Stephen Fry to Manage Wagner/Verdi Festival & Simon Callow To Star As Wagner

Simon Callow IS Richard Wagner

This year’s Deloitte Ignite Festival at the ROH will be curated by  Stephen Fry. A multi-media/multi-art form event, 2013's festival will be different to past years in that it will be spread over four weekends rather than 3 days.

Events related to Wagner will include: 

• An interactive sculpture installed in the Covent Garden piazza. Created by set designer Es Devlin (Les Troyens, Take That‘s Progress Tour (Really? Ed), and the London 2012 Closing Ceremony), the installation will feature  behind-the-scenes footage captured during a performance of  the ROH's Die Walküre. 
• An "original take" on Die Walkure by  Gandini Juggling (Yes. They juggle)
• Mime artist Andrew Dawson, who will perform a potted version of Wagner’s Ring cycle (Is it just me that is having flashbacks to the 60's with David Bowie, Lindsay Kemp  and Threepenny Pierrot ? Ed)
• And in what maybe the most interesting event,  Simon Callow will  present a one-man show - Inside Wagner’s Head - commissioned specially for the festival, in which Callow will play Wagner.

Stephen Fry said:

"This is an incredible year for opera lovers. The two-hundredth birthdays of Verdi and Wagner and the centenary of our very own Benjamin Britten’s entry into the world. Very proud and pleased to be associated with Deloitte Ignite’s contribution to this celebration and the opening up of opera to as wide an audience as possible.’

The festival will run from 6 – 29 September.

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Free Ebook. The Story Of The Greatest Wagnerian Soprano: Evelyn Innes by George Moore

George Moore

"Wagner had been all his life dreaming of an opera with a subjective hero. Christ first and then Buddha had suggested themselves as likely subjects. He had gone so far as to make sketches for both heroes, but both subjects had been rejected as unpractical, and he had fallen back on a pretty medieval myth, and had shot into a pretty medieval myth all the material he had accumulated for the other dramas, whose heroes were veritable heroes, men who had accomplished great things, men who had preached great doctrines and whose lives were symbols of their doctrines. The result of pouring this old wine into the new bottle was to burst the bottle.In neither Christ nor Buddha did the question of sex arise, and that was the reason that Wagner eventually rejected both. He was as full of sex—mysterious, sub-conscious sex—as Rossetti himself. In Christ's life there is the Magdalen, but how naturally harmonious, how implicit in the idea, are their relations, how concentric; but how eccentric (using the word in its grammatical sense) are the relations of Parsifal to Kundry.... A redeemer is chaste, but he does not speak of his chastity nor does he think of it; he passes the question by. The figure of Christ is so noble, that whether God or man or both, it seems to us in harmony that the Magdalen should bathe his feet and wipe them with her hair, but the introduction of the same incident into "Parsifal" revolts. As Parsifal merely killed a swan and refused to be kissed—the other preached a doctrine in which beauty and wisdom touch" 

"She might begin with "Margaret" and "Norma," if she liked, for in singing these popular operas she would acquire the whole of her voice, and also the great reputation which should precede and herald the final stage of her career. "Isolde," "Brunnhilde," "Kundry," Wagner's finest works, had remained unsung—they where merely howled. Evelyn should be the first to sing them. His eyes glowed with subdued passion as he thought of an afternoon, some three years hence, in the great theatre planned by the master himself, when he should see her rush in as the Witch Kundry"

"As she lay between sleeping and waking, she strove to grasp the haunting, fugitive idea, but shadows of sleep fell, and in her dream there appeared two Tristans, a fair and a dark. When the shadows were lifted and she thought with an awakening brain, she smiled at the absurdity, and, striving to get close to her idea, to grip it about its very loins, she asked herself how much of her own life she could express in the part, for she always acted one side of her character. Her pious girlhood found expression in the Elizabeth, and what she termed the other side of her character she was going to put on the stage in the character of Isolde. Again sleep thickened, and she found it impossible to follow her idea. It eluded her; she could not grasp it. It turned to a dream, a dream which she could not understand even while she dreamed it. But as she awaked, she uttered a cry. It happened to be the note she had to sing when the curtain goes up and Isolde lies on the couch yearning for Tristan, for assuagement of the fever which consumes her. All other actresses had striven to portray an Irish princess, or what they believed an Irish princess might be. But she cared nothing for the Irish princess, and a great deal for the physical and mental distress of a woman sick with love."

