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Home , Anja Silja, Anton Dermota, Anton Seidl, Astrid Varnay, Ferdinand Frantz, Frans Andersson

No: 221 April 2016 Number 221 April 2016

CONTENTS

3 Editor’s and Chairman’s notes Andrea Buchanan Richard Miles 5 From the Treasurer Neil King 7 New Committee Members 8 Memories of Dame 9 A Tribute to Pierre Boulez John Crowther 11 – A Celebration Paul Dawson-Bowling 21 Anton Seidl Peter West 23 Wagner and the Jews Professor Derek Hughes 25 Debussy’s Journey from Pro-Wagner to Anti-Wagner John Crowther 28 A Visit to the Nibelunghalle Richard and Sylvia Lemon 30 Thank You to the Wagner Society Kirstin Sharpin 32 Wagner and Shakespeare John Crowther 34 Review – The Rinse Cycle Katie Barnes 36 Review – Die Walküre in James Flattery 37 Review – Fulham ’s Der fliegende Holländer Katie Barnes 41 Review – A Recent Concert at the , Barcelona Jeremy Rowe 42 Review – in Baden-Baden Andrea Buchanan 43 Wagner Society Contacts 44 Forthcoming Events

Cover photo: Stuart Skelton in Tristan and Isolde, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden Copyright Monika Rittershaus

Printed by Rap Spiderweb – www.rapspiderweb.com 0161 947 3700 Editor’s Note Andrea Buchanan Taking over from Roger Lee, albeit temporarily, was never going to be an easy task and I have discovered just how true this is in putting together this edition of Wagner News. It has deepened my respect and admiration for Roger in performing the role so competently and creatively for so long. I have done my best to make a decent job of editing this magazine. You wilI note that it is slightly shorter than usual and I trust you will forgive me for this. I am not sure whether our members appreciate how much admiration and how many compliments about Wagner News we receive from our overseas Wagner Society colleagues who read this regularly. Along with the quality of the singers that we have assisted in various ways in forging their Wagner careers, it is a testament to the reputation that the Wagner Society has gained in the world-wide Wagner community. The recent sad news of the death of Pierre Boulez has prompted two articles: a wonderful personal memoir from our President, Dame Gwyneth Jones, and a tribute from John Crowther. We have lost yet another fine Wagnerian in this extraordinary conductor. I am proud of the quality of the contributions to this edition. The centrepiece is unquestionably Paul Dawson-Bowling’s excellent tribute to Hans Knappertsbusch and we are grateful for the considerable effort that has gone into this fine piece of writing. The shorter, although in no way less valuable contributions from John Crowther, Derek Hughes, Peter West, Richard and Sylvia Lemon, Jeremy Rowe and James Flattery make for interesting and insightful reading. And where would we be without Katie Barnes and her eminently readable reviews, of which I am pleased to report we have two in this edition? Last but not least, of course, thank you to our President, Dame Gwyneth, for her contribution. In the process of putting this edition together I have discovered with great pleasure the amazing copy-editing skills of John Baildam and am deeply grateful for his precise and painstaking efforts in ensuring that we have as few errors in the magazine as possible. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have enjoyed putting it together. Andrea Buchanan From the Chairman Richard Miles Dear members, There are plenty of developments to report on this month. Firstly, I should like to pay tribute to Roger Lee, who as you will know has had to resign as Editor of Wagner News for health reasons. I will begin by quoting verbatim his valedictory statement, entitled “The pleasure of editing Wagner News”: “The 980 pages making up the 21 issues of Wagner News which I edited from January 2011 to January 2016 covered some 541 items. “It was my privilege to work with almost 150 authors and a special pleasure to invite 60 first-time writers to join this group. “It was my aim to increase the proportion of the magazine’s

– 3­ – material produced by practitioners and a long list of distinguished names provided a rich resource in this respect. “My principal objective was that of encouraging the artists who came to us via Mastersingers and the singing competitions to share their experiences with our readers. It is the work of these authors which made me most proud.” Naturally, we wish Roger all the very best for a full recovery, but in the meantime, we will find him very hard to replace. Roger made the job of editing Wagner News look so easy for so long, with little requirement for input from the Committee, and he produced such an interesting and varied magazine each quarter, that we are all at risk of underestimating how difficult this is to achieve. Please bear with us while we try to follow in his footsteps. Finally, I’m sure that all members will want to join us in thanking him for his achievements over the last five years, and in wishing him well. The second person leaving the Committee to be thanked and appreciated for her even longer tenure as Membership Secretary is Margaret Murphy. She has worked tirelessly on behalf of members for 18 years and for many members has been the ‘face of the Society’ over that time. Whether answering queries, or patiently chasing unpaid and underpaid subscriptions, she has been unfailingly efficient, tactful and good-humoured. As a (relatively) new Chairman, I am extremely grateful for her wisdom, common sense and guidance over the last four years. We shall miss her, and we wish her a long and happy retirement. Numbers 3 and 4 (in no particular order) are Ed Hewitt and Charlie Furness-Smith, who joined the Committee about four years ago, and have both decided to stand down. Ed was our legal adviser, and his counsel in connection with the redrafting of the Constitution a couple of years ago was particularly valuable. He has also been a valuable source of informal advice on legal issues that have arisen from time to time. Members will recall Charlie’s highly erudite and entertaining, albeit occasional emails, full of provocative and interesting ideas. Fortunately, we do not have to do without Charlie and Ed altogether, as both have offered to help the Committee in future, but both of them feel that their family and professional commitments mean that they cannot play a full part in Committee affairs for now. We are grateful to both of them. Andrea Buchanan deserves thanks for having been Secretary for the last few years. During that time, she has been the real heart and soul of the Society. She is standing down from the Secretary role and the Committee although she remains as Singing Competition Manager, and has been responsible for editing this edition of Wagner News, while we find a suitable editorial committee (Roger is too hard an act to follow for his role to be filled by one person alone!). Finally, it is my great pleasure to say that we have recruited four new members to the Committee. They will be formally appointed at the AGM in May, at which point each of them will introduce themselves in person, but we are delighted to welcome Cormac Cawley, Jan Leigh, William Matthams and David Pope to the Committee. Please refer to page 6 where you will find a brief biographical statement from each of them. We will continue to allocate roles consequent on the above changes, but for now, William Matthams is appointed as Secretary, replacing Andrea Buchanan, and Jan Leigh has taken responsibility for events. We welcome all four of them.

– 4­ – Annual Accounts and Other Financial Matters Neil King, Treasurer By the time this edition of Wagner News has been posted, the audited annual accounts will have reached you and the AGM will be upon us. Since a comparatively small proportion of members come to the AGM, I am taking this opportunity to cover some of the main points from the 2015 annual accounts, which I will also be covering in my report at the AGM. I have additionally covered a number of other finance-related items that I think will be of interest to members. ANNUAL ACCOUNTS This year was again one of frugality and caution, and we ended the year almost exactly on budget, creating a small surplus as we did last year. However, the resources of the Society are still by no means back to where they were in 2012 and we must continue to exercise caution in all financial decisions, as well as seeking to maximise income and hopefully gain more members in 2016. Number of members: For the second year running, there has been a significant drop in the number of members. There is some comfort in 2015, however, since the drop came primarily from our no longer recognising as members people paying less than the current subscription. I had mentioned this at the AGM last year and also in Wagner News during 2015. Only a timely payment of the full subscription will henceforth result in membership being retained. (It should also be noted that the categories of European and Overseas members were abolished during 2015 and, since the year-end, student membership has also become free of charge.) However, we continue to hope that the re-vamped website will encourage many more new (and younger) members to join and so begin increasing the membership roll. Income: Income was down across all categories, reflecting the lower membership numbers, although donation income remained constant; likewise, income from events was also down by about a third, reflecting the fewer events arranged in 2015 and a lower number of paid attendances. As a result of moving additional cash from the bank account into the Charifund investment, investment income rose during the year and, whilst we are up-to-date on claiming Gift Aid refunds, we did not have 2014’s benefit of claiming back four years’ worth of refunds, therefore income tax income has also fallen substantially. (2014 was a one-off in this regard.) Charitable Expenditure: Direct charitable expenditure remained fairly constant during 2015, although the considerable reduction in expenditure on meetings and events was offset by increased spending on the Singing Competition and the Bursary. The amount spent outside the Singing Competition on individual grants for coaching was also reduced. Governance Costs: These costs were reduced during the year, largely due to the decision not to print and distribute the AGM papers by post, but rather to post them on the website for members to download. Sundry costs were also reduced (almost to zero) and there was less expenditure on the website. Balance Sheet: Overall, a modest surplus for the year was generated and this is reflected in the balance sheet. Additional investments of £15,000 were made. Debtor balances were reduced due to efficient collection of monies owed (only three months’ Gift Aid refunds are outstanding) whilst creditors increased, partly as a result of calculating more accurately the provision for members’ subscriptions received in advance.

– 5­ – BUDGET We have decided to publish a summary budget on the website for 2016 alongside the monthly management accounts. The reasons for this are two-fold: firstly, we feel that all members have a right to know the financial plans that the Committee have for the society each year, but also the management accounts already include a Variance against Budget page, so it seems rather obvious that members will need to know against what variances are being calculated! I am very happy to take questions on the budget, which was approved by the Committee late in 2015. MONTHLY MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTS Although no monthly management accounts have yet been posted for 2016 (I need to wait for the completion of the audit before I can finalise the 2016 brought forward opening positions etc.), the management accounts are normally posted regularly to the website. I continue to hope that at least some members read these from time to time, although I fear that this may not be the case as, since we started publishing these accounts monthly, I have received not a single query or comment on them! I am sure that some of the questions that I receive at the AGM could be covered in advance of the meeting and members’ minds put at rest sooner, were these monthly results to be reviewed throughout the year. I am always available via the normal email address, if you would like to take up any points. PAYMENTS AND BANKING I continue to be asked about payment by direct debit and I certainly agree with some members’ views that this would be by far the easiest method of payment. Unfortunately, for a society of our size and with modest resources, this is simply impossible. We do not have the technical set-up to be able to actually claim money in this way and we also do not have the financial means to give our bank the guarantee that they would require of us to be part of the direct debit scheme. It is highly unlikely that this position will change in the future. The cheapest way for members to pay for subscriptions and tickets to events (and donations please!) is by online bank transfer: it is free for you and has a very low cost for us. Similarly, the website is another efficient and cost-effective way of joining the Society and buying tickets for events. Naturally, if you favour more traditional methods of payment, we are still happy to receive your cheques (although this costs us more to bank), standing order payments and, of course, we can also accept cash on the door at events. Another question that continues to be raised regularly is why the Society itself does not use online banking. Unfortunately, whilst online banking platforms that allow two signatories to each payment exist, our bank cannot make them available to us as we are not a corporate customer. The systems that are available give any single bank account signatory sole authority to make payments, which is, of course, against our Constitution, as well as being generally undesirable from a security angle. In future, we might consider changing banks to obtain this functionality, but this is not currently being considered.

– 6­ – New Committee Members 2016 A Brief Introduction Please find below a brief introduction to our new Committee members. They have all been co-opted by the Committee and will be offering themselves for formal election at the AGM.

Cormac Cawley – Website Manager Cormac Cawley joined the Committee in February of this year. He is keenly interested in all music but the classical repertoire in particular and, of course, Wagner. He read German and Latin at Trinity College Dublin and spent an academic year at the Christian Albrechts Universität in Kiel, before starting a career in law. On his first visit to Bayreuth in 2015 he was lucky enough to see Holländer, , Tristan and . Cormac is also a Director of Irish Heritage Limited, which promotes young Irish musicians and composers in the UK.

David Pope – Marketing David has been a member of the Wagner Society since 1991. He confesses to never having been particularly active in the past, but feels that he is now ready to make a contribution to the running of the Society and to help expand it. David has experience of extensive involvement in other voluntary organisations, such as the Labour Party, his trade union and a branch of the Samaritans. He hopes that his experience and commitment will be of value to our Society. David likes to attend performances of and orchestral music by many composers and usually has a season ticket for the Proms. He has attended the on six occasions.

Jan Leigh – Events Jan is now happily retired, having been a Corporate Turnaround Director and prior to that an Insolvency Practitioner. During this time she chaired the R3 (Insolvency) London Committee and was integral in organising a multitude of events for up to 500 people. She has also been a Councillor on Wandsworth Borough Council and a Non- Executive Director on Wandsworth Primary Care Trust. She is an accredited CEDR mediator. Jan fell in love with opera in the early 80s, but only discovered Wagner and The Ring cycle in the early 90s. Since then it has been her goal to bankrupt her husband by seeing as many Ring cycles as possible. She is very pleased to take up the role of “Events” and would love to hear from members with ideas for the future.

