable menace. His instantly recognisable tenor, still laser-sharp and bright, pinged out his few notes as perfectly as ever, and few Shepherds can ever have made more of one of the libretto's most famous lines, Öd und leer das Meer . He, Paterson and Pappano made the opening of Act III into an exquisite, elegiac trio, the singers' voices caressing the notes while the hushed strings gently stroked the music with indescribable sweetness. Now with a rock-solid cast, there was a sense of confidence in the way this production communicated itself to the audience. Whatever one thinks of the production, these performances had, for me, a feeling of overwhelming greatness, a sense of legend upon which we will look back in years to come – and whatever the tenor's qualities, on this occasion the opera should simply have been called Isolde . – 19 – SEE NO EVIL. HEAR ONLY TRUTH Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg , Metropolitan Opera live relay: 13 th December Tristan und Isolde , Royal Opera House Covent Garden: 14 th December 2014 Hilary Reid Evans One weekend and two contrasting revival experiences guaranteed to gladden the heart of any Wagnerian: a live cinema relay from the Met of Otto Schenk’s 1993 production of Die Meistersinger (now sadly to be retired) and Christof Loy’s 2009 Tristan und Isolde at the Royal Opera House. Despite the obvious issue of casting the hugely corpulent Johan Botha as Walther, Die Meistersinger was a beautiful production that the camera loved. With sets that are entirely realistic and closely based on Wagner’s instructions, this opera presented a rarity in today’s sensation-seeking world, which has producers chasing ever greater novelty at the expense of comprehension. Annette Dasch as Eva sang elegantly and brightly while Michael Volle as Hans Sachs brought sensitivity and pathos to his role. A special joy was to hear two of “our own” in minor roles. Scottish mezzo soprano Karen Cargill as Magdalene sang richly and roundly while former Royal Opera House Young Artist Matthew Rose shone as the Nightwatchman, a role that often presages a great Wagnerian bass. With a total running time of six hours one was agreeably entertained by the use of close ups and camera sweeps which enhanced rather than hindered understanding. With James Levine returning to the pit, the Met orchestra returned a magnificently detailed interpretation. No cinema sound system can however substitute for the joy of hearing a live orchestra at the top of its form. I may not be the greatest fan of Antonio Pappano’s speedy and in my view unsubtle interpretation of Wagner’s scores, but one could not help but be impressed by the quality of the music – and musicianship – produced by the Royal Opera House orchestra. Disappointingly, the pleasures of this production of Tristan und Isolde remained entirely aural. In fact there was a huge temptation to close one’s eyes so one did not have to once more view this sparse and curiously unhelpful production. With the only front of stage props a couple of (of course) minimalist chairs and a small table, and never even a hint of the sea or a castle, one assumes that one is expected to focus on the inner turmoil of the characters. Sad then that the beefy Stephen Gould does not physically or emotionally evoke the lovelorn hero, whilst the direction of the magnificent Nina Stemme has her move clumsily across the stage with gestures more appropriate to a bad tempered washerwoman than a bewitched and bewitching princess. Sarah Connolly as Brangäne entranced throughout, despite some strange stage directions involving a cardigan and a semi strip- tease. John Tomlinson as King Marke as ever impressed with his craft and presence, even if his voice has begun its inevitable decline. Much has been written about the live broadcast experience building a new audience for opera. Certainly compared with the cost of even a modest seat at Covent Garden the cinema is a cheaper option. However the cinema cannot reproduce the true opera experience either visually or aurally and may even raise false expectations of what a live performance can deliver. From this opera-goer’s perspective, despite the back-stage interviews, the close ups, the uninterrupted sight lines and the ability to smuggle one’s own wine into the auditorium, nothing can compare with the sense of immediacy and interaction one has with a live performance. Even if it is Loy’s empty interpretation of Tristan und Isolde ! – 20 – AN UNFORTGETTABLE TRISTAN UND ISOLDE Berlin Staatsoper, 28 th December 2014 Richard Phillips Photography: Monika Rittershaus, Berlin Staatsoper

From the very start the luscious sound of the Staatskapelle under Barenboim set the tone of what was to be an exceptional performance. The glowing strings and soulful woodwind made the Prelude a joy in itself, and the curtain went up on the set of Harry Kupfer's engaging production with Kurwenal and Tristan (on one of the wings), looking out to sea and Brangäne and Isolde sleeping on a bed in the after cabin (under the raised wing). The set is a fallen angel, prone, head in hands, with one wing down and one wing up, a space on its back for a walkway, under the down wing for a doorway. The prone head acts as a sort of high desk useful for the potion scene, the tail feathers provide a set of stepped seating platforms and under the raised wing is a useful, sloping, bed-like area for moments of repose. The whole thing turns on a pivot so that we get different aspects, and also slow rotation (so that Tristan and Isolde can discreetly disappear under the lower wing after O sink hernieder in Act II) and fast rotation just before that, at Tristan's entry.

The Personenregie is straightforward; everyone acts out exactly what you'd expect from the intrinsic drama. Of note is that during the build-up to the potion taking Tristan and Isolde look at each other longingly and get very close almost embracing each other, clearly unable to articulate their love until the potion liberates them.

– 21 – Seiffert's Tristan is big, often (but not always) loud. He has all the notes and can sing the role right to the end without tiring at all. Act III was very dramatic and forceful, perhaps too much so for someone so “sick”. He looks old for the role now, especially against Pape's King Marke, but that isn't a game changer. He is a big man and not very agile or physically mobile, so some of the challenges of the set were noticeable for him, and compared to Meier his acting is unsophisticated, but not completely clunky. They worked fairly well together, but I think a more introspective Tristan, rather than this bluff hero, would work better against her Isolde.

Gubanova sang Brangäne very well but not in any particularly striking way. Her role is played as you would expect: no frills and no “take” on it, and she is a very dependable if somewhat undemonstrative singer. I wasn't struck by her long solos in Act II and, having seen Connelly recently, this was pale by comparison. Likewise and somewhat surprisingly, Roman Trekel's Kurwenal was distinctly inferior to Iain Paterson's at the Royal Opera House (an exceptional Kurwenal in any company). Trekel simply doesn't have the voice for this and he seemed the most unnerved by the set. I have seen Rene Pape sing King Marke on a few occasions and he brings gorgeous tone and legato to the monologue. Having seen and heard John Tomlinson recently I was of course struck by the beauty of Pape's singing, and began to miss Sir John’s agony. (Although the critics scorned his voice, there was no doubt that the drama was intensified in the extremity of his distress by the degree of wear in his voice, and JT seemed to be OK with that.) Suddenly Pape hit the spot and I was completely overwhelmed by the emotional truth of his singing. As with his Gurnemanz at the Met two seasons ago, it was a performance of great stature. The only small reservation was the incongruity of the physical/age relationship of him and Seiffert's Tristan. – 22 – But the reason for going was to hear Waltraud Meier's Isolde once again. It was with some trepidation because it is now over ten years since I first heard her in the role, and she withdrew from performances in Berlin a year or so ago, but it was also with some determination because of all the Isoldes I have heard, she has been the one who for me “becomes” Isolde, combines the blazing fury of Act I with the seductive beauty of Act II and transcendence for Act III. She still looks good, moves well, and her acting is apposite and riveting. At the start of Act I she took a little time to settle, with some problems at the top (she over-reached once or twice), and surprisingly a lack of power at the bottom. Her passagio has for some time been marked by a tendency to swallow the sound a little, and this was more marked, but as Act I progressed all these things became less noticeable. She knows she can hit the top notes but they are mostly shorter than before so that she husbands her resources for the long sustained high notes she must sing. It would be wrong not to notice that her formidable technique was fully employed fielding a voice that is no longer young, but for much of the evening, her artistry captured the attention away from the technical effort. She has always been noted for the intelligence of her portrayals and the use of the wide range of colours in her voice to good effect. This she still can do, and boy can she do it! In Act I her fury and her determination were strongly shown with incisive and searing singing in all the right places, and a vengeful curse. Act II brought the younger, playful, sweeter sound to the fore and there was less trouble at the top – as though she had mentally shifted the tessitura of her voice. There were times when, in the duets her tendency to use a wider dynamic range than Seiffert does in combination with the slight preference for the orchestra that the Schiller Theatre has, her voice slipped out of earshot momentarily, but either Barenboim or she adjusted and it didn't last. There were other times when the full laser-like power of her voice was deployed to great effect. There was a stupendous moment in Act I when she hurled out a furious note which shot past my right ear and hit the back wall and, I imagine, left a dent. I can remember other occasions when I have heard her do that (Sieglinde in London with Domingo for instance) making the hair on the back of one's neck stand up. She is still agile and physically able to portray an amorous woman, important in a production like this one which requires a lot of movement. Her responses to the dramatic situation when she is not singing have always been one of her hallmarks: she is moving and acting still, truthfully, but not in any way distracting from the person singing (this has been one of her hallmarks in Act III of Parsifal , for instance) and from the moment Marke appears and Isolde has little more to sing for the rest of the Act she remained completely immersed in the drama. The way she keeps or breaks eye contact, for instance; the way and extent her body leans towards or away from the other characters, the intensity of her posture are always part of the whole performance. At the end of Act III as Marke then Brangäne speak to her and she is already separating herself, she moved slowly off the set toward the front of the stage, eyes fixed on something way in front of her as though being drawn by it. Physically she was transcendent, and at the end turned away from whatever had fixed her gaze as though it were too bright or too painful, putting her hand up to shield her eyes, but unable completely to look away, and fell lifeless. It might have been melodramatic but it wasn't. By some marvel it seemed completely real. Vocally there was

– 23 – a distinct problem at the start of the Liebestod . She over-reached at the top, as if she knew she had to think “high”, but again within half a minute she was back on track and it unfolded in an arc of increasing intensity, searing beauty, with all the climactic sustained notes bang on and totally “right”. It was truly amazing, a real corker. The audience was almost stunned and the applause grew slowly until it thundered out as she came out in front of the curtain. At the start, the man sitting next to me asked my opinion. It was his first Tristan. I ventured that I was glad I had got to hear Waltraud Meier one more time, but that it would probably be my last. At the curtain calls, Flimm, the Intendant of the Staatsoper, came on with flowers and holding a microphone; I said to my companion, “This must have been her last Isolde”. Indeed, it turned out it was her last Isolde, at least in Berlin. I imagine she will save her very last for Munich. Perhaps some of what we heard were the plusses and minuses of such a significant occasion. Flimm awarded her honorary membership of the Staatsoper. Barenboim said something really telling: not only had she sung Isolde for more than 20 years, but she didn't just sing Isolde; she was Isolde. My thoughts completely.

