No: 207 October 2012 Number 207 October 2012 INSIDE 4 Annual General Meeting: 21 st June 6 From the Committee 7 New Committee Members 8 Helena Dix in Bayreuth 10 Book: The Power of The Ring David Edwards 12 Die Walküre at Deutsche Oper, Berlin Robert Mitchell 13 Wagnerjobs: Writing and photography needed 14 Fulham Opera Das Rheingold Katie Barnes 18 Opera North Die Walküre at Birmingham Paul Dawson-Bowling 20 Dame Gwyneth Jones in Wagnerin Roger Lee 21 From the Chairman of the Leipzig Wagner Society Thomas Krakow 22 Richard Strauss: A Patriot but not a Nazi Chris Argent 23 Liszt, Alkan and Berlioz Societies Andrea Buchanan 24 Renewing your Membership Mike Morgan 26 Longborough Götterdämmerung Paul Dawson-Bowling 30 A Longborough Vassal’s Blog Nick Fowler 34 Bayreuth Festival 2012 Robert Mitchell 36 Presteigne Weekend: 21 st to 23 rd September Chris Argent and Roger Lee 40 Barry Millington: The Sorcerer of Bayreuth Christian Hoskins 41 Wagner 200 42 John Tomlinson Weekend 2013 43 Wagner Birthday Lunch 44 Richard Wagner and the Indian connection Dilip Roy 45 Book: Music in 1853 Roger Lee 47 Wagner Society Contacts 48 Events for your diary

Cover: Stuart Pendred and Malcolm Rivers as Hagen and Alberich in the Longborough Festival Opera production of Götterdämmerung . See page 26. Printed by Rap Spiderweb – www.rapspiderweb.com 0161 947 3700

–2– EDITOR’S NOTE “The musician is the servant of the composer.”

So said Sir George Solti. The centenary of his birth will be celebrated on 21st October in Chicago, the city which he made his musical home. The World Orchestra for Peace which was founded by Solti in 1995 for the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations will be joined by Angela Gheorghiu and René Pape (both of whom began their careers with Solti) and young singers from the Georg Solti Accademia a Bel Canto in his Italian home of Castiglione della Pescaia. Each summer twelve young singers and two repetiteurs receive a three week scholarship of intensive training which has established the programme as one of the world’s leading opera courses. Solti set standards for recorded sound which have never been surpassed. He provided the artistic direction for what BBC Music Magazine recently described as “the greatest recording feat of all time” in the form of his Ring cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic and a group of Decca engineers recognised as an elite in their field of work. In concert he combined rigorous perfectionism with what Ed Vulliamy of the Observer describes as “explosive spontaneity” . In his 30 year association with the Royal Opera and particularly during his tenure as Music Director from 1961 to 1971 Solti raised musical standards of the company to unprecedented heights. An exhibition in the Amphitheatre Gallery provides an overview of his work at Covent Garden which includes costumes and production designs. Lady Valerie Solti has lent family photographs, the portrait of Solti by Maggi Hambling, Solti’s Götterdämmerung scores and his briefcase with the contents as he had left them. A committed European, his orchestral career was centred on the Vienna Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestras, and he later wrote: “My term as musical director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was the happiest time in my professional life.” A Hungarian refugee who made his home in Switzerland, raised a family in London, had a house in Italy and an orchestra in America, Georg Solti was a man who was, as Ed Vulliamy says, without race or nation. Lady Solti describes her husband as “a person of the world with a belief in the new Europe.” Just as Georg Solti understood the new Germany while others remained stuck in wartime thinking, he also understood the need to perform and record the work of Richard Wagner. Whereas the composer whose anti-semitism and whose interpretation of Teutonic myths had been misappropriated and abused by the Nazis, Georg Solti performed Wagner’s music as a recording artist whose aim it was to make the work available to as many people as the technology of his time allowed. These recordings provide a legacy for an ever-increasing audience for The Art of the Future.

The exhibition: Georg Solti and the Royal Opera is open for daytime visitors to the Amphitheatre Gallery from 10am to 3.30pm on certain days. Check: 0208 7304 4000 The World Orchestra for Peace Georg Solti Centennial Concert will be hosted by Valery Solti and conducted by Valery Gergiev at Carnegie Hall on 19th October and at Symphony Centre Chicago on 21st October To view a gallery of pictures from Lady Solti’s personal albums go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/sep/09/new-review/features –3– ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 21 st June 2012, Swedenborg Hall, London Andrea Buchanan 38 members attended the 58 th AGM and the meeting was therefore quorate. All members of the Committee attended, with the exception of Roger Lee, from whom apologies had been received. In her capacity as Secretary and Acting Chair, Andrea Buchanan opened the meeting by asking attendees to read the minutes of the 2010 and 2011 AGMs carefully and time was allotted for this. Apologies for absence were then read out, notably from the President, who could not be present due to work commitments. The meeting then moved to the election of the Committee for 2012-13 and it was agreed that the voting would take place as a block. The former committee were all accepted to remain in their positions. [Note: Malcolm Rivers subsequently resigned from the Committee and is therefore currently no longer serving in this capacity.] As Richard Miles had been duly elected as Chair he assumed this role at this point from the Secretary. Acceptance of the minutes from 2010 and 2011 was then sought from the meeting. There was considerable discussion from the floor regarding the 2010 minutes, pertaining to a remark that may or may not have been made during that AGM by the then Chair. A motion was brought from the floor to amend the minutes and was passed. [Note: as detailed by the Chair in his subsequent letter to members of June 2012, the minutes were not amended. The matter is now considered closed.] The 2011 minutes were passed without comment. The Secretary highlighted the main points of her report, written in her capacity as former Acting Chair. This had been distributed at the meeting and concerned the activities of the Society during 2011. The Treasurer presented the 2011 accounts, noting that the year had ended with a healthy surplus. He noted however that membership numbers were beginning to fall significantly and warned of the impact of this on the finances going forward. It was notable that administration costs had risen sharply in 2011 and steps would be taken to reduce these. Dividends from charitable investments had fallen, due to adverse market conditions. After a few questions the members accepted the accounts. The auditors were also duly elected without any issues. Three members had raised issues to be discussed in Any Other Business. The first was a request for an explanation for the resignations of the Chair, Webmaster and one other Committee member. This was answered by a statement distributed by the Committee at the meeting and the member who raised the query stated that this was adequate. A further member had requested that an apology be issued to the President over a perceived slight in 2010. Those present did not agree to this. The same member had also raised a query over the constitution which was not pursued at the meeting, as it had been resolved in 2009. A third member raised the matter of pricing of events, stating that, in his opinion, current pricing was unaffordable for many members. The Committee agreed to consider these comments and to take them into account when pricing future events. The meeting ended at approximately 8:30pm and many of those present joined the Committee for drinks.

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FROM THE COMMITTEE 5th September 2012 Andrea Buchanan Attendees: Richard Miles, Chair; Andrea Buchanan, Secretary; Mike Morgan, Treasurer; Margaret Murphy, Membership Secretary; Gary Kahn, Programme Advisor; Edward Hewitt and Ralph Wells. Apologies were received from Geoffrey Griffiths and Roger Lee. Charlie Furness-Smith was unavoidably detained by work commitments, although he subsequently met with Andrea and Mike and was fully briefed on the meeting. Richard reported that he had written to Chancellor Merkel about the loss of allocations of Bayreuth tickets for Wagner Societies and had received a polite though non- committal response. He noted that a great deal of discussion had taken place between Andrea, Mike and himself regarding the future of the Society and conclusions had been reached about a way forward. These would involve a radical revamp of the website, automation of many time-consuming processes eg membership administration, event ticket sales, communication to members, increasing benefits to members, broadening the range of events and improving our advertising and PR. He also noted that he, Gary, Andrea and Mike had met with the organisers of Wagner 200 and that the Society had pledged to support this initiative in the belief that this would raise our profile and would associate the Society with many important events that were being organised for the 2013 bicentenary. Further details of this and of changes to come will be properly communicated to members in due course. There remains much planning and organising to do. It was noted that the Committee still lacked two members to take on events co-ordination and publicity. The search for suitable candidates continued. Richard ended by saying how pleased he was that Charlie and Ed (both of whom are under 30) had agreed to join the Committee. The co-opting of Ed and Charlie to the Committee was carried unanimously. Andrea reported briefly on the AGM, correspondence received, website developments, The Verband Congress that she had attended in May, the Karlsruhe Singing Competition and progress with the 2013 Bayreuth Bursary. Mike’s report gave the sobering news that, although the Society’s funds remain healthy due to his vigilant management, funds are now low. 2012 has been an expensive year, with considerable outlay for 2013 being incurred in 2012. Q4 is traditionally a low point in the financial year for the Society, as most of the expenditure has been incurred, while there is little to look forward to in the way of income until membership subscriptions are renewed at the end of the year. Most of the events had made a small surplus, although the Fulham Opera event had incurred a substantial loss. This lack of profitability gave some cause for concern. Margaret reported a net reduction of 70 members from the end of last year, and current membership stood at 777. It is hoped that this decline can be addressed. Gary informed the meeting in more detail about some of the events planned for Wagner 200. Details of these will be announced in future editions of Wagner News. Ed spoke on behalf of Charlie and himself about their extensive plans for a new website and how this will assist us to achieve our goals of modernising the Society and streamlining our processes. There followed a discussion about the types of events that might hold more appeal for younger members and the need to take this into consideration, along with pricing and other issues. The Committee discussed the forthcoming membership renewal process for 2013 and you will see a note from Mike Morgan on pages 24 and 25 giving further details of our plans for some new features and benefits. –6–– 6– AN INTRODUCTION TO OUR NEW COMMITTEE MEMBERS EDWARD HEWITT AND CHARLIE FURNESS SMITH

Edward Hewitt is a 28-year-old barrister whose interest in music generally and opera in particular stems from a musical father (who organises an annual blues festival in Switzerland) and a music teacher passionate about Verdi (to the extent of sporting a Verdi-style beard). An Italian speaker who grew up in southern Switzerland, Edward's first exposure was to Italian opera of which he remains a great fan. After moving to the UK for his studies he met a number of fellow opera enthusiasts at university and through them discovered the world of Richard Wagner. Together with Charlie he intends to bring some new ideas and initiatives to the Society, focused in particular on introducing Wagner to a new – and perhaps younger – audience.

Charlie Furness Smith discovered Wagner at Oxford University where he read for a Masters in Roman History. The majority of his time at university was spent doing 12 hour shifts in the Sackler Library during which he would listen to Wagner operas on repeat. He adopted the philosophy that if he didn't listen to something the length of Meistersinger or Parsifal from start to finish three times during his daily stay in the library then he wasn't studying hard enough. He now spends his time between the Royal Opera House and Mayfair where he works at an oil and gas advisory firm. Charlie takes collecting recordings of all opera (particularly 19th Century, and especially Wagner) to extreme levels, and loves analysing the nuances between the works of varying conductors, orchestras, and singers. He believes that classical music societies have a huge opportunity to promote and encourage enthusiasm for the art-form by whatever means are available. The world of classical music is crying out for younger enthusiasts. Due to the unsurpassed quality of Wagner's creations, lovers of his work and members of his societies tend to be a pretty passionate lot. Charlie looks forward to harnessing that passion and using it to bring Wagner, his works, and also the vast and diverse range of incredible achievements by other artists that provide context to his work, to a new audience. Meanwhile he looks forward to thoroughly enjoying the company of its current audience, who he thinks have indisputably good taste!