" In Brunnhilde and Elizabeth all the humanity she represented—and she thought she was a fairly human person—was on the stage. But Elsa? That was the one part she was dissatisfied with. There were people who liked her Elsa. Oh, her Elsa had been greatly praised. Perhaps she was mistaken, but at the bottom of her heart she could not but feel that her Elsa was a failure. The truth was that she had never understood the story. It began beautifully, the beginning was wonderful—the maiden whom everyone was persecuting, who would be put to death if some knight did not come to her aid. She could sing the dream—that she understood. Then the silver-clad knight who comes from afar, down the winding river, past thorpe and town, to release her from those who were plotting against her. But afterwards? This knight who wanted to marry her, and who would not tell his name. What did it mean? And the celebrated duet in the nuptial chamber—what did it mean? It was beautiful music—but what did it mean? Could anyone tell her? She had often asked, but no one had ever been able to tell her."

What, dear readers, will you make of the Irish, Victorian novelist George Moore's first Wagnerian novel Evelyn Innes - should you have never read it before. To tell you too much would simply spoil it surely? And also help predict and define any reaction you might have? Its often the way of things - if just unconsciously. No. Better you should find it as it is. But still, a brief overview:

Published in 1898, Evelyn Innes is Moore's first truly Wagnerian novel - and his move to symbolism. Innes, is not only a Wagnerian Soprano but the greatest that has ever lived,: "Wagner's finest works, had remained unsung—they where merely howled. Evelyn should be the first to sing them." The daughter of a Catholic organist - of importance later as you may discover -she sees her personality developing through roles of Elisabeth, Isolde, Brunnhilde and finally Kundry. But there is much more.

Something of a "scandal" on it's release. OK. Find a link to one review below. From the New York Post. At its time of publication in the US. It is a PDF. Click the title to read.
George Moore's "Evelyn Innes."; A Curious and Perhaps Deplorable Example of the Modern Psychological Novel. The New York Times. (Warning contains "spoilers")
By the way. There is a sequel to Evelyn Innes. If anyone is interested enough let us know and we will add.

 To Download the Full Novel Free for Kindle click here: Evelyn Innes by George Moore

 To Download the Full Novel Free in Epub click here: Evelyn Innes by George Moore

 To Read the Full Novel In Your Browser click here: Evelyn Innes by George Moore

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"Cor Blimey! Its Wagner On The Buses" - In Washington

The German embassy in Washington has covered two of the cities local buses in portraits of Richard Wagner. Its all to promote German culture it seems. The buses, along with another covered with art from the current Albrecht Dürer exhibit at the National Gallery of Art,  can be seen roaming around the city till the end of July. 

But will it be driven and manged by this particular team?

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Becoming In Endless Melody: Tristan, Isolde, Wagner and Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne

From: Richard Wagner and the English: 'Wagner's Tristan und Isolde was completed in 1859, first performed in 1865, and first produced in London in 1882, a month before the appearance of Swinburne's poem Tristram of Lyonesse. Again, critics have remarked on the affinities, particularly stylistic, between the two. Samuel Chew thought the parallels too close to be merely coincidental: "I think Swinburne must have known Wagner's libretto." Cecil Y. Lang, editor of Swinburne's letters, has said that Wagner's music "stimulated" the composition of the poem. John R. Reed observed that there was no doubt that Swinburne "did employ, in Tristram of Lyonesse, the technique of a conscious and disciplined motif suggestive of musical composition," and thus Swinburne might have noted and sympathized with Wagner's device of the leitmotiv. Also, Swinburne's organized rhapsodies have been called "melodious verbiage," and their effect on listeners may be compared perhaps with Wagner's "endless melody." For example, Ferdinand Wagner once wrote to George Powell:

"I always feel happier and better when I have dived into the turbulent waves of Swinburne's gigantic mind. The masterly hand with which he holds the threads that seem to float unconnectedly—as if driven by the wind—and which he always succeeds in tying together when least expected seems to me exactly like Richard Wagner."