A TALK ON THE RAKE’S PROGRESS St Botolph’s Church Hall, 12 th February 2015 Katie Barnes This occasion was a ‘first’ for the Wagner Society: a joint meeting with Bury Court Opera in advance of their production of The Rake’s Progress at which not a note of Wagner was heard, but we learned much about Stravinsky's only full-length opera and heard musical examples performed by three members of the BCO cast, two of whom are winners of the Wagner Society's Singing Competition. Dr Harriet Boyd-Bennett launched the evening with a highly informative illustrated lecture on the opera, including its place in Stravinsky's career, the circumstances of its composition and its premiere in Venice in 1951, the critical response, and the many composers it references, notably Mozart, Monteverdi, and, yes, Wagner. Generous musical extracts from the opera were accompanied by the ever-wonderful Kelvin Lim. Andrew Dickinson began with Tom Rakewell's opening aria, Here I stand , beautifully sung, full of easy, insolent charm, with every word as clear as a bell. Joanna Foote (the cover for Anne Trulove) followed with a magnificent account of the huge scena No word from Tom , crowned with a creditable top C. They united for the Act II Scene 1 trio, for which they were joined by Rhonda Browne as Baba the Turk. Of course Browne promptly stole the show, glaring balefully from the sidelines while the parted lovers sang their regretful duet and punctuating it with her sharp interjections. Her tour de force was her patter-aria, beautifully articulated and bubbling with wit and good humour which darkened as Rakewell cruelly rejected her. The sight of that expressive countenance crumpling into tears, then hardening into rage as she bore down on the terrified Rakewell, was a joy. It seemed so very right to hear Stravinsky's sharp, spiky evocation of musical baroque in the 18 th Century architectural gem that is St Botolph's. I felt that the music had come home.

– 24 – ORCHESTRAL HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE RING Simón Bolivár Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, Royal Festival Hall, 8 th Jan 2015 Katie Barnes Attending a concert by the Bolivárs is an experience like no other in classical music. While most professional orchestras go about their work with becoming gravity, these young players, aged between 15 and 30, radiate an excitement and enthusiasm which sweeps the audience along with them. The concert followed a powerful if idiosyncratic rendition of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with a selection of highlights from The Ring , for which their already substantial numbers expanded to a gargantuan size which would have gladdened the Master's heart. I suspected that one of conductor Gustavo Dudamel's motives for including Wagner in his programme was that it enabled him to include as many players as humanly possible. But while the Bolivárs' exuberance is one of their chief attractions, it can also blind one to their technical failings. At the time, I, and the rest of the audience, were justifiably overcome by their sheer joy in performing, but listening to the concert again on Classic FM the following week I was able to take a more balanced view. What was apparent, even on the night, was that the Ring extracts were not uniformly successful and might have been better performed in a different order, in addition to which there was a loss of continuity due to the stage waits between each selection. The first piece, the entry of the Gods into Valhalla, sounded thin without any singers. There was no indication of Froh's, Wotan's or Fricka's vocal lines and Loge's solo was omitted altogether, but mournful woodwind articulated the Rhinedaughters' laments evocatively and the piece came together with the Gods' final procession over the rainbow bridge, although even this had more of bombast than radiance – not altogether inappropriate when one considers what is to follow. For those who know their Wagner, it was a jolt to be taken straight from Rheingold into the traditional Götterdämmerung sequence of Dawn – Rhine Journey – Funeral March, but it provided an interesting opportunity to compare the false dawn in the fourth opera with that which ends the first. Again, the overall impression was of surface glitter rather than depth, succeeded by a Rhine in full, glorious spate and a Funeral March in which the great double-beats hammered home with shocking, unforgettable force, already the end of the world rather than of a single man. Having just said such a massive farewell to Siegfried, it was another aural shock to be taken back to his youthful musings in the Forest Murmurs, but this proved to be the best part of the programme, played with a sweetness and tenderness which proved that the Bolivárs do have a dynamic other than loud and very loud. The rustling strings were truly beautiful and the work from the wind section was exquisite, especially David Medina's gravely lovely clarinet and flautist Katherine Rivas' delightful Woodbird chirrupings. After that it was back to bombast with the Ride of the Valkyries, which finished the selection in roaring, rousing style, sounding, with these huge forces, more like eight hundred Valkyries rather than a mere eight. Although it gave us a suitably upbeat ending, I felt that it would have been more coherent to play the pieces in chronological order and to hire a soprano to finish the show with the Immolation. Much to the delight of the audience, we were granted an encore, a lushly sumptuous Liebestod which felt as though we were slowly drowning in liquid gold. It was an experience of Klimt-like decadence.