–7–– 7– HELENA DIX IN BAYREUTH Andrea Buchanan As many of you are aware, the Wagner Society Bayreuth Bursary Winner for 2011-2012, Helena Dix recently attended the Bayreuth Festival as her prize for winning the Bayreuth Bursary Competition which we held in London last December. Helena made excellent use of her time in Bayreuth. Not only did she participate in the Stipendienstiftung (the Bursary Awards Foundation) programme, she was also selected to appear in a Young Artists concert and competed in the next round of the International Song Competition. Helena Dix at the Festspielhaus

Helena saw Lohengrin, Tannhäuser and Parsifal . She found the experience absolutely wonderful and was thrilled to be able to attend the Festival. She wrote on her return: “Last night I returned from the most wonderful week of music. Bayreuth has such a magic charm about it. I was struck with tears on the opening chords of Lohengrin and reminded just why we all work so hard and so passionately towards keeping Wagner alive. “To have the chance to be there, to experience the operas in the company of people who are so passionate about being there as a young singer is something that will never leave me. Singing Wagner for the gala concert in the Stadthalle is one of the most terrifying and wonderful experiences of my career thus far. To be given this opportunity to sing for these people and to touch their sacred heritage was indeed a blessing. I was just so excited at their wonderful reaction to my Sieglinde! “I met many wonderful people during my stay. I had some inspiring chats with many musicians, singers and directors. All of you in some way helped me get there. My coaching leading up to this week was invaluable and I thank each of you for helping me and guiding me towards my dream. I never imagined that the week would be as physically and mentally challenging as it was, but WOW, did I adore that challenge! “This week has inspired me to work even harder and strive towards my dream of perhaps one day singing in the Festspielhaus. If I ever do, I will look back on this week as the best introduction anyone could ask for. My deepest thanks go to the Wagner Society for giving me this chance and for letting me represent them.” The Stipendiatenkonzert took place on 10th August in the Stadthalle in Bayreuth in the presence of Verena Lafferentz-Wagner, Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Iréne Theorin and was moderated by Professor Eva Märtson, President of the Richard Wagner Verband International.

–8–– 8– Mike Morgan and I attended to represent the Wagner Society (and to cheer Helena on), along with several officials from other European Wagner Societies, all the 2012 Stipendiaten and members of the public. The programme was very varied, ranging from Bach played on steel drums to piano pieces by Liszt, arias by Bellini and of course a number of Wagner pieces. Helena performed her prize-winning rendition of Der Männer Sippe to considerable acclaim. All the performances were of a very high standard and It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening. The photograph below shows the participants in the concert with Professor Märtson.

For Helena the most nerve-racking experience was, of course, singing in the next round of the Seventh International Song Competition for Wagner Voices while she was in Bayreuth. The distinguished panel of judges included Dame Gwyneth Jones, Hans Sotin, Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Professor Märtson. Again, Helena sang her prize-winning Sieglinde aria, along with Das war sehr gut , Mandryka , from Richard Strauss’ Arabella . We then had a few nail-biting days while we waited to hear whether Helena had been chosen from the 36 Second Round participants to be one of the 18 singers to compete in the Semi-finals. I am delighted to inform you that Helena WAS selected for the Semi-finals (and then, we hope, the Finals), which will take place in Karlsruhe in October. We are tremendously pleased and proud that Helena has done so well, and I am sure that you will all join me in wishing her the very best for the next stage of the competition. It has been quite a while since our Wagner Society was so prominently represented in the Stipendienstiftung and at Bayreuth generally, and we should all be delighted that our contribution was seen as so significant. On behalf of the Committee of the Wagner Society I would like to thank all of our members for your support. We could not pursue this excellent programme of support for promising young singers without the financial contribution that your membership fees make. It reminds us of why we joined the Wagner Society in the first place! –9–– 9– BOOK REVIEW: THE POWER OF THE RING BY GARY KAHN David Edwards The following are quotations from two British directors of The Ring :

Whatever you do, a Wagner production should have an atmosphere of confrontation. It shouldn’t always be a very comfortable evening in the theatre

Our production was a vision of The Ring rather than an explanation. We’ve tried to make it very rich and resonant. I’d say “Reveal it in a mythic sense; don’t explain it in a psychoanalytic or a Marxist sense”

The first is Keith Warner, interviewed by Gary Kahn for his glorious, weighty and comprehensive record of the creation of Covent Garden’s current Ring cycle. The second – and I can hear the groans already – is Richard Jones, talking to Andrew Clements for The Guardian in 1996. It’s fair to say that both directors’ work has divided public and critical opinion. The reactions they have provoked prove that, post- Chéreau, no single production has succeeded in satisfying all tastes. Nor, as Warner is astute enough to remark, would Wagner have wanted it to. One man’s Wagnerian meat is another man’s poison. First published by the Royal Opera House in 2007, The Power of the Ring is now reissued in softback at £35 (available from Amazon for £29.75, with free delivery). Kahn’s authoritative account of the immense task of devising, designing, staging and performing the Ring is a welcome follow-up to John Snelson’s Illustrated History of Wagner’s Ring at Covent Garden (ROH & Oberon Books, 2006) which ended with a chapter on the Haitink/Jones/Lowery cycle. Both books are indispensible documents of the history of this work in Floral Street. Something similar about the ENO, WNO and Scottish Opera productions would make for a fascinating comparison. Warner identifies two major strands in recent Wagner production: the very abstract and archetypal on the one hand and those placing great emphasis on the human drama on the other: As I saw it, the quest for our production was how to integrate both of those strands and try to find design and acting styles that would enable us to do this . Warner and Kahn delve into Wagner’s Feuerbach-influenced thinking, which was the springboard for this production and offers a fresh way of looking at the piece. – though this will doubtless be contentious for some. The many layers of thought and image that have been fed into this production are intriguing and revelatory, though I can’t help feeling that those images should speak for themselves on stage, and not require the detailed explanation that Kahn’s book offers. The critical reception of Warner’s staging however reflects the need for the background analysis that is faithfully presented here by an author with unparalleled access to the creative team. There are informative interviews with Antonio Pappano, who humbly confesses that Die Walküre remains for me the Everest in its demands upon the conductor, while Götterdämmerung is the best written…so in some ways it is easier to conduct . What emerges clearly throughout this brilliantly illustrated volume (Clive Barda’s photography is exceptional) is how fraught with potential pitfalls putting on any Ring cycle is. Budget cuts and technical limitations force design rethinks at virtually every stage. Cast-changes, sickness and exhaustion add to stress levels; and the sheer stamina required by everyone involved is staggering. If you liked the Pappano/Warner Ring , then you will want this book. And if you didn’t, you might still be intrigued to learn about the extended process and the serious thinking behind it. David Edwards worked on three Ring Cycle productions at Covent Garden – 10 –

A TALE OF THREE WALKÜREN Die Walküre at Deutsche Oper Berlin: 25th + 28th May. Philharmonie Berlin: 27th May. Robert Mitchell At what stage does anyone realise that Siegmund and Sieglinde are twins? In the Deutsche Oper Berlin it is very early on. Hunding, is suspicious of the similar snake marks in their eyes, and when Siegmund sings “...ein Zwillingschwester und Ich” his fork comes crashing down on the table. Clearly he realises far sooner than the twins. Attila Jun delivers a brutal, vocally rich account; a bit of a crasher, predictably lifting and crashing his chair down at “ver hasst ist er Alle und mich” . His “...die Hunding's Ehre behüten” indicated considerable pride in his social position. My main reason for coming to this excellent production again was to see Martina Serafin as Sieglinde. I was very disappointed not to have seen her but absolutely delighted that she was replaced in both performances by Heidi Melton who has graduated to this role with predictably effortless vocal ease. She also displayed nice little acting touches as in the seductive way her hand slid up Siegmund's upper chest wall at the close of “Winterstürme” . Torsten Kerl sang Siegmund in heroic mould. He can sing out at “Wälsungenblut” (as in his “Siegfrieds Schwert” in last autumn's Ring here), but otherwise cleverly husbands his considerable vocal resources. Greer Grimsley repeated his anguished and visually and vocally authoritative Wotan. Catherine Foster delivered a vocally impeccable and touchingly acted Brünnhilde. At her “muss dich treulos die Treue verlassen” she gently wafted these words into the auditorium with a slight extension of the neck on “verlassen” , not repeated on the Monday. Such inevitable subtle changes are what keep operatic performance alive: no two performances are ever identical even with the same casts, but subject to innumerable variations. This is one reason why this nearly 30 year old production could easily survive more decades. A wonderful piece of production occurs with “In meinem Busen berg ich den Grimm...” Wotan has the by now terrified Brünnhilde restrained with his spear against the side of the tunnel stage right front. As he exits across the stage lightning accompanies the ferocious orchestral accompaniment. Foster has fabulous breath control and held her “vertraut” of “ihm innig vertraut” through the four bars to the start of the semi-tutti chord at the beginning of the fifth bar. Most exponents have snatched away the word well before this. You can get an idea about this production on YouTube-Deutsche Oper Berlin. This was a week of Walküren in Berlin so on Sunday it was off to the last of three concert performances. Good as the DOB acoustic is, that of the Philharmonie is incomparable and the sound of the Philharmonic playing Wagner here is exceptional, even if the sonority of the strings is somewhat muted compared to the days of maestro von Karajan. The orchestra sound was enhanced by six harps to DOB's two, and the outsize double basses there are also hugely advantageous to the string Klang . However the DOB cor anglais is unique, and the bass clarinet, so important in this work, on a par. The principal singers had the huge advantage of performing in front of the orchestra into this perfect acoustic. I must report that their sound was quite overwhelming, sometimes even too loud. With comparison to the Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenberg recording of the previous week one can again confirm that no recording, no matter how excellent, can compare to the sound at a live performance. I was sitting in the second row of block A and it almost – 12 – seemed like a private performance. For a few euros you can decide yourselves about this Walküre on “Digital Concert Hall”. For me there were no weak links. The phenomenal 68 year-old Terje Stensvold sang Wotan with commanding authority and warm tone. Christian Elsner looks like a chunkier version of the late Derren Nesbitt. He produces a delightfully sweet, secure tenor with inexhaustible nuance as Siegmund. The brutish Hunding of Mikhail Petrenko has a wonderfully sonorous bass, with a slightly quizzical expression to “Wölfing” much better live than on the radio. Anne-Marie Westbroek completely identified with the hapless Sieglinde. Lilli Passikivi was perfect as Fricka, just striking the right balance between moral authority and hapless wife. Evelyn Herlitzius is a vocal and physical phenomenon who in most ways makes an ideal Brünnhilde. Her small, slim frame is no bar to a big sound in a role which she projects tirelessly and consummately. Part of her excellent vocal projection may be related to a very mobile jaw joint which allows her to open her mouth very widely and seemingly very easily. Even without the advantage of her positioning here in the Philharmonie, her Isoldes at the DOB in 2010 were also overwhelming. Rattle paced the work excellently, as did Runnicles at the DOB. No tempi soporifici or exaggerated Luftpausen ; just straightforward, masterly Wagner. Magic! This review has a translation facility at www.wagnersociety.org / Wagner News Extra WagnerJobs

MASTERCLASSES WITH SUSAN BULLOCK We need written cover and photography for the second of these events which takes place on Saturday 24 th November. (See page 48 for details).

BOOKS RECEIVED FOR REVIEW

Please contact Roger Lee: [email protected]

– 13 – SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL Fulham Opera’s Das Rheingold , 24th June 2012 Katie Barnes Photography by Simon Bennett The idea of presenting any of Wagner's stage works, let alone part of the Ring cycle, as an intimate opera seems like a contradiction in terms. Yet this is what Fulham Opera have done, and very successfully too. Given that their avowed aim is to make large-scale operas accessible to “opera newbies”, it was disappointing that the audience was no larger, but it was their bad luck that they should be staging their endeavour on a night when a very different epic struggle (England v France) was taking place in Euro 2012. At the very least it may have reduced passing trade! It was also a shame that the event was not publicised at all outside the church (which was shrouded in scaffolding and netting), which might have encouraged one or two passers-by to try their luck with their first Wagner. St John’s Church is small, and the space is shallow, approximately square, with a large altar area approached by three low steps, empty apart from the massive, modern, marble altar, like a huge stone table. It is strange to experience a pagan tale being performed in a church, especially when it deals in such a hard-hitting way with deceit and materialistic behaviour on the part of pagan deities, and this production gave the story an even more materialistic setting than usual. There was a strange dichotomy between the lovely Victorian stained glass window above the altar, with its scenes of the Crucifixion and the life of Christ, and the sordid story being enacted below it. The programme gave a synopsis of a “traditional” Das Rheingold , but a producer's note pointed out the similarities between Wagner's characters and popular soap operas, and indicated that the production would transfer Rheingold to Dallas .

