No: 203 October 2011 No: 203 October 2011 INSIDE 6 Bayreuth Report 7 Mastersingers events 8 Pleased to meet you: Mike Bousfield 9 James Rutherford in Bayreuth 12 Paris Opera Siegfried 14 Longborough Siegfried 16 Opera North Rheingold 18 Fulham Rheingold 19 Things to come: Wagner events worldwide 20 Cover Story: A new visual image of Richard Wagner 21 Lohengrin in Savonlinna, Finland 22 Forthcoming Society events 24 Film: Captain America 25 Lübeck Ring 26 San Francisco Ring 27 Northern Wagner Orchestra Tannhäuser 28 A Wagner Virgin 29 Bayreuth Tannhäuser 30 Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger in Bayreuth 31 Berlin Ring 33 Review of DVD boxed set Wagner 34 Book review: Wagner and Cinema 38 Book review: Wagner and the erotic impulse 40 Wagner’s Mediæval sources: Recordings now available 41 Letters 44 Rehearsal Orchestra 16th October event CLANGERS If only this were a reference to Oliver Postgate’s delightful swanee whistling characters from the sixties who shared their planet with the Soup Dragon, but it concerns alas two errors in Wagner News 202 which you did not have to be eagle-eyed to spot. Alwyn Mellor is singing the role of Brünnhilde in the Seattle Ring in 2013 rather than 2012 as stated. She will not be appearing in Götterdämmerung at Longborough next year because she was already cast as Sieglinde in Opera North’s Die Walküre . Apologies go to anyone who may have been inconvenienced or embarrassed by these inaccuracies which crept in to the “News of Young Artists” item. A big apology is due in particular to Chris Argent, whose review of Tony Palmer’s DVD The Wagner Family began with a repeat appearance of the opening lines of Ewen Harris’ review of the cinema relay of Die Walküre from the New York Metropolitan Opera. The sources of the problems responsible for both of these errors have been identified and we have taken the actions necessary to prevent any such recurrence. STOP PRESS Mastersingers Company alumnus Julian Close is covering the role of Fafner for Hans- Peter König in the New York Metropolitan Opera production of Siegfried . The cinema relay will be transmitted on 5th November at 4pm. –2– EDITOR’S NOTE As we prepare for the celebrations of 2013 the Wagner Society is unveiling an exciting programme of events which will be delivered by its own performing arm, The Mastersingers Company (see: page 7) in association with such organisations as the Music Club of London and Arts in Residence. This image will be seen with items which relate to the Society’s 2013 programme. It has been commissioned for Wagner News from Peter West of Donnington Arts. He tells us the story of this entirely new and original image of Richard Wagner on page 20.

NEW AND RETURNING CONTRIBUTORS Nicholas Jacobs ran the Libris publishing house specializing in German literature until he retired in 2010. He is the proud nephew of Robert L Jacobs, author of the 1935 Master Musicians Wagner [email protected] According to Tim Reynoldson his musical talent level is reflected by some piano grades and a good enough voice to sing in a (“very”) amateur choir. [email protected] Max Page is a professional cricket umpire operating in the Sussex League. He and his wife Elizabeth joined the Wagner Society ten years ago and were lucky enough to win the ballot for Ring tickets at Bayreuth in 2009. [email protected] Retired army captain Christopher McQuaid founded the Wagner Society of Ireland in 2002. In 1994 he had read an item in Wagner News on how to get tickets for the Bayreuth Festival which, he says, “showed me the way.” [email protected] Ulrich Müller is Professor Emeritus at the University of Salzburg. For nearly two decades he has been writing articles for the Bayreuth Festival. Among his passions is that of performing mediaeval music. [email protected] Andrea Buchanan is serving her second stint on the Committee of the Wagner Society. She works in the Civil Service. With the minimal amount of free time that is not taken up by opera she is learning German. [email protected] Retired Clinical Psychologist Terence Gaussen returned to singing about 10 years ago. He currently sings in Leeds Festival Chorus and plays trombone in local orchestras. [email protected] A Fellow of Hertford College Oxford, Paul Coones founded and conducts the Hertford Bruckner Orchestra which consists of both undergraduates and adult players and which specialises in the late romantic repertoire. [email protected]

Cover Photo: Peter West [email protected] 01256 222 339 Designed by Roger Lee. Printed by Rap Spiderweb – www.rapspiderweb.com 0161 947 3700 –3– HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE COMMITTEE MEETING 21st September 2011 Andrea Buchanan Jeremy Rowe opened the meeting by welcoming the new committee member, Richard Miles. Richard comes from a financial background and his business and commercial expertise will be most welcome. It was with great regret that he then announced the resignation of Pam Hudson as Ticket Secretary. Pam did a fantastic job for the Society for many years and we would all like to thank her for her hard work and the valuable contribution that she made. We are delighted to inform the membership that Dame Gwyneth Jones will be featuring in a new film about retired opera singers due for release in 2012. Based on the Ronald Harwood play of the same name, Quartet is being directed by Dustin Hoffmann and will also star Dame Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon and Billy Connolly. The Secretary reported that she had established contact with the Oxford Wagner Society and we hope that this will result in members of both societies attending each other’s events. The Oxford Society are planning a Wagner concert in the Sheldonian theatre on November 12th. Once we have more details, we will post these on our website. The Treasurer presented accounts for the year to date. We are happy to report that the financial position of the Society is sound and healthy. It was decided to invest a further £5,000 in Charifund shares. Mike is making headway in his search for a new firm of accountants who will act as examiners for the Society. The Membership Secretary reported that membership numbers remain broadly stable from last year. The Webmaster gave an update on the website including a new area called “Wagner News Extra” where reviews etc for which there is insufficient space in the magazine may be posted in full. The Secretary gave an update on arrangements for the Bayreuth Bursary event on 3rd December (see page 23). The Committee was delighted to note that David Syrus will accompany Scenes from Götterdämmerung and that Kelvin Lim will accompany singers for the Bursary competition. Andrea continues to work closely with Malcolm Rivers on this event and we urge members to attend. The quality of our young singers is known and appreciated in Bayreuth and we look forward to sending another up and coming opera star to the Bursary events in 2012. The International Wagner Verband Congress in May 2012 in Prague was discussed. Jeremy and Andrea will attend and will also attend the RWVI annual general meeting during the Congress. All members are most welcome to attend, should they wish. There is an excellent programme of operas and excursions on offer for visitors, along with the opportunity to meet Wagner Society members from all over the world and exchange views. For further information and registration forms, visit the RWVI website on http://www.richard-wagner-verband.de/english/index.html There was also some discussion about the library and the archives currently held by Ralph Wells and Geoffrey Griffiths. The committee are investigating the possibility of finding alternative accommodation for the large collection of German books currently held by Ralph.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE CHAIRMAN Please watch the website for full details of a recital to be given on Thursday 5th January at St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, with Allison Pears and David Syrus. Tickets will be £15.

–4– FROM THE CHAIR

With this issue of Wagner News we have changed to direct mailing from the printers to the members rather than have Margaret Murphy continue to cope with the huge task of putting 800 magazines into envelopes, together with a number of flyers. (I did it once, and it was a terrible chore!) We are enormously grateful for all that Margaret has done for the magazine, and send her great thanks. She will continue as Membership Secretary, keeping an eye on overseas and complimentary members and of course continuing as a valuable member of the Committee.

Direct mailing means that we will no longer include event flyers separately, but will incorporate these into the centre pages of the magazine. The magazine will not be affected by pulling out the centre to send in applications for events, and the new system will make for a far more efficient booking system whereby members can send one cheque to pay for all events on the flyer. Our Treasurer, Mike Morgan, will be handling all ticketing after the Rehearsal Orchestra event. The Committee will be booking events further ahead in future which will better enable members to plan which events they wish to attend.

As your Chair I am concerned that we are rather “London-centric” and thus I have been making it my business to see what’s going on outside London. It was therefore an enormous pleasure to travel to Leeds for the Northern Wagner Orchestra’s Tannhäuser . A review in this magazine conveys the enthusiasm and success of the event, and it was very exciting to greet many old friends in the soloists, as well as meeting conductor Michael Williamson for the first time. I was delighted to congratulate Michael on his achievement with the Northern Wagner Orchestra.

I hope soon to be visiting the new society in Oxford, and we are engaged in making contact with the new Cambridge society. It was also a great pleasure to fly to Zurich to spend time with our President, Dame Gwyneth Jones, and get to know her and Adrian better. As we embark on the journey towards 2013, I am sure our President’s contributions will be exceptionally valuable, joining with all the other expertise we have to make the bicentenary a resounding success.

Finally, on behalf of the Wagner Society I would like to say a big “thankyou!” to Richard Walker, committed Wagnerian and much admired Head Teacher of Portland Place School who retired this summer. Through his generosity the Wagner Society was able to hold many meetings in his school. For his leaving party the Society was invited to provide a cabaret. Kelvin Lim accompanied Zoe South as Brünnhilde and Simon Lobelson as Alberich and Hagen in excerpts from Der Ring which I had the pleasure of narrating.

Jeremy D Rowe

–5–– 5– BAYREUTH REPORT 2011

Andrea Buchanan, Secretary and Bayreuth Bursary Administrator Mike Morgan & I were lucky enough to see a couple of operas (we both won tickets in this year’s ballot) and we arranged a series of meetings with various officials at the Festspielhaus, the Richard Wagner Verband International and the Stipendienstiftung (who administer the Bursary events). The aim of our meetings was to enhance our relationship with the various officials on behalf of the Society and to ensure that the ticket process was running smoothly and would continue to do so. It should be noted at this point that all the tickets received by the Wagner Society (including the Chairman’s allocation) are made available to members via the ballot. Unlike many other Societies in the Verband, the Wagner Society Committee does not keep any tickets for itself. Our first meeting was with Frau Ina Besser-Eichler, Manager of the Friends Office). As a “corporate” Friend of Bayreuth, the Wagner Society receives a small entitlement of tickets each year. We wished to ensure that all the contact details were correct for the new Committee members and to find out how best we could ensure a smooth process when ordering tickets. Frau Besser-Eichler was most welcoming and helpful in this regard. One piece of good news is that the Friends Office are planning to take credit cards in the near future.. We received assurances that the current allocation was correct for our Society and that the system was not likely to change in the foreseeable future. We then met with Frau Karin Benker of the Ticket Office (Kartenbüro). The Wagner Society currently has an annual entitlement of tickets via this office (the majority for the Society and a number for the Chairman – all of which are available to the members via the ballot). Frau Benker informed us that the allocation and ordering process was due to change later this year, but was not able to tell us in what way, or whether this would affect our allocation. We expressed the view that we hoped that there would be no impact on our allocation and that we would do all we could to ensure a smooth ordering process. Our next meeting was with the outgoing Treasurer (Schatzmeister) of the International Richard Wagner Verband, (RWVI) Herr Hubert Glomm. Members may be aware that we were not able to make our usual contribution to the Verband in 2010 due to the unfortunate circumstances of the time. We wanted to assure Herr Glomm that the Society’s financial health was now restored to its former state and we sought assurance that our membership would not in any way be affected by this. He referred to the Constitution of the RWVI which permits member Societies an exemption from paying annual fees for exceptional circumstances and signed a note of exemption for 2010. We will resume payments as normal in late 2011. Herr Glomm retires later this year, and he introduced us to his potential successor in the Verband, Herr Horst Eggers. Our final meeting was with Dr. Stefan Specht, in charge of the Bursary Programme. As Bayreuth Bursary Administrator on the Committee, I was keen to establish contact with Dr. Specht (following on from the excellent relationship established by Maureen McIntosh) and to understand how the Bursary process works. Again, Dr. Specht was most charming and helpful. He was very pleased that we would be sending a Bursary winner in 2012, as we were unable to do so in 2011. Once again we ensured that all contact details were in good order and I look forward to further communication from Dr. Specht later this year. Mike and I will build on these renewed relationships in future and ensure that the Society is well represented in Bayreuth. –6–– 6– - Advertisement -

Registered Charity 1076508 Artistic Director: Malcolm Rivers EVENTS ORGANISED BY MASTERSINGERS October 16th 2011 The Rehearsal Orchestra in scenes from Götterdämmerung conducted by David Syrus at the Henry Wood Hall, Trinity Church Square SE1 4HE. 2.30 until 7.30. Starring Alwyn Mellor as Brünnhilde December 3rd 2011 Bayreuth Bursary Day at the London Welsh Centre, 157 Gray’s Inn Road with scenes from Götterdämmerung in production with Alwyn Mellor Brünnhilde and David Syrus piano. Starting at 2.30pm. Spring 2012 Two concerts at the home of Sir Vernon Ellis at 49 Queen’s Gate Terrace, London SW7 5PN. One will be a celebration of Russian Music on February 29th and the other of the music of Richard Strauss. In collaboration with the Music Club of London. Details very soon. September 21st-23rd 2012 The Rodd/Presteigne. In association with the Music Club of London and Terry Barfoot’s Arts In Residence. “Rogues and Lovers in Opera and Verse”. Presented by Terry Barfoot, Malcolm Rivers and Dame Anne Evans. Lectures, Masterclasses, workshops with young singers and verse reading and a painting exhibition – plus a Victorian Banquet and wine tasting in the Judge’s Lodging. Fantastic weekend for diverse tastes! Details available in the near future. May 10th-12th 2013 In Aldeburgh to mark the beginnings of the various Centennial celebrations for Wagner, Verdi and Britten. In association with the Music Club of London featuring Sir John Tomlinson, Dame Anne Evans, Humphrey Burton, Patrick Carnegy , Malcolm Rivers and David Edwards with the Young Artists programme. Usual unsurpassable talent! May 20th 2013 (or another date that week) The Keith Warner lecture: “Two Hundred years Of Wagner”; with international guests. June 2nd 2013 The Rehearsal Orchestra conducted by David Syrus in the Henry Wood Hall with “Wagner’s Great Choruses”. Including The Ride of the Valkyries June/July 2013 Discussions ongoing over events to complement Longborough’s Rings September 27th-29th 2013 Lohengrin . An Arts In Residence Terry Barfoot weekend in Somerset with lectures and workshops with Dame Anne Evans and Malcolm Rivers. October 2013 Projected first month of the new Mastersingers study course for aspiring Wagnerian talent. TO GET INFORMATION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE SIGN UP FOR DAVID WATERS’ ‘MASTERSINGERS WAGNER E-MAIL’: [email protected] www.mastersingers.org.uk –7–– 7– Pleased to meet you MICHAEL BOUSFIELD

Michael would love to have gone down in history as a great Wagnerian singer or conductor. The role he would most wished to have performed is that of Loge in Das Rheingold . Sadly, he says, when the gods were distributing their talents, they gave him neither a singing voice nor the ability to read music. He even claims not to be able to sing in tune! He does however feel that he can always spot a good voice and can usually predict the winner of a singing competition or a voice with great potential.