– 7­ – Memories of Pierre Boulez A Personal Recollection Dame Gwyneth Jones I was deeply saddened to hear of the death of Pierre Boulez. This is a great loss for the music world, to which he brought new impulses through his compositions and also his invaluable advice, which he gave towards the building of new venues. The first time I met and worked with Pierre was at the Bayreuth Festival in 1970, when I sang Kundry in with him, which was recorded by Deutsche Grammophon; although our real work together started in 1976 with the Bayreuth Centenary Ring, where I sang Brünnhilde for five consecutive years. During these five years, our work together with Patrice Chéreau developed in the most wonderful, fulfilling way, with the result that the original public reaction inthe first years changed from the scandalous, vicious booing to over one-and-a-half hours of ecstatic applause at the final performance. The vehemence of the audience in the first years was extraordinary. We even received letters threatening to shoot us if we dared to come in front of the audience with Pierre and Patrice; but all of this negativity helped to form a bond of friendship between us which strengthened our wish for this incredible production to be understood and accepted. Pierre, who was normally a very quiet, reserved man, changed as did his approach to the music, which became more dramatic and transparent with each year. I remember so well the sublime atmosphere in the third act of Die Walküre “Ewig war ich”, and how I felt as though time was standing still with the beauty and transparency of the music. It was a great honour and a pleasure for me to have been a part of this production, which was filmed by Unitel and has become an unsurpassed legend. It will always remain an unforgettable experience for which I am eternally grateful, especially for the beautiful friendship with Pierre and Patrice, which I will always treasure.

From l to r Pierre Boulez, Dame Gwyneth Jones, René Kollo and Patrice Chéreau

– 8­ – Pierre Boulez: 1925-2016 FROM ENFANT TERRIBLE TO ESTEEMED MASTER John Crowther

When Pierre Boulez died soon after his 90th birthday, tributes poured in from his musical homes in Paris, Darmstadt and Baden-Baden, and from the many orchestras of the world which he had conducted throughout his fruitful life. The following tribute focuses on Boulez’s connections with Wagner’s music, which formed only a small part of his vast repertoire. Boulez first learned of Wagner through the orchestral and piano music of fellow Frenchman Claude Debussy, which is peppered with quotations from Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde. As a result, Boulez thought long and hard about Wagner and once said that Parsifal was “one of the most remarkable works ever produced in music”. In the 1960s Boulez was a fiery revolutionary, the enfant terrible of the contemporary music world. He fought the musical establishment in every way, even saying that “the most elegant solution for the problem of opera is to blow up the opera houses”. So it was a surprise when, following the death of Hans Knappertsbusch, Boulez was asked to conduct ’s production of Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1966. It was Wieland who had suggested to him that the traditional tempi of the piece were too slow. Accordingly, Boulez declared that his aim was “to strip Parsifal from the pompous and funereal ritual with which it had been weighed down”. The result was a production that cut through decades of conventional thinking and had the swiftest tempi ever known. It shocked audiences at first but then ran for four seasons. Boulez once joked, “I always conduct Parsifal like Pelléas, and Pelléas like Parsifal”. (See article by J. Crowther on p. 25.) Boulez was invited back to Bayreuth by Wolfgang Wagner in 2004 to conduct Schlingensief’s production of Parsifal. Boulez

– 9­ – accepted the invitation because he said that after nearly four decades of the world’s best symphony orchestras he could convey his ideas about the sonority and the tempi of the piece far better than he had done in 1966. In fact, he changed very little. Sandwiched between the of 1966 and 2004, Wolfgang Wagner invited Boulez to conduct the Centenary Ring in 1976. Boulez’s sister, Jeanne, suggested to him that a possible producer might be Patrice Chéreau … and the rest you know. Without Boulez there would have been no Chéreau Ring. Boulez said that his aim had been to get rid of the so-called “tradition” in the Ring, as he found it unbearable. He therefore refined the sound to almost chamber proportions to bring out transparency and detail in the score. At first his interpretation upset his pit musicians who wanted to play in their Germanic manner of high decibels rather than in soft French textures*. But it was soon recognized that Boulez’s tempi dictated the style of the drama unfolding on the stage, and by the end of the filming run in 1980, musicians and Wagnerians revered Boulez as a game-changing master of Wagner’s scores. His style of conducting the Ring appeals to each of us in different ways. I particularly enjoy the magical colours he conjured from the woodwinds, especially from the cor anglais. This soft touch emphasises Boulez’s French approach, because it was when Wagner was first in Paris that Berlioz showed him how to write for the cor anglais. Boulez conducted most of Wagner’s mature works during his life, but only the Ring and Parsifal in Bayreuth. Boulez and Wagner were Titans towering high above their peers and it seems worthwhile reflecting just how much they had in common: • Both were skilful Pied Pipers capable of charming huge sums of money out of affluent donors in order to pay for their extravagant projects • Both designed buildings to create their own sound-worlds. Boulez, Nibelung-like, built an underground laboratory for electro-acoustic music.** Wagner, god-like as ever, built the Festspielhaus atop the Green Hill • Both founded ensembles to create the sounds they wanted: the Ensemble InterContemperain in Paris and the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra • Both sought unconventional sounds from voices and from conventional instruments • Both invented new instruments to produce specific sounds • Both composers pushed orchestral players and singers to the limit • Both were in demand as conductors on the international circuit, but Boulez more so because travelling was far easier in his day • Both were perceptive and sweeping writers on music • Both were revolutionaries who changed the course of music history. I conclude this tribute with one simple difference between them. Whilst held the life-long view that the greatest piece of music ever written for voices and orchestra was Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Pierre Boulez thought it was Parsifal. They will certainly have much to debate if ever their spirits meet together in some afterlife.

* In his recent autobiography, Christian Thielemann castigates Wagner for scoring too many fortes for the orchestra in Die Meistersinger, so drowning the vocal lines. It is noteworthy that Thielemann had onetime been an assistant to Boulez in Bayreuth. ** IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in the Pompidou Centre, Paris.

– 10­ – Hans Knappertsbusch – A Celebration Paul Dawson-Bowling If there is one conductor who unites Wagnerians of different outlooks and sympathies, that conductor is Hans Knappertsbusch. It is just over 50 years since Knappertsbusch laid down his baton. Orfeo d’Or has issued, officially at last, a Knappertsbusch Die Meistersinger, Bayreuth 1960, and has followed it with a completely unknown Lohengrin. This amazing issue dates from , 2 September 1963, and it is all the more important because, unlike Parsifal which comes in twelve Knappertsbusch versions and The Ring which comes in three, the new issue is his only recorded Lohengrin ever to be released. This celebration is mainly concerned with Knappertsbusch’s recorded legacy, and anyone reading of something they want but cannot acquire is welcome to contact me on [email protected] or www.thewagnerexperience.co.uk. My first impression of Hans Knappertsbusch was in 1958 with at Bayreuth. This created an overwhelming effect on my father and me and it was confirmed immediately afterwards at a Bayreuth inn where we fell in with some orchestral players. When they all started comparing conductors, those who still remembered him rated Toscanini very highly in Parsifal. They eventually concluded that in some vague general way Furtwängler was the greatest, but there was instant, unanimous agreement that for ‘General-Wagner-Direktor’ the choice had to be Hans Knappertsbusch. Knappertsbusch was born at Elberfeld in 1888, and he studied philosophy at Bonn. He went on to Cologne University where he studied conducting under . He wrote his doctoral thesis on the character of Kundry, and he worked at Bayreuth as a young assistant in the 1900s under . His debut as a conductor came at Mühlheim in 1910 and he went on to appointments at Bochum, Elberfeld, and Dessau. Then in 1922 he was appointed General Music Director for Life at Munich. For his guest trial appearances there, he conducted Die Meistersinger, Die Zauberflöte and Die Walküre, and on 5 October 1922 he christened his appointment with Tristan und Isolde. He conducted almost 1,300 performances during his time in Munich and his repertoire ranged far wider than Wagner. He performed The St Matthew Passion twelve times, and he gave the world premieres of ’s opera Samuel Pepys, Li-Tai-Pe by Franckenstein, Pfitzner’s Das Herz, and Weinberger’s Die geliebte Stimme. He directed the Munich premieres of The Mikado and . As for Mozart, there are two live recordings of Figaro (both incomplete) which are fascinating. Most crucially, however, he conducted new productions of every work in the Wagner canon, apart from Der fliegende Holländer, and he added . His reign lasted until the Nazis came to power. Even though they had begun by extolling Knappertsbusch’s Aryan conducting of Wagner in preference to the Jewish style of the ‘detestable’ , they eventually sacked him, enraged by his uncompromising stance against them. He moved to to become director of the , but Nazi caught up with him there after the Anschluss. He became a bit of a nomad, conducting The Ring in occupied Paris and . His return to Munich after the war was almost a royal event. He was scheduled to reappear at the Prinzregententheater. So much time had passed; so much had been lost

– 11­ – and destroyed. Then into the hall he strode, nodded to the orchestra in recognition and announced dryly, “Right, gentlemen, the thousand years are over: I’m back!”. He went on to help redeem Wagner for the world, lending his massive authority to disassociate Wagner from the Nazis when Wagner was tainted through guilt by association and the future of Bayreuth hung in the balance. Bayreuth was seen in many places as the source of all evil, a malign and fearsome influence to be destroyed and forgotten. It was an important step forward when they persuaded Hans Knappertsbusch to conduct The Ring and Parsifal. So it was that in 1951 Bayreuth rose like a phoenix from the ashes. Parsifal, conducted by Knappertsbusch and produced by Wieland Wagner, was its special triumph. It was recorded live, like all Knappertsbusch’s best recordings. Only once did he have a resounding studio success, namely with Die Meistersinger on Decca, but generally Knappertsbusch in the studio seemed slightly earthbound. He needed the participation of an audience. Hence it is his live versions that bear the stamp of greatness, and his three complete live Bayreuth Rings are about the greatest tone documents of the tetralogy in existence. He also left two remarkable live versions of Götterdämmerung on its own, namely Bayreuth 1951 and Munich 1955. Knappertsbusch regarded his association with Bayreuth as the pinnacle of his existence. Of all conductors in recorded memory, he was the one who liked to do Wagner ‘Wagner’s way’, unlike the many famous interpreters who were not happy with the Bayreuth acoustic. Furtwängler tried to get rid of the famous ‘Schalldeckel’, and Richard Strauß preferred the open acoustic and the balance of a traditional opera pit. Karajan disastrously re-seated the orchestra during his first season at Bayreuth (1951), but had the sense to go back to Wagner’s arrangement the following season. Solti actually succeeded in having sections of the ‘Schalldeckel’ removed for his Wagner sound with its jutting brilliance. But for Knappertsbusch, the ideal Wagner sound was Wagner’s own, and this is partly why he was so good at conveying the sheer ‘northernness’ of The Ring. All three of his Ring recordings confirm that it is Knappertsbusch who realises its epic greatness; Knappertsbusch who sustains the grand line of this immense symphonic odyssey; and Knappertsbusch who unwaveringly releases its well-springs of exaltation. It is he who draws from the orchestra a uniquely massive and glorious sound, and he who extracts the best from his singers. His casts were the stuff of legends and his deployment of their musical inputs was allied to Wieland Wagner’s mesmerising direction. In more than 50 years, I have never encountered any near rival to the psychological intensity and penetration of Wieland Wagner’s first Bayreuth Ring as it had evolved by 1958. The sound engineering of 60-70 years ago has its limitations, but these count for nothing because the Bavarian Radio engineers magic us straight to Bayreuth and its incomparable acoustic. Thanks to the engineers’ grasp of exactly where to place the microphones, all three versions create a sense of being there, far more vividly than do many well-manicured Bayreuth broadcasts of more recent times. One reason why Das Rheingold is incomparable is that Knappertsbusch did not view it as a sort of dainty hors d’oeuvres. The subtitle, ‘Vorabend’ (preliminary evening), has misled many musicians, even Karajan and Barenboim, into misrepresenting Das Rheingold, but Knappertsbusch recognised it as a centre-weight of The Ring. His three versions are all marked by the sheer breadth and sweep and the continuity of pulse that are his hallmarks. Much of the Prelude and the first scene has the running figuration of water ceaselessly flowing and eddying. Water is a heavy medium and yet many conductors, Haitink and Pappano being particular culprits, take this scene so fast that it