Sara Gonzalez-Saavedra (left) as Flosshilde, Zoë South as Woglinde and Elizabeth Capener (right) as Wellgunde in 2011. In 2012 Wellgunde was performed by Alexa Mason. – 14 – The area was used in a very effective way, with much of the action taking place in the aisle (helpful for those seated further back, but frustrating for those sitting at the front, who had to spend a lot of time twisted round to find out what was happening behind them), with surtitles projected onto the back wall. At the beginning the platform was bare apart from some pieces of furniture covered in blue-green drapes. As the Prelude sounded from Benjamin Woodward's solitary piano two actors came down the aisle carrying between them a long blue cloth embroidered in black and gold which they raised, lowered and rippled between them, passing it over the heads of the audience (nearly hitting some of us over the head) before holding it across the front of the acting area to cover the entrance of the Rhinedaughters, and then laying it upon the altar with a bowl full of golden jewellery, representing the Rheingold, upon it. The Rhinedaughters wore loose pantaloons and tops in shades of blue and green, and romped happily around the stage, flicking and kicking imaginary water at each other, and at Alberich, who swaggered up the aisle wearing a black velvet jacket and trousers with a brightly-patterned beach shirt. Their careless humiliation of him, and his deep hurt, were tellingly conveyed, and I especially liked Flosshilde's wary glance at him when Wellgunde blurted out the secret of the gold's power. At the end of the scene he snatched the gold from the bowl and fled up the aisle with it, leaving the Rhinedaughters to follow. During the transition music the blue cloth was held across the front of the acting area while the actors removed the drapes to reveal what the programme described as “Wotan and Fricka’s temporary home”, with low-slung armchairs and a drinks cabinet to one side and trophies and photographs of Freia set out across the altar.

Wotan, first seen slumbering in an armchair, was a Stetson- wearing Texan tycoon, a swaggering, cigar-chomping, unscrupulous Wagnerian JR who did not carry a spear but flourished a golf club (which, when Froh later waved it, only just missed some members of the audience, myself included!). The understandably anxious, booze-swigging Fricka was clearly his Sue-Ellen, even more of a termagant than usual, her relationship with her faithless husband wrecked as much by her anxiety and her drinking as by his fecklessness which had caused it. Ian Wilson-Pope as Wotan

Freia was an enchantingly pretty but dim blonde in denim micro-mini skirt, invitingly low-cut blouse and tinsel-trimmed pink Stetson, and Donner and Froh were glamorous but ineffectual young cowboys who watched the giants’ approach using binoculars. I liked the idea of bringing them onstage earlier than usual, when Freia first pleads for their help – a risky move, as it risked overcrowding the small performing area, but it helped to fill out the family relationships. Perhaps due to the Dallas-themed setting, the extended family of the gods seemed even more dysfunctional and less sympathetic than usual.

John Woods (left) as Fafner and Oliver Hunt as Fasolt

– 15 – The giants were not horny-handed workmen but menacing, smart-suited businessmen who stalked in down the aisle, carrying baseball bats to enforce their demands. Even Fasolt, generally the most lovable character in the Tetralogy, was grim and lowering, only once allowing a softer side to show when he threw an agonised glance at Freia before agreeing to accept the gold in her place. Loge was the punk-haired, cocaine- snorting family dropout with more brains than the rest of the family put together. Fricka tried to keep Freia happy during the negotiations over her future by plying her with chocolates. This scene can be hard to stage, with a number of performers required to stand around without much to sing, but the level of byplay was just right, giving all the characters roles in the story without it becoming distracting. Given the extremely limited scenic resources, not to mention the unholy demands upon the stamina of our solitary pianist, it made sense to insert a brief interval after Scene 2, which meant that the interlude had to fizzle out midway. The programme noted that Wagner had approved such a break in a performance he witnessed in Berlin in 1881. The audience were banished from the auditorium while scenic and lighting changes were made, and on our return the area had been transformed into Nibelheim. The altar was spread with scales and other equipment for evaluating the gold, and the black-clad Nibelungs (every available member of the cast) lurked behind pillars, in corners, and in unoccupied seats. The interlude resumed with the sound of the Nibelungs’ hammers, and the singers deployed around the church created an unforgettable effect, striking bottles and pieces of metal so that the sound seemed to surround the audience. It was quite magical, far superior to any rendition of that passage I have experienced in a larger opera house. The scene in Nibelheim was given great atmosphere through the simple device of having the Nibelungs sitting at the back, working miserably on gold objects which one of their number brought in on a tray and distributed among them. Their joyless, mechanised movements were a terrible contrast to Mime’s description of the delight which they had formerly taken in their craft. The Tarnhelm scenes were also very well handled. Alberich hid behind the altar to become invisible, and when he turned into a serpent the other Nibelungs massed behind him in single file. All in black, their hair covered and their heads lowered, moving their legs in unison, they created an eerie illusion of a many-legged monster. The final transformation was cheekier: Alberich took a small wind-up toy toad from his pocket and placed it on the altar, where it hopped about while he hid behind. After Wotan grabbed the toad, he and Loge lunged behind the altar to pull the Tarnhelm from Alberich’s head and haul him out down the aisle. The Tarnhelm itself was the cheekiest touch of all – it was an elaborate, gilded baseball cap. The blue cloth was again held across the front to conceal the scene change back to Wotan and Fricka’s temporary home. The gold for the ransom was again very cleverly devised, consisting mainly of cartons covered in gold paper, but also a gigantic gold sack, stiffened with hoops, which could be drawn up around Freia to conceal her while Loge and Froh tipped pieces of gold into it. Erda approached from the back of the church, remaining halfway down the aisle as she addressed Wotan, keeping physically distant from him, as though she were on another plane. Fasolt was struck down with a baseball bat and died on the steps of the altar, and the Gods processed down the aisle to Valhalla (Southfork?) while Loge sat on the altar, watching them go, and the voices of the Rhinedaughters were heard from the back of the church. – 16 – While few of the cast could hope to sing their roles in a theatre with a full orchestra at this stage in their careers, this chance to perform their roles in this small- scale environment, with piano accompaniment, gives them a wonderful opportunity to gain experience in the Wagnerian repertoire. For me, the star performers were Robert Presley as Alberich and Oliver Hunt as Fasolt. Presley, obviously the most experienced performer in the cast, gave a superbly finished performance: evil, vengeful and pathetic by turns, rising to tremendous crescendos in habt Acht! and the final curse. Oliver Hunt, tall and imposing, very young but already possessed of an impressive bass, created a most arresting Giant. I look forward to hearing more from him. Ian Wilson-Pope showed great command and presence as Wotan and sang with considerable power.

Robert Presley (left) as Alberich with Brian Smith-Walters as Loge

Brian Smith-Walters brought out Loge’s cynicism and despair as well as his cunning, but the top of his voice sounded constricted. Ian Massa-Harris’ perpetually terrified Mime was a splendid character study which promises well for Siegfried . Stuart Laing was a beautifully sung Froh, Alexa Mason doubled a ditzy Freia with a sexy Wellgunde. Sara Gonzalez was a cavernous-voiced Erda and Flosshilde, and Zoë South, this project’s Brünnhilde, launched the evening as a bright Woglinde. Jemma Brown made a forceful, bitter Fricka, John Woods was a vicious if light-voiced Fafner, and Ben Weaver made the most of Donner’s brief moment of glory when conjuring the storm. Hero of the night was Benjamin Woodward, who played his solo piano unflaggingly and ensured that I never once regretted the absence of an orchestra. Fulham Opera not only attempted the apparently impossible in staging a small-scale, large-value Rheingold : they achieved it. I await the development of their promised cycle with impatience.

– 17 – DIE WALKÜRE AT BIRMINGHAM Paul Dawson-Bowling The Opera North performance of Die Walküre at Birmingham on the last day of June was quite exceptional, and pride of place for the achievement goes to the conductor, Richard Farnes. In every way the Birmingham performance came across as even more compelling than his first-night broadcast ten days earlier from Leeds. Either the BBC transmission must have muted the total effect, or the performances had become bigger as the series settled down. The quality of British orchestras nowadays, especially in the provinces, is almost unbelievably good, and Richard Farnes drew the most beautiful, impassioned playing from his outstanding musicians, a Ring Orchestra at full strength, or virtually so, apart from four harps instead of six. His sense of pacing and his integration of the wide-ranging tempi were unerring, except for a minor fall from grace in the rushed fences at the end of Act I, a tempo which did not rise up naturally from what had gone before. The energy and dispatch of Wotan’s invocation to Loge likewise made a far cry from the weariness that Karajan finds in this passage, but this was a matter of interesting variations and absolutely not an imperfection. Generally Farnes blocked out the emotional diversities of Wagner’s vast forms in a way that revealed their arching span. Most important of all, he seemed almost invariably to go to the heart of the drama, and at the end of Act II, that great elemental storm of Wotan’s anger rose up and towered with a blackness and majesty fully in the league of Hans Knappertsbusch; and no greater praise is possible than that. It was disconcerting that the roles of Siegmund, Wotan, Fricka and Brünnhilde (four out of six principals) had not been given to British singers, but I was very taken with the Siegmund of Erik Nelson Werner. His is a clarion sound with supple metal in the tone and the ability to search out the expressive hues and emotional range of Siegmund, the haunted heroism, the wonder and the ecstasy. It was even more satisfying to hear Alwyn Mellor’s Sieglinde and discover how she has become even better than as Isolde last summer at the Grange Opera. Her opening exchanges showed how her lower registers have taken on more warmth and fullness; she now too seems to ease her voice into her vocal lines instead of kick-starting it, and her vibrato seems to have taken on a new meaning. Vibrato – such a strange subject. Alwyn Mellors’s is quite an entity, but it seems to colour what she sings with expressive intensity and never to undermine the pitch, which happened quite often with Annalena Persson, the Brünnhilde. Voices are terrible instruments to own. A singer can be as musical as Orpheus but if the voice is co-operating badly or not at all then what comes out is much what one might expect from an Emil Gilels playing a battered honky-tonk. Annalena Persson has an instrument that often will not deliver a steady note, not in her mid and lower registers, a failing which “War es so schmählich” exposed mercilessly, however beautifully she shaped it. It really is hard; she is a lady of the finest musical intentions only fitfully realised. Some of the other Valkyries were possessed of exactly the shining certainty that she missed and Miriam Murphy (Gerhilde) was outstanding in this respect.