With no musical background or training and little music in his childhood family home (although mother had some old 78s of Gigli) he was 23 when he saw his first opera: Aida with Grace Bumbry at Covent Garden. He was overwhelmed with the grandeur and pageantry of the Grand March and the contrasting beauty of the death scene. Thereafter he saw as much opera as possible, but no Wagner until a Scottish Opera production of Rheingold in Glasgow in 1972, which was completely over his head through lack of any introductory research. This was later rectified by the time of the ENO Ring in 1975 and when, between them, Sir Reginald Goodall, Alberto Remedios, Rita Hunter, and Emile Belcourt (still his favourite interpreter of Loge) turned him into a lifelong Wagnerian. He remembers with great sadness being told over lunch with Alberto many years later that this landmark Ring would have been filmed for posterity had negotiations not broken down over the little matter of a difference of £100. Alberto offered to pay it himself but this was refused as a matter of principle. His love of Wagner’s music inevitably led him to the Wagner Society and he joined the Committee in the early 1990s as Membership Secretary and later as Honorary Secretary until his resignation in 2000, over perceived concerns about administrative and financial issues. He has remained closely associated with the Society and is a regular reviewer and interviewer for Wagner News and has occasionally compèred the Society’s Bayreuth Bursary competition. Five years ago he joined the Council of the Music Club of London and currently serves as its Chairman. For many years he has been a Trustee Director of the Mastersingers Company and works closely with Malcolm Rivers in the work of aiding the development of future Wagnerian singers. In the “real” (or perhaps “unreal”) world Michael is a partner in a London firm of financial advisers specialising in pensions, retirement planning and capital investment. In 2001/2002 he was the President of the Life Insurance Association and was closely involved in its merger with the Chartered Insurance Institute. His sporting interest is cricket and he feels that anyone who can endure/enjoy a five-day test match must feel equally at home with five hour or even four day operas!

[email protected]

–8–– 8– JAMES RUTHERFORD: THE BAYREUTH HANS SACHS Michael Bousfield caught up with James Rutherford in Bayreuth on 29th August When did music become a part of your life? My mother said that I could sing before I could talk. At 16 I was a boy chorister in Norwich and at that time I did some work for the National Youth Music Theatre who were involved with the children’s element of the Royal Opera and I enjoyed a season in the West End. At 18 I was too young to go to music college so I studied theology at Durham University. In the days when a degree was paid for this was a means to an end to get university experience where I could do a lot of sport, music and drama. With a lower voice it does no harm to start a bit later, as did Sir John Tomlinson, Robert Lloyd and Richard van Allen. When did you realise that you have large voice? Although I am big fellow, I don’t feel I have a large voice like Sir John, James Morris, Bryn Terfel or Willard White. Reviews have used terms such as “soft grained”. I sang a lot of lieder early on and the voice has filled out. Even in my second year of Sachs I feel that the voice is now bigger. In a way I am glad I am not doing Meistersinger at Covent Garden next year: it’s a big house and a tough orchestra to sing over, unlike Bayreuth, and I would be singing Sachs alongside the Pogner of Sir John Tomlinson who, of course, created the role in this production, thereby inviting comparisons! I went to the Royal College of Music at 21 for 5 years having had little formal music education. I just knew I could sing a bit and loved singing, and I didn’t know much more than that. They said at College that I would have to work very hard as I was behind the other people but they felt that I had the potential to succeed. My wife supported me tremendously at this time. I knew nothing at all about classical singing and spent much time in the library listening to recordings. What sort of roles did you sing in College and who were your teachers? I was recommended through a friend to the Wagnerian soprano Margaret Kingsley, who was a marvellous teacher. They did not want to push me at College. After two years of preliminary study I went on to the opera course. As the low notes were there I sang the smaller bass roles in Handel, Britten and Stravinsky as well as spin-off concerts and oratorios, which were a major part of the learning. I left the opera course with three serviceable arias for audition purposes: Leporello, Figaro plus a Handel. And after College, at age 26? This was before the opera houses had their young artists programmes and the only option was to go to the National Opera Studio (paid by the Royal Opera) and I had the opportunity to audition before all of the major companies in the UK. David Syrus was on the panel and this was full circle as he had conducted me at 16 with the National Youth Theatre. From there I went straight out to work, starting with Britten and Stravinsky and a lot of Mozart. After four to five years I was no longer the “new kid” and there was little new work. I wasn’t even offered any Mozart roles as there were younger, thinner and prettier boys doing it! I did my first Leporello with Scottish Opera, but I no longer enjoyed singing that role. Things were not working out apart from Donner in Rheingold in Chicago and Covent Garden in 2004. So at the age of 32 I changed management and decided to move more into the heavier repertoire. –9–– 9– Five years ago I went to the Wagner competition in Seattle, which I won. My first association with the Wagner Society was the pre-competition concert which they arranged in London. Off the back of Seattle I was offered a role in San Francisco. My CD was sent to all the major opera houses and a few months later the Berlin Staatsoper contacted me when their casting director was moving to Graz as Intendant and he asked me to sing Hans Sachs in his first production, which I turned down as I felt I was too young. They persevered and, having turned it down two or three times I decided to accept. Then the big break! September 2009: one performance in Graz and my entire career changed. Bosses and casting directors from Berlin, Vienna, and Covent Garden were there. Five months later I had the call from Bayreuth when Katarina Wagner and the conductor Sebastian Weigle invited me to sing Hans Sachs for them in Barcelona. I felt as sick as a dog (the most ill I have ever been for an audition) so I felt I had nothing to lose, but gave my best. Katarina said I was awfully young – my predecessor was 64. Weigle asked “Is that all you have got?” implying the voice was small, so I sang the heaviest bit – the angry aria towards the end of Act III. I pointed out that the score at that point repeats “piano, piano, piano” in the orchestra and therefore there is only a certain amount I have to get over the top of them. This may have been somewhat cocky and arrogant, but next day my agent rang to say: “You are spending the summer in Bayreuth!” Later when I arrived there Katarina told me that I had been on a list of one! On the age issue, did you seek advice from other artists or friends such as Sir John Tomlinson or Sir Donald McIntyre about taking the role? No, they would have told me not to! As it is the longest role in opera, I felt I should grab the opportunity while younger and when it is easier to master the text rather than in my late 40s or 50s when the brain is less sharp. My earlier plan had been to understudy Bryn Terfel at WNO and ease into the role which I knew one day I would sing. You had an unscheduled performance of Hans Sachs at Glyndebourne this summer. How did that come about? I was alerted the day before that Gerald Finlay might be unable to sing. I was supposed to be driving to Harwich en route to Bayreuth, so I drove to Lewes instead and was officially told at 11am on the day that I would be singing. Thankfully I had seen an earlier performance but I still had only a few hours to “walk” through the production on the day. At 10 that evening after the performance I drove straight through the night to Bayreuth for a midday rehearsal having had no sleep! You have very strong views on the opportunities – or lack thereof – for young British artists. I am aware for example that you have sung only once in a major UK house in the last seven years. Yes, this is something I have always been passionate about. Opera companies around the world do not see it as their duty to develop singers. They want the finished product served up to them as a package. The approach is: go somewhere else and do it first and then come back to us. They don’t want to take a chance on a “young British kid”. In one sense I can understand this mind-set and, yes, I know that the opera companies would say they are doing so, but many of my colleagues and I don’t see this development in practice. We have great British singers in the UK, and with Covent Garden and ENO being funded by

– 10 – the state I feel that greater opportunities need to be given to British artists. I know that Glyndebourne as a private house is different, but of the main roles in Meistersinger there was only one British-born artist. Tell us something about your approach to singing Wagner. When I decided to enter this repertory I knew nothing about Wagner. So I did a lot of research and I bought a lot of books and recordings. I knew all the singers who had sung Hans Sachs at Bayreuth. Norman Bailey was a tremendous influence – just the best Sachs. I love his recording in German even though it has the slower Goodall tempi. In this Bayreuth production, things move at a good pace. We are all a very young cast of about 40-ish, including the conductor. Things keep moving and are exciting – not too lugubrious. What of the future? Wotan? Boris? My relationship with Graz continues for a further year or so where I do new productions of roles I have wanted to do with good directors and good conductors in the right sized house: roles such as Iago, Germont, hopefully Falstaff , Barak in Die Frau and Orestes. Would I have had these opportunities in the UK? I am not sure about Wotan. I don’t have a Sir Donald McIntyre voice. He has a darker, more forceful sound than I can muster. I have turned it down already – the first time I have ever been able to do that and thought it the right plan. Boris Godunov is a little on the low side – I am really more of a baritone than a bass. But who knows: Norman Bailey later in his career went down to a bass which is where I began. I have been incredibly lucky to get where I have. Although not overwhelmed, I have enough work at present and I feel that I am doing the right kind of roles. I would like to build up a dozen to twenty roles which will form the backbone of my career until my mid 50s when things start to wind down a little bit. I always want to love doing it: there are people in the business who have become jaded and don’t enjoy singing any more. One hopes the constant travelling and staying in apartments and grotty hotels will not wear one down. I have two young children (9 and 6) and I was away for nine months last year, which is really tough. It is a fine balancing act which you can never get quite right. And the future of opera in general? I always joke that we have gone through different eras. Firstly the era of the singer (at the beginning of the 20th Century), later that of the conductor (the Karajans, Soltis, etc), then it moved to the generation of the director, but now we have moved to the era of the administrator. In my opinion it is the administrator who makes all the decisions. Often the people that make casting decisions are administrators who have never stood on a stage and actually done it. I am not saying that these are necessarily the criteria for doing the job, but there are people around the world who do not even have the knowledge. Thankfully in the UK we do have a few good people like Peter Katona at Covent Garden who really knows his craft. It is the money people who decide who does what, where and when. In my time at College almost an entire floor that was used for practice and teaching was turned into offices for marketing and administration. More people were being hired for those kind of tasks when the focus should be on producing new artists! I have been incredibly lucky to get where I have and am very grateful for all the support and opportunities which I have had with the Mastersingers.