– 25 – A VERY BRITISH MASTERSINGERS English National Opera, London Coliseum: 14, 18, 21 & 25 February + 3 March 2015 Katie Barnes Photography: Catherine Ashmore, English National Opera It is a truth universally acknowledged that when ENO has its back to the wall it serves up a belter. Mastersingers is very deeply written into the company's DNA: the triumphant 1968 production brought them to the Coliseum, and now, amid the current crisis, it is the opera which demonstrates why they must stay there. Richard Jones' 2012 production for WNO transfers amazingly well to its larger London quarters, creating a spectacle so huge that it seems ready to explode clean out of the theatre. Among the more sinister suggestions which have been floated lately, is that the company should disband its chorus and orchestra, and hire-in performers as required. The fools! Does anyone seriously think that a ‘scratch’ orchestra could be made into the organic whole which Edward Gardner has made of his experienced band of players, who know him and each other so well that they seem almost to think as one? This is a most majestic Mastersingers , if at times a little too maestoso : at my first performance, Act III lasted nearly 2¼ hours and the final scene dragged just where it needed to move on, but a fortnight later Gardner had taken 20 minutes from the overall running time, making the evening infinitely tighter and fleeter. The sound in the Prelude is overwhelmingly lush, with wave after wave pouring over the audience like a flood tide; the sounds of the summer night are drenched in musical perfume and the sense of anticipation in the Act III interlude, with trumpeters and drummers craftily placed around the theatre, is thrilling. I have seldom if ever heard the ENO chorus sound better, expanded to a massive 90 singers with the 43 permanent members as its core. The emotional and vocal power of “ Wach’auf ” blows us away. This production is a triumphant vindication of the company's much-criticised policy of singing in English. The Jameson translation has been persuasively revised by chorus master Martin FitzPatrick, with additional work on Sachs' role by Iain Paterson. The majority of the cast enunciate it with admirable clarity and the gains in communication are immediate and obvious. Like most composers, Wagner wrote his operas to be heard in the vernacular. It is refreshing to find that Jones has no truck with assertions that this opera is about proto-Nazism. For him, this is, first and last, a homage to German art, and the point is made with the very first note of the overture, when the curtain rises upon an act-drop covered with the portraits of 103 German and German-speaking artistic heroes, although Wagner himself is a notable absentee. I especially like the inclusion of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf as the Marschallin, who, like Sachs, generously relinquishes a younger beloved to their proper partner, and of Lotte Lehmann, a pupil of Mathilde Mallinger, the first Eva. It's a pity that the sight of this splendid cloth distracts the audience from hearing the Prelude: I found myself so busy identifying faces that I was missing the music, so I ended up listening with my eyes shut. This visual theme returns hours later in the Finale, during which each member of the cast in turn holds up a portrait of someone on the frontcloth, with Sachs, holding a portrait of the historic Hans Sachs (who doesn't feature on the cloth) the last of all. I had to read the programme note to understand that the costuming is a mixture of Victorian and pseudo-Renaissance because the production is set in a Victorian Nuremberg – 26 – hankering for past glories. Having absorbed that, I could appreciate the flamboyance of Buki Shiff's brocade costumes, with the Meisters' identical red and gold robes as their leitmotif, which explode via a phantasmagoria of nightwear for the riot into colourful cod- Renaissance finery in the last scene, where the Masters stand out in their black frockcoats. Jones and set designer Paul Steinberg use the width and depth of the vast Coliseum stage to their fullest extent, expanding from the green box of Act I to the Act II street, where Pogner's dwelling resembles the Dürerhaus and Sachs' shop looks like a green clapboard cricket pavilion, with the elder and linden cheekily suggested by the brocade patterns of the roofs. The riot appears under-staged, which I think is inevitable given that WNO's and ENO's budgets do not run to extras or acrobats, and the chorus, quite rightly, concentrate on singing one of the hardest pieces in the choral repertoire very well indeed. Attention is focused on the scuffling Masters – the sight of Kothner, wearing what appears to be an enormous Babygro, sliding helplessly along the floor as he tries to hold back the crowd single-handed, will stay long in my memory – and on the fight between David and Beckmesser, complete with a Charley's Aunt (“still running”)-style chase three times around and behind the houses. These spare sets are a beautiful contrast to the realistic, cluttered intimacy and captivating detail of Sachs' bachelor dwelling, a workshop, living room and library all rolled into one, complete with a rudimentary kitchen next to the piano. Poignantly, there are several pictures of Sachs' wife and children, together with a few toys, and a handsome framed painting of Tristan and Isolde hangs above a window. In the final scene, a green, tiered stand not only displays the chorus, in their rich costumes, to the best advantage but projects their colossal sound most magnificently. As at the Royal Opera House, the dance is not performed by a few extras but becomes a communal celebration culminating in a wild farandole, led by David, Magdalene and the apprentices. Jones is a master at developing the characters and their relationships. I did not see the production with WNO (Gerald Mallon and Richard Miles reviewed it in WN 199), although I saw it, semi-staged, at the Proms. He has clearly completely rethought it for the ENO cast, who, with only three exceptions, are entirely new to their roles. Every moment, every look and gesture illuminates our understanding of the even the most minor characters. Of recent years ENO has shown a regrettable tendency to engage foreign performers at the expense of native talent, so it is a matter of considerable national pride that, with one major and two minor exceptions, the cast is homegrown. When Iain Paterson sang Amfortas for ENO in 2011, I stuck my neck out and prophesied that he would be a fine Sachs one day. It is so gratifying to be proved right. He inhabits the role so completely that it seems impossible that these are his first full performances. Early in the run he was still learning how to pace himself. In an article in The Guardian , he stated that he had not sung through the opera with orchestra until the dress rehearsal and I felt that he was soft-pedalling in the first two Acts to save himself for Act III. Greater experience brought greater confidence, and in later performances he had power to spare. His voice has a higher timbre than we have been accustomed to in this role in recent years and it caresses the music with a sound reminiscent of a young Norman Bailey. – 27 – In Act I his Sachs is a laid-back man who, like Walther, clearly has little time for all the Masters' formal flummery, immediately establishing a link between the two. He is at ease with his colleagues (I love his little mimed conversation with Moser over the latter's new shoes) and amused by Beckmesser's needle-pricks. While the other Masters sit back and retreat into themselves to listen to the Trial Song, Sachs sits forward in his seat, drinking it all in. But in Act II the Fliedermonolog shows us how deeply Walther's song has disturbed him, how his poetic genius, allied as it is to an intense insight of all the people who surround him, mercilessly subjects him to dizzying emotional highs and lows. The atmosphere between him and Eva positively crackles with what he cannot say and he shrinks from her affectionate touch. He is wounded by her unthinking cruelty, but his spirits rise with his gloriously mischievous taunting of Beckmesser (his dance with the shoes is a sublime moment, pricelessly funny). But at the start of Act III he awakens in a black pit of depression, his face a mask of bleak pain. We only have to see how he clasps his pillow in his arms, to understand the cause of a despair so intense that at one point he rushes out, barefoot, into the street. During the scene with David he is emotionally miles away from the boy. He begins the Wahnmonolog in deepest depression, but it is wonderful to see how the dawning optimism of the music enables him to control the beast at last, and how, in the scene with Walther, the return to the ordinary routine of life, preparing a simple breakfast and burning himself on the coffee pot, followed by the thrill of creation as he writes the song down, draws him back from the brink. That scene becomes the heart of the opera: I have never seen a Sachs and Walther bond so deeply, and I love the idea of Sachs making Walther lie down on a couch (Freud's picture is on the frontcloth) to re-create the environment in which he experienced his dream. Both Walther and David represent aspects of Sachs' younger self, and both physically resemble him. Emotionally and spiritually, Walther is his son, but although Sachs and David usually seem close, here I felt that Sachs doesn't even particularly like his bolshy apprentice, maybe because David is just too like him in his own apprentice days. But Sachs' anger at discovering Beckmesser's theft darkens his mood again, Eva's blundering attempts to make amends inevitably trigger an explosion, and in the wake of his König Marke-like renunciation he has to wipe away a furtive tear. Again, art becomes his saving grace. I love the moment when he leaps over a stool like a mountain goat to reach his writing table to take down the last verse, and the christening, the Quintet and the crowd's acclaim on the Festwiese all help to heal him. He cannot watch while Beckmesser ruins the song, perhaps feeling guilty for what he has done, and he has to walk away as Eva crowns Walther. Even when he conquers his demons, they are never far away. What a performance. What a debut. What a star! Gwyn Hughes Jones, long known for his interpretations of Italian roles, has successfully made the transition to Wagner. There is a lovely relaxed, Mediterranean sound to his voice, which may not be exactly what one expects in a Walther but complements the music beautifully. All his music is sung expansively, easily, lyrically. I would love to hear him sing Lohengrin (is it too late for ENO to dust off Tim Albery's lovely, unrevived production for him?). This is a maturer Walther than usual, not an angry youth but a man who knows his worth. Even so, we see him grow up in the course of the opera: I particularly like his shocked – 28 – response in Act III to the discovery that Sachs is his rival. The Walther of Act I might have punched Sachs on the nose, but he has learned patience and trust, and waits, watching closely, while Sachs and Eva resolve their tangled relationship. When he steps forward and takes Eva's hand, it is with the knowledge that he has Sachs' blessing. Even then he panics and would bolt when faced with the crowd waiting to hear him sing, but David very firmly brings him back, and it is that same Sachs-like impulse to run which makes him initially so ungraciously reject the offer to become a Master. Not the least of the evening's pleasures was the joy of seeing Rachel Nicholls in her first major Wagnerian role in London. The only company debutant in the cast, I felt that, like Paterson, she needed the experience of the first few performances to gauge how best to pitch that amazing voice to the house. At first she perhaps pulled her punch too much, but once her voice had settled, phrase after phrase flashed out like gleaming swords. It is surprising to hear such a Brünnhilde-like attack in this role (Evas of the past have often been Sieglindes or Marschallins), and I think that in the longer term, Valkyries and Irish princesses may feature more in her regular repertoire than Nuremberger maidens. Despite an unflattering costume (why was she not allowed a new dress as well as clumpy gold shoes for Act III?) she looks unbelievably youthful and plays the loving, heedless girl with great understanding. She makes us see how the stress of her situation makes Eva so ruthlessly manipulative in Act II, but she is too young and inexperienced to realise how deeply she hurts Sachs. When she enters ready to elope, the way she stands gazing at Sachs' shop, silently biding him farewell, shows how much she is still torn between her two men. In Act III she desperately tries to make amends by hugging Sachs over and over again, not realising how hard she makes it for him until he explodes, and then, like him, she is so distraught that she nearly runs out of the shop. Sitting at his feet on an old box as he tells her of Tristan and Isolde, she looks just like a child. When Andrew Shore first sang Beckmesser in an Edinburgh Festival concert in 2006 he emphasised the man's vindictiveness. Now, as I expected then, he has deepened and refined his characterisation into the most sympathetic interpretation of the role I have seen. He is a past master at bringing out the humanity and pathos of his comic creations: this Mastersingers is as much Beckmesser's tragedy as Walther's triumph. On one level, this is a brilliant comic study of a fussy, pompous bureaucrat whose dignity is a natural magnet to life's banana skins. On another, this is an infinitely touching portrayal of a sad, lonely, vulnerable middle-aged man driven to disaster by a hopeless love – 29 – which is his own personal Wahn . Each outburst of bad temper is followed by a moment of very private anguish and rage with himself which ends up making him angrier than ever. His vulnerability is highlighted at the end of Act II when the crowd flees to leave him alone onstage, every stitch of his clothing torn from him in the fight, his modesty protected only by his lute, while, deep in shock, he meaninglessly mouths the words of his song. By the final scene, I found myself caring so deeply for Beckmesser that I crossed my fingers for him before his mangling of the Prize Song (beautifully set up by his pompous pre-song routine of breath fresheners and inhalations) and even shed a tear over his failure. It is heartwarming to see him return in the finale, back in the fold. As one expects from this great artist, his voice moulds the music beautifully – Beckmesser is a Mastersinger, and his music must be sung, not barked – and every single word is perfectly audible. He has a wonderful rapport with Paterson and his comic timing is perfection, especially in the Act III pantomime which, as someone once said of Geraint Evans, is a cross between Chaplin and Chaliapin. James Cresswell, the only non-Brit among the leads, justifies his importation with his glorious singing of Pogner, a river of living gold straight from the goldsmith's workshop which makes one regret that the character “fades out” in the middle of the opera. Jones stresses the man's vanity: the role's key moment is his complacent anticipation of the crowd's acclaim on the morrow, just before he sees Eva's distress and realises, too late, what he has done. Nicky Spence has for some time been one of ENO's “sleepers”, a singer whom the company has backed highly but has rarely been allowed substantial roles. Now he emerges as a fully-formed tenor, a big, shaggy, boisterous, enormously likeable David whose ringing voice bids fair to challenge his Walther and physically is a perfect younger edition of his master, down to the unruly mane of hair. Assisted rather than hindered by Jones' prop-heavy direction of the scene, he makes his recitation of the rules a highlight of Act I. Madeline Shaw's youthful Magdalene, rich-toned, high-spirited, perceptive in her understanding of the lovers' predicament, is a sheer delight. It says much for the strength of the casting that the lesser Masters include a Mozart and a Rossini Figaro, an Alberich, a Mime, a King Priam, a Rakewell, a Captain Vere, a Don Basilio and a Don Ottavio. David Curry's youthful, earnest, engaging Kothner, richly sung, leads the pack, seconded by Peter Van Hulle's astute Vogelgesang (his banjo-eyed grin on hearing the third verse of “ Am stillen Herd ”, like a kid who has only just discovered the existence of sweetshops, is a masterpiece) and Quentin Hayes' stolid Nachtigall. Roderick Earle's “oldest inhabitant” Foltz, an evilly shameless piece of character acting, nearly steals the show, and Richard Roberts' Zorn radiates a joy which lights up every scene in which he appears. Timothy Robinson's benign Eisslinger, with his sweet smile, Stephen Rooke's elegant, aristocratic Moser and Jonathan Lemalu's Schwarz, bursting with personality, complete the company. Nicholas Crawley's deep tones complement the Nightwatchman's eerie appearance, a Bosch-like figure in black houppelande with platform boots, who stalks the stage like a memento mori . The Masters are beautifully characterised as individuals and as a homogenous mass, bearing down upon Walther as Kothner questions him and surrounding him while Kothner recites the Tabulatur, silently, gleefully mouthing every word. The opera closes with Sachs (and through him, Wagner's) reminder of the importance of art. This stunning, life-enhancing evening reminds us of the importance of the company performing it. To paraphrase tonight’s translation, “Do not despise your ENO, but honour well their art”. – 30 – THE CARDIFF EISTEDDFOD COMES TO TOWN The Mastersingers of Nuremberg at English National Opera, 14 th February 2015 Hilary Reid Evans Richard Jones’ much praised 2010 Welsh National Opera production has had a further airing at ENO, this time in English rather than the German. And therein lies the rub. A fellow reviewer has written that this is a triumph, against which only the most niggling of reservations can be set. The rub for me is the blindingly obvious. Much as one wishes to be nice to the poor beleaguered souls of ENO, as I am sure we all know, Wagner wrote his own libretti. The words and music are inextricably bound up together. His work therefore simply does not sound right in English, or any language other than German and, despite every effort to rhyme or scan, this translation is a forced fit with much of the delicacy of meaning – and some of the musical puns – irrevocably lost. That aside, this, Wagner’s comedy of boy meets girl, boy gets girl after five and a half hours of hard graft translates extraordinarily well to the Coliseum stage. For the first time in many a production of Meistersinger/Mastersingers I did not find myself sneaking a look at my watch to work out how long it might be to the next interval. All the more noteworthy since this is a triple first production. Remarkably, it is the first production of the opera at the Coliseum, has Edward Gardner, the ENO’s outgoing music director, conducting his first Mastersingers with great subtlety and finally has Iain Paterson in his first role as Hans Sachs, singing with beautifully rounded tones and some fine acting, filling out the depths of this complex character with subtlety and apparent ease. (If one more persons says “Ah, but you should have seen Terfel in the original”, I fear I may scream). A second niggling reservation is that Gwyn Hughes Jones as the young knight Walther looks considerably older than Iain Paterson as Sachs. Would it have hurt to dye Walther’s beard? It makes it all the more difficult to understand Sachs’ sacrifice of his love for Eva on the basis of his maturity when he looks so youthful and active. But this is scratching at the edges of a production that includes some wonderful vocal and visual fireworks. Andrew Shore is for example simply magnificent as Beckmesser, bringing exemplary comic timing, pathos and humanity to a role that is so often portrayed as arrogant or simply self-deluded. For once, in Hughes Jones’ portrayal of Walther, one really hears the way in which the prize song builds and builds from its first entry in Sachs’ study to its thrilling conclusion in the finale’s Eisteddfod. Rachel Nicholls as Eva is warm, feisty and brings great delicacy of tone to the role, vocally a fine match for Hughes Jones’ Walther. My third niggle is however reserved for the costume designer, Buki Shiff. Nicholls is not by any means the largest of Wagnerian sopranos, so why then clothe her throughout in what looks like an ill-fitting and drab Laura Ashley outfit from the 1960s? She is the beautiful young daughter of a rich jeweller, so let her look as well as sound the part, please. My final niggle is a very minor one but one that almost drove me to distraction. Who were all the German cultural icons portrayed on the front cloth collage? Some were blindingly obvious, some not, so would it have hurt to have a key or guide? The allusion to Wagner’s unfounded fear (that German culture was in terminal decline and could only be saved by a resurgence of German values) is plain but did rather turn the intervals into a game of Where’s Wally? So, a few niggling but real reservations about a wonderful, although not perfectly authentic, Meistersinger experience. Long may the ENO survive.