– 18 – The Wotan of Bela Perencz, a Hungarian, provoked some puzzles about what a concert performance should achieve and be. Is it about visual presentation or more purely audible values? Perenzc was a very considerable visual presence, more so than Michael Druiett, Opera North’s Rheingold Wotan, and he made a tremendous impact, not only at the big moments but also in stretches when the music sinks down to an almost inaudible whisper. On the other hand he did not actually sing as beautifully as Michael Druiett, and there was something odd about his delivery of certain declamatory passages, “Als Junge Liebe Lust” being an example, in that he swallowed what should have been points of emphasis so that the music sounded rhythmically unstable. Nor has he a voice intrinsically as steady as Michael Druiett. The Hunding, Clive Bayley, deserves a special mention, a powerful bass and a formidable presence in spite of not being a large man. Perhaps we may hope to hear him as Hagen, who is often now played as an immense, glowering eminence, because of the success of Joseph Greindl and Matti Salminen in the role, even though they do not give us the slight, apparently insignificant figure that Wagner described. Katarina Karneus as Fricka was not entirely convincing. Wotan’s spouse is after all a great lady, and a lady of compelling authority. Fricka’s “Nicht doch” at Birmingham was a mild remonstrance, not the concluding put-down, the final ‘coup’ without much ‘grace’ of her Wotan-demolition. The gigantic screens with their stretches of free association film-footage did not add much, and the English text was more of a paraphrase than a translation, but this did not take anything away from the impact of a great performance. The production of the singers, their dramatic arrangement, was superb, and it was not an imitation staging. Wotan did not kiss Brünnhilde to sleep but came and stood behind her while she folded her arms across her breast and slipped gently to the ground. She simply lay there centre stage, and in the presence of Wagner’s music, less is often more and the result was magical. It was right that Wotan should always remain a god, (with Bela Perenzc, and how!), nothing like the shambling, sitcom collapse that Greer Grimsley now makes of him at Berlin. After gazing at Brünnhilde long and sorrowfully, this Wotan did leave the platform as in a staged production, but still turned round for one final, agonised last look. I cannot wait for Siegfried .

A MESSAGE FROM THE SECRETARY We are aware that some of our members who kindly sent us their e-mail addresses when they renewed their membership this year may still not be receiving the regular e-mails that I send out titled FROM THE WAGNER SOCIETY. This is due to an internal communication issue and to the fact that many of the e-mails submitted were unfortunately illegible. If you are one of these members, we can only apologise to you. If you would like to be on our e-mailing list and receive regular updates regarding performance information, special offers, news about events etc., please send me an e-mail to [email protected] and I will add you to the list. Andrea Buchanan, Secretary

– 19 – MUNICH OPERA FESTIVAL: DAME GWYNETH JONES AS COSIMA Ein Haus der Kunstmusik : 24th June 2012

Dame Gwyneth Jones in the role of Cosima Wagner Imagine it is the Wagner year, and Bayreuth is deserted. Thielemann has left and so has the orchestra apart from the trombones. Only the usherettes (the “blue girls” as they are called) are still present, as well as Katharina Wagner and her preceding Festival directors. The music of die Todesverkündigung signals the grand appearance of Cosima Wagner alias Dame Gwyneth Jones, who sings softly, reluctantly, with a slightly fragile but ever so distinctive and moving voice: “Siegmund! Sieh’ auf mich! Ich bin’s, der bald du folgst!” While singing she places a white shroud around a “blue girl” just as she did as Brünnhilde with Peter Hoffman in Patrice Chéreau’s Centenary Ring in 1976. Then the “Wagnerin” evening opening the Opera Festival in the Munich House of Art becomes an occasion of energy and remembrance. It is amazing to see how, at the end of the most intimate part of Dame Gwyneth’s performance as Brünnhilde with “Ruhe,du Gott!” and “War es so schmählich, was ich verbrach?” from Die Walküre , the excellent Vertigo Trombone Quartet suddenly change to the blues and Cosima starts dancing softly with a bust of Richard Wagner.

Editor’s note: I am grateful to Katja Wodzinski at www.easy-german.com for providing translation services for this edited adaptation of Klaus Kalchschmid’s account of this event which appeared in Die Welt on 30th June 2012.

– 20 – MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRMAN OF THE LEIPZIG WAGNER SOCIETY Thomas Krakow

Dear Friends of the Wagner Society of London, I am glad to have the opportunity to send you greetings from Leipzig, the city where Richard Wagner was born, and which is preparing to celebrate the bicentenary of its most important son. ‘Richard is a Leipziger’ is the motto of our Society. Many great composers have lived here: Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Clara and Robert Schumann and Edvard Grieg, but only Wagner was actually born in Leipzig. It was here that he went to school, here that the idea of his becoming a musician was formed. In Leipzig he found the material he required, absorbed lasting impressions in the theatre and concert hall, and experienced the staging of his own early compositions. His relationship with the city of his birth was a turbulent one, but at the end of his life the two were reconciled. I would like to invite you to discover Wagner in Leipzig as soon as you can and for as long as you want. But the special invitation is to join the International Richard Wagner Congress from 18th to 22nd May 2013. Be our guests. The Wagner Society of Leipzig and the City of Leipzig welcome you. Best regards / Mit freundlichen Grüßen Thomas Krakow (Vorsitzender)

Richard-Wagner-Verband Leipzig e.V. Richard-Wagner-Platz 1 | 04109 Leipzig T +49 341 30 86 89 33 | F +49 341 30 86 89 35 [email protected] http://www.wagner-verband-leipzig.de

– 21 – RICHARD STRAUSS: A PATRIOT BUT NOT A NAZI Chris Argent I am astonished by the charge levelled by Jonathan Livny in his article on the Israel Wagner Society in Wagner News No.206, page 48 that Richard Strauss was a member of the Nazi Party. This is a calumny too far. Nowhere have I come across previously any suggestion that Strauss was a member of the Nazi party though he did succumb to blandishments from Goebbels to become President of the Reichsmusikkammer . He did so, as is well known, for his own ulterior purposes (such as securing an extension of music copyright in Germany and encouraging the performance of works by his younger German colleagues). His decision not to decline the invitation has of course reverberated damagingly to Strauss' reputation down the ages, but he was a political innocent at the time he received the invitation and the Nazis at that stage had yet to embark on their assault on the civilized values to which Strauss (and many other Germans) subscribed. In a nutshell, as George Marek put it in his 1967 biography: “Strauss was not a Nazi. He was not an anti-Nazi. He was one of those who let it happen... he was politically naive”. Even though his Jewish daughter-in-law was threatened towards the end of the war, and her children – his grandchildren – were abused at school, he was still man enough to commit to paper his disenchantment with the Nazis when he wrote to Stefan Zweig, a letter intercepted by the Gestapo. That he lamented in his seminal composition Metamorphosen the destruction of the opera houses in Dresden, Munich and Vienna and, possibly, the death of German culture (and not of the millions who died as a direct consequence of Hitler's war) only serves to demonstrate that while still a patriot as late as 1945 he remained extraordinarily naive. There is evidence to prove that Carl Orff was a party member as were Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Herbert von Karajan, but there is not, so far as I am aware, any evidence to suggest that Richard Strauss was a member of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party).

I am grateful to Chris Argent for setting the record straight on this important point. As Editor I am sorry that this factual error slipped through my checking system. Roger Lee

Just like the Wagner Society, The Richard Strauss Society is a charity whose objectives mirror those of its more populous partner. Unlike the Wagner Society however, the Richard Strauss Society does not have a temple at which to worship and absorb the life- affirming balm of the Master’s compositions, but it does have the equivalent of Wahnfried in Garmish-Partenkirchen which is Strauss’ villa which he built on the proceeds of his first operatic success: Salome (which the Kaiser loathed). Unsurprisingly, the Richard Strauss Society has a newsletter, a membership fee and a committee which endeavours to fulfil the Society’s charitable objectives. New members are most welcome, and may care to contact us at [email protected]. Chris Argent

– 22 – LISZT, ALKAN AND BERLIOZ SOCIETIES An exciting new collaboration for the Wagner Society Andrea Buchanan Richard Miles and I met recently with officers of the Liszt, Alkan and Berlioz Societies to explore ways in which our societies can collaborate to the mutual benefit of all of our members. We face many common problems with membership decreasing in size and increasing in maturity, poorly attended events, the desire to attract a younger audience and the need to streamline our systems to cut costs and function as efficiently as possible. It was a productive meeting and we agreed that we would begin by publicising each other’s events and that we would aim to hold about two joint events per year, to incorporate items of interest which would cover all four composers. (Now, there is a challenge!...) We shall begin with a dinner and recital organised by the Liszt Society in January. The recital will include works by Liszt, Alkan, Berlioz and Wagner, and we also hope that a young singer will be able to perform some Wagner and possibly also some Berlioz items. Wagner Society members will be most welcome to attend both of the events listed below (some of the committee have already confirmed that they will be going to the dinner) and you will note that the prices are very reasonable.

Alkan, Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner Societies dinner to inaugurate, celebrate and promote the closer working of these Societies 7 to 10pm (approx) on Thursday 24th January A piano recital by Mark Viner followed by a two course dinner The Forge Restaurant, 3-7 Delancey Street, Camden Town, London NW1 7NL Price : £40 per head including wine. Non-member guests welcome http://www.forgevenue.org/visit-the-forge

Requests for attendance to: Jim Vincent, The Liszt Society, 3 Offlands Court, Reading Road, Moulsford, Oxon OX10 9EX Tel: 01491 651842 e-mail: [email protected] Payment by Paypal (destination address: [email protected] ) or by cheque payable to The Liszt Society. Applications must be received before 3rd January 2013 . No tickets will be issued and a list of attendees will be held on the door. Members applying for places electronically will be notified by e-mail. Members applying by post are requested to provide a self-addressed stamped envelope if they require written confirmation. Liszt Society Annual Day: 12 to 9pm on Saturday 10th November 2012 Includes AGM, recital, masterclass by Leslie Howard and evening concert Deptford Town Hall, Goldsmiths College, University of London For further information on these societies, please visit the websites below http://www.lisztsoc.org.uk http://www.theberliozsociety.org.uk http://www.alkansociety.org

– 23 – the Wagner society

MEMBERSHIP RENEWALS 2013 Mike Morgan, Treasurer

This is a gentle reminder to members that subscriptions for next year will be due for renewal on or before 1st January 2013. Renewal forms will be made available to members before the end of the year.

I should also like to take this opportunity to introduce our members to some of the changes that we intend to implement, as the Society modernises and streamlines its operations.

The ‘electronic age’ is here to stay and one of the Society’s prime objectives is to develop the website, so that it will serve as a communication centre for members and will take up much of our current manual administration workload. This will include areas such as the processing and payment of membership applications and renewals, the booking and payment of events, the ability to access Wagner News on-line and the opportunity for members to communicate openly with one another offering advice, information about Wagner and other opera events and general items of interest.

Communication with members will increasingly be by e-mail and those of you who have not already done so will be encouraged to provide us with your e-mail addresses. Eventually we shall send out all important information, including electronic copies of Wagner News by e-mail, thus significantly reducing our use of the postal service. Naturally we recognise that some members do not have access to e-mail and we can assure this minority that their needs will be accommodated.

In the future, although not for a while yet, those who do not wish to receive electronic communications will be asked to make a small contribution towards the cost of postage. The main thing we would like to emphasise at this stage is that, for 2013, membership fees will not increase for current members who renew their membership. We are going to increase the fees slightly for new members only. We will also be offering a few opt-in benefits to members at additional cost, but these will be entirely voluntary.

– 24 – Benefits offered under the new structure will hopefully satisfy the demands of members and at the same time will help to attract and retain new members, in particular younger people with an interest in Wagner.

These optional benefits on offer for 2013 membership will consist of three items:

• The option to enter into a ballot to win free tickets to Wagner opera events in 2013. These events will include tickets to Bayreuth, the Longborough Ring, Wagner Society events and other opera and concert tickets. The cost of this option will be £5 per member (£10 for joint members). This option will be additional to the Bayreuth Ballot entry where members pay for tickets and which remains part of the current basic option.

• The option to become a Premium Member. Premium members will be acknowledged on the website (if they wish) and will receive an invitation to a party and recital to be held in 2013. The donations made by Premium Members will be used entirely towards the funding of our charitable remit, especially for young singers. Premium membership will cost £10. (£20 for joint members)

• Members will also be invited to make a further charitable donation, should they so wish.

We will be sending you all membership renewal forms in the next few weeks by post, as usual. Please be aware that these will look a little different this year due to the changes that are outlined above.

The development of the website will not be completed overnight, but it is our aim to have a fully operational version up and running some time in 2013. There will be many changes to the way we do things that will centre around the website and we will ensure that you are fully and clearly informed of all these changes well in advance.