– 11 – SIEGFRIED AT THE OPÉRA BASTILLE, PARIS: 27th AND 31st MARCH Katie Barnes

The third instalment of Günter Krämer’s long-awaited production of the Ring puzzled, amused, instructed and bewildered in equal measure. It also displayed a wide range of musical and dramatic ability. As in Das Rheingold , Philippe Jordan’s conducting of the superb orchestra of the Opéra National de Paris continued to be one of its chief pleasures. The cast was a mixture of some singers familiar with their roles and others making débuts, the most notable of which was Torsten Kerl, Glyndebourne’s Tristan in 2009, tackling the young Siegfried for the first time. I found him hugely impressive, although, like his colleagues, he had to fight hard against the instruments in this orchestra-friendly house. He produced some thrilling sounds in the forging scene, was beautifully lyrical in Act II and still managed to sound fresh during the final duet with Brünnhilde, a point at which many singers begin to flag. He was ill-served by his drab costume, which made his substantial figure look hefty and lumpen, but dramatically this was a Heldentenor performance of the old school, making the character an open, jolly, charming, naïve and constantly good-humoured chucklehead. It said much for his dramatic abilities that his childish, cheery, constantly wide-eyed Siegfried remained likeable and never tiresome. I wish that I could see him in a traditional production with an animal skin and a winged helmet – he has the figure for it! I was less certain about Katarina Dalayman’s Brünnhilde. The audience loved her, she had some gorgeous moments, especially in “Ewig war ich”, and her acting was very touching, but her voice showed signs of strain in some of the more heroic moments of the role. I was not sure whether it was due to stress over her dizzying location – she deserved a medal, simply for getting through the show – or because her voice is a size too small for the part. She sounded less at ease in the broadcast of the opening night than at the performances I saw. It would be interesting to see how she performs in a complete cycle. The other unqualified success is Juha Uusitalo, an enormous, powerful, dignified man with massive stage presence and a simply glorious voice which makes light of the Wanderer’s role. He sings everything with such majesty. This is a Wotan who can walk onstage and make the audience accept that he rules the world. But despite his hugeness, he can still emphasise the pathos and loneliness of the god – the Wanderer’s grief in Act III at knowing that Siegfried would see Brünnhilde while he would not is heart- wrenching. Act I is especially magnificent: at the moment when he climbs onto the table and reveals his identity he fills the stage, and it’s too small for him. In Act III his tenderness in the scene with Erda, especially at “eine Mann” is wonderful and there is a huge sense of fulfilment as well as defeat in the way he sings the final “Zieh hin! Ich kann dich nicht halten!” Unfortunately the Wanderer’s scene with Alberich lost much of its accustomed fire because Markus Jupither (a nice confusion of pagan theologies), substituting at short notice for an ailing Peter Sidhom, understandably concentrated on his singing at the expense of dramatic characterisation. One could see the space all around the character which Sidhom would have filled out with his customary fire and passion. In the broadcast of the première Sidhom’s voice was as black as night, pierced with rage and grief, and the sheer force and momentum he give to the scene was stunning. His peal of laughter after “der Welt walte dann ich!” was utterly chilling and world-shattering. Jupither, by contrast, simply laughed because the production required him to do so. At least Jupither was ready to go on when Sidhom fell ill. At the 6th March

– 12 – matinee both Kerl and Uusitalo lost their voices. Kerl walked his part while Christian Frantz sang “avant-scéne” and assistant director Alejandro Stadler walked the Wanderer while Egils Silins sang “avant-scéne”. I dread to think how it must have sounded when the two mutes met in Act III with both voices coming from, presumably, the pit. Just like the Royal Opera when Christian Gerhaher and Andrew Greenan were unavailable during the recent Tannhäuser , the Opéra Bastille short-changed its audience. Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke is dazzling as Mime, brilliant and merciless in his scenic larceny, especially at the end of Act I. I found myself hating him, which was in itself a tribute to his dramatic skills because he works so hard at making the character utterly repulsive. Unlike many notable Mimes of recent years (Graham Clark, Alasdair Elliott, Gerhard Siegel), he makes no attempt to make the character sympathetic. Unfortunately this extends to his vocal performance, an unwelcome throwback to the barking and whining associated with the role in years gone by. Despite this, the audience adored him, and it was significant that he not only took the top curtain call at the end of Act I but received the most applause despite Kerl's excellence. The other huge treat in the casting is Stephen Milling's glorious Fafner. His voice is unbelievably resonant. When Wotan first awakened Fafner Milling could be glimpsed standing at the back behind the natives and his voice sounded so overwhelming that I assumed that he was using a microphone, as is common at this point. But later, when the natives carried him forward, his voice was as huge as before, and I realised that this was his natural sound. Simply incredible. I have never heard a Fafner like this. In addition to his towering vocal achievement, he gave the evil, murdering giant dignity and even compassion in his sudden, unexpected concern that Siegfried should escape his own fate. Qui-Lin Zhang, another huge voice but this time in a tiny frame, is a mini- powerhouse Erda, physically frail and vulnerable but with a voice rooted in the depths of the earth like the Weltesche. Elena Tsallagova sings delightfully as the Woodbird, but as she was required to sing from the wings she sounded very distant from the action. As in Das Rheingold , Philippe Jordan continues to take the score in a very measured way. The Act I prelude is taken very slowly, emphasising the laziness of the dragon's snoring in contrast with Mime's timidity and frenetic nervous energy. The huge, lumbering sound of the Giants’ motif, quoted when the Wanderer answers Mime’s second question, is quite overwhelming, and the forging scene has enormous, unexpected majesty. The Act II prelude is given a very deliberate rhythm which makes the audience listen to Fafner's heartbeat and made the orchestra’s sudden starts of terror all the more potent. The ebb and flow in the Curse motif is full of violence, and the Act III prelude has an elemental force which contrasts beautifully with the lovely sense of peace in the music at the start of Scene 2. Jordan must beware of letting the orchestra dominate too much, as all the singers had to fight to be heard at one time or another. For personal reasons I was unable to return to Paris to see Götterdämmerung . There will be no Ring performances next season which will give Krämer plenty of time to re-evalute his productions of the individual operas before they are presented as a cycle. Hopefully, this may enable him to refine his cornucopia of ideas into something more coherent and structured than the individual elements currently appear to be.

The full version of this review is available at Wagner News Extra on the Wagner Society website: www.wagnersociety.org

– 13 – SIEGFRIED AT LONGBOROUGH 28th July 2011 Paul Dawson-Bowling Martin Graham’s amazing achievement, his brainchild of the Longborough Festival Opera, goes from strength to strength. This year, with Siegfried , everything from the opening prelude onwards had taken on a new amplitude, a new sumptuousness; and when I asked him, he confirmed that he had improved the pit by installing wood walls and flooring at the back, and that he had widened the pit and its aperture out into the auditorium. This made it possible to have more strings and more sound out in the opera house, so that the climax to the Act I prelude carried greater conviction than I have ever heard – anywhere. The improved acoustic also allowed Anthony Negus to invoke the sound palette of Siegfried with the finest tonal shading, so that the lower strings glowed broadly as the title hero muses on his mother, all of which Negus managed at some speed. His was a quicksilver view of the score, taut and vital. He confirmed yet again that he is a truly great conductor of Wagner, even though I did just wonder whether he might have exploited the intimate acoustic and easy balance to draw more mezza voce and soft singing from his cast. There was a general tendency for them to sing as if trying to fill some great barn of a place like the Met. Another point of difficulty, as Martin Graham had observed on a previous occasion, was that every success brings its own problems; and a mild one now was that, in comparison with the rest of the orchestra, the heavy brass now seemed pinched so that there was something un-climactic about the great moment during the prelude to Act III where the Wanderer motive comes sweeping in. Martin Graham tells me that this difficulty is being addressed, and I am sure it will be overcome – as I said, Longborough goes from strength to strength. This was not quite the case with Alan Privett’s production. While excellent, it was not quite the knock-out that Das Rheingold , and Die Walküre had been. To be sure there was the same grand simplicity as before. Helped by the suggestive lighting, it only needed a few scaffold frames and an enormous round metal door to conjure up Mime’s smithy. Another scaffold frame successfully represented a mechanical dragon in Act II with the singer incorporated in it as a kind of ghost in the machine. Act III consisted of two long platforms with a shallow corridor between them from the back. As a whole, the production succeeded in presenting Siegfried and its story directly, and for this relief much thanks; but many finer points were unconvincing, notably Siegfried’s forging of Nothung, which swung uneasily between mime and literal presentation. The unceasing presence of the slinky black clad Norns gyrating, pirouetting and writhing about the stage seemed more intrusive than ever, and because the stage space is so intimate at Longborough they were not a subliminal presence, but right “in your face”. By the end of Act III I did also begin to long for something other than endless Stygian gloom onstage. At Longborough this gloom even outstripped the interminable darkness of almost every Wagner staging of recent years, a far cry from the blinding, azure glory of Wieland Wagner in this scene. Above all, it was not easy to make out a synoptic vision among the producer’s many bright ideas. Happily the cast was second to none. The big discovery was the Siegfried of Daniel Brenna, an American who successfully conveyed a boy of 17 going on 12 and who possessed a stamina that never wavered in Wagner’s toughest tenor role. His beamish

– 14 – delight in his fatuous sword-play after forging Nothung, his goofy good nature, and his clean-cut, naive eagerness were all of a piece with the unfinished identity of Wagner’s boy who knows no fear. At the other extreme was veteran Philip Joll, no longer in need of make-up to present a grizzled Wanderer as had been essential when he first shone at Welsh National Opera over 25 years ago. His tone has harshened since those days but he remains a mighty commanding force. The voice of Nicolas Folwell as Alberich, another stalwart of those same famous productions, has preserved its youthful presence and tone, almost like that of some twisted, evil Peter Pan, and his confrontation with the Wanderer in Act II was a high- watermark. Colin Judson’s Mime provided the most subtle characterisation of the evening. He was a nasty piece of work, which avoided making Mime too sympathetic and Siegfried unsympathetic in comparison. We had a thoroughly sparky Woodbird in Allison Bell and a suitably Sibylline, truly contralto Erda from Evelyn Krahe, her eerie allure making her believable as Wotan’s old enchantress. This leaves the description of Alwyn Mellor as Brünnhilde. Hers is not an easy voice. It could with advantage develop more richness in the centre, and her attack is edgy, as if she was tormenting her vocal instrument into doing her bidding. On the other hand it is perhaps this stress which gives her performances such tension and voltage and helped to bring to the scene of Brünnhilde’s awakening a supercharge that fairly brought the house down, erupting in storms of applause that were fully justified. This scene set the seal on a remarkable evening, and if it was not so extraordinary as Das Rheingold and Die Walküre had been, it was still a very great occasion. As London productions of Wagner become ever more dreary and are performed and produced for the most part with also-rans from abroad, it is increasingly the provinces: Grange Park Opera, Opera North and above all Longborough that are keepers of the flame. Personally I have to go back to Knappertsbusch and Wieland Wagner at Bayreuth or Karajan at Vienna for Wagner performances as life-enhancing as those that Martin Graham presents at Longborough.

THE MADNESS OF AN EXTRAORDINARY PLAN AND DIE WALKÜRE Bridgewater Hall Manchester, 15th and 16th July 2011 Roger Lee writes: With this stand-alone piece of music theatre Gerard McBurney set himself the task of bringing alive Wagner’s “extraordinary journey” which took him 27 years to navigate. The title is from Franz Liszt’s letter encouraging Wagner to complete the Ring project which even Wagner described as preposterous. Liszt wrote: “Do not be afraid of the madness of your extraordinary plan.” Tim Reynoldson writes: This was my first experience of live Wagner. I found it to be wonderfully uplifting and definitely worth the effort to get there from the south coast. Highlights for me were the Hall's super acoustics, Sir Mark’s conducting, the playing of the Hallé Orchestra and the singing of Susan Bickley as Fricka. As a non-speaker of German I found the surtitles very helpful. The difficulty Sir Mark had in preventing the orchestra from drowning out the soloists at times made me add Bayreuth to the “in my dreams” wish list! The full version of this review is available at Wagner News Extra on the Wagner Society website: www.wagnersociety.org

– 15 – OPERA NORTH DAS RHEINGOLD Symphony Hall Birmingham 24th June 2011 Paul Dawson-Bowling This tremendous performance of Das Rheingold was fully and subtly mimed out with three screens aloft to provide scenic representations of a river, cloudy heights and so on. The singers were all very much involved with each other, sometimes to the point of man- handling. Alberich seized an imaginary Tarnhelm from Mime and placed it on his head and later we sensed the ropes that bound him even if we did not see them. If anything, the performance was all the more spectacular because Wagner’s great drama was allowed to speak for itself, and all credit should go to Peter Mumford for his concert staging. The performance was better sung (at least in the case of the men) than any staged or broadcast Das Rheingold that I have witnessed for a good 15 years, better than Barenboim at Berlin, Thielemann at Bayreuth, and Gergiev at St Petersburg, even better than Longborough. As so often, my intense enjoyment of the “provincial” cast provoked near-homicidal wish-fantasies towards the managements at ENO and Covent Garden for engaging foreigners and neglecting such a plenitude of home-grown talent (Loge alone was a German). I cannot sufficiently praise the Wotan of Michael Druiett who invoked all the gravity and authority of the role and also sang it superlatively and brought out its high drama. “Vergeh’, frevelnder Gauch!” had terrific voltage. His voice itself is clean-cut and pure in intonation, but his heldenbariton flexibility has an added seasoning from the dark, rich hues of a true bass. With the likes of Falk Struckmann’s increasingly raw, wobbly version in the ascendant everywhere, it beggars belief that Michael Druiett is not snapped up for appearances at the Met, Bayreuth, Paris, Seattle – everywhere. Nicholas Folwell is now a veteran Alberich but I have never heard him give a greater performance, technically superb as ever and conveying all Alberich’s wronged evil and his crazed, appalling grandeur. The German Loge, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, exuded a facetiousness that was almost camp, but also the demigod’s strange honesty, always offering helpful advice, but without warmth of interest in those he is advising. The two giants were sharply etched and powerfully sung by James Creswell and Gregory Frank (Are there some future Wotans here?); and the minor gods Donner and Froh were not so minor after all when sung and projected as they were by Derek Welton and Peter Wedd. The snivelling, sly Mime of Richard Roberts was the final icing on the cake. Jeni Bern, Jennifer Johnston, and Sarah Castle were three delectable Rhinemaidens, but the Fricka (Yvonne Howard) could have done with more warmth and steadiness and the Freia (Giselle Allen) could have had more sweetness. They sounded much better on the broadcast from Leeds a week later, and so did the Erda (Andrea Baker), although she did not make much of Erda’s smouldering, twilight dreaminess. What the broadcast failed to show was the staggering dynamic range which Richard Farnes the conductor achieved, flattening it out too far. Farnes was generally magnificent even if he began the evening with a rare misjudgement. His low double basses were too soft, so that the bassoons failed to match them in pianissimo; indeed they came in with a hefty poop which masked the basses. Otherwise he won my admiration for his aptness of pacing, for his ability to lay out the feast of orchestral beauties provided by Wagner’s glinting creation, and for the sheer thrill of his music-making. – 16 – There are always details which raise an eyebrow. Here it was the quick-step giants, scarcely Wagner’s “weighty and dragging back” in tempo, but so powerful as to be fully convincing; and as happened here Richard Farnes generally drew playing which had true Wagnerian heft. His orchestra shone in all departments; and with Wagner’s six harps all present in full muster, there was no niggardliness about the forces involved. The descent to Nibelheim was an occasion (certainly not the only one) when Farnes encouraged his timpani to give everything they had; and in the terrible passage where Alberich compels the stricken Nibelungen to bring up the horde, he ensured that the music took us to the volcanic centre of Alberich’s mentality, his rage, hatred and pain. Richard Farnes’ Das Rheingold was no light hors d’oeuvre as it had been with Barenboim or Pappano, but a centre-weight of The Ring as with Goodall and Knappertsbusch. It was only a preliminary in the sense that it whetted my appetite for more, and indeed I have scoured my diary for any opportunity to go to this Das Rheingold again before this tour closed. I can only advise everyone reading this review to book up for Die Walküre next season. If it is even half as good as Das Rheingold , everyone who comes to it will be in for a wonderful time.

