Wagneriana Singe, Schwester, Summer 2009 —dir werf’ ich’s zu— Volume 6, Number 3 weisst du wie das wird? –Götterdämmerung From the Editor he May 23 Wagner and Strauss concert went spectacularly well. On the program were Strauss’s enchanting Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs), as T well as his “Ruhe, meine Seele” (Rest, My Soul), “Wiegenlied” (Cradle Song), and “Zueignung” (Dedication). Excerpts from Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Die Walküre in the second half provided much enjoyment. In addition to his ex- pert accompaniment of soprano Julia Rolwing, pianist Lloyd Arriola performed Liszt’s powerful transcriptions of Tannhäuser. This concert offered a sophisti- cated sampling of some the best vocal German music. Rolwing, who sang the Strauss songs for only the second time in her career, demonstrated great agility, flexibility, and tonal accuracy as she swooped up and down the scales of these exquisite lieder. And in Wagner’s excerpts, she evinced a wonderful combina- tion of great sweetness and heroic flair, charming her audience with her sensitiv- Julia Rolwing beams ity, dramatization, and expressivity. Hers is a multicolored timbre that is very at the applause (Concert photos by pleasant to hear. Thomas Kwei) Arriola’s performance of the Tannhäuser piano transcriptions by Liszt elicited a standing ovation from the audience. And his accom- paniment was delicate and attentive, providing solid, artful support for Rolwing. Despite the holiday weekend (Memorial Day), attendance was good. The concert was featured in the Boston Globe three times in the days leading up to the event and was advertised on WGBH and WHRB. Pick- man Hall at the Longy School of Music turned out to be an excellent venue for a concert, both for its pleasant acoustics and central location. We thank the following volunteers for helping make this event a success: Gina Canepa, Paul Geffen, Thomas Kwei, Eric Larivee, Joy Pianist Lloyd Arriola and Soprano Julia Rolwing at the BWS’s May 23 concert McIntyre, Robert Reed, Erika Reitshamer, and Barbara Petery. 1 A CD of the May 23 concert is available from our Web site (www.bostonwagnersociety.org); the cost is $12 in the United States and $16 overseas. We now accept credit cards and PayPal for this CD. The Two Rings: Tolkien’s and Wagner’s On April 26 Professor Edward Haymes gave a fascinating presen-tation on the interrelationship of Wagner’s Ring Cycle and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. The talk included clips of Peter Jackson’s cinematic version of Tolkien’s monumen- tal work, with musical accompaniment from Wagner’s Ring. The effects were stunning. The two super-imposed works were a seamless match, and Wagner’s music added several levels of drama to the film. The merging of the two works was a stroke of genius. The CD of the lecture “The Two Rings” is available from the Boston Wagner Professor Edward Haymes Society. To order a copy, please contact us at 617-323-6088 or at the April 26 lecture and presentation [email protected]. The cost is $10, which includes shipping. (Photo by Dalia Geffen) The BWS Receives a City of Boston Grant The City of Boston’s Cultural Council has awarded the Boston Wagner Society an arts grant. These much-needed funds will help defray some of our expenses associated with lectures, presentations, and concerts. We are very grateful to the Boston Cultural Council for their generous help and proud that we were able to obtain this grant. I particularly would like to thank BWS Treasurer Robert Reed for his tre- mendous assistance in preparing the grant application. Appointment of Program Adviser Conductor, pianist, and vocal coach Rainer Armbrust has done us the great honor of accepting a volunteer position as the Boston Wagner Society’s Program Adviser. You may have met him at his concert for us in January of this year. Maestro Armbrust’s advice will be invaluable in our quest to bring you interesting and enjoyable pro- grams. We are very grateful for his assistance in this regard. Our very able Maestro Jeffrey Brody remains the Boston Wagner Society’s Music Adviser. Please Volunteer! The Boston Wagner Society urgently needs volunteers who can help out with events, mailings, grant ap- plications, the newsletter, and many other large and small tasks. Due to changed circumstances, I cannot devote as much time to our Society as I have in the past. Therefore your help is crucial. Please volunteer as much or as little as you like! If we cannot obtain enough volunteers, we may have to cut back on our programs, but I hope that won’t be necessary. –Dalia Geffen, President and Founder ____________________________________________________________________________________ Wagneriana is a publication of the Boston Wagner Society, copyright © The Boston Wagner Society, Inc. Publisher and Editor: Dalia Geffen Proofreader: Erika Reitshamer Logo design: Sasha Geffen We welcome contributions to