– 12­ – turns into a picture of the Rhinemaidens careering along briskly as if they were on roller- skates. Knappertsbusch never leaves any doubt that the Rhinemaidens move in water. He conveys the languid, resisting feel of water by means of his weightier phrasing and broader tempi. He also makes it clear that his Rhinemaidens are voluptuous creatures, not nymphets, and he allows them time to sing the music with a lovely lazy lilt. The opening, “Weia! Waga! Woge, du Welle!”, epitomises the sheer musicality of the singing. Furthermore, the fundamental pulse, the groundswell he established in the Prelude, continues undisturbed. He comes quite specially into his own for the Rhinemaidens’ hymn to the Gold. The Bayreuth brass were recorded well behind the strings in those days, just as they sound in the theatre, but the first trumpet playing the Gold theme has a laser-like brilliance shining out through the waves which Knappertsbusch draws from his strings. The effect of creating such splendour at the outset is to throw the whole tragic action of The Ring into high relief – as nobody else quite does. None of this would have worked without Knappertsbusch’s extraordinary casts. Apart from his matchless Rhinemaidens with their special aching purity, there is Ludwig Suthaus, no less, as Loge in 1956 and 1957. However, in 1958 the role had an interpreter of special subtlety in Fritz Uhl. Loge’s narration gains from Knappertsbusch’s conjuring phrases out of the massed strings as if he were breathing the music out of them. Even the incomparable Wotan of is established, for all his presence and majesty, as a counterpoint within the symphonic texture of Wagner’s orchestra. and are both extraordinary as Alberich, but whereas Neidlinger sings this difficult part so accurately and progresses to a crazed, appalling grandeur, Andersson makes more of his nerviness and desperation. Happily too, ’s Mime was at its peak in 1958, not yet sliding into parody. There is so much that is remarkable about Knappertsbusch in Scene II that I could almost write a book about it, but I should move on to the Descent to Nibelheim and the underworld kingdom of Alberich which never sounded so frightful and plutonic. Knappertsbusch takes the Descent quite steadily, so that when it comes to the hammering rhythm of the Nibelungs, he has time to give it real shape and melodic direction. As a result it not only has all its usual energy, but grimness as well, a relentless trudge and toil. At the same time his sense of crisis and climax is devastating, and no-one has made more of that searing trumpet line screaming out The Ring’s great central love motive, stamped down here under the Nibelung hammering, the forces of blood and iron. The1958 version is uniquely disturbing at the point where Alberich enters driving on the terrified Nibelungs. It was only on the 1958 version (Golden Melodram) that Wieland Wagner replaced his children enjoying a good scream with adult slaves, stumbling and scrambling, shrieking and groaning in a state of terror and torment. Other conductors may see the Rheingold orchestra as glints and tints, but this work puts terrible events in train, and under Knappertsbusch it is in the orchestra that the main action lies. In the final scene all is action and sweep, with Erda’s warning set off as an awesome parenthesis. The entry of the Gods into Valhalla is Wagner at his most fascinating and equivocal, knife-edged as it is between real glory and empty bombast, but Knappertsbusch elects to play the passage for all its worth. He finds a special accent and weight for the insistent triplet figurations surrounding the so-called rainbow motif, and he calls forth torrents of sound to build up an exaltation that is matchless. For one who had been performing Wagner consistently for over 40 years, his three versions of Die Walküre show surprising variations. The first leans more to lyrical

– 13­ – expansiveness; the second is on a tauter rein; the third, about twenty minutes shorter than the first, is intensely dramatic. They all have remarkable casts with significant differences. In 1956, the Siegmund was , singing without rehearsal for a sick colleague and any rapport between him and the orchestra is no more than random. Ramon Vinay the following year is by contrast a meticulous, accurate Siegmund, with an authentic valour of character. He was partnered by as Sieglinde and she gives a surprisingly sensitive and delicate portrayal, though predictably thrilling at “Oh hehrstes Wunder!”. I have never warmed to the awkward Sieglinde of Gre Brouwenstijn of 1956, but 1958 restored the role to , one of its most spontaneous and feminine interpreters. 1958 also brought in the incomparable . His minor rare mistakes go for nothing beside his delicacy and magnetism. His mezza voce at “Schwester! Geliebte!” is exquisite, and his great outbursts at Brünnhilde are hair-raising in intensity and heroism. Throughout the 1950s was the constant Hunding, bringing to the role that sinister brooding quality that made him the doyen of Wagner’s black basses. as Brünnhilde was another fixture of the KnappertsbuschRing , and although Martha Mödl actually took over for every second cycle, the first was always the one recorded. It is in the 1956 version that Varnay shows up best of all, a beautiful voice, all softness and cream in quieter passages, richer where more power is desirable, infallibly in tune and deployed with profound dramatic insight. Hans Hotter is also the constant, incomparable Wotan. He was in better voice in 1956 with a finer legato, but it was 1957 and above all 1958 that most clearly revealed his extraordinary stature. In “der durch Verträge ich Herr, den Verträgen bin ich nun Knecht” and “Trauer schüf’ ihm sein Trotz!”, the bitterness and frustration of the later versions are peerless, and it is unexpectedly in 1958 that he sings his pianissimo “das Ende!” most beautifully. When it comes to Act III, his 1956 “zum letzten Mal” goes with lieder-like musicianship, but his later versions are differently moving, with the voice breaking increasingly with emotion. For grasp of mood, architecture and atmosphere, Knappertsbusch’s Walküre is matchless. The grey storm of Act I is misty and dense. The moonlight later seethes with spring, culminating in all the rapture that was not in evidence on his (Decca) studio version of Act I with . The Prelude to Act II has the same gravity and power in all three years, and in Wotan’s monologues his cellos and basses brood more darkly even than with Furtwängler. Moreover, Furtwängler does not come near Knappertsbusch in the sheer blast of the orchestra at the climaxes of Wotan’s anger. Even so Knappertsbusch was constantly considerate to his singers, reining back the fortissimo trombones to save even the mighty Hotter from being overwhelmed at “Hörtet ihr nicht, was ich verhängt?”. It was perhaps in Knappertsbusch’s 1956 version that Act III has its most perfect performance under this or any other conductor. If 1958 has more tension and fire, 1956 has total balance and continuity. It is only in the 1956 version that it feels like sacrilege to breathe after Wotan’s “so küsst er die Gottheit von dir!”, for fear of disturbing the stillness of the strings in the sleep motif. The Wotan of Hans Hotter is vividly ‘miked’, very different from the far-away positioning established by on the Solti recording, and this points up the lieder-like subtlety of his words. The orchestra conjures up the fire with a deep magic of its own; and when the motif of the hero Siegfried stands forth in unison on trumpets and trombones, Knappertsbusch phrases the grand line of it in one, without a break halfway through. The scene has its timeless majesty; and as the horns and cellos come sweeping in with the motif of Wotan’s farewell, Wagner’s fusion of poignancy and beatitude has never seemed more ineffable.

– 14­ – If I were allowed to take only one work under Knappertsbusch to a desert island, it would probably be Siegfried. In all three years he conjures up a nebulous haze for most of Act I, focusing with unforced naturalness on the fantastic elements in Wagner’s orchestration; the rough-hewn sound, like crude ore, of the Nibelung-tubas in the Hord motif; or the scratchy snickering in Mime’s music as the middle and lower strings play their instruments with the wood of the bows. Act II likewise emerges rich in diversity, with the murk of Neidhöhle, the horrid spikiness in the bickerings of Alberich and Mime, and a visionary account of the forest murmurs. It is not just a matter of his vividly depicting Wagner’s rustle and stir and the play of sunlight from above; it is the scale of it, his sense of a whole forest where all nature thrums with rapturous life. But it is in Act III, above all in the Erda scene, that there is simply no-one to touch him, and his 1956 version seems the greatest of all. It is in Knappertsbusch’s hands alone that this scene really emerges as the core crisis of The Ring, the centre of the ‘world tragedy’, as Wagner called it. Nobody takes the Prelude to Act III as he did, with such density and such gravity of phrase from the very first bar. Wagner brings in the spear motif four times and he has the stretto entries of the spear motif rising towards the focal point where the trumpets and trombones come in with the Wanderer motif, mightily augmented. Here, where the Wanderer motif begins, many conductors drop the dynamic level and let the grand line collapse; but this is where Knappertsbusch unleashes a maelstrom of sound. Things never level off; the arcs of sound rise higher and higher, and the climax is like nothing else achieved in this music, except – almost – in Knappertsbusch’s own later versions, and almost too by Solti, but only at Bayreuth. This Act III Prelude is about grey clouds, lowering mists, ‘northernness’, especially as Wotan soon comes raging in on the wings of the storm. The whole scene is played at this unique height, and the eerie music as Wotan summons up Erda is incorporated without for one moment lessening the sense of crisis. It might have been a challenge to play the rest of Act III in such a way that it lives up to this first scene, but Knappertsbusch solves it. His massive glow with Wagner’s magic fire gives way seamlessly to his azure purity, as if a new world were dawning. A special point, above all in 1958, comes at “O Heil der Mutter, die mich gebar”. There is none of the usual swoop and scoop from “der” to “Mutter”; instead, Windgassen as Siegfried and the four horns shape the phrase with an equal finesse. There are four published versions of a Knappertsbusch Götterdämmerung from Bayreuth, the first a recording by Decca from 1951, which is available on Testament. Its sound is superb, richer but softer-edged than on the later versions. There is also a fifth live version from Munich in 1955, with the up-and-coming Birgit Nilsson as Brünnhilde. She had learnt her German words on the flight from Scandinavia to Munich, and it is her sole recorded appearance in this role under Knappertsbusch. Unfortunately its sound is not equal to the sound achieved at Bayreuth. It is at Bayreuth that it is clearest how Knappertsbusch presented Götterdämmerung as a work of glorious episodes, suffused with an utter ‘northernness’. The Norns’ Scene from 1956 has an intriguing history. Martha Mödl’s illness led Astrid Varnay to avert a crisis by stepping in to sing Third Norn before launching into the extravagant demands of the Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde. As the day dawns, Knappertsbusch’s Olympian sweep is not pure gain, in that he gives rather short shrift to the lovely figure with the turn in it symbolising Brünnhilde’s new womanliness. The fugato on Siegfried’s horn-call is less sunlight and dancing than under Furtwängler, but Knappertsbusch rises to great heights as the music floods over into the Rhine motif (at the modulation into A major), and greater still as it broadens out into E flat again. The

– 15­ – end of the entr’acte sweeps on to the first scene with no more than a slight broadening, and the tempo allows plenty of space for Greindl’s Hagen to register his leering objection to his siblings’ unwed state without sacrificing inexorability of pulse. This inexorability suits Greindl’s marmoreal joylessness and oppressive presence. is in good voice as Gunther, both in 1956 and 1957, creating a nuanced study of public assertion and private insecurity, whereas in 1958 started with genuine authority, revealing both kingship and honesty in decline. It is the 1956 version which offers the most moving account that I know of the terrible scene where the ‘tarnhelmed’ Siegfried comes upon the defenceless Brünnhilde. It is one of the most poignant moments in all recorded Wagner. Brünnhilde is initially thrilled; she hears her hero returning, but then, as the music rises to a climax, there comes a clashing discord; and the flames and smoke part to reveal a threatening stranger. She screams in horror, straight into the microphone. The sinister tones of the Tarnhelm – those muted horns and the motif of magic deceit – work extraordinary things on the imagination. When Brünnhilde asks who he is, he tells her roughly that he is Gunther, a suitor without fear of the fire – and that he has come to claim her person. She rouses herself and tells him to stand back from the all-powerful Ring by which she is protected, but Siegfried says that this arrogance of hers is the very thing that tells him to wrest it from her. One can almost smell her grease paint, it is all so vivid; and her extraordinary half-gasp, half-yelp after Siegfried’s angry gruntings and strugglings makes it sound as if he has hit her in the breast. She has been raped of the Ring, leading to her most despairing of capitulations, outwardly broken, inwardly bleeding. It never quite happened again like this, neither in 1957 nor in 1958, even though the cast was the same. It is all the more heart-rending because it is followed instantly by Siegfried acting like a malignant narcissist; absolutely no remorse; utterly unmoved by Brünnhilde’s misery; utterly without compassion. In all three versions, Knappertsbusch takes Act II at full throttle. The steerhorns, blaring and dissonant, the uncouth energy of the vassals, and the cheerless mirth of Hagen are all characterised at the same mighty pulse, and the trumpet imitations of Brünnhilde’s “Helle Wehr! heilige Waffe!” spit fire throughout. There is no let-up in Knappertsbusch’s dramatic thrust, even at the low ebb after Siegfried and the Gibichungs have left the stage, and yet he is the least frenzied of interpreters at the end of the Act. The result is to point up the irony, focusing unhurriedly on the wedding preparations going happily ahead against grey death in the hearts and minds of the three principals. In Act III, above all in 1958, Knappertsbusch effectively fulfils the promise of Acts I and II. He starts it with some of the loveliest sounds ever conjured from this score. As at the beginning of Das Rheingold, here too there is a lovely lazy lilt for the Rhinemaidens. The string parts create swirls and eddies around the melodies, whether sung by the voices or the woodwind. As Siegfried, Windgassen always made tirelessly intelligent use of a voice that was not intrinsically heroic (he was no Alberto Remedios), but in 1958 he showed particularly indefatigable stamina. For the horror of his sudden death, Knappertsbusch heightens the epic with an electrifying tension, then softens to a degree of seductive persuasion (rare in Knappertsbusch) for Siegfried’s dying vision. Perhaps his way with Siegfried’s funeral music in Act III never again quite matched the earth-shaking performance that he gave in 1951 (on Testament), no matter that its ensemble was not quite ideal. Nor do I respond appreciatively to the unmarked ‘Luft-Pause’ that he and so many others insert at the end of Götterdämmerung just after the last appearance of the Götterdämmerung motif.