OPERA NORTH DAS RHEINGOLD Symphony Hall Birmingham 24th June 2011 Ewen Harris This was a semi-staged performance with the singers without costumes in front of the orchestra, seated when not singing, standing and moving when doing so and making entries and exits right and left as required. This worked very well and provided opportunity for acting to some extent. The orchestra made a slightly shaky start to the entry to the depths of the Rhine. Happily this was temporary and they played superbly thereafter. Opera orchestras are often not given the credit they deserve. (Out of sight and out of mind maybe.) Full credit though to this one and to maestro Farnes. We also, unusually, had our full complement of six harps (and presumably also the one off-stage); a contrabass trombone; a bass trumpet; a Wagner tuba; and while there was no thunder machine, the percussion section made a pretty good fist of it. For the anvils we had 12 percussionists playing chunks of steel with hammers, again with results worthy of the real thing. The screams of the enslaved Nibelungs were pre-recorded by the Opera North Children’s Chorus, and were almost overwhelmed by the accompanying orchestral climax, but I’ll bet they enjoyed making it! Outstanding among the singers were Nicholas Folwell as Alberich, James Cresswell as Fasolt, and Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke as Loge. A well-presented programme was available at a reasonable price containing interesting information about Opera North and its associates, articles and comments on the Ring and Rheingold and biographies of the artists. A thoroughly enjoyable evening then, a straightforward presentation of Wagner’s work without gimmicks or distortions. Maybe this is the best way to go with Ring productions: Wagner’s music and words without overlays of any producer’s or director’s particular hang-ups so that we may interpret this wonderful combination in accordance with our own, as Wagner intended that we should.

– 17 – SOUTH FORK COMES TO VALHALLA Fulham Opera Das Rheingold reviewed by Andrea Buchanan Having not previously come across the Fulham Opera company it was with some trepidation that I went to St. John’s Church in Fulham Broadway at the end of August to see their production of Das Rheingold . But Wagner is Wagner, and if you are free and in possession of the £10 entrance fee you gotta go! Besides, the idea of Wagner performed in a church was intriguing. The church, originally built in 1828, was small, (apparently half its original size), simple, painted white and dominated by a large, plain, marble altar. There were maybe 60 people in the audience. A single grand piano was set up on stage right. This seemed at first to be an improbable setting for Das Rheingold , but in the end, through clever use of the space it proved perfect for the ingenious, witty and thoughtful production that unfolded. The basic theme was wholly Dallas. The patriarch of a nouveau-riche oil family, with a wife who liked her bling and her ostentatious surroundings, a gum-chewing, vapid blonde bombshell sister-in-law and two macho cowboy brothers-in-law was a real wheeler-dealer who couldn’t resist the lure of acquiring ever more power and wealth. This concept worked a treat. Simply and ingeniously done, it was a credible and consistent interpretation which never felt corny. The props were perfect, notably the gold cloth- covered hoop concealing Freia from the giants and the child-sized rainbow coloured brollies which appeared when Donner swung his hammer, demonstrating how little you need to spend to make an opera like this come alive. Fiona Williams’ direction made excellent use of the whole space in the church, drawing the audience right into the opera and the singing was, on the whole, up to the roles in hand, as was the acting. There were sit-up-and-take-notice performances from Peter Brook as Fasolt and Robert Presley, outstanding and moving as Alberich. I have rarely heard either role better sung. Sara Gonzalez made a compelling and powerful Erda. The real revelation for me (and for my fellow Wagner Society members in the audience) was the extraordinary piano accompaniment and musical direction of Ben Woodward. He played with a profound understanding of the music and was clearly living every role (silently singing all the words throughout). I had never heard an entire Wagner opera performed to the accompaniment of a piano before and it was wonderful. Watching Wagner operas can often be a remote and rather grand experience, with a significant spatial and psychological distance between the audience and the stage. The joy of this production was feeling that you were right inside it. This was an exciting place to be.

Other members of the cast were Zoë South as Woglinde, Elizabeth Capener as Wellgunde and Freia, Ian Wilson-Pope as Wotan, Elizabeth Russo as Fricka, Stuart Laing as Froh, Stephen Svanholm as Donner, John Woods as Fafner, Brian Smith-Walters as Loge and Ian Massa-Harris as Mime

Video clips are available at www.fulhamopera.com

– 18 – DAS RHEINGOLD AT FULHAM OPERA Jeremy Rowe, 4th September Bayreuth, The Met, Covent Garden... and St John’s Church, Fulham. In this very unlikely venue we had no idea what to expect of Fulham Opera’s production of Das Rheingold . This was a fully staged production, costumes, scenery, lighting, surtitles, the lot, with a piano accompaniment. Within a very short time, it was clear we were enjoying an exceptionally well- sung, well-staged production. Obviously all done on a shoestring with very simple costumes and lighting, this was nevertheless a great performance. It was very much an ensemble piece, and the cast's obvious enjoyment of performing was infectious. Setting the opera in 1970s Dallas worked surprisingly well. Wotan was portrayed as JR, and South Fork Ranch was his Valhalla. Slimy tourist Alberich in Hawaiian shirt and Mafia giants added to the theme of power and corruption. In a small venue the cast don’t need huge voices, and their diction was notably good. Among a consistently strong cast we especially liked Sara Gonzalez’s Erda (rising mysteriously out of the darkened audience), Robert Presley’s repulsive Alberich, and Ian Massa-Harris’ brilliant cameo Mime. Benjamin Woodward directed from the piano with a clear mastery of the challenging piano part, but it was a pity he didn't have a page turner to avoid the odd awkward slip as he turned the pages himself. Fulham Opera are clearly ambitious, and they achieved a very high standard. It is to be hoped that they find an opportunity to stage the production again, enabling all the cynics who wouldn't expect high standard Wagner in Fulham to be proved wrong again!

Find news of Wagner events round the world at www.wagnersociety.org THINGS TO COME Chris Argent Having admired the lists of forthcoming performances of Wagner operas compiled by Raymond Browne and David Waters in Wagner News, and having performed the exercise for some years, I find myself called upon to prepare the lists for the benefit of members of the Wagner Society (and for my own benefit too, be it said). The tally of forthcoming performances has grown substantially over the years as opera houses round the world demonstrate their virility by staging Wagner operas and the Editor of Wagner News gently suggested that the place for the list is not that journal but the world wide web because of the space the listing would occupy in Wagner News and also because the listing is time sensitive and of little value after the event. None of the information should be taken as gospel. It cannot be recommended too strongly that if a visit for a particular opera to a particular venue at a particular time to hear particular singers is contemplated then checks need to be made before embarking on a journey (or even making travel and accommodation bookings). Having said that, I hope that the listing will prove to be a useful guide. Both the author and the Society’s Webmaster, Ian Jones, would welcome notification of any scheduled Wagner performances before 1st January 2013 that have been overlooked.

– 19 – COVER STORY Roger Lee Some time ago I asked Peter West of Donnington Arts to design a Wagner News cover which would be worthy of the issue of the magazine which heralds the Society’s approach to 2013. He created the splendid and entirely original image which adorns our front cover. He also produced the Wagner News bicentenary logo which makes its first appearance on page 3. His artwork is crafted from photo imagery of a wonderful piece of sculpture.

Peter West I discovered this antique life-size portrait head of Richard Wagner being offered for sale at a most unlikely west-country auction in early 2011. In fired porcelain, the head is beautifully detailed, spookily lifelike and in remarkably fine, undamaged condition. On the back is the mark of the sculptor: Émile Muller, Ivry, Paris. Muller (1823-1899) was a French architect, ceramicist and writer who is said to have abhorred “the vulgarity of repeated models” so it is likely that the piece is quite rare. This ‘Wagner’ (for I have others!) is displayed discreetly in a corner of the garden, nestling in the foliage of a Mexican Orange tree at precisely the correct height from the ground. I think that even the grumpy old rascal himself would approve!

– 20 – SWANS AHOY! Chris Argent reports on Lohengrin at Savonlinna in Finland on 20th July 2011 At the performance of Lohengrin in Olavinna Castle as part of the 2011 Savonlinna Festival, surrounded as it is by water, one might have been forgiven for believing that one was at Cookham for the Swan Upping Ceremony. There were paper swans everywhere. Each chorus member proudly displayed on raised arm a model white swan. Elsa and (presumably) Gottfried were to be seen playing with a toy swan in a pool by the side of their toy ancestral home before the opera started and at the denouement. A large model swan was trundled on to the stage at the cries of ‘Der Schwan, der Schwan’ though the radiant knight appeared on the opposite side of the stage through a 5-metre high gateway in a blaze of light. The swan motif continued throughout the performance (except when Ortrud was plotting to do down Elsa and Lohengrin), notably when the soon-to-be-married Elsa was accompanied variously to the castle chamber, to the church and to the bedchamber by a bevy of attendants dressed up in swan’s garb and flapping their arms in a synchronized supposedly artistic manner reminiscent of the dancers in the Mariinsky Ring , and looking just as ridiculous. Despite these distractions one’s overriding impression was of a committed performance by the Savonlinna Opera Festival Orchestra (presumably a non-permanent body of musicians) superbly led by Philippe Auguin and a complement of able singers amongst whom Jaakko Ryhänen as Heinrich der Vogler, Samuel Youn (the King’s Herald), Jordanka Milkova as Ortrud, Amber Wagner (Elsa) and Thomas Hall (Telramund) were particularly impressive, with the palm going to Ms Milkova whose demeanour and body language complemented the thrust of her powerful singing. My radar led me to believe that Richard Crawley gave a distinguished rendering of the role of Lohengrin, but I really found his voice lacking in body and unfocused in the higher register (but then I am tenor averse). The coup de théâtre came when the large model swan was set on fire and Gottfried returned to play with the toy swan and Elsa (who survived unharmed in this production) in the pool. The acoustic of the Castle was kind to both orchestra and singers, and the chorus was exemplary, but this was a festival rather than a great performance albeit enjoyable for all that.

Photos: Savonlinna Opera

– 21 – Richard Wagner, Frederick the Great and the Sacralisation of Art Wednesday 16th November Professor Tim Blanning Portland Place Sixth Form Centre, (Top floor, access by lift) Portland Place School 143 Great Portland Street London W1W 6QN Free parking after 6.30pm. Nearest tube: Oxford Circus or Regent’s Park Wine 7.00pm Event: 7.30pm Tickets: £12 Wagner Society Annual Dinner Friday 6th January 2012 Hosted by our President: Dame Gwyneth Jones and our Chair: Jeremy Rowe With special guests Professor Hans-Michael Schneider, Vice-President of the Richard Wagner Verband International, and members of the Wagner Society of Munich Charing Cross Hotel, The Strand, London WC2N 5HX Musical performance by Zoe South (soprano) and Kelvin Lim (piano) Reception 7.30pm Dinner 8pm Entertainment 10pm Carriages 10.30 Tickets £75

Please indicate on your ticket application if you have anyone with whom you wish to share a table

TO: Mike Morgan, 9 West Court, Downley, High Wycombe, HP13 5TG Please send …… tickets for the Professor Tim Blanning event @ £12. Total: £……… Please send …… tickets for the Wagner Society Annual Dinner @ £75. Total: £……… I wish to share a table with: …………………………………………………………….. I enclose a stamped addressed envelope and cheque to The Wagner Society for £……. NAME: ………………………………… Tel/Email: …………………………………... ADDRESS: ……………………………………………………………...……………… .……………………………………………………………..………...………………......