– 31 – THE DUTCHMAN FLIES AGAIN Der fliegende Holländer : Royal Opera House, 5 th February 2015 Katie Barnes Photography: Clive Barda, Royal Opera House

When Tim Albery's 2009 production was last revived in 2011 the absence of Bryn Terfel left a hole at the centre of the proceedings which, coupled with slow-paced conducting and careless direction, robbed the show of much of its impact. This time, Terfel's return, with an otherwise new cast and a magnificent conductor, galvanised the production into a return to its former splendour. This was a riveting evening. Much of its success was due to the superlative Andris Nelsons, whose conducting infused the score with gossamer delicacy as well as the expected stunning power, giving us a timely reminder that this opera was written late in the Romantic era which gave rise to Der Freischütz and Giselle . In the Prelude surging, storm-tossed fortissimi alternated with exquisitely tender harps, and there was an almost Italianate restfulness and sensuousness in the sorrowful refrains to Senta's Ballad. Fierce though the musical sea-spray sounded, one felt that the singers were comfortable with everything which Nelsons did, and that in turn meant that his audience was relaxed and receptive. The timing of the performance was about the same as in 2011, but it never dragged and the time sped by. I have to hope that the management were waiting in the wings after this first night, to offer him a contract for a return visit. We need to hear him again, preferably in more Wagner. Five years on, Terfel's interpretation of this, one of his signature roles, has intensifed and matured. In 2009 my overall impression was one of blazing magnificence. Now, some of that golden glory has been dimmed by the bleakness of the Dutchman’s despair, scarcely illumined by his hope of redemption through Senta’s love. His habitual vocal hugeness was tempered by moving, tender legato and his portrayal has become fuller and deeper. Where before, the Dutchman was grimly austere and remote, now he was more human, and we saw straight into his soul. The vulnerability revealed by his relationship with Senta touched the heart.

– 32 – Adrienne Pieczonka, whose Sieglinde was the heroine of the 2006 Bayreuth Ring , made a notable Senta. Less febrile but vocally more even than her predecessor, she was utterly convincing in her portrayal of the hideous, serene logic of obsessiveness: the only person to whom she could relate was the Dutchman, with Daland and Erik barely getting a look-in. Her creamy soprano sounded utterly secure throughout the role’s cruelly testing range, even in the danger spots in the Ballad.

Some might have found Michael König’s Erik dull, but I found his interpretation very interesting. Senta did not need to fantasise about a pale man while this grim, piercing-eyed huntsman sat gazing intently at her. But although he could almost have been her imaginary hero made flesh, with an obsession equal to her own, she could not respond to him and could only give him an unwanted pity. Her fantasy was easier for her to handle than stark reality. He sang Erik’s tricky music with full, lovely tone and no hint of strain or uneasiness. Peter Rose’s physically and vocally rounded Daland downplayed the role’s darker aspects in favour of light relief. His pop-eyed reaction when the Dutchman asked for Senta’s hand brought laughter from the audience, and his Act II aria was a delight. The way he tried to leave the lovers alone together but could not quite bring himself to go, was both psychologically acute and very amusing. Catherine Wyn-Rogers’ Erda-rich voice made her luxury casting for Mary, and the versatile Ed Lyon, taking a night off from L’Ormindo at Shakespeare’s Globe, contrasted the lyrical charm of his aria with a rambunctious contribution to the shipboard party. Is there another tenor who can successfully alternate Cavalli with Wagner? The production, so lacklustre in 2011, came up sharp and fresh. It may be dark and drab, but its very spareness concentrates the audience’s minds on the music drama, and its coups de theatre were as potent as ever. Once again my hair stood on end when the shadow of the Dutchman’s vast ship slowly engulfed the stage and when the stage was filled by his crew, a multitude of ghostly Doppelgängers of their captain, and the mighty sound of the double chorus bade fair to blow the ship away. This Holländer was flying high. – 33 – I SEE NO SHIPS Der fliegende Holländer : Royal Opera House, 9 th February 2015 Hilary Reid Evans The economics of running an opera house means, of course, that revivals are a necessity. In the case of this, the second re-run of the 2009 production, there has been some highly welcome fine-tuning. Unfortunately the overly lengthy and somewhat nausea inducing “wind and rain” (or possibly sturm und drang ) effect during the overture remains, as does the sad spectre of Senta entering with a model ship under her arm. I suppose that director Tim Albery wishes to remind us, in this otherwise somewhat shipless opera, it is indeed a tale of the sea. As on previous occasions, Bryn Terfel as the eponymous Dutchman paints a somewhat lugubrious and surprisingly cuddly portrait of the man condemned to roam the seas until redeemed by the love of a faithful woman. Others speak of the menace the role brings, yet for me the overwhelming emotion conveyed by Terfel was of a weary sadness. Meanwhile, Senta (Adrianne Pieczonka), despite some vocal fireworks, remains a mystery: is she truly besotted with the Dutchman or does she see him merely as a means of escape from her money-grabbing father and her tedious boyfriend? This production does not help us. Whereas in Wagner’s original Dresden production Senta sacrifices herself for the Dutchman, thus freeing him and allowing them both to ascend to heaven, in this we are left with Senta staring somewhat confusedly at her father and erstwhile boyfriend. The net effect left this audience member scratching her head and wondering why the obvious message of the opera – redemption through love – had been removed, or at least obfuscated. Peter Rose performs well as Daland, however Michael König as Erik disappoints, his characterisation at least providing one with the feeling that Senta might be better served sailing the perpetual seas than spending the rest of her life with such a tedious spouse. Ed Lyon shone as the Steersman. One highlight of the performance was an exuberant Act III sailor’s party, complete with a Singing in the Rain dancing in the water pastiche, extraordinarily well staged and sung. I’ve said it before and say it again: the Opera House chorus are heroes, each and every one. On this occasion however it was the male chorus that won the warmest plaudits, with the returning sailors certainly out-singing their sewing machine bound dames. Meanwhile, the Opera House orchestra under the baton of Andris Nelsons performs what is for them a somewhat patchy job, with the music drawn out in places, elided in others. Nevertheless, one senses in this production the greatness that is to come in Wagner’s later operas. There are the leitmotifs in the overture, loud and clear, with the score providing a bridge (forgive the pun) between Wagner’s early Italianate and his later master- works. Despite the stellar cast this production presents us with an unsatisfactory dramatic, if not musical experience, the characters’ motivations unclear, Wagner’s themes concealed. And not even a fully-fledged ship in view.