– 16­ – But such things matter less with Knappertsbusch, because these performances otherwise remain ‘ultimate, all-time greats’. When they draw towards the closing pages, the music of this ultimate catastrophe of fire and flood has a blast that is titanic. Then more imposing than in any other performances I know, comes the Valhalla motif, as Valhalla becomes visible, burning in the distant sky. Above all in 1958, the inherent nobility of this motif is transfigured as it is swathed around by the music of the Rhinemaidens’ primal innocence and the great theme of ‘Brünnhilde in Glory’ – signifying redemption, salvation, ‘redemption of the world by love’. The final effect ofThe Ring as Knappertsbusch conducted it was always one of overwhelming affirmation. Whatever Wagner’s conscious intentions, The Ring under Knappertsbusch particularly emerges as Wagner’s supreme validation of human existence. It gives substance and reality to the notion that whatever twilight must ultimately fall on all human endeavour – and our own brief span – it does not matter; it does not invalidate the experience of our own lives. The prospect of annihilation certainly leaves a certain wistfulness – yes, that is there at the end of The Ring – but it also establishes the conviction that simply to have lived life, with all its hopes and challenges, its drab patches and its minor successes, its big tragedies and its bigger triumphs, is something so supremely worthwhile, that not even total, eternal oblivion can undermine that worthwhileness. So can I find anything critical to say of Knappertsbusch, anything less than ideal about his performances? In these strange times I almost feel that I should be finding something negative, to prove balance and to be politically correct. Well, perhaps his ‘new’ Lohengrin from the Prinzregententheater gives occasion for pause. It is a strange experience, because the Prinzregententheater is nearly a replica of Bayreuth, and the Bavarian engineers should have found it easy to transfer their skills to it. However, this Lohengrin is unlike any other Knappertsbusch Wagner, and the first problem is indeed its sound engineering. It seems likely that the same engineers were not responsible. The tapes of Lohengrin were unearthed in the archives of the former deputy intendant of the , and they may have been a private recording by non-professionals. The balance is often wayward, and the problem stamps and spoils that greatest of choruses, “Welch ein Geheimnis”. The subsidiary solos come bellowing out while the principal roles descanting above them are inaudible. The chorus that should enfold the ensemble is nowhere; and the orchestra that should enfold them all is emaciated. Under such circumstances no performance can register properly. So is it worth having? For the likes of me – ‘Yes, and how!’. At least the ‘new’ version gives an impression of the Knappertsbusch ‘bigness’ in this work, if not his usual exaltation. It does not seriously enter into the reckoning against my personal favourites, each so different – Sawallisch at Bayreuth, and Karajan in the studio, to say nothing of Kempe, also live at Munich a decade earlier. In this Lohengrin Knappertsbusch is surprisingly brisk, not normally a Knappertsbusch failing. His Act I Prelude takes less than seven minutes, and the Prelude to the next Act steps sturdily from one interval to the next instead of uncoiling with measured, serpentine menace. His singers do not add many reasons to favour this version. is a dull, glamourless Lohengrin, no longer secure in pitch, and although he sounds far more youthfully attractive as Walther in Die Meistersinger on the Knappertsbusch sets from Bayreuth 1952 and Munich 1955, it remains unclear why he was the favourite of many high-profile engagements. However, the stage may have revealed a presence and acting powers which are impossible to appreciate from sound only. I have to remember that Poul Elming sounded prosaic and matter of fact in the Bayreuth broadcasts of Sinopoli’s Parsifal, whereas the DVDs later revealed a remarkable and searching portrayal. Other famous names like Inge Borkh,

– 17­ – Joseph Metternich and Kurt Böhme add only marginal appeal because of the recording; they come out of it sounding bleached and pale. At least Astrid Varnay as Ortrud is as fearsome as ever, but even she sounds better under Sawallisch at Bayreuth a year earlier because she was better recorded. This Lohengrin missed the epic quality which Knappertsbusch divined in Der fliegende Holländer at Bayreuth in 1955. He conducted the original one-act version which was how Wagner originally intended it, but never heard. The freedom from interval breaks adds to its build-up. Vivid indeed and epic is the scale of the seas which swirl up in the cellos and basses and which never sounded blacker or more mountainous. The same is true here of Wagner’s amazing realisation in music of the steady rocking of the treadle, combined with the rapid whirr of the spindles; Knappertsbusch’s tempo, leisurely yet mobile, seems to do justice to every aspect of the music. His Senta, Astrid Varnay, is a rapturous, hysterical Senta with many high notes scaled down to a mere thread of tone. The Dutchman of Hermann Uhde possesses the crucial ability to make not only Senta but his audiences sympathetic to him – and to pity him. If they are simply bored by his endless ‘Leiden’, then the performance is lost. The end of the opera epitomises the performance; the horns are magnificent and ringing; the orchestra phrases as well at fortissimo as at piano; and Knappertsbusch sets a tempo that gives time for every turn of harmony, every surge of the line. At the end, as the final upsurge of strings in Senta’s redemption motif yields up its momentum and slowly comes to rest, he achieves a genuine catharsis. His other live version of a Wagner opera not to hail from Bayreuth is Tristan und Isolde which was from the Prinzregententheater in 1950. It has long been available, and it has Helena Braun as an unexpectedly lovely Isolde. I love her soft little laugh, so delicately dismissive of Brangäne, at “Meinst du Herrn Melot?”. Knappertsbusch’s strikingly heroic Tristan is Günther Treptow, and Paul Schöffler and give vintage interpretations as Kurwenal and Marke. The sound is vintage, even faded, but it cannot dim the blazing affirmation of the performance. This is especially true of the Liebestod. When the music achieves the tonic culmination which had eluded it in the Act II duet, Knappertsbusch has his trumpets and trombones playing not forte but fortissimo, another solid wall of brass to support the grand line of music. The result is purest exaltation. 2015 saw a second ‘new-old’ set from Orfeo d’Or, the official issue of the Bayreuth 1960 Die Meistersinger, which was previously available on Golden Melodram. This set is an example of Wieland Wagner at his most perverse in casting Joseph Greindl as Sachs. Joseph Greindl was the deepest of black basses, and he now had to cope with a role so high that it challenges most . Greindl’s struggles with the tessitura result in a Sachs who never sounds at ease with himself. My favourite member of the cast is Elisabeth Grümmer, not only a vital and appealing heroine but far naughtier here than on Kempe’s HMV recording. Even more than on Kempe’s performance, there is no feeling with Knappertsbusch that the purple passages, the great monologues, the quintet, and the crowd fugue have been spliced into music of looser organisation. Here everything functions as part of Wagner’s grand symphonic design. The same holds true of his Munich version of 1955, even though it has a slimmer sound. It is also distinguished by the Sachs of Ferdinand Frantz. He anticipates the phenomenal portrayal which he would record for Kempe on HMV. Also memorable at Munich were Kempe’s future David and Beckmesser, and . This Munich Meistersinger was also graced by Lisa Della Casa’s wonderful Eva, a minx with a warm heart and the loveliest of voices.

– 18­ – Knappertsbusch’s studio recording also had an exceptional Eva, the sweet and enchanting Hilde Gueden. Paul Schoeffler is the ripe and seasoned Sachs, and Günther Treptow made a traditional, heroic Walther. The surprise was the mighty Anton Dermota as David, almost more heroic than Walther, but Karl Dönch was somewhat monochrome as Beckmesser. To me, this version seems to have a greater freedom of episode than Knappertsbusch’s live versions. Even so, if I were allowed just one choice for this work, it would be Knappertsbusch Bayreuth 1952. The radio recording is simply amazing for its age. If the score were lost and had to be reconstructed by ear, the Golden Melodram CDs of this performance would be a good bet. was a dour, dreary Sachs for Karajan the previous year, constantly under the note, and so it is a particular pleasure to enjoy his security of pitch and such natural dignity here. Even Hans Hopf as Walther comes over more vivid and appealing than was often the case, and there is also Lisa Della Casa as Eva again, even fresher than at Munich three years later. The other special casting is Kurt Böhme’s fascinating Pogner, gruff, ardent and unimaginative; even perhaps hinting at senility. He makes it believable that this Poger might stake his daughter’s happiness on the outcome of a singing contest. Here too Knappertsbusch’s control of the work’s architecture is so sure that even “Verachtet mir die Meister nicht!”, the vilified passage which Cosima wheedled the reluctant composer into retaining at the end, functions as a majestic summary of the work’s message, a final stroke of genius. Karl Muck reigned as principal Parsifal conductor at Bayreuth for almost thirty years, but not even Muck was more closely associated with this work than Knappertsbusch. He had first conducted it at Elberfeld in 1914 among the first performances that materialised after the expiry of the copyright limiting Parsifal to Bayreuth. He went on to conduct it 187 times before his first at Bayreuth which took place at the first Festival after the war. Ernest Newman was there and went on to write of the 1951 Parsifal that it was “not only the best Parsifal I have seen and heard, but one of the three or four most moving spiritual experiences of my life”. Except in 1953, Knappertsbusch went on to perform Parsifal at every Festival until his final illness, 53 performances in all. He left at least twelve complete Parsifal recordings from Bayreuth, as well as a wartime studio version of Act III from . His last performance of Wagner was Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1964, and it was by purest and greatest good fortune that my fiancée and I were there to hear it. Knappertsbusch’s Bayreuth 1964 Parsifal on Orfeo d’Or rivals but complements his Bayreuth 1962 version on . Wieland Wagner produced a staging of mind-blowing beauty, a quality with which most of today’s producers today seem only distantly acquainted. Moreover, Knappertsbusch suffused the experience with a spiritual, numinous quality, and realised to the full a musical world of awe and majesty, nobility and holiness. The Bayreuth 1964 version also brought together two of the greatest dramatic artists in my experience. Hans Hotter – again – is as remarkable for the sheer variety of colouring and the tenderness he finds in Gurnemanz as for his musicality and his massive authority. Who else is as touching and gentle with Parsifal in Act I at “Dein Name, denn?”? Who else is moved in Act III by such an intimate, inner grief over the demise of Titurel, at “Des Grales Anblick nicht mehr labte”? But then there is also John Vickers as Parsifal. ’s subtle and sensitive assumption of Parsifal might have remained supreme on record if John Vickers had not been even greater. No-one, not even Melchior, has wrung the heart as he does when he cries out “Und ich, ich bin’s, der all’ dies Elend schuf!”. There is also