– 22 – BAYREUTH BURSARY COMPETITION Saturday December 3rd, 2011 London Welsh Centre, 157-163 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8UE

14.30 Mastersingers Present SCENES FROM GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG Alwyn Mellor: Brünnhilde , Stuart Pendred: Hagen , Andrew Mayor: Gunther Niamh Kelly: First Norn , Catherine Young: Second Norn , Meta Powell: Third Norn Directed by Christopher Cowell with David Syrus, Piano

16.00 WAGNER SOCIETY BAYREUTH BURSARY COMPETITION Finalists: Justine Viani, Thomas Humphreys, Helena Dix, Simon Lobelson, Jonathan Stoughton, Ione Cumming, Charne Rochford, Miriam Sharad Accompanied by Kelvin Lim (Piano) Panel: Dame Anne Evans, David Syrus, James Rutherford Refreshments available Tickets on the door or in advance from Mike Morgan, 9 West Court, Downley, High Wycombe, HP13 5TG

Please send me …… tickets at £25 each. I enclose a stamped, addressed envelope and a cheque made out to The Wagner Society.

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– 23 – CAPTAIN AMERICA : BOX OFFICE SUCCESS, INSULT TO WAGNER Film review by Jeremy D Rowe The recent science fiction film from Marvel films is a lavish load of hokum. Spinning a crazy yarn set during the Second World War, the film reinforces stereotypes and prejudices mostly forgotten in the 21st Century. Whilst it is distasteful to see a film which focuses so much on killing Germans, perhaps this is inevitable for a film set in 1943. The rather thin and simplistic story line concerns a super-hero, Captain America, and his battle to save the planet from a Nazi-like and ruthless soldier with his mad scientist sidekick. And guess what? At the moment the film reveals the full horror of the scientist’s invention, and the full nastiness of Johannes Schmidt, we are treated to an extended excerpt from the Ring. Rarely has even Hollywood used Wagner’s sublime music in such a crass and distasteful way. Some ignorant producer somewhere said, “Baddie = Nazi = Wagner”; a notion both repugnant and insulting. Unfortunately things get worse when we discover that the machine which will obliterate New York and Chicago, clearly some kind of atom bomb, is called “The Valkyrie”. The film is harmless nonsense and many will undoubtedly enjoy its high level of gratuitous violence; but surely the time has come to call a halt to Hollywood’s appalling use of the music of our greatest composer?

JONES-ROWE Opera Tours

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– 24 – DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN IN LÜBECK Nicholas Jacobs Three full cycles of an outstandingly successful Ring took place in this beautiful north German town: in September 2010 and in February and May 2011 and we are also promised a keenly-awaited DVD. Lübeck is the birthplace of Thomas Mann who saw his first Wagner ( Lohengrin ) at the opera house on the site of the present theatre in 1893. The new (1908) art nouveau theatre holds some 800 people and has an orchestra pit so effectively sunken that the instrumentalists gasp for air. The acoustic is so good that some soloists sound amplified. The general manager had to threaten one newspaper with an injunction for suggesting this in the case of the consistently magnificent Wotan (Stefan Heidemann). Hearing Wagner as good as this in a small house is a thrilling experience, just as any weaknesses would be magnified. If you only saw Rheingold in this production you would get the impression of a straightforward, outstandingly well sung modern-dress staging without any particular distinguishing marks except Valhalla as an elaborate construction-site, with genuine building-workers to match. This Ring is modern but not aggressively so, and the direction is almost never distracting, but rather it enhances and illuminates the action, or has real charm. For example in Siegfried the Woodbird is represented as a young Red Cross nurse, radiantly sung by Andrea Stadel. At the end of Act II Wotan watches her encourage Siegfried on his way to Brünnhilde. To the closing notes of the Act he takes some paper- money out of his pocket and slips it into the Woodbird’s breast pocket. It is witty, suggestive, and hardly distracting, because the Act is over. There are many such deft but seldom extreme touches throughout this pleasing, always intelligent and intelligible production. In Götterdämmerung , the Rhinemaidens appear out of their natural element as tipsy bar-girls. It is astonishing how well the music fits such an interpretation. The most extreme and striking directorial intervention occurs during Siegfried’s Funeral Music. This martial music, however magnificent, is utterly alien to Siegfried’s character and represents a Gibichung takeover of his murdered body: a classic mafia cover-up, stage-managed by Hagen. In this production, at the height of the most violent kettle drums, Hagen and his hoodlums attempt to gang-rape Gutrune. The essence of that brutal music is revealed as never before. The imaginative production of this Ring is by the Cyprus-born Irishman Anthony Pilavachi, who has directed in Berlin, Cologne and Houston among other places. Little seems to have been published about his concept, but the impression is of a director who has come fresh to the work, who puts the music first, and who directs with great originality but with deep empathy and respect for Wagner’s work. All of the singers deserve the highest praise, particularly Rebecca Teem’s astonishingly powerful Brünnhilde, Jürgen Müller’s youthful, always resonant Siegfried, Veronika Waldner’s unforgettable Fricka (also Waltraute), Antonio Yang’s mesmerically evil Alberich, Arnold Bezuyen’s sinister but also comic Mime, and an Erda (Ulrike Schneider) with a voice of the profoundest beauty. Mention has already been made of Stefan Heidemann’s tireless Wotan and Andrea Stadel’s attractive Woodbird. Only Loge (John Pickering) seemed to lack character, but my benchmark is the inimitable Emile Belcourt in Goodall’s ENO Ring of nearly forty years ago, so this maybe a little harsh. The good news is that the general manager of the Lübeck theatre hopes to be able to repeat this outstandingly successful Ring in 2013, the 200th anniversary of its composer’s birth. – 25 – DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN IN SAN FRANCISCO 28th June – 3rd July 2011 Ian Rickword This Francesca Zambello production had been publicised as an “American” Ring . Rather alarmingly, we had been promised specific “environmentalist” and “feminist” themes. We need not have worried: the messages were relevant to the drama and, though not always subtle, they were never offensive. This was an excellent, coherent production with many clever features. The four dramas were set over more than a century, starting with Das Rheingold in the Gold Rush era, Die Walküre in the boom of the 1920s and the depression of the 30s, Siegfried in the recent past and Götterdämmerung in the near future. The pristine state of America with its forests and clean rivers became progressively more degraded until, in Siegfried and Götterdämmerung , we were treated to visions of industrial wastelands populated by decidedly ungodly capitalists and ragged Rhinemaidens clearing up rubbish into black plastic bags. The themes were emphasised by the imaginative use of videos and other cinematic techniques during the preludes and scene changes. There were countless ingenious details most of which were creative and striking though a few, inevitably, were duds. The feminist aspect was not overly prominent though all the women were certainly feisty. A memorable vision we took away from the immolation scene was that of the Rhinemaidens and Gutrune (practically the only survivors) remaining on stage throughout, looking on as though to say “see what a mess our menfolk have made of things – it’s now up to us to try to sort it out”. Musically, Das Rheingold seemed a bit flat. Perhaps, coming soon after Tristan at the Grange, we had to get used to the very large house. Thereafter things picked up. The orchestra was very good, moved along strongly by Donald Runnicles. Sometimes it was too strong as it tended to overwhelm the singers, especially the basses and baritones. Wagner had a good point in suggesting the orchestra should be buried under the stage. That apart, the singing was mostly very good, especially the women who were better able to carry their voices over the orchestra. The star of the cycle was undoubtedly Nina Stemme whose Brünnhilde was superb. She electrified the stage from the moment she appeared, sang brilliantly throughout with massive stamina, thrilling on the high notes but strong and clear on the many low notes that this part requires, and acted very movingly. Mark Delavan was an attractive Wotan with a good, round voice but, in both his singing and his acting, could have been more commanding. The other male parts were all well sung though the Hunding was rather wayward. The role of Siegfried was split. In the eponymous opera the part was taken by Jay Hunter Morris who sang well and clearly though he was stretched at times and appeared to tire towards the end. Ian Storey sang the role in Götterdämmerung but he seemed to struggle and was sometimes inaudible. This all changed for his death monologue where the orchestra was more nuanced and his singing was outstanding: tender, moving and well-articulated. Heidi Melton (playing Sieglinde for the first time in this, the third run of the cycle) sang strongly, though in contrast to almost all the other singers, her acting was rather wooden. This was a powerful and satisfying production which we would recommend if it is ever repeated, and especially if Nina Stemme is singing.

– 26 – ON PLAYING IN AN AMATEUR PERFORMANCE OF TANNHÄUSER Paul Coones reports from the cello section of the Northern Wagner Orchestra Leeds University, 9th - 11th September 2011 However well you think you know a piece there are always new things to hear when you are actually in the orchestra. This applies not only to the famous set pieces but also to those constantly occurring magical touches to instrumentation and harmony of which Wagner was a master. Especially intriguing was the combination of styles evident in the Paris version of Tannhäuser , with its Tristanesque passages, and there are moments when a motive, theme or chord looks forward to Der Ring and to Parsifal . Much has been made of Wagner’s elliptical and oft-quoted remark made on 23rd January 1883 (just before his death) and recorded in her diary by Cosima that he still owed the world Tannhäuser . But I agree with those who conclude that it was not simply a case of never having got it right: for him it remained an experimental work. I like Mike Ashman’s perceptive comment (ENO/Royal Opera, Opera Guide 39, 1988) that the opera was, for Wagner, simply its latest current edition, used as a working model to gauge his own progress in his craft. As a ‘Janus-faced cornucopia of its composer’s obsessions’ (renunciation, a curse, a Liebestod , a redemption, a singing competition, and a whole set of transformations), it is worth bearing in mind that Wagner went on to create music dramas out of any one of these embryo strands. Composition as the art of transition still haunted him, and his own personal journey to this end was not, even at the time of his death, complete. All these thoughts came to mind as we played the music (even though pretty well my whole attention had to be spent on dealing with the notes and counting like crazy!). As always, Wagner gets beneath appearances and confronts you with very deep emotions and feelings, mainly inexpressible in words and often repressed (which is often said to be why some people cannot stand his music). There is no ignoring this if you are actually playing it. And it is never simple. The opposition of Venus and Elisabeth is not at all as clear cut as it seems. Venus is not just a seductress in a grotto; Elisabeth may be saintly but she is no plaster saint. Most of us will recognize this well from experience (both of Wagner and of ourselves, in our own lives). The ghosts of Cosima Liszt and Judith Gautier would be well-placed to comment, and so might a certain English maid known to Wagner, and there is also the tantalizing case of the pink panties... But it is all there in the music, in the orchestra. What is astonishing is how powerfully all this comes across even in a concert performance: the drama, the tension, the ambiguities, especially with a cast of such splendid singers as we had in Leeds. Indeed, as we all know, some stage conceptions can be distracting and ill thought-through, if not downright silly. I recently saw a production of Tannhäuser in Geneva in which the Pope himself appeared at the end in a surgical gown wheeling a stand with a saline drip attached (answers on a postcard please). The Leeds weekend was a wonderful opportunity and an utterly memorable life- enhancing experience. Roll on Parsifal one day, when we shall encounter the most complex female character in the whole of Wagner! A report of Ross Alley’s presentation: “I still owe the world a Tannhäuser” will appear in the January 2012 issue of Wagner News

– 27 – NOTES FROM A WAGNER VIRGIN Northern Wagner Orchestra’s Tannhäuser Weekend, 9th-11th September Terence Gaussen

For a singer with experience mainly in choirs and of lieder the chance to sing in the Chorus for Tannhäuser was a must. Wagner is so different and the opportunities to sing this music are so infrequent that it was irresistible. I had no real knowledge of this opera and had not attended any performances of Wagner operas, so I came as a ‘Wagner Virgin’, albeit a grey-bearded one! The initiation proved very pleasurable for many reasons. I felt I really got inside the music and became part of it. It was a delight to hear known melodies appear, but also to experience the breadth and spread of orchestral and solo passages and feel Wagner’s driving insistence, almost obsessively pursuing themes and musical effects. As soon as I started to think “he’s gone on long enough with that...” just at that point I began to feel why he had pushed ideas so far and so powerfully. I discovered more about this music than I ever could in “just” listening. Perhaps I started to get the feel of Gesamtkunstwerk , since even without being staged it felt very complete. This sense of a real wholeness was curiously heightened by the fact that everyone was in their casual clothes – just ordinary-looking people on a weekend, but singing and playing this incredible stuff. This made it perhaps more approachable and real for me than if it were staged in a grand opera house. There was a sense of humanity doing its thing in making music: you see a guy in his jeans and trainers and suddenly he is producing glorious sound as one of the soloists. In this play-through weekend you got to the reality of the music just because there are no bells and whistles or stars or pomp. It was Wagner undressed and you could hear the bones and see the shapes of the music. So, for one who came to learn and experience the music it hit all the right notes. It was not perfect in performance, but it was spirited, with many glorious orchestral moments and wonderful voices in the principals. I often find that I can identify with more in the music, and can hear more things in performances that are not fully rehearsed. It is as if the nuts and bolts show more and hence many aspects are more apparent. So this kind of ‘come and sing and play’ weekend works very well for me – although people who have heard opera house productions may feel there are many flaws. The essential point is that NWO gives musicians at many levels a great opportunity to take part in wonderful music and to learn too. It was a privilege to be part of the chorus and to meet people who had come from all sorts of settings and previous singing experience. I found Michael Williamson’s style of conducting such large and mixed forces to be very supportive and his beat and musical intentions were wonderfully clear. Sarah Estill not only organised the whole event but her great singing helped me to see just what a Wagnerian soprano brings to the music. I loved Magdalen Ashman’s Venus too – she sounded always as if she had power in reserve. John Upperton’s voice took my fancy as the Act II Tannhäuser – a really lovely open tenor who, even in the top end of the register did not sound as if he was singing high since the voice quality maintained a big masculine sound.