Swinburne once was deprecated as a poet of sound obscuring sense, just as Wagner was criticized by Max Nordau and others for lack of coherence and form'. (From: Richard Wagner and the English.
Anne D. Sessa)

From: Tristram of Lyonesse. Algernon Charles Swinburne

Tranced once, nor watched along the fiery bay
The shine of summer darkness palpitate and play.
She had nor sight nor voice; her swooning eyes
Knew not if night or light were in the skies;
Across her beauty sheer the moondawn shed
Its light as on a thing as white and dead;
Only with stress of soft fierce hands she prest
Between the throbbing blossoms of her breast
His ardent face, and through his hair her breath
Went quivering as when life is hard on death;
And with strong trembling fingers she strained fast
His head into her bosom; till at last
Satiate with sweetness of that burning bed,
His eyes afire with tears, he raised his head
And laughed into her lips; and all his heart
Filled hers; then face from face fell, and apart
Each hung on each with panting lips, and felt
Sense into sense and spirit in spirit melt.
"Hast thou no sword? I would not live till day,
O love, this night and we must pass away,
It must die soon, and let not us die late."
"Take then my sword and slay me; nay, but wait
Till day be risen; what, wouldst thou think to die
Before the light take hold upon the sky?"
"Yea, love; for how shall we have twice, being twain,
This very night of love's most rapturous reign?
Live thou and have thy day, and year by year
Be great, but what shall I be? Slay me here;
Let me die not when love lies dead, but now
Strike through my heart: nay, sweet, what heart hast thou?
Is it so much I ask thee, and spend my breath
In asking? nay, thou knowest it is but death.
Hadst thou true heart to love me, thou wouldst give
This: but for hate's sake thou swilt let me live."
Here he caught up her lips with his, and made
The wild prayer silent in her heart that prayed,
And strained her to him till all her faint breath sank
And her bright light limbs palpitated and shrank
And rose and fluctuated as flowers in rain
That bends them and they tremble and rise again
And heave and straighten and quiver all through with bliss
And turn afresh their mouths up for a kiss,
Amorous, athirst of that sweet influent love;
So, hungering towards his hovering lips above,
Her red-rose mouth yearned silent, and her eyes
Closed, and flashed after, as through June's darkest skies
The divine heartbeats of the deep live light
Make open and shut the gates of the outer night.
Long lay they still, subdued with love, nor knew
If could or light changed colour as it grew,
If star or moon beheld them; if above
The heaven of night waxed fiery with their love,
Or earth beneath were moved at heart and root
To burn as they, to burn and bright forth fruit
Unseasonable for love's sake; if tall trees
Bowed, and close flowers yearned open, and the breeze
Failed and fell silent as a flame that fails:
And all that hour unheard the nightingales
Clamoured, and all the woodland soul was stirred,
And depth and height were one great song unheard,
As though the world caught music and took fire
From the instant heart alone of their desire.
So sped their night of nights between them: so,
For all fears past and shadows, shine and snow,
That one pure hour all-golden where they lay
Made their life perfect and their darkness day.
And warmer waved its harvest yet to reap,
Till in the lovely fight of love and sleep
At length had sleep the mastery; and the dark
Was lit with soft live gleams they might not mark,
Fleet butterflies, each like a dead flower's ghost,
White, blue, and sere leaf-coloured; but the most
White as the sparkle of snow-flowers in the sun
Ere with his breath they lie at noon undone.
Whose kiss devours their tender beauty, and leaves
But raindrops on the grass and sere thin leaves
That were engraven with traceries of the snow
Flowerwise ere any flower of earth's would blow;
So swift they sprang and sank, so sweet and light
They swam the deep dim breathless air of night.
Now on her rose-white amorous breast half bare,
Now on her slumberous love-dishevelled hair,
The white wings lit and vanished, and afresh
Lit soft as snow lights on her snow-soft flesh,
On hand or throat or shoulder; and she stirred
Sleeping, and spake some tremulous bright word,
And laughed upon some dream too sweet for truth,
Yet not so sweet as very love and youth
That there had charmed her eyes to sleep at last.
Nor woke they till the perfect night was past,
And the soft sea thrilled with blind hope of light.
But ere the dusk had well the sun in sight
He turned and kissed her eyes awake and said,
Seeing earth and water neither quick nor dead
And twilight hungering toward the day to be,
"As the dawn loves the sunlight I love thee."
And even as rays with cloudlets in the skies
Confused in brief love's bright contentious wise,
Sleep strove with sense rekindling in her eyes;
And as the flush of birth scarce overcame
The pale pure pearl of unborn light with flame
Soft as may touch the rose's heart with shame
To break not all reluctant out of bud,
Stole up her sleeping cheek her waking blood;
And with the lovely laugh of love that takes
The whole soul prisoner ere the whole sense wakes,
Her lips for love's sake bade love's will be done.
And all the sea lay subject to the sun.