– 19­ – his astonishing beauty, as in Act II at “Du weißt, wo du mich wieder finden kannst!”. This is generally rendered fortissimo, a stentorian admonition to Kundry, but John Vickers brings to the passage an entirely new meaning through his haunting mezza voce, brimming with gentleness and compassion. In Act III too, in the passage beginning “Wohl traf ich Wunderblumen an”, he has a rapt stillness that is beyond intensity. Particularly in pianissimo he has an almost occult power of projection, and together with Hotter and Knappertsbusch he creates a total suspension of disbelief, so that it is the world of Parsifal that seems real. The Kundrys of 1962 and 1964, and Barbro Ericson, have some of the same calibre, although Régine Crespin at Bayreuth during the late 1950s radiated an unrivalled allure. In her several versions on Golden Melodram, she sings “Parsifal, weile!” as nobody else does. Ericson is matter-of-fact at “Bekenntniss wird Schuld in Reue enden”, but Dalis is more sympathetic and Crespin delivered the passage with an erotic empathy that is incomparably seductive. Gustav Neidlinger as Klingsor in 1964 displays a special degree of the emptiness, anguish and hatred that are such common denominators among Wagner’s ‘villains’. Indeed, his Klingsor shows much of the same appalling grandeur as does his Decca Alberich, and it is even better sung. Thomas Stewart is likewise a searing Amfortas, and if Bayreuth 1956 on Golden Melodram seems essential for Fischer-Dieskau’s psychological study of Amfortas (and for Hotter’s Titurel), Thomas Stewart sings it almost as beautifully in 1964, and adds sword-edged torment to a dark night of the soul. In this 1964 version, Heinz Hagenau is oracular and majestic as Titurel; and the flower-maidens are led by , no less. Their vocal lines catch perfectly the strange fusion of innocence and allure that Wagner wanted. His grandson choreographed that their garments, slightly diaphanous, swayed in a vision of feminine loveliness that never overstepped the limits of taste, a dance that was infinitely suggestive without resorting to crude nudity. “Anyone who has difficulties understanding the music and poetry in this final work has never heard it in Hans Knappertsbusch’s interpretation.” These words are not mine but those of Hans Hotter in his autobiography. He continues, “Anyone who had the good fortune to sing in a Bayreuth Parsifal under Hans Knappertsbusch would never forget the experience for the rest of his or her life. He was, like few others, in a position to bring together the full profundity of Wagner’s tonal consecration with the problems of the last mysteries of the Grail and their elucidation to form a single integral unit.” Hotter adds, “The joy of having portrayed Gurnemanz in the cast of his (Knappertsbusch’s) final Parsifal in his beloved Bayreuth Festival Theatre, indeed his last appearance anywhere, even outweighs the sorrow of his death on October 25th 1965, in Munich.” No-one else summons such a distillation of beauty in the Good Friday Spell from the Bayreuth Orchestra, so ravishing yet so pure. In the Act I Transformation Knappertsbusch managed a special broadening and heightening of tension, and Wagner’s extraordinary fusion of majesty and crisis invariably comes across as almost nowhere else. I find both the 1962 and 1964 versions transcendental, and there is no recording of Wagner that means more to me than these. Here Knappertsbusch sets the final seal on Wagner’s spell. In his moving obituary in Opera, Hans Hotter described the “almost mystical rays that emanated from this extraordinary man”. Hotter also confirmed that Knappertsbusch was unique in that he inspired even the and its mix of fractious, cantankerous personalities with something they felt for no other musical titan – neither fear nor respect, but simply love.

– 20­ – ‘AS FREE AS EAGLES ABOVE THE CLOUDS’ Anton Seidl 1850-1898 Peter West Anton Seidl was the finest conductor of Wagner opera of whom few today appear to have heard. Only my opinion, of course, but that bold statement is based on years of studying the history, statistics and the astonishing reputation of this simply incredible brightcecilia.net musician who died, prematurely, at the peak of his career at his New York home, at the age of 47. That he was a true disciple and a loyal friend of Richard Wagner is well documented in many publications where, we are reminded, of the major role played by Seidl in the preparations for the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876 – which went ahead almost as planned. Yet for some inexplicable reason Wagner handed the baton that year, not to his competent and loyal assistant, but to Dr Hans Richter. Did Wagner, we must think, have other more important roles in mind for him? “What would I do without my Seidl?”, Wagner is reported to have said on several occasions. One of the oddest facts my research revealed was that Anton Seidl is practically unknown in Europe – even in Germany. Other important conductors of that vintage – Mottl, Levi, Richter, Muck and other names trip lightly from the tongues and pens of the scribes and commentators, but seldom, if ever, Seidl. In 1885, at the age of 35, he accepted an invitation to appear as guest conductor at the New York . Whilst there, one of the Met’s leading conductors of the day () died unexpectedly. Without hesitation Seidl accepted an invitation to remain in-post to take over the German repertoire at that establishment. After a successful twelve-year tenure he was appointed conductor of the . As an ‘off the peg’ conductor he was, however, less than entirely satisfactory because he had to learn from scratch compositions which, although alien to him, were considered standard repertoire by his contemporaries. However, he more than compensated for these short-comings by introducing the operas of Wagner to the Americans. He was, in fact, the first to conductDie Meistersinger, Tristan and a complete Ring, as at the time, only Die Walküre had been heard previously in the USA. In spite of his international fame, however, Seidl was not invited to conduct at Bayreuth until 1897 – a Parsifal – which preceded his untimely death by only seven months. Anton Seidl was born in Pest, , later to become part of the modern city of Budapest. Between 1870 and 1872 he studied at Leipzig University and Music Conservatory; after graduating he obtained employment with Wagner in Bayreuth (living at Wahnfried as a member of the family) as an ‘Assistant’, initially participating in the often tedious task of copying manuscripts for publishers, proof-reading and extracting parts from scores for individual orchestral players.

– 21­ – Familiarity with Wagner’s great tetralogy, , led to him assisting at rehearsals and coaching individual performers for the first complete performance of that great work. (You are urged to read ’s penetrating account in Robert Hartford’s book Bayreuth: The Early Years of being coached in the role of Woglinde by Seidl.) Thereafter, perhaps as a reward, Wagner used his influence to secure his loyal friend a conducting appointment at ’s Wagner Theatre in Leipzig in 1875. Four years later Anton was appointed Director of . Wagner did consider asking Seidl to conduct the world première of his final opera, Parsifal, but as we know, was chosen to present the work in 1882 – one year before the composer’s death. Today, this former Wagnerian giant is all but forgotten, save by the few like me, yet in the final months of his life he was the most influential musician in America. His funeral remains the most spectacular event ever accorded to a conductor – grander by far than Wagner’s or, come to that, probably than any other musician’s. The extracts which follow are taken from a rarely published and seldom seen report from the New York Times describing in great detail the funeral of Maestro Seidl in New York on Wednesday 1 April 1898. They are reproduced here by kind permission of the New York Times. ‘The public memorial service for Anton Seidl in the Metropolitan Opera House yesterday afternoon, in the size and character of the assemblage that there honoured the master, and in the number, variety, and beauty of the floral tokens of remembrance that surrounded his bier, testified amply to the place he had made for himself in the esteem of this community. ‘H.E. Krehbiel, at the conclusion of the Reverend Wright’s address, read this dispatch from Robert G. Ingersoll: “In the noon and zenith of his career, in the flush and glory of success, Anton Seidl, the greatest orchestral leader of all time, the perfect interpreter of Wagner – of all his subtlety and sympathy, his heroism and grandeur, his intensity and limitless passion, his wondrous harmonies that tell of all there is in life and touch the longings and the hopes of every heart – has passed from the shores of sound to the realms of silence, borne by the mysterious tide that ever ebbs but never flows.” ‘He mingled his soul with the music and gave his heart to the enchanted air. He appeared to have no limitations, no walls, no chains. He seemed to follow the pathway of desire, and the marvellous melodies, the sublime harmonies were as free as eagles above the clouds with outstretched wings. He educated, refined and gave unspeakable joy to many thousands of his fellow-men. He added to the grace and glory of life. He spoke a language deeper, more poetic than words, the language of the perfect, the language of love and death. ‘Anton Seidl is dead. Play the great funeral march! Envelop him in music. Let its wailing waves cover him. Let its wild and mournful sigh mourn above him. Give his face to its kisses and its tears. Play the great funeral march – music as profound as death that will express our sorrow, that will voice our love, our loss, our hope, and that will tell of the life, the genius, the triumphs, the death of Anton Seidl.’ The Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Henry Schmidt, brought the Exercises to a conclusion by playing the great funeral march from Götterdämmerung.’

– 22­ – Wagner and the Jews Derek Hughes Wagner’s hostility to the Jews troubles his admirers and fills his detractors with delighted outrage. But how far did the expression of that hostility extend? Did he approve of violence against Jews? Are his music dramas themselves anti-Semitic? Much of the prosecution case rests not on what Wagner explicitly said (bad as this is) but on opinions which are extrapolated from his statements: he never, after all, said that his works contained Jew-figures. The extrapolated opinions, however, are often historically suspect, for it is too readily assumed that ideas dominant in the Nazi period were already available, fully formed, to Wagner. There are also misrepresentations of ’s sometimes elliptical and ambiguous diary entries. In an article published in the latest Wagner Journal (and in a talk recently given to the Wagner Society) I attempt to restore historical balance. One smoking gun that apparently convicts Wagner of murderous anti-Semitic extremism is an entry in Cosima’s diary for 11 August 1881, recording his reaction to reports of an anti-Jewish riot in Russia: “That is the only way it can be done, by throwing these fellows out and giving them a thrashing.” Commentators have regularly jumped to the conclusion that the recipients of the ‘thrashing’ were the Jews, and have condemned Wagner accordingly. Study of contemporary newspapers, however, suggests a very different story: that Wagner was, in fact, praising the deadly efficiency of the Russian police in quelling the riot, and implicitly contrasting this with the ineffectuality of the German police in coping with the riots currently taking place in Prussia. I also produce other evidence to suggest that Wagner distanced himself from the most violent extremes of the anti-Semitic movement to the point that, in 1881, the anti-Semitic writer Eugen Dühring mocked him in print for going soft on the Jews. Many of the anti-Jewish ideas and stereotypes detected in the operas in fact only emerge towards the end of Wagner’s life, or indeed after it. For example, the opposition of Siegfried and Mime is sometimes seen as a proto-Nazi opposition of the Aryan superman and the subhuman Jew. Although the Aryan had been a subject of ethnographic interest for much of the nineteenth century, the extreme polarising of Aryan and Jew only became politically potent in the 1880s. While the subterranean and dwarfish Nibelungs might seem to evoke the Jewish ‘Untermenschen’ of Nazi propaganda, the negative image of the Jew in Wagner’s lifetime was rather different: a clever and clannish city dweller, who avoided the countryside and was averse to manual labour – above all, to the occupation of blacksmith. Not very like Mime. Amfortas’ wound has been held to symbolise the sin of interracial coupling with Kundry: what the Nazis called ‘Rassenschande’. Yet this idea was not current in Wagner’s time. Far from deploring interracial sex, anti-Jewish writers frequently urged intermarriage as a path to integration. Nor, indeed, was the difference between German and Jew yet seen exclusively as one of race. There were still authoritative figures who regarded the difference as one of culture rather than racial character: the former, of course, can be removed, whereas the latter is immutable. Wagner himself on several occasions implies that the difference is cultural, so we are not self-evidently entitled to hunt for racist ideas in the operas. In his Trial Song, Walther likens Beckmesser in his marker’s booth to Winter lurking in a thorn hedge. In the final part of the article I dissent from the common view that this

– 23­ – is an allusion to the Grimm tale of ‘The Jew in the Thorn’. A common theory of myth was that it was a personified narrative of the seasonal cycle: thus, Siegfried wakening Brünnhilde originally represented spring reviving the earth at the end of winter. Wagner incorporates the structure of seasonal myth in several of his works, nowhere more openly than in Die Meistersinger, where we move from the barren winter thorn of Act I to the Midsummer festival of the third act. Winter in Walther’s song is not a Jew: he is Winter. It is difficult to compress a detailed argument into a small space, but I hope that readers of Wagner News will be encouraged to turn to The Wagner Journal. The current issue also contains excellent articles by Barry Millington, on Burne Jones, George Eliot, and Wagner, and by Nila Parly on the performing of Isolde’s death, notably by Waltraud Meier.

Notice is hereby given to members of the

62nd ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF THE WAGNER SOCIETY

WEDNESDAY 18 MAY 2016 19:30 -21:00 at St Botolph’s Church Hall, Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3TL

Papers to be found on the Wagner Society website www.wagnersociety.org

Agenda suggestions and any nominations for the Committee to be sent to [email protected] by 20 April 2016

Any members who cannot access the internet should request papers from the Secretary in writing to 15 Cloudesley Place, London N1 0JA with a sae.

As usual, members are cordially invited to join the Committee for drinks after the meeting. Please let the Secretary know if you will be attending for catering purposes.

We look forward to seeing you there!