In the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact me: [email protected] with any queries which you may have about this communication.

– 25 – LONGBOROUGH’S GLORIOUS “TWILIGHT” Paul Dawson-Bowling Photography by Clive Barda for Longborough Festival Opera Martin Graham brought his dream of staging the Ring , complete and uncut, to glorious fruition in July with Götterdämmerung , and he was able to do it because he shares in no small measure its creator’s grandeur of vision. However he also shares Wagner’s astounding organisational skills and his capacity for sheer grinding hard work in pursuit of a great objective. Anyone can have a great idea, but as successive governments have shown through their failures, the devil is in the detail, and it is the capacity for infinite pains and details that gets results and explains Martin Graham’s ability to make the impossible happen. His success is so phenomenal that if any committed Wagnerian has the funds or availability for just one Ring cycle next year, Wagner’s bicentenary year, then it should probably be Longborough. The snag is there are only going to be three cycles, a fact which is going to leave many people disappointed. Götterdämmerung is the most difficult part of the Ring to put on in a reduced scoring of the kind so successful at Longborough. Whereas great tracts from the earlier Ring operas are so lightly scored that they can be played by a modest orchestra without any change to the instrumentation, these are rare and short in Götterdämmerung , and this was why Longborough’s most unexpected success lay in realising the distinctive sound- world of Götterdämmerung so well. There was absolutely nothing lean and hungry about it, but rather an amplitude and a saturation which belied the modest forces creating it. In this the masterly hand of Anthony Negus was constantly in evidence, and he also brought to the score the same propulsive energy that made his Siegfried so exciting. To be sure, he emphasised dynamic verve rather than the Northernness of Götterdämmerung , the mists and lowering greyness, but great music has more in it than any one interpretation can ever fathom, and Negus’ vitality and incandescence fitted in perfectly with Alan Privett’s alert, compelling production, which likewise was nowhere redolent of forests and heavy clouds. It was a production built simply round some trellises, jungle jims, rope ladders, some man-sized mobile tripods (three), and above all a great central disc which could glide into the foreground or recede to the back of the stage. The disc could also shift from horizontal to vertical, and much of the time it made a raked platform where the action took place. What lent to the staging a dreamlike quality was the subtle and atmospheric lighting of Ben Ormerod, and the production might otherwise have seemed over-literal in its emphasis on the Ring ’s everyday aspect. Siegfried with his dirty boots, shabby trousers and T-shirt looked more as if he had wandered off a building site than from the world of myth, archetypes and legend, but then Privett had all the essentials fully in place. His many imaginative touches were placed at the service of Wagner and not of Privett, and it yet it was exactly in this that they revealed Privett’s individuality and greatness as a producer. How simple and effective were the Rhinemaidens with their floaty blue-green dresses suggesting something watery and subaqueous. How simple and effective was Hagen’s final failure as he dangled despairingly away from the Rhinemaidens, clinging onto his segment of the trellis. – 26 – The Norns were amazing: three towering turrets of women, gliding mysteriously round the stage, the only really myth-invoking aspect of the production. They were like the rest of the cast in being superior to any counterparts that appear currently on the world’s great stages. Rachel Nichols is an incredible find and a wonderful Brünnhilde, possessed of a beautiful voice and a musical intelligence of a very high order, perhaps a legacy of her background in JS Bach. She is radiantly secure above the stave; her high C at the end of the prologue was ecstatic; and she had absolutely the stamina for the panegyric of her Immolation. She had during the evening sung three pivotal phrases as beautifully or more beautifully then I have ever heard them, “O heilige Götter” from the prologue, “Ach Jammer! Jammer!” from the closing scene of Act II, and “Gutrune heisst der Zauber” , also from this scene. I must confess that I had mixed feelings about at last witnessing Malcolm Rivers in a live performance. What if this admirable man and warm acquaintance produced something which called for adverse comments?

– 27 – What an unnecessary concern! In two crucial aspects Malcolm outshone every other member of the excellent cast, most obviously his son Hagen with whom he shares a scene. First, Malcolm Rivers’ diction was in a class of its own: crystal clear but never percussive, and second, there was his sheer presence. While on stage he riveted my gaze to his immense, chilling, vituperative presence. It seemed a mistake to garb him with dark glasses; in this tiny theatre his facial expressions would have been visible everywhere, and my guess is that they would have been worth seeing. His voice had so little undesirable seniority to it that at one point he managed the best mezza voce of the whole evening.

Stuart Pendred, the Hagen, seemed to grow vocally throughout the performance. Initially his timbre seemed to be too much upper edge and not enough centre, but by the time of his call to the vassals, it had plenty of body and heft. His modest stature helped him produce a characterisation all the more in keeping with Wagner’s intentions because he did not possess a vast and obvious menace. Some great Hagens, from Joseph Greindl to Matti Salminen, have actually misrepresented the role, because one look at them is enough to make anyone run a mile. Lee Bisset made such a spectacular Sieglinde that she seemed in line for Brünnhilde this time. Instead her attractive good looks and her feminine appeal enabled

– 28 – her to fill out the poignant but flimsy role of Gutrune, so that Siegfried’s infatuation made total sense. Siegfried himself is probably Wagner’s most difficult role. Nowhere else except in the original Dresden Venus did Wagner created a character who so utterly failed to present on stage the picture in his imagination (as his writings revealed it); and it is always a big challenge to make Siegfried work. What makes it all the bigger is Siegfried’s assault on Brünnhilde, abusing her and violating her, Nothung or no Nothung, as horribly as if it had been an actual rape. He becomes so unlikeable, even detestable, that only Alberto Remedios has managed to tone down the audience aversion which then follows by creating a hero so exuberant, so full of life and joy, that he is simply incapable of appreciating how this could be unsettling for a woman, let alone devastating. As for the defence of Siegfried commonly put forward, it simply will not do. It is no good to say that these are mythical times when people and standards were different, because Wagner recast his myths into intense psychological dramas that are utterly of the here and now. Motivations and sensibilities in Wagner are so in tune with today’s ideas that we relate to them as if they were today, and we quite unthinkingly make estimates of the characters as if they were familiar individuals, as real as any that we can ever know. Mati Turi sang Siegfried heroically and rose heroically to the challenge of promoting his character, and if he and Alan Privett still left the impression that the Götterdämmerung Siegfried is mostly a muscle-bound idiot, or a cad, or both, the fault lies with his creator. Homer was not the only supreme genius who sometimes nodded. As for the other ‘minor roles’, and there are not really any minor roles in Wagner, I was particularly taken with the purity and legato of the first Norn, Catherine King (also Flosshilde), and the Waltraute of Alison Kettlewell which was warm and lieder-like, while the lounge-suited Eddie Wade sang Gunther in a suave-bass and did everything possible to give substance to another of Wagner’s less fulfilling creations. I still cannot reconcile myself to Privett’s girls clad in black who writhe constantly and obtrusively round the stage and sometimes shift the scenery, but these are my only real reservations about his great production; otherwise any scanty reservations relate to the common problems of Ring productions everywhere. For Longborough’s complete Ring in 2013 I have only one big additional hope: that it should be broadcast or recorded by an enterprising CD company. The world should hear it. My information, poignant and disturbing, is that not a minute of this treasurable Ring has ever been stored up in an audio or visual recording of any kind; and if this state of affairs persists, then once next summer is over, the Longborough Ring may prove only to have “flourished but as the flower of the field.” This Ring deserves immortality, not “As soon as the wind bloweth over it, it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.” There may be Ritzier, glitzier versions on offer, performed with Wagner’s full, outsized orchestra and not the Lessing reduction as at Longborough, but it would be difficult to imagine another Ring so guaranteeable in its success and so successful in so many ways. Now that Donald Runnicles has breathed new life into Götz Friedrich’s venerable version at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, that might be a competitor; but the versions at the Met and Seattle Opera are both let down by conducting that does not hold a candle to Anthony Negus. As for the Covent Garden – “Oh what a falling off was there!” There are so many reasons why that account misses the mark that even to begin them would make sorry reading. The fact is that Martin Graham’s Ring at Longborough outshines them all. Wonderful! Unmissable! Overwhelming!

– 29 – A VASSAL’S EYE VIEW OF LONGBOROUGH GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG A Rehearsal Diary by Nick Fowler Week 1: Studio Rehearsals (London) Monday 18th June First day! Very nervous about Chorus Master Simon Joly who has quite a reputation, having worked at WNO, ENO and the BBC, but he turns out to be extremely nice. Definitely on our side, which is a good start. In the afternoon the German Language Coach arrives, and after a while we all start to doubt our command of even the most basic German! But he's very patient and keeps explaining what he wants and we start achieving it, we think. Tuesday 19th June Today we are in the presence of our Musical Director Anthony Negus who is of course becoming legendary among British Wagnerians. Still nervous, even though most of us have met him before and he is always extremely warm and encouraging. But we still want to get it as right as we can for him. Again, our nervousness means that some bits, which of course we know, we start to become uncertain about, and do them badly, and the uncertainty spreads, so things start getting worse. But the music team wisely move us on to other sections and then come back to the dodgy bits, so things gradually improve. Wednesday 20th June Meet Director and team. Get shown the model. Concepts explained. Begin moving it. Getting used to space. Getting used to our sticks. Hearing the people singing Siegfried and Brünnhilde for the first time Hagen (Stuart Pendred) a known quantity to some of us. Thursday 21st June Costume fittings today. More insight into what the production will look like. Some trepidation when it becomes apparent that we will be barefoot. Those of us who know Longborough aware that going barefoot in backstage areas not a good idea. But at least there's nothing outlandish or difficult to deal with. Friday 22nd June First session with the women. It's astonishing how little they have to sing. Obviously the opera has other female characters, in fact more of them than there are male characters, given that there are 3 each of the Rhine maidens and Norns, but the female chorus have almost nothing to do except drape themselves over the male chorus and otherwise stand around. This may explain why the female chorus in our production numbers only four – basically the Rhine maidens and Norns, who are doubling up anyway in several cases. I'm sure much learned and erudite stuff has been written about this as an example of Wagner's attitude to women. He's quite happy to create wonderful female characters when they are goddesses or half-immortal or water-nymphs or, as in Gutrune's case, purely mortal but still noble, but when called upon to deliver normal, mortal, human women, he chooses not to. The female chorus have precisely eight bars of music to sing! I heard our Music Director discussing one passage of our music with his assistant, and saying he wondered why, since the women were on stage at that point, Wagner hadn't got them to join in with that passage. It seemed he was almost tempted to have them join in, but then changed his mind. Perhaps thinking of how Wagnerians in the audience would respond!