– 28 – The high point for me was Wolfram’s song in Act III Scene 2, Wie Todesahnung Dämm’rung deckt die Lande . Pure magic from Richard Burkhard! No one told me that Wagner could be so deeply and quietly touching. Perhaps it appealed to me because it has the form and quality of lieder (see Wagner News 201, April 2011, p14, which I read subsequently) In any case I have downloaded the music and hope to have a go at my next singing lesson. The weekend was extremely well organised and the prior work of coordinating all the requirements of the principals, orchestra and the 40 strong chorus must have been enormous. Within three days we received an email asking for feedback – that is organisational commitment at its best! For me the NWO weekend was a marvelous idea extremely competently put into practice in a most enjoyable and stimulating manner for musicians of many levels to experience and engage with Wagner’s work.

TANNHÄUSER AT BAYREUTH Review of the performance on 13th August 2011 by Christopher McQuaid This was a complex and unusual yet musically satisfying production. It is set in a plant (Venusberg) where excrement is processed to yield biogas, of which a by-product is ethyl alcohol which the workers consume in large gulps from large red mugs. At a more intellectual level the struggle is, I quote from the notes: “…about choosing between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. At the end Tannhäuser is not able to find either of them.” The curtain is already open when one enters the Festspielhaus and the workers are working. There are no set changes per se . However, a Charles Darwin prop rises from the centre of the stage with evolving beings in a circular cage in which Tannhäuser has been cavorting with a very pregnant Venus. The shepherd is clearly intoxicated and having lots of fun. The pilgrims (workers) are sweeping and dusting their paths to Rome. In Act II during the singing contest the workers (guests) bop along, swaying from side to side with the music. Tannhäuser smokes an occasional cheroot using a lighter. Venus is a spectator. There are video images behind the plant with strange goings on, not unlike the breeding rabbits in a previous production of Parsifal. There are notices and screened statements such as “Mann gegen Mann” (Man against Man). In Act III a video of Elisabeth being assumed into Heaven is shown as Wolfram sings “O du mein holder Abendstern.”. At the choral conclusion Venus’ newborn baby is passed around by the chorus. In this and all other productions at Bayreuth, the music shines through the fog. After all, the Bayreuther Festspiele is an experimental theatre where the crowning glories are the acoustic, the chorus and the orchestra. The soloists are variable, but they are mere mortals who work very hard at their art. The choral singing was heavenly, and of course the ensemble in Act I was brilliant as ever, as was the wonderful concluding passage in Act II: “Nach Rom!”

– 29 – TRISTAN UND ISOLDE AND DIE MEISTERSINGER AT BAYREUTH August 10th and 12th 2011 Robert Mitchell This was the 100th Bayreuth Festival and it is still characterised by arguably the best choral singing and acoustic to be found anywhere in the world. To this is added a perfect musical execution of the works. It is something that can only be experienced at its best live. No recording I ever heard could match it. This was particularly pertinent to James Rutherford’s magnificent Hans Sachs which flooded the auditorium with his warm, mellifluous tones in an expertly paced interpretation containing many subtleties of utterance and acting – at least a match for any Sachs I have heard here since 1964. Listening to the satellite broadcast nowhere did justice to this fine vocal achievement. But this was but part of a uniform standard of vocal excellence at Bayreuth. Herr Vogt having migrated to the banks of the Scheldt, Burkhard Fritz replaced him as Stolzing and overcame the ludicrous ideas of his producer’s directions to project a gleaming voice which also reached the end of the evening in fresh state. All the others in the cast sang excellently. Sebastian Weigle conducted competently. Wolfgang Wagner’s autobiography (Acts) had humour on almost every page and it seems that his daughter has also inherited a wonderful sense of the same with some incredibly amusing moments and ideas, and some outrageous ones, in her first Bayreuth production previously described in these pages. Quite what they had to do with Richard Wagner’s work remains a mystery. Peter Schneider replaced Georg Solti here in 1984 and enjoyed a great success with Tristan und Isolde , much deserved once we were past the peculiar accenting of the first bars. Again the cast were almost ideal and many aspects of the actors’ interactions were excellent. In particular Robert Dean Smith as Tristan (dressed in Act I like a private detective) now has a voice of resplendent power and honeyed lyricism. However, as in most modern productions, there was so much extraneous distraction to exhaust the eyes and brain. One has to concentrate hard on the main action and then try to persuade oneself that this is a real Tristan und Isolde . Nowhere in this production could one have imagined a ship, a garden with high trees or a castle garden. Instead Acts I and II were in a largish hall, descending somewhat in Act III to a basement with the obligatory tilted modern bed surrounded by a bit of scaffolding rail around which a by now doddery Kurwenal wandered incessantly. The surrounding walls of the stage suggested a giant public urinal against which the subsidiary characters occasionally positioned themselves (Berlin’s recent effort had the stage move a little laterally from act to act. These unified stage scenery attempts are really very poor value for money and show very poor imagination.) It’s all a great pity. With the superabundance of musical talent Bayreuth could be going through a golden age in presenting the Gesamtkunstwerk . Instead we are offered superb musical presentations with perverse productions. The public are starting to realise this. For the first time in living memory I saw someone outside the ticket office offering tickets for three performances with no apparent interest, and offloading my two spare tickets was a real trial. On a positive note, no matter how hard they try, the producers never quite defeat Wagner’s greatness. Perhaps we conservatives could be treated to a nice revival of occasionally, say, a Tietjen, or even a Wieland, Ring ? It would be interesting to see what the public wanted. Museums can be very interesting places.

– 30 – DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN : DEUTSCHE OPER, BERLIN 10th, 11th, 14th, 18th September 2011 Ken Sunshine The word Gesamtkunstwerk is associated with Wagner; the idea of an integrated artwork is one he very much pursued and came closest to achieving in the Ring . Translating the music and words into a Gesamtkunstwerk performance then requires the right environment, top-class singers and musicians, appropriate stage sets, empathetic direction and interpretation, all in balance. We were lucky enough to be at Deutsche Oper when this full integration was almost achieved with Götz Friedrich’s famous Time Tunnel version of der Ring . The Operhaus has excellent acoustics and perfect sightlines. Peter Sykora’s sets are inventive and spectacular and with minor exceptions the singers were all A or A+ class. Donald Runnicles kept the music absolutely in tune with the action, but one of the beauties of this production, was the intensity of the one-on-one connections: Fricka/Wotan, Siegmund/Sieglinde, Wotan/Brünnhilde, Siegfried/Mime, Waltraute/ Brünnhilde. In each of these we experienced not only the music and singing but also the sincerity of the acting. These people lived what they were doing and we therefore believed it. Throughout the four evenings emotion ruled and relationships were portrayed truly and deeply. Two of my inter-act notes: “I’m breathless” and “I shall be exhausted by the end of all this” speak for themselves. The most spectacular scene was the raising of the fire around Brünnhilde, achieved by flames emerging from eight sunken wells accompanied by lots of dense, swirling smoke, an impression of which is in the painting below. The full version of this review is available on Wagner News Extra at: www.wagnersociety.org

– 31 – – 32 – WAGNER : A BOXED SET OF FOUR DVD FILMS BY TONY PALMER A review by Chris Argent Palmer’s film Wagner was initially released in 1983 and features those colossi of the English stage: Richard Burton as Wagner, Vanessa Redgrave as Cosima, and Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson as Ludwig’s ministers together with the Society’s President as Malvina von Carolsfeld. The film (shown at the NFT and by the Wagner Society a few years ago) comprises three disks and lasts 7 hours and 46 minutes, so the viewer will need more than a free evening to embrace it in a single pass. For those who have yet to see it, the film is a wonderful treat. The music is conducted by Georg Solti and there is superlative acting (often over the top) from the three knights of the realm. A host of other famous names appears such as William Walton, Ronald Pickup, Bill Fraser, Peter Hofmann, Yvonne Kenny, Manfred Jung, Jess Thomas and Richard Pasco. In its scale and ambition it rises to the challenge of matching and laying bare the epic character of Wagner’s lifetime achievements as well as the reasons for Bernard Shaw’s apocryphal ambivalent attitude towards him. The title of the film Silent Wagner has to be an unrepentant oxymoron. It is not inappropriately named however as it deals with Carl Frölich’s biopic of the composer originally released in Germany in 1913. The joy of the product which translates early 20th century nitrate film stock to 21st century optical technology is the accompanying sardonic and yet fascinating commentary imposed on the silent sequence of film frames. Guiseppe Becce was an extraordinarily close look-alike as Richard Wagner, though his style of acting often reminded me of Buster Keaton, particularly in the way he (just like Mussolini) thrust his somewhat prominent chin aggressively upward and forward (perhaps Wagner did too!). The film does ample justice to a man who led such an eventful life and whose everyday existence spanned the lows of utter depression consequent on the rejection of his early operatic offerings in Paris and supreme euphoria on landing the friendship and seemingly unlimited financial support of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Palmer makes play (and who would not?) with the fact that Richard and Cosima’s children, Eva, Isolde and Siegfried, were all illegitimate and adds that Cosima’s children by Hans von Bulow were also illegitimate, so that Cosima (herself illegitimate) had little immediate company but for illegitimate children and a husband who was never sure who his father really was. For any lover of Wagner or anyone else wishing to acquire evidence that, as well as being a towering genius he was a distinctly unsavoury citizen of the nascent Germany, with Tony Palmer’s lucid (and at times barbed) commentary this film is unmissable. The DVD Parsifal is a performance at the Mariinsky Theatre conducted by Valery Gergiev with a commentary by Plácido Domingo who also takes the part of the eponymous hero. Palmer has assembled a rich concatenation of visual and musical reminiscences of the Grail legend and of Wagner’s utilization of what arguably is mere myth to compose his final opera, all intercut with reminders of the devastation wreaked by the Nazis on the peoples of Europe as a consequence of their belief in the impurity of the Semitic race and its supposed impact on German culture. It is fortunate indeed that the film’s director has leavened the account by interposing direct quotations from the anarchic film Monty Python and the Holy Grail , and that he secured the commentary of a biblical scholar who demolishes the concept of any relationship between Christianity and the mythic grail. For my review of the The Wagner Family DVD see: Wagner News 202 (July 2011). – 33 – WAGNER AND CINEMA Book Review by Chris Argent This is an esoteric collection of essays, several of which had me diving for the dictionary just as did Tony Hancock on that dismal Sunday morning in East Cheam when he decided to spend the day reading Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy . As with that tome, I was obliged to consult the dictionary to try and penetrate the meaning of some very clever (and totally abstruse) observations. One word in particular, ‘diegetic’, was used ad nauseam – signifying, I gather, music heard within a dramatic setting as when a character is shown listening to a concert. The scholars responsible for these essays, for scholars they must be, use technical jargon to a fault thereby frequently obscuring the essence of their arguments. The use of poor syntax and poor grammar (as in turning nouns into verbs, eg, ‘privileging’, ‘relativize’, ‘fetishing’) reflects a certain contempt for the reader. Likewise the use of longer words (some artificially constructed) when a shorter word would suffice is a real annoyance. Thus we get ‘effectuate’ for ‘effect’ and ‘focalized’ for ‘focused’. Spelling could have been improved especially where a misspelt word occasions doubt as to the meaning of a whole sentence as in: “…neither she not they have access to…”. And in a compilation about film it is surprising to see the director (D.W. Griffith) of Birth of a Nation referred to as “G.W. Griffiths” The volume cries out for better editing. If one is selective in choosing which essays to read there is a great deal of interest within the book as well as some entirely fascinating insights into Wagner’s methodology and the way in which cinema, especially in Germany and Hollywood, treated the resonance of the Wagner/Hitler relationship. Added to which there are some delightful metaphors. I particularly liked “Tristan’s acoustic erections”. The most lucid writing is the Foreword by Tony Palmer which nicely encapsulates the objectives of the eighteen essays which follow. Possibly the most undecipherable assembly of words is the Introduction which can inhibit (but should not) exploration of many of the essays. The earlier survey-type essays are the most complex and impenetrable. Peter Franklin’s ‘Underscoring Drama – Picturing Music’ sounds promising but requires hard work. In his conclusion the author states “Wagner’s compositions only reflect rather than realize his ideas” – that seems arguable. He also suggests that “Wagner was preparing the autonomous art of music” – perhaps in readiness for use in underscoring films! Paul Freyer deals with the life and works of Richard Wagner, starting promisingly, but then refers to a film released to mark the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1913 (and I thought he had been born in 1813). He does mention, en route , that a projected film to use Wagner’s music to synchronize with appropriate images was scuppered by the avaricious occupiers of Wahnfried who demanded a fee of half a million marks. Freyer also reminds us of the vindictive character of the Wahnfried set in taking revenge on the Dutch tenor Anton von Rooy for playing Amfortas in New York in 1903, never to be invited to sing at Bayreuth again for flouting Cosima’s ban on Parsifal performances other than in the Wagner temple.