– 24­ – DEBUSSY’S JOURNEY FROM PRO-WAGNER TO ANTI-WAGNER Pelléas et Mélisande, English Touring Opera, Snape Maltings, 13 November 2015 John Crowther

Debussy was devoutly pro-Wagner when he was a young man. He visited the Bayreuth Festival during several seasons and proudly won a bet with a friend that he could play the unabridged piano transcription of Tristan und Isolde from memory. But as his own very French ‘voice’ developed, he became increasingly disillusioned with Wagner, giving the curious reason

Photo credit G.F.T. Nadar G.F.T. Photo credit that Wagner could never be a model for his own music because Wagner was not French. Whilst Debussy continued to admire both Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde, he once wrote viciously that “Wagner was a beautiful sunset mistaken for a sunrise”. It is therefore no surprise that Debussy’s only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, demonstrates his ambivalence towards Wagner, so much so that Pierre Boulez, who was an undisputed champion of Claude Debussy c1908 Wagner’s operas and all of Debussy’s music, jested “I always conduct Pelléas like Parsifal, and Parsifal like Pelléas”. (See article by J. Crowther on p. 9.) Debussy had searched for years for a play to turn into an opera before he eventually found what he wanted, a French tragedy called Pelléas et Mélisande, by the Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. The theme was ‘love’, just like so many of Wagner’s music dramas. The text consisted of short conversational exchanges between the characters and Debussy made a bold decision to orchestrate it almost verbatim without employing a librettist. The result emerged as a vast tone poem, against which the singers performed their tragic tale. The action takes place in mediaeval times in a mythological, Wagnerian landscape that encompasses a homecoming by sea, a marriage, a tower, an intense love triangle, a light as a signal in the night, hunting in the forest, a lovers’ assignation, a wise old king, a murder, a well, and the birth of a child – all elements of Tristan und Isolde, except for the child and the well. Pelléas et Mélisande was an instant success when it premiered in Paris in 1902 and it has been in the global repertoire ever since – probably because it is the most original opera of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, singers are not drawn to it because there are no grand gestures and no long vocal lines. Every word sung is an understatement, sometimes in monotone; what is not said is just as important as what is said. In complete contrast, the long lyrical lines are in the orchestra, sometimes like Parsifal, sometimes like Tristan und Isolde, and this is where Debussy’s wonderful score weaves its magic. The result is that instrumentalists and great conductors, like Pierre Boulez, are drawn to it. A new version of Pelléas et Mélisande, devised by Belgian composer Annelies

– 25­ – DAS RHEINGOLD AT OPER LEIPZIG C. TOM SCHULZE van Parys, has been on tour throughout Europe. The production was directed by ETO’s OPERA À LA CARTE General Director, James Conway. It featured a single minimalist set with inventive lighting and was redolent of the sparse sets used by Wieland Wagner in Bayreuth. But, whereas TRULY BESPOKE TRAVELFOR THE ARTS Debussy scored his opera for a Wagner-sized orchestra, van Parys scored her version for a chamber ensemble of only 13 players, with woodwinds doubling up. Musically this HOLIDAYS worked brilliantly in Snape Maltings, with its warm, responsive acoustics where only a single double bass along with dark woodwinds was enough to foretell doom. Debussy’s score, and van Parys’s version of it, was much more sparing with brass instruments than Travel for the Arts’ à la Carte any Wagner opera, giving the work a magical, impressionistic sound world. Jonathan service is for those clients for Berman conducted the piece expertly and with great sensitivity. whom group tours don’t fit the The soloists have a difficult task in this opera because the libretto comprises short bill or who would rather travel sentences with no opportunity for a traditional aria. Jonathan McGovern’s velvety was aptly suited to Pelléas, whilst Susanna Hurrell’s pure soprano voice was ideal for the independently. child-like Mélisande. Stephan Loges sang Golaud with obvious frustration and violent • We tailor your itineraries for the jealousy. Casting the soprano Lauren Zolezzi as Golaud’s young son Yniold just did not dates you wish to travel, for the work for me. Some houses, such as Munich, cast a boy treble in the role and I find that performances you wish to see this works better both vocally and choreographically. Overall, this sparse but creative • We arrange your travel to suit production with a chamber ensemble was outstanding. The ETO is to be congratulated for your needs and can look into touring with such a challenging masterpiece. The scene in Debussy’s opera that resembles Wagner most closely is where Pélleas journeys by rail or from your and Mélisande make a secret rendezvous in the garden. Golaud creeps towards them from local airport the shadows and murders Pélleas. Debussy claimed that his first two orchestral drafts of • We can book your choice of this scene were too similar to Tristan und Isolde, so he tore them up. His third and final hotel or offer suggestions version was acceptable to him and it completed his journey from pro-Wagner to anti- • We can tailor your holiday to Wagner. celebrate occasions such as birthdays or anniversaries

Destinations such as Bayreuth, Leipzig, Berlin, Vienna and Milan are particular favourites with our regular clients, but we are able to organise a visit to any musical destination you choose. Pélleas et Mélisande Carlo Swarbe (1892) Call Mark, our à la Carte Manager – 26­ – Tel: +44 20 8799 8354 or email [email protected]

or visit www.travelforthearts.com Travel for the Arts is a division of Specialised Travel Ltd DAS RHEINGOLD AT OPER LEIPZIG C. TOM SCHULZE OPERA À LA CARTE TRULY BESPOKE TRAVELFOR THE ARTS HOLIDAYS

Travel for the Arts’ à la Carte service is for those clients for whom group tours don’t fit the bill or who would rather travel independently. • We tailor your itineraries for the dates you wish to travel, for the performances you wish to see • We arrange your travel to suit your needs and can look into journeys by rail or from your local airport • We can book your choice of hotel or offer suggestions • We can tailor your holiday to celebrate occasions such as birthdays or anniversaries

Destinations such as Bayreuth, Leipzig, Berlin, Vienna and Milan are particular favourites with our regular clients, but we are able to organise a visit to any musical destination you choose.

Call Mark, our à la Carte Manager Tel: +44 20 8799 8354 or email [email protected]– 27­ –

or visit www.travelforthearts.com Travel for the Arts is a division of Specialised Travel Ltd The Nibelunghalle at Drachenfels Richard and Sylvia Lemon Wagner Society members Richard and Sylvia Lemon recently visited the Nibelungenhalle in the Drachenfels, high above the Rhine south of Königswinter. Legend has it that Siegfried slayed the dragon Fafner here and this mythical association was commemorated by the erection of the Nibelungenhalle in 1913 as part of the Wagner centenary celebrations. They enjoyed their visit greatly and wished to share some of their photographs with readers of Wagner News.

On payment of a modest entrance fee, the visitor enters the domed hall to the sounds of – naturally – Wagner. Inside are to be found paintings and sculptures depicting familiar scenes from the operas. Perhaps the most impressive are a series of wall paintings by Herman Hendrich depicting scenes from The Ring, examples of which are given below. all photos Richard and Sylvia Lemon

Freia picking apples The sleeping Brünnhilde

– 28­ – Behind the hall lies the Dragon’s Cave – with a somewhat unrealistic Fafner lying in wait.

There is also a fine painting of Siegfried slaying Fafner.

The Nibelunghalle is open daily (weekends only in winter). Königswinter is about 12 kms south of Bonn and is easily accessible by road or by train from Cologne or tram 66 from Bonn. From Königswinter (Fähre tram stop) there is a rack railway (the Drachenfelsbahn) that takes you up the mountain. The Nibelunghalle is a five minutes’ walk from the intermediate stop at Drachenburg. The views of the Rhine from the summit are well worth seeing.

– 29­ – A Note from Kirstin Sharpin Winner of the 2015 International Competition for Wagner Voices, Karlsuhe

The six finalists in Karlsruhe, with Kirstin third from the right I’m hugely grateful to the Wagner Society and the Mastersingers for giving me both the opportunity to compete in the International Competition, and the support to make sure I did so as fully prepared, and as stress-free, as possible. The vocal and artistic development this opportunity has provoked stood me in good stead for the various rounds, and has formed a solid base on which to build my future. Like anything in life, it will take time to see which doors, which new pathways, open as a result of my success. However, I know that the accolade that now appears on my CV changes the way in which I am perceived by the industry for the better, even at a time of unprecedented difficulties within the profession, and I am cheered and encouraged by that. In all honesty, though thrilled to reach the Karlsruhe rounds of the competition, the possibility of winning didn’t cross my mind until after the semi-final. As a result, I was unprepared for the emotional and practical repercussions of winning, both of which continue to take time to work through. However, the future looks far brighter now than a few months ago – as one close friend said to me, shortly afterwards, the overture is ending, and the prelude to Act 1 has begun. A career in opera is a long-range pursuit, and Wagnerian voices have perhaps the longest building period of all. It is very hard to remain upbeat, positive and motivated through this lengthy studentship, when offers of employment and the associated positive reinforcement can be hard to come by for those whose voices are still growing into their repertoire, as lighter-voiced colleagues begin to experience success and friends establish themselves with all the trappings of a grown-up life. What the Internationaler

– 30­ – Gesangswettbewerb für Wagnerstimmen, and the individual competitions run by the branches of the Richard-Wagner-Verband-International offer is an invaluable source of not just financial support (though, believe me, that is enormously important, and very much appreciated!), but also, and perhaps even more importantly, a confirmation that these voices, even if not yet ‘finished products’, have value. Their belief that young artists in this category by virtue of their innate talent are worthy of support and have a future in front of them (even if that seems, at times, an ever-receding goal post!) is hugely important. Of equally great value is the opportunity to meet, and be heard by, serious Wagnerians, both professional and amateur and to benefit from their experience, their advice, and their enormous enthusiasm. I was hugely struck at Karslruhe by the effervescent energy of the combined Wagner Societies who attended the event and by their representatives. With this level of actively engaged energy, the future of Wagnerian opera is in very safe hands – a gift for which I, my colleagues, and future generations of singers, musicians, directors, and audiences, thank you all.

FORTHCOMING RELATED EVENTS MASTERCLASS GIVEN BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE WAGNER SOCIETY DAME GWYNETH JONES Thursday 19 May 19:00 To the winners of the President’s Award at the 2015 Singing Competition: Katie Stevenson – Mezzo-Soprano Gareth Daffydd Morris – Tickets £25/Students £5 from [email protected] or on the door ————————————- THE WAGNER SOCIETY SINGING COMPETITION 2016 Sunday 27 November 14:00 In the presence of Eva Wagner-Pasquier and Dame Gwyneth Jones Panel: Sir John Tomlinson, Peter Spühler and Professor Eva Märtson To be followed by a staged recital event (to be announced) Tickets £25/Students free with valid ID from [email protected] or on the door ————————————- DAME GWYNETH JONES IN CONVERSATION WITH HUMPHREY BURTON Tuesday 8 November 19:00 Ticket price £25/£5 students All these events will take place at and are presented jointly with The Royal Over-Seas League, for whose support the Wagner Society is most grateful Royal Over-Seas League, Over-Seas House, Park Place, London SW1A 1LR

– 31­ – WAGNER‘S DEBT TO SHAKESPEARE John Crowther 23 April 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, so it seems timely to reflect on the importance of Shakespeare’s plays to Wagner’s music dramas. “Wagner’s Shakespeare” was the subject of an excellent lecture given to the Wagner Society by Dr Patrick Carnegy (see Wagner News 200); the following article highlights how Wagner copied many of Shakespeare’s characters and used them as his own. Wagner freely admitted that the main dramatic influences throughout his life included Shakespeare and Aeschylus. He was especially drawn to Shakespeare’s characters, saying that they were “real persons, unmistakeable, incomparable, human characters”. He wrote his first drama when he was a schoolboy, a tragedy called Leubald und Adelaide using characters drawn from Hamlet, , King Lear and Henry IV. Fourteen of them are murdered during the sordid action, some of them returning as ghosts, Banquo-style. Wagner later boasted that he had wanted to learn enough music only to compose a score for Leubald! Thereafter, many characters and situations in Wagner’s operas were derived from Shakespeare’s plays. When these are summarised as in the table below, we must conclude that Shakespeare’s influence is a constant thread woven like a Leitmotiv throughout most of Wagner’s music dramas. And how did Aeschylus influence Wagner? Firstly, Aeschylus was a poet, a composer and a stage manager all in one, and Wagner fashioned himself likewise. Secondly, the plays of Aeschylus are long, with the complete Oresteia lasting 10 hours. Wagner emulated this too: the original, uncut version of Rienzi lasted only a very modest seven hours!