– 30 – Week 2: Studio rehearsals (London) Thursday 28th June Working on Siegfried's death and the funeral march. Realization dawns as we watch him sink down during his final aria that we are going to have to lift him! He is a big man and we have to lift him three times. For the last two lifts he is on a stretcher, so they're not quite so difficult. The Assistant and Movement Director are very attentive and concerned that we bend correctly, lift from the knees and thighs, time it carefully so we all lift together etc. We eventually do it several times and we manage not to drop him, and nobody gets hurt. Week 3: Sitzprobe (Birmingham) Wednesday 4th July First time on the Vassals Express! This is the mini-bus to transport us around. We get caught in traffic so we arrive late and there's a danger we won't get to our Act III bits. Sure enough, just as we get to within a couple of pages of our off-stage ‘Hoi-hos’, it's time to leave. Ah well. Good to hear the orchestra, even though the acoustic will be so different in the theatre. We felt that we were being completely swamped in our bits which, given the boomy church acoustic and the absence of a pit, we probably were. Stage Rehearsals (Longborough) Saturday 7th July First time on stage, with actual towers and gates where before we'd had chairs. Start realising how much more time needed to move and climb, how much more difficult to manage our sticks when actually climbing. Director and Movement Director darting about trying to make us think about motivation for and intention behind each move, but we're more concerned with just getting from A to B without hitting anything or anyone. Of course they're right to be concerned and to want us to start doing it properly as soon as we can. Sunday 8th July Act III: tricky for we Vassals. Very little singing, but a great deal of standing around reacting to what's happening, desperately trying to remember and listening out for cues in the music and text. Even more importantly, working to take in and remember when we're supposed to do something in response to what a character has said or done. Is this the quick move across to that tower or the slow one across in front of that gate? Where am I meant to be next? How am I going to get there? What was I supposed to be thinking at this point? Technical team have had not had time to set things up as they wanted, so having to do things around and between us, which means often having to stop until they are ready. Every time we stop and wait the concentration slips and the Assistant and Movement Directors have to jump in and get the focus back. We do get to see exactly what we will be dealing with in the immolation scene, which almost becomes more real than it should when the flaming torches start dripping burning hot oil and scraps of material and are quickly extinguished. A piece of good news: the initial lift and carry of the body has been abandoned. Instead Siegfried will stagger to the appropriate place and die. No reason is given, but it appears there was concern we might injure ourselves Throughout the afternoon there's the added distraction of the Wimbledon Final. Any break is an occasion to dash out and watch a bit more of it on the TV. Our Gutrune is Scottish, so of course madly rooting for Murray, and devastated (well, in a small way) when he finally loses.

– 31 – Week 4: Stage Rehearsals (Longborough) Monday 9th July Day off! We're not in Act I so not required. Shame it isn't yesterday – could have watched the tennis. Very glad not to have to get on that bloody bus! Tuesday 10th July Stage and orchestra for the first time today, so we should be able to get some idea what it will ultimately sound and feel like. At first it's surprising how soft the orchestra is, compared to what it was in the Sitzprobe in Birmingham. In fact it's sometimes so soft that we have trouble hearing it. And our Music Director's position in the pit isn't raised enough for us to be able to see him sufficiently. Our first entry is from upstage and all we really see is the top of his head. So inevitably we part company with the orchestra and often find ourselves several beats ahead. We have several goes at it, and it begins to get better. Thursday 12th July The last rehearsal before the Dress Rehearsal, which, as is increasingly the case, is open, therefore essentially a performance: Performance Zero. So our last chance to get things wrong in private! Actually it all goes rather well. No stops necessary, so technically our first complete run. The bits we're able to observe are beginning to look amazing. Everything seems to be heading in the right direction. The music staff and the Assistant Director have been rehearsing the covers. Longborough have always been strong on coaching and working with the covers. The Gutrune and Brünnhilde covers have had chances to go on in rehearsals. As cover for Alberich I get the chance to walk through the Hagen his scene on stage with the Assistant Director. It would be nice if more companies took the business of covers as seriously. Sunday 15th July: Dress Rehearsal Last chance to get it right before the first night. Vassals scene goes well – coordination between stage and pit maintained, everything works as it should.

Weeks 5 and 6: The Performances Tuesday 17th July: First Night The show goes very well. Audience seems very receptive – bravos at the end of each Act and big applause for Anthony and the orchestra at the beginning of Act III. The performance runs slightly later than expected, so afterwards we're not able to stay and celebrate. Instead we quickly pile into the bus and head back to London hoping

– 32 – to arrive in time to get our last trains and buses home. Forced to miss the sponsors’ party to which all cast and crew were invited, but fortified by several bottles of wine planted on the bus, which are of course appreciated. We all pretend not to be interested in the reviews, but I imagine we will all be checking on the internet the next morning. Thursday 19th July: Second Performance Much discussion on the bus of the reviews. It's always good to see colleagues praised in the press. It's always unpleasant to see them criticised. You never quite know how to behave the next time you see them afterwards. Usually everyone just ignores it and gets on with the job, which is probably the best approach. Some of the comments by the reviewers mystify us. It is a reminder how subjective a business it is. It does make one question the point of them (the reviews) at all. Sunday 22nd July: Third Performance More discussion of the reviews. Particularly the one in that morning's Observer, which we all agree is what a review should be like. It's always easy to feel that a review is good ie fair and balanced if you agree with it, and bad if you don't. But unlike several of the others, this review (by Fiona Maddocks), gives the impression that the reviewer has thought about what they have watched, and tried to understand it. Gunther's wheelchair is an example. We've all had our moments when we've wondered about this, and some of us are still not convinced about it. I have always quite liked the idea that Gunther is so decadent and lazy that he would prefer to use a wheelchair even though he doesn’t need one. Fiona Maddocks sees something else again: "Gunther seeks attention by faking a disability he does not suffer". Most of the other reviewers are openly dismissive of it, which seems to me the easy knee-jerk reaction. Surely we are entitled to expect better from reviewers in our national papers? A moment of drama backstage during the last Act. After Siegfried's death, in the process of transferring him to the stretcher upon which we carry him back on for the final scene, he drops the ring! It spins about at our feet, threatening to roll off into the darkness and be lost forever, or at any rate not be found in time for Brünnhilde to cast it into the waters as required. Fortunately I manage to grab it before it escapes and return it to our grateful Assistant Stage Manager. The implications of the standby Alberich (ie me) actually having had the ring in his hand only sink in afterwards. What if I had suddenly been possessed by its power and refused to hand it over? How would the opera have ended then? I expect there was a spare available. Best performance so far. It just keeps getting better! Looking forward to the next. Starting to feel sorry that it will be the last. At least for a while. Tuesday 24th July: Final performance I spend most of Act I at one of my favourite listening posts on the balcony outside the boxes where I can sit leaning against a pillar with just a thin door between me and the audience, looking out over the view and watching the blue tits and various finches flitting about in the trees. Just about as near paradise as I can imagine! It's the best performance yet.. Everything works. Huge applause at the end. We all feel that we have participated in something special. Longborough Festival Opera a very special place – an extraordinary venture. And to have spent so much time working on and in Wagner's music and text and ideas is such a fantastic experience. It's more than worth the occasional discomfort on the Vassals Express!

– 33 – BAYREUTH FESTIVAL 2012 Der fliegende Holländer (6th Aug) Tristan und Isolde (7thAug) Lohengrin (8th Aug) Robert Mitchell Have you had a Bosabalian moment? Years ago, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin amongst an excellent series of performances which included Ligendza, Wenkoff and Talvela in a Barenboim-conducted Tristan und Isolde , one stood out above all others: Luisa Bosabalian as Amelia in Ballo in Maschera . She had a voice of exceptional, easy strength, perfect pitch and legato, and crystal clear purity. It was the most pleasant of surprises, which one always hopes will be repeated. This year at Bayreuth there were two such performances. One of them would surely have been Mr Nikitin as Der fliegende Holländer , but he had to withdraw when the management panicked after the media got to know about the Hakenkreuz on his chest, apparently on the eve of the Generalprobe . (Displays of this symbol are illegal in Germany, but in the event the Holländer's chest was covered. The important point however was not lost: the Russian recipient may have had bad thoughts or beliefs in the past and will pay the price for all eternity in today's Germany – no seven year let-out possibility there!) Apparently in rehearsal Herr Thielemann was often asking Mr Nikitin to sing more softly, perhaps an indication of what we had been denied. (A previous Bayreuth stalwart was rumoured also to have had a Hakenkreuz , but that was on the bottom of his private swimming pool rather than about his person.) In the event Samuel Youn took over and gave his all with a voice of heldenbariton brilliance, successfully overcoming the vagaries of a production in which the ocean was at all times non-existent. The producer's ideas were really hammy and even predictable. For example a femme fatale dressed in leopardskin coat with underlying Beate Uhse gear is about to attempt to fellate our hero. He casts her off angrily at "niemals der Tod" . A sekretärin profers a soothing mug of coffee, which he angrily sweeps aside at "vergb’ne Hoffnung" . Our hero is a whizz-kid executive, presumably disenchanted with his life, who has undergone some kind of intracranial surgery and needs to sustain himself with intravenous narcotics (shades of the Berlin Tristan und Isolde ). He wanders about with a small suitcase on wheels stuffed full of depository notes or some such with which to go on a bribing spree. (I'm really not making this up.) Photo of Samuel Youn by Enrico Nawrath for Bayreuther Festpiele

– 34 – How singers manage to give such excellent vocal perfomances while having to contend with this rubbish says much for their capabilities. The ladies' chorus were making electric fans in Daland's factory. Senta spends her time painting Holländer ships on the cardboard packing boxes strewn about the stage. Adrianne Pieczonka clearly had an off- night with small scale unintelligible singing. Michael König tried hard with the most thankless task in the role of Erik as handyman for the factory. He will do well in more interesting roles. Franz-Josef Selig sang well as Daland. The greatest contributions to the evening were the phenomenal choruses and the magnificent Festival Orchestra under Christian Thielemann's baton. As usual his interpretation was marked by utterly scrupulous and illuminating observation of the score, with two (unmarked) Thielemannesque ritartandi: the first at “Ach lieber Südwind, blas’ noch mehr ”, the second in the finale. The orchestral colours were always hauntingly apt, for example the softly braying brass just before “Nur eine Hoffnung soll mir bleiben” in the Holländer's first monologue. The audience always go wild when he takes his ovation. They still love a hero. Tristan und Isolde was marred by the dotty production, full of irrelevant, distracting movement, unintelligible diction by Isolde and Brangäne 80% of the time, and really sluggish conducting by Peter Schneider. The men all sang magnificently, especially the ever better Robert Dean Smith who never lapses into shouting even in the most dramatic moments of Act III. At last we had a production of Lohengrin where the genius of the producer, Herr Neuenfels, enhanced the drama by allowing the interaction of the characters to enhance the music, not work against it. The depiction of the Brabantines as rats in some big experiment was problematic, and I regret that much of the meaning of this production passed me by, as it clearly did my neighbours. For example, Telramund is defeated not by Lohengrin's sword but by an icy look from his wife! Clearly the rats were nasty and shot arrows into poor Elsa. At other times they had a sense of fun, especially their laterally nodding heads in time to “Treulich geführt” . Gottfried is some adult-sized mature foetus who comes out of a big egg left by the swan. In the title role Klaus Florian Vogt exceeded all expectations. He had all the Bosabalian attributes. He has a clear jugendlichtenor voice which never tires, is well projected, and can always shift down to a melting mezza voce when required. He looked splendid and totally believable. Over 48 years of attending Bayreuth this was the only time I have ever witnessed much of the audience giving a standing ovation for an artist's first appearance before the curtain. Photo of Klaus Florian Vogt by Jörg Schulze for Bayreuther Festpiele The chorus here was even better than in the Holländer, with a spine-tingling “Gesegnet soll sie schreiten” culminating in a magnificent crescendo, trumped only by “Welch ein Geheimnis” a little later, which ends in opposite fashion with a perfect pp. In between these choruses we had the spellbinding confrontation between the handsome, vocally resplendent Annette Dasch as Elsa and a finely characterised if somewhat underpowered Ortrud from Susan Maclean. The chorus flanking them was dressed in the most colourful costumes in marked contrast to the usual drabness so prevalent in Wagner productions these days. Andris Nelsons in his third year here paced the work expertly. – 35 – HEROISM AND VILLAINY IN OPERA, VERSE AND ART Presteigne: 21st to 24th September 2012 Chris Argent and Roger Lee Photography by David Waters and Roger Lee The Mastersingers weekend in Presteigne (the Welsh equivalent of Aldeburgh) opened in its now traditional manner with a wine tasting event to get things off to a convivial start followed by the sumptuous and now legendary Victorian feast created by Gaby Rivers. Terry Barfoot of Arts in Residence explored the characterisation of a variety of operatic heroes and villains with performances by members of the Mastersingers Company’s Young Artists. In the field of heroes, those who had foregathered in the Assembly Rooms heard Leonore’s aria from Act I of Fidelio performed by Gweneth-Ann Jeffers and likewise elements of Florestan’s great scena and Aria from Act II of the same opera sung by Mark Le Brocq. Gweneth-Ann Jeffers RL Mark Le Brocq RL The other heroes presented were Carmen, whose Habanera was sung by Antonia Sotgiu and Escamillo’s Toréador song deftly rendered by Stuart Pendred. Otello and Radamès: for the former of these two heroes Jonathan Stoughton was joined by Gweneth-Ann Jeffers for the peaceful and romantic Act I Duet in Otello , and the same couple performed the Radamès-Aida duet from Act III of Aida . What was striking about this canter through the operatic pages featuring heroes was the huge variation in qualifications to be a hero: Otello might have been a hero in Shakespeare’s Othello but in Verdi’s superb reduction he is nought but a malleable wimp. Escamillo’s accession to the Antonia Sotgiu DW ranks of the hero is surprising as he just kills bulls (much as Siegfried qualifies by killing a dragon). The hero chosen to represent the Wagnerian canon was Brünnhilde whose Immolation Scene concluding Götterdämmerung was sung by an ecstatic Rachel Nicholls (the Longborough Ring Brünnhilde) to enthusiastic applause. The session finished with Cavaradossi: a noble but tragic hero whose aria in Act III of Tosca was sung by Jonathan Stoughton. – 36 – Terry Barfoot then turned to Villains: a much more exciting prospect. Stuart Pendred set the ball rolling as the diabolical Pizarro gloating in anticipation of his political rival Florestan being murdered, an aria riddled with short, stabbing phrases that he infused with substantial dramatic intensity. Antonia Sotgiu as Carmen and Jonathan Stoughton as the besotted Don José sang and convincingly acted the final scene from Carmen . Richard Black, Jonathan Stoughton, Antonia Sotgiu DW Stuart Pendred deployed his experience as an actor to the full, mesmerising the audience with his performance of Hagen’s Watch from Act I of Götterdämmerung with a nice sardonic smile and a distinctive evil tinge to his voice. Stuart’s performance of Hagen at Longborough was notable for the terrifying sense of menace which he brought to the role. Just a few months later here at Presteigne he demonstrated that he has a new physical power to the voice to complement his obvious facility for generating an imposing stage presence. Nick Fowler joined Stuart as Alberich for the Act II duet having covered the part for Malcolm Rivers at Longborough this summer. Richard Black and Julian Black provided all of the singers with the secure which made it possible for them to demonstrate their talents to the full. Nick Fowler (standing) and Stuart Pendred DW You can read Nick Fowler’s Longborough Blog on page 30