– 34 – HANS SACHS SPEAKS Iain Paterson interviewed by Andrea Buchanan, Gresham Centre: 5 th March 2015 Katie Barnes

Photo: Richard Carter Iain Paterson, ENO's glorious Sachs, kindly paused on his Himalayan ascent through Wagner's bass-baritone roles to speak to the Society. Anyone who read his recent article in The Guardian and his blog, ayepatz.com, will know how appropriate it is for him to play the cobbler-poet. He is not only a remarkable singer and actor but also one of the most articulate performers writing today about the pain, pleasure and (sometimes) hilarity of the business of singing. He acknowledged his debt to the great singers who have informed his work, above all “my hero” Sir John Tomlinson, “a bottomless well of good advice” who has encouraged and mentored him throughout his career. They first met while he was in the Opera North chorus (where his first solo role was Biterolf!). Inspired by Sir John to strike out and gain stage experience, he joined ENO, where he first sang Fasolt and Gunther. It was as a direct result of Sir John's advice while they were singing at the Met in 2009 to “look at Wotan and Sachs” that he is now singing the former in Houston and Leipzig and the latter at ENO, with his Bayreuth debut as Kurwenal this summer. He regaled us with tales about productions he has enjoyed or disliked – an incomprehensible “Kupfer-derived” Peter Grimes in Vienna made him “overact for Scotland” and he nearly walked out of a Figaro which was only 10% produced halfway through the rehearsal period. As Gunther he has played golf onstage in Munich, and in Paris he had to sing while pushing his Hagen, the hefty Hans-Peter König (who had only arrived to rehearse shortly before the premiere), around the stage in a wheelchair.

– 35 – He enjoyed the “Machine Ring ” at the Met, mainly because he was one of the few singers whom Lepage actually directed, but preferred the Schenck production. As “a great believer in opera as the ultimate team game”, he loves Richard Jones' Mastersingers , “a true ensemble piece, at its best when there isn't a star”. He sees it as a "wonderfully mischievous piece” with Sachs taking a dark joy in bursting everybody's bubble. He told us about the rehearsal process for Mastersingers and how the characters were worked out: he talked a lot with Jones about Sachs' relationship with Beckmesser and worked out their back story. He is convinced that they had been great friends in the past – why else would Beckmesser waltz into the shop as though he has been there hundreds of times? And Beckmesser may even have been Sachs' best man, but something went wrong between them after Sachs' wife died. Jones freely admitted that Beckmesser is his favourite character and would act out the role while directing Andrew Shore and giving him “loads of detail”. Paterson feels that Sachs takes Walther to his heart so readily because he had once hoped that Beckmesser would be the one who would challenge and change the Mastersingers' rules, only to be disappointed in finding that Beckmesser was the most hidebound of the lot. But he finds it “absolutely horrible” to hear Beckmesser mangling the Prize Song and noted how Sachs tries to talk him out of using it. He is certain that after the opera ends, Sachs will find Beckmesser drowning his sorrows at the pub and that the two men will be reconciled. Walther's success in the contest will give Sachs a sense of closure and peace. Because the projected new translation arrived a year late, management decided to use the Jameson translation with the rhymes removed. Because Paterson found that this made it harder to learn, Edward Gardner allowed him to restore some of the rhymes, and with Gardner's encouragement he continued and ended up translating most of his role as he was learning it. He enjoyed the challenge and “tried very hard to stick to what Wagner wrote”. Some nuances are harder to convey in English: “ Hatt' einst ein Weib und Kinder genug ” translates as “I once had wife and children enough”, which sounds dismissive, but the German word “genug” has a greater value, signifying that Sachs has survived his loss and will not go down the same road again. Sachs is a father figure to Eva and “of course he's tempted”. He thinks that she feels as he does, and when he finds that she doesn't, he is angry with himself and lashes out at her, but instantly regrets the outburst. He knows that he has to help her, not when she becomes angry with him, but earlier, when he recalls Walther's motif during the Fliedermonolog . This is something that stimulates him more than Eva, and something in him, which died with his wife, comes to life again. He sees Sachs as a man who is “warm, rich and teeming with life”: he has been melancholy since his wife died (Jones suggested in rehearsals that the character is bipolar, which would explain his mood swings between Acts II and III). Perhaps he has not won any contests since then because he has “lost his spark”. He sees himself in Walther, who is inspired by the sight of Eva. Looking to the future, Paterson is heading for his first Walküre Wotan, with the Wanderer to follow. He wants to continue with his non-Wagnerian roles such as Don Giovanni, Jochanaan and Orest, would love to do the Rimsky Boris Godunov and more Verdi, especially King Philip, and hopes to emulate Sir John and still be singing in twenty years time! Whatever direction his future career takes, we must hope that he will return to speak to the Society again some time. In the meantime we can read his blogs, especially his recent, moving tributes to Sir John and the other great Sachses who helped him in advance of his debut in the role.

– 36 – SECRET OPERA: DIE WALKÜRE : AND THE AUDIENCE GOT SMALLER! Eglwys Dewi Sant, Cardiff: 7 th March 2015 Richard and Sylvia Lemon In the January 2015 issue of Wagner News Katie Barnes provided a glowing review ( It’s the Venues that got smaller ) of the New London Opera Players’ performance of scenes from Die Walküre . She concluded with the news that there were plans to perform the complete opera this spring. Well, they did, under their “experimental” wing called Secret Opera. The title is appropriate as the public were virtually unaware of the performances. In a church near the centre of Cardiff we comprised a quarter of the audience for a production with first rate professionals giving their all. The pianist (at a grand piano now) was again Andrew Charity who played brilliantly without the benefit of a page-turner. Whilst the piano can never replicate a full Wagner orchestra, it enabled every nuance of the singing to be crystal-clear. The acoustics of Eglwys Dewi Sant were, from a front row of the pews, excellent; nothing was lost. Staging was as described previously: just a skeletal tree and a couple of chairs (with a table for Act I). A single candle provided the Magic Fire. As for the soloists, it is difficult to criticise. If there was any minor failing it was with Brian Smith Walters’ Siegmund. He has a beautiful voice, but he tired at the end of Act I and slightly scratched some of the high notes. We stress, a minor criticism of an otherwise fine voice. Sieglinde was Cecilia Bailey, radiant in the role. Hunding was again kilted, sung by John Milne at this performance. He has a deep, rich voice and performed with the right feel of menace. Fricka was Joanna Gamble, who suitably cowered Wotan to submission - again, an excellent voice. Wotan was Ian Wilson-Pope: powerful, clear, godlike when necessary but all too human when confronted by Fricka. He suitably melted to Brünnhilde’s plea and the Leb’ wohl sounded as though he wished it! The role of Brünnhilde was split: Patricia Casement-Thomas taking Act II, and Zoe South Act III. Dramatically this did not work as they are very different ladies in both voice and appearance. Patricia has a heroic voice – the young confident Walküre who knows what she must do. Zoe was a more tender, quieter, character. Both were fine and gave committed performances. The Walküren themselves were a superb ensemble, each a worthy soloist. An interesting touch was that when each sang she held up a card with her name on it – the first time we have readily known which of them is which. When Wotan appeared they turned the card round to show a score (presumably the number of fallen heroes they had carried to Walhall). Brünnhilde’s card was blank! As Katie said, the attention to detail in both the clarity of the words and in the acting (essential in close-up like this) was outstanding. We were privileged to attend such an intimate performance. Cecilia Bailey afterwards thanked us for coming. We were trying to thank her! Secret Opera have a high standard and it was good that they came to Wales. We can but wish to see them again. The complete Ring perhaps?