The caption to the 1876 cartoon reads “Aeschylus and Shakespeare, according to Porges the only two dramatists to whom Wagner could be compared, offer him homage in their correct attire”

– 32­ – CHARACTERS AND/OR SITUATIONS WAGNER COPIED FROM SHAKESPEARE

WAGNER SHAKESPEARE CHARACTERS CHARACTERS MUSIC DRAMA PLAY OR SITUATIONS OR SITUATIONS Die Feen Arindal’s mad scene King Lear Lear’s mad scene Ada turned to stone by The Winter’s Tale A statue of the dead magic, later turned back Hermione returned to life by song by music Das Liebesverbot Main characters copied: Measure for Measure Isabella, Angelo, Claudio, Mariana, Isabella, Friedrich, Lucio, Gentleman 1, Claudio, Mariana, Gentleman 2, Elbow, Luzio, Antonio, Angelo, Mrs Overdone, Brighella, Danieli, Pontius Pompey Bum Pilate Rienzi Lovers come from the Romeo and Juliet Lovers come from hostile political divide families Lohengrin Ortrud is an envious, Macbeth Lady Macbeth manipulates serpentine woman who Macbeth to seize the crown manipulates others Die Meistersinger von Song contest is on A Midsummer Night’s Play by mechanicals takes Nürnberg midsummer’s night Dream place on midsummer’s night Mastersingers from the A Midsummer Night’s The mechanicals guilds Dream Beckmesser wooing Eva/ Twelfth Night Malvolio wooing Olivia Magdalene Beckmesser misreads a Twelfth Night Malvolio misinterprets a piece of paper piece of paper Siegfried Comic character of Mime Henry IV Comic under-plot featuring lightens serious drama Parts I and II , Bardolph, Pistol et al. Die Walküre Fricka urges the weak Macbeth Lady Macbeth urges Wotan to kill Siegmund Macbeth to murder Duncan Wotan’s treatment of King Lear Lear’s treatment of Brünnhilde Cordelia Götterdämmerung The three Norns can Macbeth The three witches can foretell the future foretell the future Hagen’s devious plotting Othello Iago’s devious plotting Alberich exhorts Hagen to Hamlet Ghost of Hamlet’s father recover the ring urges revenge I warmly acknowledge Dr Patrick Carnegy for the script of his lecture to the Wagner Society in 2015

– 33­ – The Rinse Cycle Unexpected Opera, Charing Cross Theatre, 3 and 5 March 2016 Katie Barnes “Underneath the Arches” in Villiers Street nestles the Charing Cross Theatre, a former old time music hall venue where the performances are punctuated by the sound of the trains overhead, rumbling like Fafner with indigestion. In this unlikely setting, Unexpected Opera’s ‘The Rinse Cycle’, directed by Lynn Binstock, scripted by Roger Mortimer and billed as “Wagner’s Ring Cycle conditioned with comedy and shrunk to two hours”, presented a potted version of the tetralogy as a play within a play. The result was a resolutely oddball, many-layered entertainment which had as much to offer to hardened veterans as it did to Wagnerian newcomers. The outer layer was the amusing framing story, designed to introduce the audience to the world of Wagner. Henpecked Ronnie (who sang Wotan, Alberich and Hagen), proprietor of the Patisserie Valkyrie; his domineering wife Edith (Fricka and Erda); and their waiting staff – Ronnie’s feisty girlfriend Hilda (Brünnhilde, Woglinde and Helmwige); dim aristocrat Tim (Siegmund and Siegfried); and his girlfriend Robin (the Woodbird, Sieglinde, Gerhilde and Wellgunde) – performed musical highlights from The Ring, linked by a mixture of dialogue scenes and straightforward narrative, which gave a greatly simplified version of the story, guiding the audience to Wagner’s music at the heart of the piece. With the exception of a winged helmet for Wotan, shields for the Valkyries, a wooden sword, and a Ring fashioned from a bicycle bell, all the props were ingeniously culled from the patisserie and laundry (we learn that dim Tim is responsible for the laundry leitmotif: having misread Ronnie’s handbill for the Ring cycle as the Rinse cycle, he has bought three large washing machines which were ranged at one side of the stage). The Giants were represented by decorated oven gloves skewered on brooms, wielded by a snarling Tim; the Tarnhelm was a net washing bag; the dragon was a steaming trouser press; the twins consummated their love on a cafe table upon which Brünnhilde was later put to sleep; the Rhinedaughters wore rubber gloves and aprons; Nothung was smelted in a washing machine, aided by a dose of washing powder labelled Forge, and then pressed on an ironing board; and the washing machines also served as the tree from which Siegmund drew his sword and as Fafner’s lair. They glowed red as Wotan conjured the magic fire and during the Immolation. Where was Wagner amid all this? Everywhere! One would think that the distraction of the framing story and the humour of the linking dialogues would ruin any attempt to treat the subject seriously – surely this is the first presentation of The Ring to debate whether the Giants are Polish builders – but miraculously, as soon as the music kicked in, the mood changed completely and the old wizard of Bayreuth worked his magic. The musical extracts were most gloriously played and sung, and were staged with great sensitivity. Strangely, despite the eccentric nature of the event (or perhaps because of it?), the spirit of The Ring and the emotions of its characters shone through with astonishing clarity. It was a great joy to hear Andrew Porter’s matchless translation again. The singers, nearly all double-cast in the two performances I saw, were all magnificent. Cara McHardy’s redoubtable Hilda/Brünnhilde was outstanding, her voice gleaming like the Rhine gold itself, while Mari Wyn Williams spun out warm, resplendent

– 34­ – vocal lines and created a gentler, more vulnerable character. Anna Gregory’s Robin/ Sieglinde had Valkyrie-like vocal amplitude and steel. Justine Viani, slenderer of voice, was no less effective. Harriet Williams and Mae Heydorn were both superb in the mezzo roles: Williams stopped the show with her rich-toned and intensely compelling account of Erda’s warning (despite being attired as a country lady wearing a flowered hat and carrying a trug) and Heydorn’s furious, handbagging Fricka aroused genuine sympathy for the rejected goddess’s plight. Edward Hughes gave further evidence of his burgeoning promise with his endearing, ringing-voiced Siegmund and Siegfried. It was a particular delight to hear his lovely Winterstürme and sensitive “Forest Murmurs” soliloquy. Brian Smith Walters, dramatically sharper and hilariously funny, was hugely impressive. Paul Reeves, common to both casts, was a chilling Alberich, a genuinely sinister Hagen, and above all a beautifully touching and vulnerable Wotan, and he sang most gloriously. He and Mari Wyn Williams created one of the most intimate and completely heartbreaking accounts of the Farewell that I have ever seen. Kelvin Lim, patiently sitting at the piano centre stage all night, played as brilliantly as ever. I loved his interjections into the narrative to explain the use of leitmotifs, and his amused, knowing expression as he watched the barely controlled mayhem around him, was itself worth the price of admission. I had wondered whether such an esoteric entertainment would work for a non- specialist audience. I need not have worried. On both nights I attended, the cheers raised the roof, everyone joined lustily in the final singalong of the Ride of the Valkyries, and a group of opera tyros sitting beside me could be heard eagerly debating the possibility of a first visit to the Coliseum. If rinsingThe Ring attracts new operatic audiences, the practice can only be encouraged. Unexpected Opera

Mari Wyn Williams as a saucy Rhinemaiden, with Bisch, Basch & Bosch behind her

– 35­ – Die Walküre, Dresden, 20 February 2016 James Flattery This was my second visit to the Semperoper, following an excellent two years ago and I would strongly recommend a visit there. A train from Berlin will take you to Dresden in just under two hours. The Semperoper has an excellent acoustic and of course in the Dresden Staatskapelle it has one of the finest orchestras in the world in its very large and deep pit. On this occasion, the Semperoper were only staging this part of The Ring. Opera houses should stage single parts of The Ring more often to make it more accessible to potential new admirers. Die Walküre in my opinion is the work that stands best alone, particularly as Wotan in his monologue virtually retells the story of Das Rheingold. I recall that Sir John Tomlinson once said that there are good and bad traditional productions and there are also good and bad modern productions. I am a great believer in that message. Willy Decker’s Die Walküre had some interesting concepts, although there were problems with their execution. It appeared that the world was a stage and that Wotan was the director. This resulted in there being theatre seats on stage through most of the opera, making it cluttered and this must surely have annoyed the performers. Musically, there were more positive things to report. I don’t go far back enough to have heard the great conductors of the 60s, 70s or 80s live, but after the Barenboim Die Walküre at the Proms in 2013, I doubted that I would hear a better performance musically. This performance, however. topped that of Barenboim. Christian Thielemann led the Dresden Staatskapelle wonderfully. His tempi were slightly faster than I had expected, but apart from one fluff of the brass in the first Act, the orchestra were marvellous and Thielemann received the greatest applause from the audience that evening. Nina Stemme is quite rightly now considered the Brünnhilde of our age. Her performance in the role has deepened since the Proms and I hope that House have snapped her up for any planned future Rings. She sings beautifully, yet with the power to rise above the orchestra in this demanding role. The one member of the cast that was not familiar to me was Markus Marquardt, a member of the Semperoper ensemble. Marquardt was a more baritonal Wotan than Sir John Tomlinson, for example, although he performed the role well. I did wonder, however, whether his voice would have the heft for larger houses than Dresden. The Wälsung twins were performed by Petra Lang and Christopher Ventris, who was covering Johan Botha as Siegmund. Ventris, whom I’ve not heard in the UK for some years, was a powerful and ardent Siegmund. As I’ll be making my first trip to Bayreuth this year to see The Ring, I know that at least the role of Siegmund will be in good hands. Petra Lang’s interpretation of Sieglinde was possibly not the most subtle, although there was great emotion and power. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the exclamation of “Siegmund” sung so loudly. Georg Zeppenfeld performed Hunding, dressed as if ready to go deer stalking. Zeppenfeld sang the role with his usual richness and beauty of tone, and despite my doubts that he would be able to convey the spitefulness of Hunding, he did so excellently. Christa Mayer was a superb Fricka and has a strong powerful mezzo voice suited to the role. What impressed most was her characterisation of the resentful wife. The ovation on this opening night for the singers and in particular for Thielemann lasted for around 15 minutes and was well deserved. A wonderfully engaging evening of Wagnerian music making.

– 36­ – Der fliegende Holländer, Fulham Opera, 29 November 2015 Katie Barnes Advance publicity for Daisy Evans’s arresting production described it as “an immersive take” on Wagner’s opera, in which “refugees are arriving on Europe’s shores in greater numbers every day. Among them is a man with a past, desperate to find an end to his suffering” while “one woman attempts to stem the tide of suffering.” I got an idea of what the immersive aspect would involve as soon as I arrived at St John’s Church. The normally open and welcoming vestibule was shut, with notices attached to the doors announcing that the Fulham Opera Refugee Centre would start processing refugees at 19.00. Presenting myself at the due time, I collected my ticket, bought a programme, and was handed over to Mary and her assistants, who briskly issued me with a wristband, a blanket, a cushion a folding chair and a refugee form to complete. By 19.15 the vestibule was crowded with audience members/refugees sitting in plastic chairs and completing forms, and eventually there was too little space for anyone to sit down. The intention was evidently to give the audience some small sense of the displacement and disorientation experienced by the homeless and stateless. However, on a practical level, those arriving close to the start clearly had little time in which to be “processed”. Fulham Opera should have given us an advance warning to arrive early. all photos Fulham Opera

As the first notes of the overture skirled through the air, we poured intothe auditorium, dragging our chairs with us, setting them down in whatever space we could find around the clearly defined performing area. The place was eerily lit in chill blues and greens, the pillars were swagged with rigging, ragged sails floated above our heads, and the place was full of dry ice. It was all immensely atmospheric, but I regretted that the scramble to get in and settle down inevitably distracted our attention from the overture. Once we were in our places, though, our attention was riveted. This Holländer was set in a world as chill and bleak as the fog and ice pervading the church, which made us shiver within our warm blankets. Daland and the Steersman were heartless people

– 37­ – traffickers who mercilessly bullied the unfortunate men whom they smuggled to a new life. The effect was necessarily dissipated by the fact that the same chorus members had to sing the hearty music of Daland’s crew while cowering from him in terror as refugees. Later, while they lay in exhausted sleep around the edge of the acting area, they provided the voices of the Dutchman’s crew, floating on the cold air. The Steersman was a drug addict who peddled his wares among his terrified victims and tripped on Ecstasy during “Mit Gewitter und Sturm”, slipping in and out of consciousness as he sang, which momentarily made me wonder whether the production would be presented as his dream. But the Dutchman was all too real, a man without any visible ship but burdened down by a huge holdall which he carried about like Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress. The other refugees had arrived with nothing, but this timeless wanderer had acquired the possessions of many lifetimes. He had no jewels to tempt Daland, but tossed tainted dollar bills into the air while the corrupt captain grovelled to gather them up.