Wagneriana. Please contact us at [email protected], 617-323-6088, or www.bostonwagnersociety.org. Address: Boston Wagner Society, P.O. Box 320033, Boston, MA 02132-0001, USA 2 Wagner’s Mastersinger: Hitler’s Siegfried The Life and Times of Max Lorenz Wagner’s Mastersinger: Hitler’s Siegfried, a film by Eric Schulz and Claus Wischmann; Max Lorenz, tenor Featuring interviews with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, baritone; Klaus Geitel, writer on music; Walter Herrmann, Lorenz’s biographer; Waldemar Kmentt, tenor; René Kollo, tenor; Liselotte Tietjen, dancer; Michael Wessolowski, expert on Max Lorenz; Hilde Zadek, soprano Bonus: CD with previously unreleased material of Max Lorenz’s interpretation of Siegfried Medici Arts Picture format: NTSC 16:9; sound format: PCM stereo; region code: 0 (worldwide) Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish Booklet notes: English, German, French Running time: 53 mins. (DVD) + 74 mins. (CD) (mono) Number of discs: 1 DVD + 1 CD agner’s Mastersinger: Hitler’s Siegfried is one of the few indispensable artist biographies that have appeared in recent years. Thanks to a very well written script and a fine selection of pe- W riod films, stills, and, of course, recordings, one comes away with not only a solid and infor- mative life of this incomparable Heldentenor, but also a perspective of Germany from the Weimar Re- public to the Federal Republic, as well as Austria and the United States. As if the basic biographical ele- ments and a generous sampling of his singing were not enough, there are also some very telling and meaningful commentaries and recollections of this artist gleaned from interviews with baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, tenors Waldemar Kmentt and René Kollo, soprano Hilde Zadek, music critic Klaus Geitel, Lorenz biographer Walter Herrmann, and the dancer Liselotte Tietjen. And if all of that were not enough, there is a bonus CD of Lorenz in a complete Act 1 of Siegfried and excerpts from Act 2 in a 1938 Buenos Aires performance. And if all of that is still not enough, we can en- joy beautiful panoramic views of the interiors of the Vienna State Opera, the Dresden Semper Opera, and the Bayreuth Festival Theater. One sequence has the camera onstage in a performance of the Götterdäm- merung prologue with Lorenz and Frida Leider (there were giants in those days), and gradually the cam- era turns 180 degrees, thereby providing a look at the stage, the stage-right wing, the orchestra pit, and the auditorium itself. This provocatively titled DVD cum CD release provides a somewhat more genial counterpart to two other recent DVDs, Great Conductors of the Third Reich and Shadows in Paradise: Hitler’s Exiles in Hollywood. Obviously, a large part of Max Lorenz’s superlative singing career was spent in Nazi Germany. How- ever, Lorenz had two very powerful reasons to come to grief with the Nazi state: he married his agent, the Jewess Charlotte Appel, and, like his first boss at Bayreuth, Siegfried Wagner, he was known for ho- mosexual affairs; once he was even caught in flagrante. That incident would have meant the end of his career had it not been for the intervention of Wagner’s daughter-in-law, Winifred. Winifred told Hitler that without Lorenz there simply would be no Bayreuth Festival, period, thus standing up to Hitler and saving Lorenz (and the Festival). Once, when Lorenz was out of town, the Gestapo showed up at his house to take his wife away to the “model” concentration camp Teresin (Theresienstadt). Charlotte called Winifred, Winifred called Gö- ring’s sister, and Göring’s sister called the Führer. The Gestapo man at the house was told to leave im- mediately without Mrs. Lorenz and never to bother either of them again. Your reviewer takes the time to recount this because the anecdote is in complete contradiction to the inaccurate title of this DVD, with its 3 unfortunate pandering. The title implies that Lorenz was one of those artists who stayed behind in Ger- many and willingly prostituted their art for the sake of Nazi politics. Viewers of this DVD will see that in the case of Lorenz, the situation was completely different. Lorenz stayed and sang in Germany and Aus- tria because by then (1943) it was too late to leave, and his singing was protected by the authorities—but he was no Nazi. That he was married to a Jewish woman and was also homosexual made for a certain controversy and tension in his day-to-day existence as long as Hitler was in power. This constant fear and insecurity plagued him during the Third Reich and even after. After World War II, he managed to resume his stellar career, sang all his big Heldentenor roles, and eventually turned to the character-tenor Fach. Success and adulation were constants, but at the end of the day, when all the guests had left and the awards and acclamation had come to a halt, he retreated to his familiar turf of uncertainty, insecu- rity, and aloneness.