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Update: Happy Birthday RW: The Wagner Scrapbook - 2nd Edition

Update:

When we started this project we had a lot more material which we did not have the time to include (indeed, we still do). This was in-part because it needed "cleaning-up" or digitizing or for similar reasons. We thought that we would not be able to get this additional material ready in-time for this week and most importantly today.  However, we have now found ourselves being able to add a lot more of this material. And so, we present a "second, revised edition". A much we feel might be of interest is now included. Amongst this, is a review of the first Rienzi at Dresden,  both of the opera  and the cast - including of course, Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient.  This adds to lot more about Wagner's early work. Of especial interest is what maybe the first newspaper "feature" written about Wagner longer before is future "fame". Written in 1845, this provides a clear insight into the conditions under which he worked at this time.

You will find reviews of Wagner as a conductor of other peoples work - from his time in London. Also:  the formation of London's first Wagner Society, a fascinating item about Johanna Wagner written during her early years, a review of the "Art Work Of The Future, just after it was written, and much else scattered throughout.

We hope you find the additional material worth your time

We spent a surprising amount of time trying to think what we could do for this week. It seemed that every idea that came to us had already been developed or done in a similar way. But then by chance, we  went back to the origins of the Wagnerian. How, we thought,  would we have produced something like this during Wagner's first centenary? Without electronic media it seemed impossible. But then, an idea came to us. A very, very basic way of reproducing some of the media here could, at a stretch, be done with a very old fashioned scrapbook. And so The Wagnerian Scrapbook: The First 100 Years came into being.

A note: every article here is from a real, and at the time predominant newspaper or journal. No matter how bizarre the story, it was, at the time it was published, read as "truth" by those that may have known no better.

In here you will not only find real and very interesting "truths" but also things you might not believe that anyone would have believed. Most of the articles can be read, although one or two have been included purely for their "atmospheric qualities.

We hope, that at least someone enjoys this as much as we did putting it together - whoever you might be.

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Fake Bayreuth Tickets In Circulation.

Not the first time you might say but these are a little different, because they are being given away free to local residents in Bayreuth. It seems that a number of Bayreuth residents have awoken to find the tickets in their mailboxes, along with a fictitious letter from the festival management.

However, the tickets are easily spotted: although they resemble official tickets closely, they are printed on very cheap paper and contain the addition of an QR Code which when scanned includes, among other things, the following message:

"This ticket is counterfeit. Sorry. However, Richard Wagner's anti-Semitism is real"

How very droll.

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Want to get Seattle Ring Tickets before they go on general sale? Become their friend.

If you want to make sure of buying the tickets of your choice for Seattle Opera's "Green Ring" before they go on general sale tomorrow, then all you have to do is like "like" them on Facebook and you will receive a code and advanced login details to do so.

Click either  of the following links below:

 Like Seattle Opera on Facebook

OR

Buy Tickets Wednesday at 9:30

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Wagner 200: 'Ring of the Nibelungen' an animated scenic progression

Blair Parkinson, is an artist well known to us over on facebook and on his website. He has produced the following video to commemorate Wagner 200. As you can read from Blair's description below, this is just a small part of his 'Nibelungenlied' project. For full details and to view the work done so far, please visit Blair's blog: Living Horus. He also reviews the odd Wagner recording and video.  Recommended.

A personal tribute to Richard Wagner to mark the bicentennial of his birth. This is the culmination of around eight months work and the completion of the first stage of my 'Nibelungenlied' project.

It's an animated progression of each scene from the depths of the Rhine to the final apocalypse of the Immolation Scene.

There are few characters here, those in there are at the moment purely present to judge the scale. Characters and costumes are the next stage of the project. From there I'll combine the two to encompass the entire story.

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Daniel Barenboim In Conversation: Wagner & Ideology

We could not recommend this enough - if for nothing else than for Barenboim's discussion

about conducting Wagner. 

The following is an edited conversation about Wagner that took place between Edward Saïd, and Daniel Barenboim at Columbia University, where Mr. Saïd is Professor of Comparative Literature and English. The conversation appeared in full in the Spring 1998 issue of Raritan, a quarterly publication of Rutgers University and at Barenboim's website here.

ES: Wagner is a composer who, unlike almost any other composer, lends himself to conferences and discussions. And, of course, associated with the name of Wagner are a series of adjectives -there's Wagnerism, there's Wagnerian, there's a Wagnerite. What is it that causes this extraordinary interest and devotion to Wagner?

DB: I think that the reasons are manifold. They stem from Wagner’s musical personality; they stem from his personality outside music; they stern from the fact that he not only wrote music and the librettos to his own operas, but tried to revolutionize opera and to create the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk. We can't really talk about Beethoven and the consequences; we can only speak about Debussy and the consequences in a very limited sense. But when we discuss Wagner and the consequences, we have to ask, did he have any influence -and if so, what kind of influence - on the way people viewed the music that preceded him? Did he have any effect on the history of the development of interpretation of the great classics, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.? And what influence, if any, did he have on the music that came after him? On the purely musical side of the twentieth century?