While the men exploited, the women consoled and redeemed. Mary, as we had already seen in the vestibule, was in charge of a refugee centre, and she, Senta and their companions succoured shivering displaced women, sorting and folding blankets and handing out hot coffee to members of the audience. Again, I felt a sense of dislocation because the helpers and the refugees sang the jaunty Spinning Chorus as they worked, and it was at times hard to tell which group was which. In a corner, Senta pored obsessively over a copy of the Evening Standard containing a photograph of the Dutchman, her ultimate refugee. She clearly longed to free herself from her hideous surroundings by giving everything to the man who needed it most. I have never seen such an angry, defiant Senta. Her need to help the helpless was surely motivated by a sense of guilt at knowing

– 38­ – how her own father added to the toll of human suffering. At the climax of the Ballad she swept coffee pots, cups and other apparatus of hospitality from the marble altar and climbed onto it, arms spread wide, as she vowed herself to the Dutchman in a grand, self- abnegating gesture. Erik was clearly another factor in her desperation to escape her intolerable life. Dressed similarly to the other men, there was nothing about him to suggest that the huntsman came from a different social group to Senta’s seafaring community, planting the suspicion that he, too, might be mixed up in Daland’s dirty dealings. His selfish, demanding neediness only added to her sense of oppression, and when she rejected him he tried to force himself upon her. But she was more than a match for him, wrestling herself free and threatening him with an upraised foot aimed at his midsection, and he backed away from further confrontation. Her first meeting with the Dutchman was no romantic union, but the coming together of two solitary people who both needed someone to need them. In their hideous environment, with Daland chaffering for their speedy marriage, their pledge of eternal faith could not carry with it any hope for a better future, and so it proved in Act III (there was an interval after the duet), where the shipboard party was a living nightmare. Again the bullying Steersman dominated the proceedings, breaking out a cocaine brick and forcing pills on everyone while crew and refugees alike stumbled drunkenly about and eventually collapsed. As they lay around the performing area, they “channelled” the voices of the Dutchman’s crew through their stupour. The women, apart from Senta, had sensibly beaten a hasty retreat, but she remained, staring, shocked, at the ghastliness around her while she stuffed tablets into her mouth, glaring defiantly at the Dutchman while he looked on, aghast, appearing powerless to stop her. The only way she could find to manifest the choice she had made in vowing herself to him, was to take her own life. The quietness and gentleness of the interlude with Erik was a welcome respite from the mounting horror. Her predicament seemed to bring out the best in him, as the once aggressively needy suitor cradled the dying woman in his arms, trying to soothe her pain by recalling happier times. But there was no final redemptive transfiguration for her or for the Dutchman: she died sprawled on the floor, surrounded by rubbish from the party and the human detritus rejected by the world, while the Dutchman collapsed, dragged himself to her, and, on the final chord, wrapped his arm around her dead body. All this worked better for Wagner in some ways than others. While the production concept showed commendably intense commitment to an issue which affects us all – the excellent programme included a passionate article by Janet Fischer, the evening’s Senta, on “Living Without A Home” – I did not feel that it had sufficient relevance to Wagner’s opera. The Dutchman is not a refugee from a conflict which has made him homeless: he seeks redemption from a self-inflicted curse. If he is fleeing from anything, it is from himself. Wagner’s libretto gives no indication that Senta is interested in saving anyone other than the Dutchman. Judging by the views expressed by those around me, the “immersive” aspect divided opinion: some felt that it intensified their experience, while others appeared to be merely irritated or amused by it. But, as ever with Fulham Opera, the musical and dramatic values were magnificently high. Jonathan Finney (who, as FO’s regulars know, is no mean heldentenor) conducted his own excellent reduction of the score for an indefatigable 13-piece orchestra (two violins, two violas, two ’cellos, double bass, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet and French

– 39­ – horn). Inevitably the scale and splendour of Wagner’s orchestration was lost. However, in the very close environment of St John’s, where the singers can (and, in my case, did) tread on the audience’s feet, the instrumentation of this chamber ensemble – which, as Finney cannily pointed out in his programme note, is pretty close to that of the Siegfried Idyll – created a warm and not inappropriate sound for the intimate scenes, especially Senta’s duets with the Dutchman and Erik. Only at the beginning of Act III did I feel that the sound was simply too undernourished to convey Wagner’s intentions. The utterly glorious magnificence of Keel Watson’s passionate, doomed Dutchman would have graced a venue far larger than this. Larger than life in every way, with a voice so huge, bronze-toned and beautiful that it seemed to make the church walls expand to accommodate it, he simply blew us all away. Why on earth is this amazing singer ignored by our major companies? Janet Fischer sang Senta’s music superbly and portrayed the doomed woman’s rage at the world with immense power. Mae Heydorn’s glamorous, sumptuous-voiced Mary ruled over the pre-performance refugee centre and the refuge in Act II with effortless aplomb and made me wish that her role had been larger. Edward Hughes’s needy, confused Erik gave further evidence of his immense vocal and dramatic promise. Tom Lowe’s dour, menacing Steersman, a very unusual reading of the character, was not the light lyric tenor usually associated with the role but a strongly dramatic voice (his previous credits include Don José and Pinkerton) which threatened to overwhelm the lovely grace of his aria. John Milne’s Daland, full of patently false bonhomie, was strongly acted but too approximately sung for my taste. So, was the experiment in immersive Wagner worth making? I believe that it was. Although I felt that it did not altogether work, I am obliged to admit that its sheer immediacy was quite unlike anything else I have ever experienced at an operatic performance. As ever, Fulham Opera are in the vanguard of achieving the apparently impossible on a miniscule budget.

– 40­ – A bold experiment which didn’t quite work A report on a recent concert at the Liceu Opera, Barcelona Jeremy Rowe The Liceu’s huge auditorium was sold out for a concert entitled “A l’Entorn de Wagner i el Cinema”, given by the opera company’s orchestra with their music director Joseph Pons. The intention seemed to be to compare film score music with some of Wagner’s concepts. Starting, almost inevitably, with the Ride of the Valkyries (Die Walküre Act Three), the enlarged, stage-filling orchestra was in very good form.Walküre was followed by Howard Shore’s suite “The Fellowship of the Ring” (an arrangement by John Whitney of Shore’s score for The Lord of the Rings). Following immediately after one of Wagner’s greatest musical achievements, the Shore score seemed muddled, and unfocused. It’s not very interesting music, and is unsuccessful when played without the visual images of the film. Despite a valiant effort to make it exciting, the Shore piece seemed very inadequate, and simply reminded us how wonderful the Walküre score is. After a short break, Pons gave us the Prelude from Parsifal (Act One). This was sublime; exceptional playing by the orchestra with a beautiful, still atmosphere conjured up in the opera house. Clearly there were many in the audience attracted by the performance of cinema music, so a significant number would not have known the Prelude. Nevertheless, there was huge applause for this wonderful performance, and hopefully it will create many new converts to the Master. Parsifal was followed by a selection of John Williams’s pieces composed for Indiana Jones. Presumably we were supposed to find some commonality between the search for the Grail and Indiana Jones’s adventures. Again the programming failed: after the wondrous performance of the Predule, the Indiana Jones music seemed dull and empty, lacking in coherence. Again, the overwhelming feeling was that this concert was showing us how great Wagner is when compared to others! After the interval, came Siegfried’s Funeral March. Once more the orchestra, on the stage of the Liceu, was brilliant. I had heard the same orchestra in the pit a few days before at a performance of Götterdämmerung. At that time they were excellent; but up on the stage, the sound was significantly more magnificent, with Pons’s control of the piece proving exemplary. Pons tends to be a quiet and unassuming Wagnerian, although he produces outstanding performances. This led to John Williams’s orchestral suite “Star Wars”. Perhaps the subtitle “The Phantom Menace” had made them think of Hagen and Alberich, but whatever the link, it wasn’t a good one. Of all the cinematic music performed, the Star Wars Suite was the most successful as a concert piece, and the audience warmed to it with much applause between each movement. Pons, uncharacteristically, was indulging in a great deal of dancing around on the podium – perhaps signifying his feeling that this music is rather lightweight. There were moments when Williams’s work reminded me more of Walton than Wagner, and the sublime Funeral March eclipsed all of the Williams pieces. It’s ironic that we left the Liceu humming The Big Tune from Star Wars! If this had been a football match (and we are, after all, in Barcelona), the score was clearly Wagner 3, Cinema 0.

– 41­ – Tristan und Isolde in Baden-Baden Andrea Buchanan The much-anticipated new production of Tristan in the Festspielhaus, Baden-Baden, a co- production with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Polish National Opera Warsaw and the China National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, was always going to be amazing. With Simon Rattle at the helm of the and Eva-Maria Westbroek and Stuart Skelton as the leads, I felt confident in forking out for one of the Festspielhaus’s eye-wateringly priced seats on Easter Monday. In a nutshell, this was one of the best Tristans I have ever ‘heard’ – this being the operative word. The conducting and the orchestra were sublime, with what seemed to me perfect tempi and variation, ranging from gentle, slow, heart-aching bitter-sweetness to overwhelming and all-pervasive swells of an amplitude in which you could almost literally drown. I have always loved the Berlin Phil’s renditions of just about everything they do, and to me they are the ultimate Wagner orchestra – they just get Wagner. And therein lay the problem. This is not an orchestra that is kind to singers when it plays in the pit of an exceptionally large opera house, albeit one with a fine acoustic. Even from my highly privileged position in Row 3 of the Stalls, I struggled to hear some of the cast clearly at times, with Sarah Connolly being a notable example. Even Skelton appeared to be battling with the orchestra at times and this tension proved a distraction in an otherwise wonderful performance. The production was great. Polish director Mariusz Trelin´ski set the action largely on a sizeable ship, even it seemed, in Acts 2 and 3, recalling the setting of the Bayreuth Marthaler production of earlier years. This set, however, was far more dramatic, dark and spatially varied than that of Marthaler. Scenes took place on various different levels, with judicious use of subtle lighting and video adding to the drama. The costumes, however, were somewhat uninspiring, with the male cast in sailors’ uniform and the women condemned to rather drab and unflattering contemporary dress. Poor Sarah Connolly was particularly dowdily clad, reminiscent of a 1950s governess. I had wondered how Westbroek would take to the role, as I have not always been enamoured of her Wagner interpretations thus far, yet she rose to the challenge magnificently, remaining consistently strong and true in her singing. I knew Skelton would be fantastic, and his sensitive and well-acted Tristan was only marred by his struggle to rise over the pit. Excellent support came from Michael Nagy as Kurwenal and Stephen Milling as King Mark. When I could hear her, Sarah Connolly was, of course, sublime. Readers can enjoy this production (with Rattle and Skelton, but not the rest) in the cinema from the Met on 8 October this year. I do recommend that you go along. Photos: Monika Rittershaus

– 42­ – CONTACTS

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– 43­ – FORTHCOMING WAGNER SOCIETY EVENTS

WAGNER SOCIETY AGM Wednesday 18 May 18:30 St Botolph’s Church Hall, Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3TL Liverpool Street

PRESIDENT’S AWARD MASTER CLASS GIVEN BY DAME GWYNETH JONES Accompanied by Adrian Mueller A joint event with the Royal Over-Seas League Thursday 19 May, 18:30 for 19:00 Royal Over-Seas League, Park Place London SW1A 1LR Green Park Tickets £25/£5:00 students

AN EVENING WITH STUART SKELTON This year’s star Tristan in Baden-Baden, London and New York We are delighted to announce an evening with Stuart Skelton, when he will talk about his career, with particular reference to the role of Tristan. Thursday 21 July, 19:00 for 19:30 Tickets £25/students free (with valid ID) to include light refreshments St Botolph’s Church Hall, Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3TL Liverpool Street

DAME GWYNETH JONES MASTERCLASS AT RCM A Royal College of Music event Dame Gwyneth will work with five singers at this public event Wednesday 21 September, 14:00 Royal College of Music, London SW7 2BS S. Kensington Tickets from RCM – www.rcm.ac.uk/events (not yet listed on the website, so keep looking)

DAME GWYNETH JONES WITH HUMPHREY BURTON A joint event with the Royal Over-Seas League Dame Gwyneth will share her memories of her long and magnificent career with renowned interviewer, Humphrey Burton Thursday 8 November, 18:30 for 19:00 The Princess Alexandra Hall, Royal Over-Seas League, Park Place London SW1A 1LR Green Park Cash bar before the event and during the interval Tickets £25/£5:00 students

Tickets for the above events (except the AGM, which is free) are available from David Pope, 15 Fairwood Court, 33 Fairlop Rd, London E11 1BJ

Please send cheques payable to The Wagner Society, enclosing an SAE. Tickets are also available on the door. More details of forthcoming events are available at www. wagnersociety.org, or contact Jan Leigh at [email protected]