– 37 – WAGNER AND HUMAN SACRIFICE Professor Derek Hughes Andrea Buchanan has kindly asked me to write a brief introduction to the Wagner chapter of my book Culture and Sacrifice: Ritual Death in Literature and Opera (Cambridge, 2007), which studies the treatment of human sacrifice in Western literature from Homer to Margaret Atwood’s novel The Blind Assassin (2000). Although Western societies had given up human sacrifice by the time they started to produce significant literature, fascination with it persisted, both in classical texts (especially of Euripides and Virgil) and in more modern works from the mid 17 th Century onwards. Opera-lovers will be aware of the averted human sacrifices in Idomeneo and in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride (the former, of course, revised by Wagner). They were the tip of the iceberg. Dramas of averted sacrifice crowd the 18 th Century stage, reflecting optimism that rational civilization could shake off the barbarous past. The trend persists at the end of the century and into the next: Peter von Winter’s The Averted Sacrifice (Das unterbrochene Opferfest) (1796), Spontini’s La Vestale (1807) and Fernand Cortez (1809), and Spohr’s Jessonda (1823). By the time of Bellini’s Norma (1831), however, human sacrifice was no longer averted, and Wagner positively celebrates the willing self-immolation of his heroines. When human sacrifice decisively re-entered Western literature, in the 1640s, it reflected a new concern with defining the value of the individual in relation to the total social organism. What is an individual life worth in comparison with the interests of the state? Wagner, however, is less interested in perfecting the status quo than in ending it: female self-immolation repudiates a culture that has evolved exclusively as an expression of male expansionist and acquisitive instincts, to the suppression of the feminine. Senta’s self-sacrifice rescues the Dutchman from such a life; for woman, according to Wagner in Opera and Drama , is hard-wired to self-sacrifice because of her child-bearing role. (Paradoxically, even as Wagner deplores the suppression of the feminine element in culture, he displays a thoroughly man’s-eye view of what it might be). Nevertheless, his concern is powerfully expressed, and it accounts for his fondness for female characters who, for good or ill, have lost the power they had in the past (Ortrud, Brünnhilde, Isolde), and sometimes have literally gone underground (Venus and Erda). Over the millennia, some subordinate questions repeatedly surface in connection with human sacrifice. One is the association between human sacrifice and hunting. Does the ordered ritual of sacrifice contrast with the primitive wildness of the hunt, or are the two profoundly related? The question is still debated by anthropologists, and the association of sacrifice and the hunt is powerfully present in early Greek texts: Agamemnon must sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, because of an impiety committed while hunting. The association is still ever-present in Wagner, while gaining radically new meanings. When, in Die Feen , Arindal first encounters his fairy beloved Ada, he is a hunter and she a doe. At the other end of

– 38 – Wagner’s career, Parsifal first appears to us as a huntsman, but becomes the guardian of Christ’s sacrificial relics. Siegfried dies as the quarry of a hunt; Brünnhilde’s self- immolation ritually transforms the nature of his death. For Wagner, hunts are always bad: they represent a false, essentially masculine turning in man’s social development, to which sacrifice is the opposite pole. For this reason, Erik’s status as a huntsman in Der fliegende Holländer is very important: Senta must choose between the affirmation of self-sacrifice and a life spent skinning her husband’s game. Much is lost by turning Erik into an odd job man or security guard. Wagner also gives special voice to preoccupations that are very much of his age. He is, I think, the first composer to write extensively about the unconscious, and to have his imagination shaped by the geological revolution: to think about geological time, layers, and convulsions (one of which occurs at the end of The Ring ). What happens to the conception of sacrifice when human destiny is governed not by divine plan but by the lifeless and mindless processes or rock and ice? In Religion and Art Wagner reflected (inaccurately) on the frozen mammoth remains in Siberia, and we find their haunting equivalent in characters such as the Dutchman and Kundry, perpetually reliving the same moment of their existence, until released by sacrifice. Ada in Die Feen is actually turned to stone. Venus and Erda lie beneath the rocks, embodying earlier layers of culture, of sexuality, and of the mind. But the earlier layers at times burst into the present. Wagner uses with especial obsessiveness a psychologically charged situation that was a favourite with many Romantic writers: the monstrously or supernaturally disrupted wedding. Weddings are dangerous occasions even in classical tragedy: Iphigenia is lured to the sacrificial altar in Aulis under the pretence that she is to marry Achilles. They are, however, far more dangerous in the 19 th Century. “I shall be with you on your wedding night,” the monster warns Frankenstein. Sure enough, before the wedding can be consummated, he does indeed murder Frankenstein’s new bride, “sacrificed to his insatiate revenge”. A wedding is seen as a perilous rite of passage, at which forbidden forces and desires are especially likely to erupt into the sphere of culture. Variants of the disrupted wedding occur in one Wagner work after another, from his first, abandoned opera Die Hochzeit (The Wedding) , via Lohengrin and Act II of Götterdämmerung , to the interrupted sexual encounters in Klingsor’s garden. The most complex is Tristan , where King Mark’s marriage is invaded by the effects of the love potion, and Tristan and Isolde are in turn interrupted by Mark and his huntsmen. For good or ill, the interruption always brings a conflict between a socially approved, male-managed view of sexuality and a more primordial version. The resolution is always the death of the woman. Other composers of the time also portray female self-immolation: Meyerbeer in L’Africaine for example. No-one else, however, displays Wagner’s intellectual seriousness, or rethinks profound associations (such as that of sacrifice and the hunt) which date back to the Greek tragedians. The self-immolations are scarcely to be imitated, but they deserve to be taken seriously, and modern directors are rarely willing to do this. Wagner conceives them as part of an ancient and intricate web of ideas, which loses its coherence if, for example, Senta simply becomes a case for the Samaritans. Culture and Sacrifice: Ritual Death in Literature and Opera is available from Amazon: £26.99 (paperback) or £51.47 (hardback).

– 39 – BEETHOVEN BY RICHARD WAGNER A new translation by Roger Allen Richard Hyland

What an unexpected book this is! Many pages go by with virtually no mention of Beethoven but a presumption that the reader is familiar with Schopenhauer. When Beethoven takes centre stage, the essay turns into a hagiography of “The Master” who is also referred to as “our saint” whose nature and way of thinking are put forward as exemplary. The work which Wagner treats most closely is the Opus 131 String Quartet but Wagner reacts to it in a very Romantic, subjective way rather than with musical analysis. If the first part of the essay is more about philosophy than music, the concluding pages are quite alarming. Wagner turns his thoughts to a condemnation of French fashion and the malign influence it can have on German women. Throughout the essay Wagner takes side-swipes at many targets but he misses no opportunity to emphasise his dislike of the French, Germany’s enemy of the time. It is rather like the passage in Billy Budd : “Don’t like the French”. It is much more specific than Sachs in Act III of Meistersinger . Wagner is unashamedly triumphalist about the military conquests of the brave German soldiers. His only regret seems to be about the army’s use of frivolous music instead of Beethoven whom he sees as the antithesis of frivolity. With skilful legerdemain Wagner links the success of the German forces with his admiration of Beethoven. I would not recommend this essay to anyone who wishes to extend his knowledge of Beethoven. It is an essay for a scholar who wishes to examine Wagner’s mind, his prejudices and predilections. However, I am full of admiration for the edition. Wagner writes in sentences of Thomas Mann-like length and complexity. The book is set out with Wagner’s text on the left and the English on the right: it is noticeable how the English is considerably shorter than the German. It was a daunting task for any translator but the work has been done beautifully. The English reads so well. Time and again I looked across at the German to be lost in admiration at how felicitously Wagner’s original had been rendered, accurately and idiomatically. Roger Allen’s book is full of helpful notes and comments. It is clearly the work of a most accomplished and devoted expert. The volume is produced immaculately and meticulously.

– 40 – OVER THE MASTER’S SHOULDER Wagner’s Visions: Poetry, Politics and the Psyche in the Operas through Die Walküre by Katharine Syer Book review by Chris Argent For anyone wishing to delve deeply into the influence of the political circumstances of Wagner’s environment in pre-unification Germany, the role of the then current fashionable fascination of the upper reaches of Germanic society with pre-Freudian psychology, and the impact of the portrayal of heroic endeavours on the field of battle, this 213-page book of obvious American provenance provides a multitude of insights as well as displaying a remarkably all-embracing musical scholarship. Although the poesy of Wagner’s compositions is analysed in considerable detail as indeed is their musical genesis, development, configuration, connotations and implications, the author emphasizes the degree to which Politics with a capital P infused and drove his imagination and inspiration. In particular she explores Wagner’s fascination with Theodor Körner, the soldier poet, at a time when the German-speaking peoples (or at least their middle and upper classes) were only too conscious that Germany was but a collection of disparate states. It was Körner‘s poetic tribute to Lützows wilde Jagd (Lützow’s Wild Hunt) the black riders or black hunters representing the voluntary German civilians who allied themselves with the Prussian military fighting with Napoleon, that inspired Weber’s Der Freischütz and clearly resonated with Wagner’s imagination. This perception, coupled perhaps with Wagner’s craving for German unity which underlies much of his output, particularly Die Meistersinger and subliminally Lohengrin , provides a perfectly respectable justification for the “Politics” in the book’s subtitle. Of course, the heading of “Psyche” looms large throughout any analysis of Wagner as composer, philosopher, pamphleteer, proselytiser, writer, lady’s man and petitioner. It is worth establishing that the book provides a forensically detailed musical analysis of a selection of Wagner’s music dramas, the author ferreting out the probable origins of Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Die Walküre , and starting out, perhaps surprisingly, with Die Feen , the opera that the powers that be at Bayreuth seem reluctant to acknowledge, doubtless because the Master himself disowned it. Ms Syer satisfactorily identifies a series of inspirational stimuli on which Wagner rests much of his constructions that include Weber’s Der Freischütz , Gluck’s two Iphigenie operas, and Körner’s Lützows wilde Jagd – a versified story which Weber uses with considerable dramatic effect in the Wolf’s Glen scene. There is however no reference to Wagner’s debt to Beethoven’s Choral Symphony though the author does acknowledge that Beethoven knew Körner and was distressed by the news of his death in 1820 when he was composing the Missa solemnis . She also draws parallel en passant to the complementary nature of Florestan’s aria invoking the victory of light over darkness and the people’s appeal to God in Die Feen to restore the well being of their King Arindal (for, as is well known, he revered the composer from Bonn). Nor indeed does the author mention that Weber’s Oberon also planted seeds within Wagner’s mind that germinated to lead to the characterization of the Dutchman, Wotan and Brünnhilde, but there is doubtless an abundance of other inspirational kernels that cluttered the mental archives of a voracious reader like Wagner.