NOLAN AND THE STAGE Over at the Rodd a couple of miles away in the Sidney Nolan Trust’s mediæval tithe barn David Edwards presented the programme he devised to complement the exhibition of paintings by Sir Sidney Nolan and to mark the centenary of the birth of Benjamin Britten next year. The company of young artists who had delivered such wonderful performances at the Assembly Rooms now brought us extracts from Samson et Dalila, Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Il Trovatore as well as seven Benjamin Britten pieces. Julian Black joined the weekend’s warhorse Richard Black in a four handed version of Le Sacre du Printemps with a virtuoso display of page-turning by David Edwards. Mark Le Brocq walked through the barn to chill spines with his Now the Great Bear and the Pleiades and Stuart Pendred revealed a comic talent to close the evening with his hilarious Bottom’s Dream . – 37 – MASTERCLASSES WITH RACHEL NICHOLLS

Dame Anne Evans, Maestro Anthony Negus and soprano Rachel Nicholls DW As soon as Rachel Nicholls had sung “Siegmund! Sieh’ auf mich!” as Brünnhilde delivering the Todesverkündigung from Act II of Die Walküre it became apparent to the audience in the Assembly Rooms that they were witnessing an historically important moment. One of the greatest exponents of this role of recent times and a distinguished conductor whose Wagnerian career extends from being Reginald Goodall’s Assistant to Musical Director of the 2013 Longborough Ring found themselves coaching a world-class soprano who already demonstrates a perfectionist’s level of preparedness for this role. Rachel’s development as a Wagnerian artist is by now a familiar story. A couple of years ago she decided to embark upon a radical change to her outstanding international career in baroque music, especially that of JS Bach. In May 2011 she took part in a Mastersingers class at Aldeburgh with Dame Anne Evans, progress from which resulted in her singing the Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde at Longborough this year, following up with their complete Ring cycle next year plus the role of Senta in Scottish Opera’s Holländer .

Those who have attended masterclasses which involve Anne Evans know to expect plenty of fun and laughter. This Dame of the British Empire produced the helmet she wore for the Last Night of the Proms, declaring that Rachel needed to get used to such apparel.

RL

– 38 – The Wotan / Brünnhilde dialogue from Act III of Die Walküre (“War es so schmählich”) was marked by a spontaneous ovation from the audience at Rachel’s virtuoso treatment of that long, heart-rending E on the word vertraut when she expanded and coloured an eleven second eternity of exquisite control over dynamics and vibrato to produce a world in a single note. “Ewig war ich, ewig bin ich” was similarly met by a burst of applause for Rachel’s apparently effortless delivery of the top C on “leuchtende” which put into practice Anne Evans’ advice to “open your throat and enjoy it.” The session was completed with a performance of “Heil dir Sonne” which alone showed that Rachel Nicholls is already one of the great interpreters of this role. It also allowed Anthony Negus to add his rendering of Siegfried’s lines to those of Siegmund and Wotan, all in the call of masterclass duty. Referring both to this occasion and to her performance as the Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde at Longborough, Malcolm Rivers thanked Rachel for having given us a glimpse of the future: “I feel privileged to be here.” He added: “I know that you have given up most of your other professional work for this.” Rachel explained how she has indeed had to pull out of several projects. “It’s too confusing for my voice to go back to singing early music. Anne and I decided that one thing which was holding me back if I wanted to develop this repertoire is my having to switch between the two. So I have taken the decision that either I shall talk to the conductors and explain that now I am singing in a different way or I shall have to say that for artistic reasons I’ll just have to pull out gracefully. I have lost a lot of work, which means that I am happy and very poor!” Rachel said that without the support which she had received from Malcolm Rivers and Mastersingers and the immense kindness shown to her by Maestro Anthony Negus and Dame Anne Evans there is no way that it would have been possible for her to have reached this level of achievement in the repertoire. To Malcolm Rivers’ concluding remark: “She is going to be one of the greats” Dame Anne added; “Yes, I feel it in me water!”

DW DW Malcolm Rivers writes: I want to take this opportunity (which I missed at Presteigne) to express a heartfelt “thank you” to all of those who were responsible for the success of the Presteigne weekend. In particular I would like to acknowledge the magnificent contributions made by Dame Anne Evans and Maestro Anthony Negus. Their dedication and industry above and beyond the call of duty and the knowledge and skills which they both unstintingly shared with artists and audience alike was as nothing I have seen before. I thank Maestro Anthony for his unparalleled work in the field of teaching and encouraging a new generation of musicians. No man has done more for young artists in this country in the Wagner repertoire. – 39 – THE SORCERER OF BAYREUTH An illustrated talk by Barry Millington: 3 rd October 2012 Christian Hoskins Barry Millington opened this presentation of his new book of this title by explaining that the capacity of Wagner’s music to cast a spell on the listener had long earned him the sobriquet of sorcerer, but also that such a term brought with it a number of negative connotations. One of the intentions of his new book is to reassess the composer’s image and demolish false stereotypes by presenting the scholarship of recent years into such disparate subjects as Cosima Wagner, Otto and Mathilde Wesendonck and Wagner’s music scores. Posing the question “Why is Wagner the one person we love to hate?” Millington referred to the composer’s widely regarded image as a scrounger, philanderer and a generally loathsome being. Using descriptions of Wagner’s personality by a number of his contemporaries however he was able to provide us with a more rounded view. Wagner’s derogatory comments about those whose work he did not admire, for instance, were shown to be tempered by his support and praise for Liszt, Hans von Bülow and even the young Brahms. Millington suggested that Wagner’s relationships with women were not particularly amoral for his era and contrasted his treatment of Minna with the considerably worse actions of artists such as Debussy, Janá ek and Gauguin. He suggested that it was all too common to invest Wagner with everčy flaw in the catalogue in order to make the music shine more brightly. The next aspect of the presentation focused on the complex character of Cosima, explaining her family background with Liszt an absent father, her ill-fated marriage to von Bülow and her subsequent relationship with Wagner. Cosima had a masochistic pleasure in suffering and self-sacrifice, but in many ways was the ideal companion for Wagner and helped him achieve his life’s ambition. Turning to the musicological side of Wagner research, Millington discussed the creative origins of Wagner’s music, including the composer’s account of how the opening of Das Rheingold came to him in a vision while on holiday in La Spezia. Although musicologists have doubted its veracity, Millington concluded that the available evidence does not contradict Wagner’s story. With regard to the origins of Tristan und Isolde , it was fascinating to learn that the rising chromatic phrase at the start of Act I was derived from an orchestral work called Nirwana written by von Bülow. Wagner’s love of silk clothing is well known, but Millington provided considerable additional detail about this aspect of the composer’s life. Wagner’s skin condition (erysipelas) is cited as a reason for the need for such clothing, but the sheer volume of soft materials and penchant for the colour pink suggests something more akin to a fetish. Millington touched on the amusing aspects of this research, but also suggested a link to the more sensual side of Wagner’s music. The final part of the talk concerned the influence of Wagner’s stage works on the development of cinema, both in terms of his proto-cinematic stage directions and his scores. Efforts to depict the music dramas on film, including some during the silent era, were discussed, as well as the use of film and video on stage productions.

– 40 – Wagner 200 is a wide-ranging, London-based festival to celebrate the bicentenary of Richard Wagner’s birth.

It opens on 22 May 2013 with a Wagner Birthday Concert by the Philharmonia and a stellar cast under Sir Andrew Davis at the Royal Festival Hall. It continues with further concerts, screenings of opera performances, public masterclasses, symposia, a curated film season, an exhibition and much more, at leading venues including the Royal Opera House, English National Opera, the Barbican, Royal Albert Hall and Kings Place.

Mark Eynon and Barry Millington, co-directors of Wagner 200 – which is generously supported by the Wagner Society – are announcing the full programme of events this autumn. If you would like to join the mailing list or are interested in opportunities for corporate sponsorship and private patronage, please contact us via the e-mail address below.

[email protected]

– 41 – WAGNER, VERDI & BRITTEN WEEKEND WITH SIR JOHN TOMLINSON Centenary and Bicentenary Celebrations

Sketch by Jürgen Rohland. Contact [email protected] On the Spring Bank Holiday weekend of 3rd to 6th May 2013 The Music Club of London have secured the All Saints Chapel on the Eastbourne seafront with dramatic scenery leading to the towering cliffs of Beachy Head, only a mile from the town centre. This Grade 2 listed gothic revival building has a quite superb acoustic.

The programme includes: • Concert with Sir John Tomlinson • Young Artists Masterclasses with Sir John and other international artists. • Concert with Mastersingers Company young artists • Candlelit dinner and music in the chapel • Tours to local sights of interest Details of accommodation and transport package will be available in the January issue of Wagner News. Register an interest for this event with [email protected] – 42 – SAVE THE DATE: WAGNER BICENTENARY BIRTHDAY LUNCH We are delighted to announce that our Wagner Bicentenary Birthday Lunch will be hosted by the Society’s President, Dame Gwyneth Jones on 22 nd May 2013. The lunch will take place at the Montague on the Gardens Hotel: 15 Montague Street, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 5BJ. The Hotel is located very close to the British Museum, with easy access from Russell Square, Tottenham Court Road and Holborn underground stations, and is a very short taxi ride from Kings Cross and Euston Stations. It is a charming hotel with excellent facilities to host such an occasion. We will be able to accommodate up to 100 people and we very much hope as many of you as possible will attend this celebration. Lunch will be priced at less than £50 for a three course meal, including welcome drinks and coffee. We are also looking into providing coach transport to the Royal Festival Hall for members who will be attending the Wagner 200 events and the Birthday Concert in the late afternoon and evening. Further details and exact prices will be announced in the January Wagner News. If you would like to register your interest in attending at this stage, please email Mike Morgan: [email protected] Don’t forget to book your tickets for the Festival Hall Concert, as it is anticipated that this will sell out very quickly.