– 34 – Fritz Lang’s archetypal film Die Nibelungen is examined in its three different manifestations, the third (of 1933) being in response to the Propaganda Minister’s lionizing of the Nibelungen story as a metaphor for German cultural superiority. The images and music in the film are evidently skewed in order to convey the impression that King Gunther, being a pure-blooded Burgundian, had no responsibility for the death of the German hero Siegfried (with its obvious corollary). One essay on ‘Wagner’s influence on gender roles in opera’ provides a potential catalyst for a series of essays as the author avers the evidence demonstrates that Wagner thought cinematically and that his compositions follow cinematic guidelines. There follows an exhaustive examination of Kurt Overhoff’s (1967) assertion that masculinity is defined by major modes and femininity by minor modes. Relevant ‘affects’ ( meaning ‘emotions’) are cited as having positive and negative connotations, the latter amusingly including affecti molesti where, maybe, affecti modesti might have been more apt. This essay repays close study as it affords both insights and entertainment in the detailing of gender-specific music and instruments as well as distinguishing between ‘pure’ women, scarlet women, and women whose operatic destiny it is to die (Tosca, Carmen, Sieglinde, Senta, Elisabeth, etc) with examples from a host of films. The film Humoresque is analysed by Marcia Citron with respect to strands from Tristan und Isolde that she highlights, and others generated by inferences from musical and visual signposts. The author argues that the final strophes of the Liebestod pose a series of rhetorical questions as to the fate of Helen, the film’s heroine, as she walks to her voluntary death beneath the waves. Ms Citron also makes play with the connection between Wagner’s music and the dominant role played by water in the Ring , in Holländer and Tristan und Isolde , and compares the relevant episodes with the scene in Aria where the young lovers commit suicide Roman senator fashion, and with Ludwig’s drowning in Tony Palmer’s Wagner . In possibly the most interesting essay, Marc Reiner suggests that that part of the sound track of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator uses music from the Ring to highlight Siegfried as a paradigm for the cultural and political history of Germany. The analysis is minutely detailed and focuses on the similarities between leitmotifs within the Ring and the score for the film. The author tangentially exposes the link between the film’s plot and the evil perpetrated by modern totalitarian dictators: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc, with Hitler as the supreme exemplar of ‘unfathomable evil’ against whom all are to be compared including Commodus in the film. He maintains that Wagner and his music are inevitably sullied by the link fostered by the film which hammers home the point by using images from Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will as well as of the ruins of Berlin and Nuremberg after Word War II. Nor do the inhabitants of Wahnfried escape accusations of complicity in the evils of the Third Reich. Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips – the Hollywood cartoon deliberately designed to demonize and dehumanize the Japanese race after Pearl Harbour – is examined in detail by Neil Lerner. In this film, which is so xenophobically aggressive that it has been removed from commercial circulation, we learn that the composer Carl Stalling uses ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ to support the director’s thesis that Japanese warriors are not qualified to go to Valhalla. The essayist also refers to another Bugs Bunny cartoon, Hare meets Herr , where, in contrast, phrases from Die Walküre are integrated into the sound track to represent German high culture albeit in Nazi Germany. This essay is full of – 35 – meaningful insights as to the tremendous power of musical quotations (not just from Wagner, but from Beethoven and Mozart as well) in propaganda. Scott Paulin’s essay ‘Piercing Wagner: The Ring in Golden Earrings’ is one of the more accessible and fascinating of the offerings. It is prefaced by an outline of the way Sontag’s Nibelungen March (much used in Nazi propaganda films) employed themes from Die Walküre so configured as to represent loathsome ‘Deutschtum’ thereby converting the German hero Siegfried into a menace or a buffoon. Thus did Frank Capra use Wagner’s music (albeit in distorted form) in anti-Nazi propaganda films, challenging the Nazi regime with its own musical language. The essayist points out, however, that “it is possible to watch Nazis spying and slaughtering their way through dozens of 1940s dramas without hearing a note of Wagner”. We also learn that, in the film Interrupted Melody (1955), Lutz Koepnick challenges Hollywood’s view of Wagner as the dystopian archetype of decadence and destruction suggesting that Victor Young, who devised the sound track of Interrupted Melody, managed to release Wagner from the reflex-like association of all his music with the Nazis. Roger Hillman’s essay describes the German cinema’s attempts to airbrush Hitler out of the German psyche after the defeat of the Third Reich with its inevitable corollary that the resurrection of Richard Wagner, the figure so garlanded by the Nazi regime, encountered difficulty on film sets. Post-1945, the restoration of Wagner by German film makers seemed like a task beyond the pale with the notable exception of Hans Syberberg who tackled the issue head on with Our Hitler, Parsifal and The Confessions of Winifred Wagner and Edgar Reitz with Heimat . This essay complements that of Tambling, with such issues as the New German Cinema, the ideology inherent in Wagner’s output, the Hollywood dream industry, the Hitlerian resonances in Syberberg’s Parsifal , and a Germany “still struggling to accept concepts of identity other than ethnic ones” which has a certain resonance for present-day English-born readers. One cannot be sure that the author really knows his Wagner opera plots as he writes: “…in the film Our Hitler , Syberberg follows the Prelude to Parsifal with the forging of the ring scene from Das Rheingold ”. Joachim Herz’s film of Holländer that launched the GDR’s political acceptance of Richard Wagner after the bifurcation of the defeated Nazi Germany, is subjected to detailed scrutiny by Joy Calico. The essay provides a history of Wagner’s operas in the context of the cultural history of the GDR and comments on the seamless transformations that Wagner’s scores demand but rarely get. Essay 15 compares film noir with the concepts underpinning Tristan und Isolde . Much is made of the concept of transformations, but then what is life itself other than transformation – from one moment to the next, one mood to another; what is music but continual transformations (of keys, harmonies, notes) and what is film but a progression of static frames giving the impression of movement? Thus the transformation of Isolde’s hatred for Tristan (Tantris) into love will eventually and inevitably conclude in the cemetery. Their love is labelled ‘tragic’, but ‘fated’ would be more apt. Giorgio Biancorosso provides an affectionate account of Visconti’s portrait of Ludwig , dwelling on the King’s regard for Richard Wagner. As Ludwig II lived in a world entirely of his own making in which Wagner loomed large for most of his reign, Visconti’s frames emulate the King’s excessive regard for his environmental milieu (and subliminally for Wagner’s craving for sensuous surroundings not alluded to by the author). Biancorosso maintains that Visconti clarifies the meaning of Tristan und Isolde

– 36 – in that it provides a sub-text for Ludwig’s relationship with his cousin Elisabeth of Austria, and Ludwig’s unconscious recognition that it could never be consummated. Thomas Mann’s comment that Act II of Tristan “… is more suited to young people who don’t know what to do with their own sexuality” seems entirely apposite to Ludwig, but hardly to Wagner. Bill Viola’s essay is concerned with polar opposites as they inform Wagner’s world: sound and vision, reality and imagination, being and becoming, love/hate, night/day, life/death, video technology cf. old fashioned photography together with time and space as epitomized by Gurnemanz’s “Here time becomes space” – which perhaps anticipated Einstein’s special theory of relativity. The author draws attention to the amazing number of Wagner’s characters in the Ring who endure sleep, implying a reluctance to accept the march of time: Brünnhilde (whose sleep provides Wagner with a way for her nephew to catch up with her in a socio-sensual sense), Erda, Fafner, Hagen and Hunding – the latter’s slumber, of course, induced by Sieglinde’s specially concocted hot chocolate. Many of the essayists adopt the procedure of quoting other analyses of films that use Wagnerian leitmotifs, and the reader is required to follow multiple levels of interpretation. Much is made of the film director aiming to produce a Gesamtkunstwerk as a demonstration that Wagner’s compositions are cinematic in structure. Tambling’s essay focuses on a discussion of films by the New German Wunderkinder (Syberberg, Edgar Reitz – director of the Heimat series, Alexander Kluge and Werner Herzog) in relation to their direct use of Wagnerian motifs and indirect application of Wagnerian plot development techniques. Apart from offering up numerous nuggets of intuitive insights into the Wagnerian canon rather like the crystals within a geode. Tambling suggests provocatively that Parsifal , as a society of the dead, is a loss of ‘affect’ – that I translate as experiencing a loss of emotion. Most of Tambling’s essay deals with Alexander Kluge’s film Power of Emotion which, remarkably, is not included in the immensely valuable appended list of films that utilize themes from or based on Wagner’s operas. William Rosar’s essay, with its long title featuring Wagner’s ‘Umbra and Penumbra’ (ie shadows) in sci-fi rests on the legacy of Fafner’s theme in a variety of films. This author also defines the use of Wagner’s music in Hollywood as ‘Mickey- Mousing’ since it so frequently turns up in cartoon films. The essay is particularly interesting when it discusses the “numinous experience” that relates to demons, hob- goblins, peripatetic minor gods and where the musico-dramatic ‘ombra‘ tradition invokes monsters, the like of Fafner (but not of Hagen or Germont père). The volume terminates with an interview with Bill Viola and in an epilogue wherein Sander Gilman records that the collapse of the Third Reich was marked not by a film, but on Greater Germany Radio by the playing of Twilight of the Gods signifying that aural signals are more powerful than visual. This interesting pearl of information contributes to one’s continuing perplexity at the inability of the Nazi hierarchy to recognize the essentially explicit message within Götterdämmerung that gods, whether mythological or real dictators, will invariably be destroyed.

Ed:. J. Joe & S. Gilman, 2010 pp 486 Indiana University Press

– 37 – LAURENCE DREYFUS: WAGNER AND THE EROTIC IMPULSE Review by Paul Dawson-Bowling This is a groundbreaking book, a wonderful book, and an annoying book. Its first achievement is to break up Wagner’s bizarre status today as a hate object and reconfigure it more in line with the historical facts. As the author Laurence Dreyfus indicates, it is thanks to the determination of such notable figures as Barry Millington and Hartmut Zelinsky that “the enduring image of Wagner today is that of Hitler’s favourite composer, a progenitor of National Socialism whose works are so drenched in race hatred and anti-Semitic vitriol that the only way they can be appreciated – if at all – is by excoriating the nasty man and begrudging him his occasionally beautiful music”. However, Dreyfus makes it plain that people have always loved to hate Wagner, and that “what is significant – and surprising – about critical responses to Wagner in the 19th Century is that the most profound and violent reactions were provoked by his erotics, not his politics”. Wagner’s stature as a hate-figure used to be tied to his assumed immorality and to what was seen as his debasing obsession with sex, both in theory and in practice, and worst of all, in his works. The depth of Dreyfus’ research establishes this and much more, and the range of his references commands my profound respect. Dreyfus then takes his researched material as the basis for a fascinating investigation of how far Wagner intended his works to set out his erotic principles and promote them, and how far he managed to embody the erotic itself in music. Can music even be pornographic? Dreyfus finds pornography in The Venusberg Music and in the Prelude of Tristan und Isolde . He goes on to examine Wagner’s personal deviances and the role of homoerotics, both in his life and his dramatic output. One of the difficulties for Dreyfus and anyone writing about the erotic is that it inevitably lays bare some very personal views of the writer and intimate aspects of his thinking, and Dreyfus’ willingness to do this is a reason for gratitude to him. It is also the occasion for explaining that even to review such a book can be a source of unease for a reviewer (like me) who is not normally given to displaying attitudes so personal. A second difficulty is that the book is written very much from a male perspective. The third difficulty (and this is the main annoyance that Dreyfus provokes) is his failure to distinguish between love and sex; and this makes a fault line that runs through his entire book. Love is a vague and difficult subject, so multifarious that it is hard to encompass and define, but one thing that is certain is that it is above all else a feeling. Anyone who classifies it otherwise runs counter to the word, to the idea behind it, and to what it actually means for real people. Dreyfus makes exactly this mistake, and consistently identifies love with sexuality or what Freud might have called “genitality”. This is wrong. The complex spiritual experience of love, above all of being in love, and the gratifications of pelvic encounters are not the same. They are anything but identical, and they were not identical for Wagner. Dreyfus persistently glosses and fudges this distinction by misconstruing and mistranslating what Wagner wrote. He mostly mistranslates “Liebe” as sex whenever it comes up in Wagner’s texts. For Dreyfus’ “Liebeswonne”, the wonder of love, becomes sexual bliss. “Liebessehnen”, the yearning of love, becomes sexual longings. The result is to put a misleading skew on the question as to what Wagner was trying to do. Dreyfus’ – 38 – own evidence, his quotations of Wagner’s writings, makes it clear that Wagner was enjoining. He was in love with love, and he hungered insatiably for that intoxicating experience where ego boundaries dissolve, where isolation and separateness are no more, where all is consumed in a oneness and communion with the beloved. Wagner craved this, an experience which is probably otherwise known only to mystics, and which he regarded as the vindication of life. Undoubtedly, there was sex in the mix for Wagner, somewhere right of centre and sometimes even right at the centre. Physical sexual encounters can indeed actualise and replenish the ecstatic feeling of love, but so too can many other things, such as talking and talking and going on talking, as Wagner dramatised in Act II of Tristan und Isolde . From Wagner’s programme-note description of the original Tannhäuser overture, quoted by Dreyfus, it is compellingly clear that part of Wagner’s didactic agenda was to reintegrate the carnal and biological with the high-flown and spiritual. He aimed to rectify the tragic split which he discerned as having arisen between lust and romance, body and soul. He drew attention to the harm that resulted from splitting off the carnal and demonising it, as does the court of the Wartburg in Tannhäuser . His thinking on the matter ran along the same lines as that of Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychologist, “Eros is a questionable fellow and will always remain so. He belongs on one side to man’s primordial animal nature which will endure as long as man has an animal body. On the other side, he is related to the highest forms of the spirit. But he thrives only when instinct and spirit are in right harmony.” Wagner recognised that one of the tragedies of the Victorian era was its refusal to admit what Jung would conclusively assert, “Too much animal distorts the civilised man; too much civilisation makes sick animals.” This mis-identification of love and sex does not spoil Dreyfus’ revelations, as established by reference to Wagner’s most blistering critics, that Wagner’s psycho-sexual agenda was why he was anathema in the late nineteenth century. Dreyfus demonstrates how Wagner illuminated areas of human experience that are perennially confused and confusing. In the process Dreyfus throws down the gauntlet to us, his readers. After describing how there was and is among writers on Wagner “an unspoken sense that Wagner must be judged adversely against the example of normal men, whose desires, practices, and sexual behaviour are predictably monochrome”, he points out that it “becomes famously difficult to locate this non-Wagnerian, non-neurotic, sexually conventional male as soon as one tries to identify him”. Dreyfus asks his readers with fine irony, “Why in heavens name should we” (we, that is, who are all so virtuous and normal!) “be attracted to music crafted by someone so obviously aberrant and perverse?” The book amounts in a sense to a compelling analysis of the reasons why, and it is unique in its deployment of musical examples to spell out the eroticism in Wagner’s music, even if the book is somewhat awkwardly sectioned out. Its sections fall under the headings: Echoes, (Wagner as revealed in the mirror reflections of his critics), Intentions, (Wagner’s agenda for straightening out the world’s attitudes to the erotic), Harmonies (Wagner’s singular success in representing the erotic in music, for which the book sets out telling musical illustrations), Pathologies (Wagner’s deviant tendencies), and Homoerotics (Wagner’s approach to homosexuality). These last two sections make rather thin subjects as far as Wagner was concerned, and Dreyfus pads out the second with material that is marginal, interesting though it may be in passing, such as Henry James’ ambivalent attitudes to the homosexual Joukovsky, the set designer for Parsifal, after the revelations about Joukovsky’s Italian lover, Peppino. Occasionally Dreyfus can suggest something bizarre, as when he tells us, “It is not far-