– 41 – The author starts on her journey of exploration of the selected Wagner operas with a careful dissection of the fairytale opera Die Feen . This proves to be a revelatory exposition in which she demonstrates that Wagner was not only well acquainted with Carlo Gozzi’s La Donna Serpente , but used the story as the basis of his very first opera. In the course of her analyses much is made of “altered states of consciousness” and she demonstrates the psychological power of uniting “poetry and politics, reflection and citation, lyre and sword”. As in Parsifal, Die Feen has a magic castle, and its hero Arindal is provided with magic shield, sword and lyre by a Merlin-like figure so he can reclaim his wife (shades of Orpheus and Eurydice , and – reversing the genders – of the plight of the Emperor in Die Frau ohne Schatten ). Many parallels emerge in the course of the review of potential origins: the black knight in Weber’s Euryanthe cf: Syberberg’s cinematic presentation of Parsifal’s appearance at the Grail Temple in Act III of that opera, the manhunt in the prelude to Die Walküre cf: Körner’s black hunt, the band of comrades led by Odin/ Wodan in Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie cf: the clan of gods led by Wotan, the profusion of Rheinlieder that included Schneckburger’s Die Wacht am Rhein that spread throughout the German states at the time of the 1840 Franco-German confrontation over the River Rhine resonates in many ways with Wagner’s nationalism and, perhaps, too with Hagen’s watch in Götterdämmerung . Some of the links that emerge provide much food for thought as they are unexpected, such as for example the parallel between the respective beloved fathers of Sieglinde and of Iphigénie, Wotan and Agamemnon, about whom they fantasize in their dreams despite each father being so amoral. Katharine Syer suggests that Wagner invests Sieglinde’s dreamscape in Act II of Die Walküre with visions of the destruction of their homes, for it is certain that Agamemnon destroyed Iphigénie’s home by the sum of his decisions and actions. Both women experience dramatic brother recognition scenes with names being withheld to exacerbate the tension of the moment. There are striking parallels too between Sieglinde’s nightmare visions of death of her brother/husband and of the nightmares experienced by Orestes and Clytemnestra in Gluck’s Iphigenia in Aulis . As the author points out, “Wagner absorbed ideas from Gluck’s operas that resonated with the revolutionary and nationalistic outlook gathering steam in the late 1840s”. Is it, I wonder, surprising given Wagner’s enchantment with Weber as well as with Körner that he was not disheartened by the dedication of the Weber’s setting of Körner’s Heroide für das Pianoforte to Princess Augusta of Prussia, it being Prussian troops who helped put down the citizen’s insurrection in Dresden in which Wagner was an active participant? A small matter perhaps in the bigger picture. Yet, I worry that Ms Syer’s assertion of the vital importance of Körner’s textual output to Richard Wagner’s dramatic output is as significant as she maintains as the parallels when examined are not inevitably watertight. Take, for example, Körner’s concept of Valhalla as a glorious resting place for dead soldiers (Valhalla being a symbol that has carried on down the ages to the present-day as an appropriate final destination for the heroic). One must set that against Wagner’s own Valhalla construct which has significant sardonic overtones especially as delineated in the music that the composer uses at the end of Das Rheingold . Unlike Wagner who craved order in society, albeit order not imposed by force, Körner had no time for dynastic rulers. Still Ms Syer makes the point that Wagner in making Siegfried (in the final act of Götterdämmerung ) as a heroic but non-aggressive participant in the Ring drama is casting himself in the same mould as Körner: more poet and courtly knight than crusading soldier, and maybe he had the same intention in sketching Parsifal’s character. – 42 – Mesmerism, aka animal magnetism, was all the rage in 19 th Century German medical practice (and is familiar to us even today in the sense of having seen a mesmerizing performance). In consequence, Wagner will have been well acquainted with its precepts, its practice and its consequences and there is evidence that the author cites that it was in recognition of the link between mesmerism and altered states of consciousness that Wagner makes such effective use of dream sequences. The most obvious examples are that of Sieglinde’s dream in Act II of Die Walküre where she is terrified by her subconscious visions of Siegmund being chased by hounds redolent of Lützow’s wild or black hunters, Hagen’s watch, and part if not the whole of Der fliegende Holländer . Dreams and somnambulism are, of course, not unique to Wagner, cf: Aminta in La Sonnambula and Lady Macbeth. The author suggests that the studies and semi- fictional writings of ETA Hoffmann on madness and the unconscious may well have provided a significant source of inspiration for Wagner’s scenarios. In her exploration of mesmerism the author neatly and idiosyncratically couples the work of Mesmer with observations by the great Isaac Newton (“subtle spirits that can have electrical characteristics”) which may give scientists entranced by Wagner pause, and she also refers in passing to the influence of Nietzsche and Charcot (without going into too much detail). The author also explores the symbolic importance of Wagner’s own dreams and refers to the theatre of the mind wherein Wagner’s work reveals and couples deception and vulnerability, truth and memory, creativity and fate, illness and despair, death and rejuvenescence. She alludes to Wagner’s Lo Spezia dream of 1853, as recorded by Cosima, as signalling the role of The Ring in Wagner’s nation-conscious mindset. Much is made of mentation (mental action) such as somnambulism. Mesmerism turns up again in a Wagnerian context where Glasenapp describes Wagner’s conducting in St Petersburg as mesmerizing while Wagner himself refers to the electrifying performances of one of his favourite singers, Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient in creating the role of Senta. There is a substantial discussion of the use of reflective narrative, a dramatic implement of which Wagner makes substantial use, for example as in Wotan’s narration to Brünnhilde in Act II of Die Walküre (and, indeed, to ensure dramatic continuity, by Erda and the Three Norns), as well as Gurnemanz’s Good Friday narration; one could argue that Sachs’s hymn to Holy German art in Act III of Die Meistersinger is essentially reflective even if imbued with the prescriptive. As might be expected there is some debate about the significance of characters in Wagner’s operas being sparing in their acknowledgement of their antecedents. In particular, of course, Lohengrin is insistent that Elsa should not ask the forbidden question: Wagner’s uncertainty as to his own parentage must have played a role in shaping some of his scenarios. In Die Feen there is the same injunction where Arindal is advised not to seek the name of the beautiful woman with whom he has become smitten. The author points out that these dramatic nuclei arise from Gozzi’s La Donna Serpente as does the plot in Parsifal where Gurnemanz describes how a beautiful woman attempts to entrap Parsifal. So the point of Wagner’s debt to Gozzi is firmly made. In her extended exploration of Die Feen as an important source for Wagner’s music dramas, the author makes some interesting observations that reflect on the German psyche, specifically that Arindal, the putative hero of Die Feen , is persuaded to curse his own wife, who he is led to believe guilty of witch-like practices, demonstrating as the critic Adolf Sanderland pointed out that love of Fatherland is stronger even than the power of conjugal love. This may well be a partial explanation of the total commitment of the – 43 – majority of the German people to their Führer and their pig-headed reluctance to accept defeat in the Second World War. Much of the book is taken up with a painstaking analysis of the musical structure of the five operas which it features. There is a great deal within these discussions to interest the general reader even one only lightly acquainted with musical notation. There is also an extensive section of notes and a bibliography together with nine colour plates mostly focused on Körner and paintings representative of the drive for German unification. The great joy of the book though is undoubtedly in the exposition of the way in which Wagner made such splendid use of literary and musical works by Gozzi, Gluck and Weber, not forgetting Theodor Körner and his Wild Hunt .

“GALANTY SHOW” Katie Barnes explains the term used in her review of Tristan und Isolde on page 17. It refers to a 19 th century pantomime shadow play, especially one in miniature using figures cut from paper. In my childhood, we visited Pollock’s Toy Museum in Monmouth Street every school holiday and in one room full of toy theatres there was a big button with the label: “Press button to see the Galanty Show”. This made the theatre light up to show the silhouetted figures. There is an example (devised by Stephen Fry, no less) on YouTube.