WagnerJobs REVIEWER NEEDED FOR FILM IN WHICH DAME GWYNETH JONES APPEARS The UK premiere of “Quartet” takes place on 15th October at the Odeon Leicester Square, as part of the BFI Film Festival. Dustin Hoffman makes his directorial debut with this film in which four ageing opera singers are reunited in a specialist retirement home. Long-term residents Reggie (Tom Courtenay), Wilfred (Billy Connolly) and the ever-forgetful Cecily (Pauline Collins) are regular participants in an annual concert that celebrates Verdi’s birthday. Michael Gambon plays the insufferable concert director. When Reggie’s old beau Jean (Maggie Smith) arrives on the scene, the already tenuous equilibrium of the group is threatened by unresolved historical tensions and Jean’s unforgiving diva-like disposition which sees her reluctant to sing. The script is by Ronald Harwood and the score by Dario Marinelli with the musical heart of the film which is “Bella figlia dell’amore”– Verdi’s quartet from Rigoletto . 7:30pm on Monday October 15th at the Odeon Leicester Square 1pm on Saturday October 20th at the Odeon West End Screen 2

– 43 – RICHARD WAGNER’S GERMANY AND THE INDIAN CONNECTION Dilip Roy The Indian influence on German literature and philosophy goes as far back as the 17th century. In 1650 the German Jesuit Father Heinrich Roth went to India to learn Sanskrit and was the first European pioneer in this field. In the 19th century, when German Indology was at its zenith, intellectual giants such as Goethe, Hegel, Heine, Herder, Nietzsche, Ruckert, Schiller, Schlegel and Schopenhauer all took a special interest in Hindu philosophy as well as in Sanskrit literature. 19th century German classical music was not far behind, for romantic composers like Beethoven, Liszt, Schubert and above all Wagner, were all inspired by Indian philosophy and thought. Richard Wagner’s fascination with Indian literature and mythology began long before he came under the spell of Schopenhauer. He was an avid reader of India’s classical literature such as the German translations of the works of the Sanskrit poet Kalidasa for whom he had the highest regard. Wagner toyed with the idea of setting his play Malavika and Agnimitra into an opera. He also read Adolf Holtzmann’s translations of the two Indian epics the Mahabharata and Ramayana and another book that he very much enjoyed reading was Panchatantra : a collection of Indian fables which he would often read out to the other members of his family as well. In his autobiography “My Life” Wagner states that the book which inspired him most was Schopenhauer’s Vedic philosophical work: “The World as Will” which inspired the conception of Tristan und Isolde . Another book that inspired Wagner was Eugene Burnouf’s “History of Indian Buddhism”. After reading that he sketched out a dramatic poem called Die Sieger (The Victors) which he had intended to use as an opera libretto. Unfortunately that remained a dream which never materialized though he kept working on it till the very last days of his life, leaving behind unfinished sketches. Influenced by Schopenhauer’s Vedic philosophy, Wagner in his many prose works refers to India as the original source of civilization. In Cosima Wagner’s Diaries he even went on to say that Indians are actually the ancient Germans. Bryan Magee’s detailed study:“Wagner and Philosophy” is a proof of his admiration for India’s culture. Finally, mention must be made here about Hermann Brockhaus, a brother-in-law from whom Wagner gained much knowledge on Indian philosophy and thought. Brockhaus was a well known Indologist and a professor of Sanskrit in Germany at the time. Dilip Roy is a Fellow of Royal Asiatic Society and a Wagner enthusiast.

RHONDA BROWNE RECITAL WITH KELVIN LIM Mezzo-soprano Rhonda Browne is appearing with Kelvin Lim at the piano in the Walthen Hall at St Paul’s school, Barnes, SW13 9JT at 7pm on Thursday 22nd November. They will perform Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder , Elgar’s Sea Pictures and works by Howells, Brahms etc. Tickets are £10 (£8 concessions). Rhonda will sing Rossweisse under David Syrus in Act III of Die Walküre with James Rutherford and Rachel Nicholls on 21st October and pieces in the roles of Erda and Waltraute for the Wagner Society 2013 Bayreuth Bursary Competition Final on 1st December. (See page 48).

– 44 – BOOK RECEIVED: MUSIC IN 1853 BY HUGH MACDONALD Roger Lee By 1853 the great cities of Europe were connected by a network of railways. Musicians were thus able to interact more easily, exchanging rapidly-delivered mail and freely crossing frontiers in the international spirit which followed the overthrow of Napoleon. Though none of its narrative (not even dialogue) is invented, this is a book which reads like a novel and as such is one which I found very difficult to put down. The starting point is a few weeks before Richard Wagner’s 40th Birthday. We become witnesses to meetings of Brahms, Spohr, Liszt, Schumann, Joachim and Berlioz, but everyone has Wagner on his mind. In fact he turns up on half of the book’s 186 pages. Impatiently awaiting the first postal delivery of each day, Wagner kept up a voluminous correspondence with his friends, most important of which was that with Liszt who was ever willing to assist and encourage him as well as from time to time being a source of much-needed funds. Wagner’s first action of 1853 had been to send his libretti for Der Junge Siegfried and Siegfrieds Tod to the printers for a run of 50 copies. In the week following the concerts which he conducted in Zurich to celebrate his birthday Wagner composed a piece of music for the first time in over five years: 23 bars for piano in the style of a polka which he presented to Mathilda Wesendonck. On 20th June he followed this with a single movement piano sonata at the head of which manuscript he wrote: “Wisst ihr, wie das wird?” “Know ye what is to come?” quoting the Norns and Brünnhilde from what was to become Götterdämmerung . On 2nd July Wagner met Liszt off the train for his eight-day visit to Zurich. Wagner felt that he and Liszt were moving into a new world of music, leaving Schumann and his supporters far behind. Wagner read out the Rheingold and the Walküre poems and Hugh Macdonald speculates that it was Liszt’s playing him some of the symphonic poems he had been working on since their last meeting four years previously ( Orpheus, Prometheus, Mazeppa ) which might have prompted Wagner finally to embark on the huge task of composing the Ring which he had been contemplating for so long. Looking three or four years ahead, he and Liszt planned to mount a Ring in a newly-built theatre in Zurich. In August Wagner set off for Italy, arriving in La Spezia. 15 years later he wrote of this trip: “Woke up with the orchestral introduction to Das Rheingold (the E¨ triad). Sinking in a rush of water. Immediate turnaround and decision to work.” Wagner never claimed that this was the first music he wrote for the Ring . In 1850 he had drafted the opening scenes for the Norns continuing into the first part of the scene for Brünnhilde and Siegfried in Götterdämmerung . In 1852 he jotted down the dragon’s motif and the Valkyries’ theme. But from that moment in La Spezia onward there was no turning back. According to Macdonald the Rubicon was crossed: “The most potent force in music since Beethoven was about to be unleashed in all its unimaginable splendour.” Wagner returned from Italy with his head full of music, but a visit from Liszt and their trip to Paris together was “enough to keep him a little longer from the desk where a pile of 14 stave music paper awaited him.” With Liszt (“the only person who had any inkling of the real achievement on which Wagner was about to embark”) he visited Aldolphe Sax’s showroom where he came across saxhorns with their darker colour and more sombre tone than conventional horns and which he was to refashion into what would become known as “Wagner tubas”. Wagner arrived back in Zurich on 29th October and on 1st November he sat down at his desk and began to compose Der Ring des Nibelungen .

– 45 – DORCHESTER ABBEY CONCERT: SATURDAY 13th OCTOBER A charity fundraising evening organised and performed by Stuart Pendred

Stuart Pendred Hannah Pedley, Kylie Watts and Jeremy Finch Oxford Chamber Orchestra and Wallingford Choir conducted by Neil Farrow Stuart Pendred joined the Mastersingers Company Young Artists Programme in 2010 taking masterclasses with Sir John Tomlinson. His meteoric progress resulted in his performing the role of Hagen in Götterdämmerung at Longborough this summer. This concert aims to raise awareness and vital funds for the Bone Cancer Research Trust (www.bcrt.org.uk) in memory of Alex Lewis, brother of a key member of the Wallingford Parish Church Choir and Andy Greig, a dear friend of Stuart Pendred. Primary bone cancer mostly affects children and young people and devastatingly, there has been no improvement in survival rates for over 20 years. Photo: David Waters http://ariasattheabbey.tumblr.com/

– 46 – the Wagner society

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

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

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

Programme Advisor: Gary Kahn [email protected]

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

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

Archivist: Geoffrey Griffiths [email protected]

Committee Member: Charlie Furness Smith [email protected]

Committee Member: Edward Hewitt [email protected]

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

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

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

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

Webmaster: Ken Sunshine [email protected]

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

– 47 – EVENTS FOR YOUR DIARY: 2012 to 2013 17th October: An Evening with Simon O’Neill and Lionel Friend. Accompanied by Lionel Friend, Simon will present a sample of his vast repertoire and will also be interviewed by the Chairman of the Music Club, Michael Bousfield. 6.30 for 7.00pm at 49 Queen’s Gate Terrace London SW7. Tickets: £20 (members) and £25 (guests) – to include wine and nibbles. Please make a cheque to the Music Club of London with SAE to Frances Simpson, 3 Hunt Close, Morden Road, London SE3 0AH. 21st October: The Wagner Society, The Mastersingers and The Rehearsal Orchestra present Act III of Die Walküre conducted by David Syrus with James Rutherford, Rachel Nicholls and Lee Bisset. Run-through: 2pm to 5pm. Full rehearsal: 6pm. Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Barbican, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DT Tickets £18 (£10 students) from Mike Morgan (see below). 17th and 24th November: Masterclasses with Susan Bullock The acclaimed Wagnerian soprano (Brünnhilde in The Royal Opera House Ring Cycle 2012) will coach young singers: Helena Dix on 17th November and Lee Bissett, Megan Llewellyn Dorke and Cara McHardy on 24th November. 2.30 - 4.15pm on 17th and 2:30 - 4:45 on 24th. Peregrine’s Pianos, 137 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8TU. Tickets £15 (£10 students) for each Masterclass from Mike Morgan (see below). 1st December: Finals of the Wagner Society Bayreuth Bursary Competition 2012/13 Judges : Dame Anne Evans, Anthony Negus and Neil Howlett. The competition will run from 2:30pm until 4:00pm. At 4:30pm Neil Howlett will present “Wann fährt der nächste Schwan” with three potential heldentenors. London Welsh Centre, 157-163 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8UE. Tickets £25 (£15 students) from Mike Morgan (see below)

EVENTS IN 2013 3rd to 6th May: Mastersingers / Music Club of London Weekend with Sir John Tomlinson. See: Page 42 18th to 22nd May: International Richard Wagner Verband Congress, Leipzig. See: page 21 22nd May: For the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Richard Wagner the Society will host A Birthday Lunch with Guest of Honour Dame Gwyneth Jones. See: Page 43 Keith Warner: Dame Eva Turner Lecture. Date and venue to follow. 16th + 17th October: Wagner’s Great Choruses Singalong. All Wagner Society events tickets from Mike Morgan, 9 West Court, Downley, High Wycombe Bucks HP13 5TG. Please send cheques in favour of The Wagner Society and enclose a SAE. Tickets for all events should be available on the door, but please check [email protected] for availability. For the latest information on all events check: www.wagnersociety.org

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