– 39 – fetched to see Wagner’s skin problems, his Gesichtsrose , (literally facial rose) as a psychosomatic condition related to, if not actually induced by his colour, fabric, and perfume fetish”. As a doctor I can assure readers of Wagner News that Dreyfus’ suggestion is utterly far fetched. Perhaps in some sense all illness has some degree of psycho-somatic element, but Erysipelas, to give Wagner’s affliction its proper name, is about as un-psychosomatic as any illness can be. These points are not mere quibbles, but they are of no consequence compared with the many brilliant observations that Dreyfus constantly offers, sometimes at a tangent. Take for instance, page 69, and his review of the distinction between aesthetic and philosophical modes of thought. As he points out, the success of an artistic creation resides in the coherence of its aesthetic ingredients, and not in whether its ideas as such add up and hang together. It is a mistake to demand a philosophical coherence of something artistic, and even more of a mistake to make philosophical coherence the yardstick for judging a work of art. Some of Wagner’s ideas do add up, but this is not the reason why his operas work. Dreyfus asserts an important truth, but anything but plain and simple, and critics commenting on Wagner and his works often honour it more in the breach than in the observance. Another constructive feature of Dreyfus’ book is that it has already provoked ripostes. The latest Wagner Journal contains a long review article that amounts partly to an endorsement of his book but partly to a spirited, indeed a rebarbative challenge. Dreyfus’ book is one to read and re-read, because it makes you go back to revisit it and check it, and then discover fresh insights. My reservations are not a reason for denying it a personal rating of alpha plus. Published by Harvard University Press, price £19.95.

RECORDINGS NOW AVAILABLE OF WAGNER’S MEDIÆVAL SOURCES Ulrich Mueller Although some of Wagner’s literary sources were sung for mediæval audiences, he could only know the old German texts as the melodies were forgotten and yet to be published. The Nibelungenlied , the Wartburgkrieg (the Minstrels’ Contest at Wartburg Castle) the Tannhäuser Ballade as well as the poems of Hans Sachs are all now available as commercial recordings. The 28 stanza Wartburgkrieg is preserved in a 14th century manuscript at the University in Jena, Germany. The oldest version of the ballad about the knight Tannhäuser and the pagan goddess Venus survives in an printed book of 1515. The 39 chapter Nibelungenlied , from around 1200 and originally sung (like all heroic epics) is transmitted with a trustworthily reconstructed melody. Songs and texts of Hans Sachs (1494-1576) are well preserved in manuscript and printed forms together with pieces of other Mastersingers such as Sixtus Beckmesser. All of these have been recorded by the Viennese musician Eberhard Kummer. The complete (!) Nibelungenlied on two MP3-CDs (roughly 25 hours) and the Wartburgkrieg and the Tannhäuser-Ballade are available from the Chaucer Studio (Brigham Young University, Provo, UT/ USA: http://creativeworks.byu.edu/chaucer/; also downloads). The songs of Hans Sachs are published by Universal Import 1998 (also download). There are in addition two albums with selected parts of the Nibelungenlied (Kummer: Preiser Records 1999 and Knud Seckel 2008: Verlag der Spielleute/ www.minne-saenger.de). The CDs and downloads of the Chaucer Studio are easy to order. Addresses for the others have changed from time to time but may be found with a search programme. [email protected] – 40 – From Max Page DIE MEISTERSINGER AT GLYNDEBOURNE As an usher at Glyndebourne lucky enough to see this Meistersinger five times perhaps you will allow me a few comments. These views are entirely my own and I am not in any way writing on behalf of Glyndebourne Opera. First of all I wish to express my disappointment upon reading the review by Jeremy Rowe who from the outset demonstrates his antipathy to Glyndebourne: “the glamorous frocks and dinner jackets, the posh picnics, the air of well-to-do self satisfaction” and then proceeds to provide a distorted account to suit his prejudices. “ The orchestra was a bit woolly ” he says. I suggest that your readers take more notice of Paul Dawson-Bowling, who was there on the same night and was full of praise, particularly for Vladimir Jurowski “at his superlative best”. “The conventional staging … was dreary” according to Jeremy Rowe. Any reasonable person who saw the meadow scene with its jugglers, fire eater and dancers would be unlikely to agree, and the audience clapped this spectacle at nearly every performance. His penultimate sentence, claiming that “Sachs and Beckmesser embraced” shows how little notice he took of what was actually happening on stage. Beckmesser refused to be reconciled and turned his back on Sachs, as described with great detail and accuracy by Paul Dawson-Bowling. Finally, Jeremy Rowe’s coup de grace : “this was … a crowd-pleasing production and the audience gave it a tremendous ovation at the end. So that’s alright then!” This is mind-blowing elitist snobbery. Most mere mortals go to opera hoping to be entertained. One might have thought that the Chairman of the Wagner Society would have been pleased that Wagner’s music was being enjoyed and that, following the previous success of Tristan und Isolde , John Christie’s original ambition to stage Wagner at Glyndebourne was at last being fulfilled. Meistersinger was a triumph in my view because it brought a great opera to an audience, many of whom had never seen it before and some of whom were even possibly antipathetic to Wagner. Night after night the audience enthused to me about what they had seen. One man told me that he generally slept during an opera, but found Meistersinger absolutely riveting and couldn’t take his eyes off it At the same time it was a complete triumph for Gerald Finlay. He did not seem an obvious choice for the role as Sachs, but from the first night it seemed that the part could have been written for him. He sang it beautifully and acted it with such sensitivity. The Daily Telegraph suggested he only had the “bellows” for a small house like Glyndebourne. Hearing James Rutherford when Finlay was indisposed I would have to say that Finlay’s diction was easier to hear. This is not, I appreciate, a fair comparison as Rutherford was filling in at short notice. Nonetheless he has been singing the role at Bayreuth, a large house with a loud orchestra, so the implication that Finlay was rather lightweight for the role was misplaced. After every performance he received a standing ovation, and rightly so. On the last night the roar that went up as he came on to the stage at the end of the performance would not have been out of place at Wembley. I have never heard such a reception in an opera house. So, if Glyndebourne has come up with a popular production of Meistersinger (which, given the Festival gets no public subsidy, is what it must do) I say “Three cheers!” I am sure that the killjoys will be able to find a more ‘challenging’ version elsewhere which will enable them to enjoy their misery.

– 41 – From Chris Argent DIE MEISTERSINGER AT GLYNDEBOURNE The virtue of publishing contrasting reviews in the same issue of Wagner News brilliantly demonstrates that one man’s meat is another man’s poison. That Paul Dawson-Bowling should see enlightenment and inspiration in the Glyndebourne Die Meistersinger whereas Jeremy Rowe and Paul Symons saw little else but an unsubtle operetta-style directorial hand is food for thought. Without the advantage of seeing this production in the flesh (as it were) where the Glyndebourne ambience adds the frisson of the ‘occasion’, some of us can only judge the production from the HD TV transmission. I own that we were entranced by the TV relay of this production which had the undoubted advantage of close-ups and a view of facial expressions and body language. David McVicar’s production came over as all of a piece scoring points all round that were often quite subtle and rarely overstated. We thought that the overarching Gothic vaulting was a brilliant solution as a setting for all three acts which tied all the elements of the developing story together, as well as being visually attractive. We had the impression (as did Paul Dawson-Bowling) that the director appreciated and brought out Wagner’s distaste for petty rules and regulations that have beset German culture and society since Bismarck united the German lands into a coherent whole, and contributed not a little to the unmitigated disaster of Hitler’s Germany and the Holocaust due to the German respect for rules, bureaucracy and administrative efficiency. One is conscious of the extraordinary difference between the German and British temperament in this context which emerges, for example, in the attitude of the two peoples to crossing busy roads: the German will wait patiently and dutifully for the green light before walking; the Brit on the other hand just jaywalks. Had this production achieved little else, the director demonstrated (particularly in Act I) that Wagner was appalled by the conservatism and reactionary attitudes of the leaders of German society and had deliberately lampooned them in his description of Walter’s treatment by the Meisters. I am not entirely convinced either that Wagner had a lot of time for the brash interloper Walter, while there seemed evidence in the way Walter was presented in Act III in a ridiculous Peter Ustinov-style Ruritanian uniform that David McVicar was less than sympathetic to this central figure. The way in which the director had Walter prance about the church in the opening scene of Act I was crass as was the business with the drawers in Sachs’ study, supposedly intended to unnerve Beckmesser (or ? amuse the audience). Directors really should learn the lesson that less (business) is often more (revelation). Not only was Gerald Finley’s Sachs mightily impressive, a small figure dominating the proceedings by the force of his personality and the limpidity of his singing, but the casting of a such a young-looking figure made the possibility of Sachs taking Eva as his bride entirely feasible (though raising doubts about Sachs holding Pogner’s baby daughter in his arms years earlier). The attempt by Sachs to persuade Beckmesser to return to the fold, brusquely rejected, was a realistic evocation of human nature and role of pride in relationships. If the director could bring himself to eradicate those elements of the production that grated, particularly the handling of the knight aspiring to the hand of Pogner’s daughter, and the over-the-top chaos of the crowd scenes in Acts II and III this would be a first-class production.

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

Chair and Jeremy Rowe 0207 402 7494 [email protected] Programme Director: Flat 20, 33 Lancaster Gate, London W2 3LP

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The Wagner Society is registered charity number 266383.

– 43 – Registered Charity 1076508 Artistic Director: Malcolm Rivers Scenes from Götterdämmerung The Rehearsal Orchestra Conductor: David Syrus

Presented by The Mastersingers Company

Sunday October 16th 2011

2.30 to 5.30: Rehearsal. 6pm to 7.30: Run-through. HENRY WOOD HALL Trinity Church Square, London SE1 4HE (NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE)

Brünnhilde: Alwyn Mellor Siegfried: Jonathan Stoughton Waltraute: Miriam Sharrard Hagen: Stuart Pendred Musical Coach: Kelvin Lim

The Mastersingers Company continues the work it started eight years ago to promote the careers of aspiring Wagnerian singers. Last year saw the start of a new direction for James Rutherford with his first Wotan in Act II of Die Walküre following his huge success as Hans Sachs at Bayreuth. On this occasion Alwyn Mellor will continue to explore her startling new career path as Brünnhilde in Longborough and Seattle

Supported by the Wagner Society

Sponsored by Ludmilla Andrew, Eric Adler, Frances and David Waters.

Tickets £15 each at the door

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