PELLÉAS ET MÉLISANDE FOR FREE: 4 JULY 2015 John Crowther Wagner’s music held a life-long grip over Debussy as explained by David Edwards in his excellent article Après le Déluge (Wagner News 216). Debussy’s only completed opera, Pelleas et Melisande , is an intense love triangle portrayed in ravishing music and, like Tristan und Isolde , it ends in tragedy. A new production of the opera is planned for the Munich Opera Festival 2015 and it will be streamed live in HD for free at 19.00 CET on 4th July (www.staatsoper.de/tv). Munich Opera House has a reputation for avant garde productions, often including the Bavarian State Ballet. Indeed, when we visited Munich for the bi-centennial Ring in 2013, the ballet appeared throughout the Cycle. Last year, being a Strauss anniversary, the Munich season opened with Die Frau ohne Schatten and it was streamed live for free. During the interval we had an interview with the Intendant and a glimpse of the VIP guests. Our own President, Dame Gwyneth Jones, was the Guest of Honour because of her life-long contribution to Strauss operas in Munich. So, please put 4 th July in your diary and expect the unexpected. “The real legacy which Wagner left for future composers was orchestral.” (David Edwards’ lecture: The Post Wagnerian Revolution , Aldeburgh 13 th September 2014 “Wagner was not a good pianist and he wrote little of significance for the piano. When he lived in Wahnfried he bored his guests on Sunday afternoons by playing Bach on the piano badly.” (Julian Jacobson in Après le Déluge , Aldeburgh 14 th September 2014.)

– 44 – THE OLDEST SURVIVING SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA IN THE WORLD? David Woodhead John Crowther describes the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, founded in 1743, as “the oldest surviving symphony orchestra in the world” ( Wagner News No.216, January 2015). But there are orchestras which have a stronger claim to that title. For example, the Staatskapelle Dresden was founded by the prince-elector Moritz of Saxony as the Hofkapelle (ie: Court Orchestra) Dresden in 1548. The history of this orchestra, published to mark its 450 th anniversary, states: “Unlike other orchestras of similarly early date, the Staatskapelle is the only one not only to have maintained an unbroken existence over four-and-a-half centuries, but to have numbered among the leading orchestras in every era of music history.” This, perhaps, gives it precedence not only over Leipzig but even the Royal Danish Orchestra – founded 100 years earlier than the Staatskapelle – and others in Germany such as at Weimar and Kassel. [email protected]

TRISTAN UND ISOLDE ACT II AT ST ALBANS St Saviour’s Church, Sandpit Lane, St Albans, 7pm on 31 st May 2015 Roger Lee This concert performance of Act II of Tristan und Isolde book-ended with the Prelude and Liebestod will be conducted by Jonathan Finney who performed the Götterdämmerung Siegfried and Loge for Fulham Opera. The work which Wagner described to Liszt as “a monument to the most beautiful of dreams” will take place in a very fine venue just 25 minutes by train from St Pancras. The cast includes two names well known to Wagner Society members as beneficiaries of its attention and support: Zoe South and Julian Close. Singing Isolde on this occasion, Zoe was recently heard to critical acclaim for her Brünnhilde with Fulham Opera. This spring she is revisiting the Walküre Brünnhilde for Secret Opera, with whom she also recently made her debut performance as Elektra in the Richard Strauss opera. Due to make his Met debut this autumn as both the Doctor and the Architect in Lulu , Julian Close will sing König Marke. A regular at Welsh National Opera as well as a stalwart of Longborough Opera’s Ring cycle with Anthony Negus, he is adding König Marke to his growing list of Wagner roles, which includes Fasolt, Fafner, Rheingold Wotan, Pogner and Titurel. Jonathan Finney has received much help from the Wagner Society’s Young Artists Programme, principally from Malcolm Rivers and his Mastersingers project. His podium work has been described by the Daily Telegraph as “confident and purposeful”. With regard to his choice of programme, Jonathan points out that the second act with the Prelude and Liebestod encapsulates the dream that Wagner described to his father-in-law Franz Liszt as an act dominated by a love duet of arguably incomparable intensity and undeniably unique length, all to portray a love that shall “truly sate itself to the full”. Zoe South and Julian Close will be joined by Edward Hughes as Tristan, Rebecca Sharp as Brangäne, Brian Smith Walters as Melot and Ciarán O'Meara as Kurwenal. Tickets: £15.00/ £10.00 (concessions)

– 45 – COSIMA Robert Mansell writes about his new play Any play involving Richard Wagner will naturally have to touch on the anti-semitism for which he is renowned. Wagner is also known to have been a womaniser and over his lifetime had many affairs with women to a greater or lesser extent. It is not perhaps so widely known that his very first infatuation, while still a teenager in Dresden, was with Leah David, the daughter of a Jewish banker. When spurned by her for her cousin, who presumably was also Jewish, Wagner went into a fierce rage and was thrown out of their household. Was this perhaps the start of his anti-semitism?! This would have been exacerbated in that he had been born in a house in the Jewish quarter of Dresden, which may have made him particularly sensitive to being brought up with the typically Jewish name of his step-father, Carl Geyer, that was attached to him until he was a teenager. Modern investigations have failed to uncover any Jewish antecedents of Geyer, but Wagner would not have had access to such biographical research and so would not have known that. The source of the anti-semitism of Cosima, his second wife, whose antipathy may well have been even more virulent than Wagner’s own, is not so clear. Her father, Franz Liszt, did not display any overt expressions of such feelings, even if he wasn’t particularly accepting either. Her first husband, Hans von Bülow, was definitely not pro-semitic, so perhaps she acquired those feelings from her relationship with him, a man who was openly averse to the “uncivilised Jews from the East”. The attitude of Cosima’s own children towards anti-semitism is less clear, particularly that of her son Siegfried. In this play the subject is only occasionally alluded to, but it is significant when it does appear. Cosima was by no means the most beautiful of Wagner’s paramours, so it has always seemed curious to me that she was the only one with whom he successfully conceived children. Perhaps she was the only one who allowed him intimately near enough? Wagner was certainly not a particularly handsome or physically beautiful man, and certainly not one with any obvious sex appeal to women. Nevertheless he and Cosima certainly did conceive children together, and that is very much the topic of this play. Bastard and Adulteress is the present subtitle, and one of which some people may dislike the first word. Crude and unsubtle they may say, and possibly even old-fashioned. Yes, but to me it is correct. There is no other word in English which adequately describes that state of birth except for “illegitimate” or “love-child”, both of which to me seem not strong enough. I like the bluntness of the shorter word and also, particularly, the hint of a double meaning ….. a double meaning which becomes more clearly appropriate when the story of the play continues as it does after Wagner’s death. One of Cosima’s illegitimate daughters, Isolde, becomes very upset when her mother for somewhat contentious reasons later attempts to deny Isolde’s Wagnerian paternity in favour of her equally illegitimate son Siegfried. The distraught Isolde is forced to take her mother to court in an attempt to assure her own son’s inheritance to at least part of the Wagner estate. This made front-page headlines in the newspapers of the time, even as far away as New York and New Zealand! It was only reduced to later pages next day by an assassination in Sarajevo which precipitated the outbreak of the First World War. Staged reading directed by Tony Palmer takes place on Friday 5 th June at 7.30pm Studio Theatre, RADA, 16 Chenies Street, WC1E 7EX (See: mailing insert in this issue.) Online booking: www.rada.ac.uk/whats-on/other-events – 46 – the Wagner society

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

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

Secretary and Wagner Andrea Buchanan [email protected] Society Bursary Manager: [email protected]

Treasurer: Neil King [email protected]

Webmaster: Charlie Furness Smith [email protected]

Committee Member: Edward Hewitt [email protected]

Committee Member: Cameron Burns [email protected]

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

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

Archivist: Geoffrey Griffiths [email protected]

Ticket Secretary: Mike Morgan [email protected]

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

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

– 47 – FORTHCOMING WAGNER SOCIETY EVENTS

7.30pm Thursday 16 April ‘BAYREUTH OR BUST’ This (Stravinsky’s comment on the obsessiveness with which Wagner pursued the building of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus) is the title of the 2nd part of David Edwards’ examination of Wagner’s bizarre and intimate relationship with King Ludwig, without whose money the Festspielhaus might never have come to be. This lecture-recital will feature WS Singing competition winners 2013 Paul Carey Jones and Catrin Aur in excerpts from Wagner’s mature works, accompanied by a visual presentation. Tickets: £15/£7.50 students St Botolph’s Church Hall, Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3TL Liverpool St

7.00pm Monday 11 May MASTERCLASSES WITH DAME GWYNETH JONES The President of the Wagner Society will coach Andrew Dickinson and Mae Heydorn, winners of the President’s Prize at the recent Wagner Society Singing Competition 2014 in Wagner roles. This is a very special occasion for the Wagner Society and we hope that you will come along and support the event. We are most fortunate to be holding this event in the beautiful surroundings of the Royal Overseas League. Tickets: £15/£7.50 students Royal Overseas League, Park Place, St James’s Street, London SW1A 1LR Green Park

7.30pm Tuesday 12 May WAGNER SOCIETY ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING All members welcome. Drinks will be served after the meeting. There is no charge for attendance. St Botolph’s Church Hall, Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3TL Liverpool St

2.00-6.00pm Sunday 18 October THE REHEARSAL ORCHESTRA/MASTERSINGERS – PARSIFAL ACT 3 sponsored by the Wagner Society. The Henry Wood Hall, Trinity Church Square, London SE1 4HU Borough Ticket prices to be confirmed.

2.00-6.00pm Sunday 22 November THE WAGNER SOCIETY SINGING COMPETITION 2015. sponsored by the Wagner Society. The Duke’s Hall, Royal Academy of Music, Marylebone Road, London NW1 5HT. Baker Street. Further details to be announced. Ticket prices to be confirmed.

Tickets for the above events (except 12 th May) are available from Mike Morgan, 9 West Court, Downley, High Wycombe, Bucks, HP13 5TG. Please send cheques payable to The Wagner Society, enclosing an SAE. Tickets, if still available, also sold at the door.

More details of forthcoming events are available at www.wagnersociety.org.