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Wagner Bicentenary - One-Man Opera. Rhodes University SA

Readers will we are sure, recall Dr Jamie McGregor's Wagner/Tolkien paper "Two Rings To Rule Them All" which we reprinted here some time ago. Dr McGregor, who really is an impassioned wagnerite,  is now presenting a very unusual and special event on the 22 May: a one man presentation of the Dutchman - just as Wagner himself famously once did for his friends. Should you be in Grahamstown on the 22nd, we think it would be plainly silly to miss this unique event.

Event: Wagner Bicentenary - One-Man Opera

Venue: Beethoven Room, Rhodes Department of Music & Musicology

Date: Wednesday 22 May 2013

Time: 16h00

Entrance: Free

22 May 2013 marks the bicentennial anniversary of the birth of Richard Wagner. To celebrate the occasion, English lecturer and notorious Wagnerite Jamie McGregor will "perform" his favourite composer's celebrated Gothic opera The Flying Dutchman in a wholly original way: by impersonating Wagner himself and recreating his dramatic public reading of the libretto. To bring
the work more fully to life, the reading will be complemented by an audio-visual presentation featuring recorded music from the opera and a slideshow of appropriate images (including stills from both recent and historical productions, set designs and artists' impressions of the work).

The total performance time will be four hours (16h00-20h00), including two intervals.

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Wagner In New York

At "The New Yorker", Alex Ross imagines  "what if" Wagner had acted on his thoughts of moving to the USA. Highly recommended.


A WALKING TOUR OF WAGNER’S NEW YORK
BY ALEX ROSS

The first in a short series of posts commemorating Wagner’s two-hundredth birthday, which falls on May 22nd. Above is the title page of Wagner’s “Grosser Festmarsch,” also known as the “American Centennial March,” commissioned for the celebrations of 1876.

In his last years, Richard Wagner often spoke of immigrating to America. The composer had enthusiastically greeted the founding of the German Empire in 1871, but in the following decade, as Bismarck and the Kaiser failed to provide funds for his nascent festival at Bayreuth, his chauvinism waned, and he entertained the idea of escaping to the New World. Cosima Wagner, his second wife, wrote in her diary in 1880: “Again and again he keeps coming back to America, says it is the only place on the whole map which he can gaze upon with any pleasure: ‘What the Greeks were among the peoples of this earth, this continent is among its countries.’” In consultation with Newell Jenkins, an American dentist who had become a family friend, Wagner drew up a plan whereby American supporters would raise a million dollars to resettle the composer and his family in a “favorable climate”; in return, America would receive proceeds from “Parsifal,” his opera-in-progress, and all other future work. “Thus would America have bought me from Europe for all time,” Wagner wrote. The pleasant climate he had in mind was, surprisingly, Minnesota.

What might have happened if, against all odds, Wagner had realized his American scheme? The outcome is almost impossible to imagine, although some historical novelist should give it a try. Somehow, one pictures Wagner winding up in California. In the event, of course, he stayed put. “Parsifal” had its première at Bayreuth, in 1882, and the composer died the following year, his name and work destined to be woven into the fate of the German nation.

During his tempestuous life, Wagner lived in many cities across the Continent, leaving an indelible imprint on all of them. In Leipzig, Dresden, Paris, Zurich, Lucerne, Vienna, Munich, and Venice, among other places, you can go on Wagner walking tours, seeing the houses where he lived, the halls where he conducted, and the meeting-places where he held forth. In recent weeks, as a kind of thought-experiment, I have been following ghost tracks of Wagner in New York, a city that he never saw and probably would have hated. A case of authorial obsession is to blame for this peculiar undertaking: I am working on a book called “Wagnerism: Art in the Shadow of Music,” an account of Wagner’s cultural impact. To be candid, the itinerary is often pretty dull, but it picks up interest toward the end, as traces emerge of hidden links between the Rockefellers and the Holy Grail.

Continue Reading: The New Yorker.

 

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Richard Wagner’s Impact on His World and Ours, 30 May – 2 June 2013. Leeds

There really are a few of these we must get to. Highly recommended

In association with the Royal Musical Association, Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, the Leeds University Centre for Opera Studies, and Opera North, the School of Music, University of Leeds, will host the international conference ‘Richard Wagner’s Impact on His World and Ours’ on 30 May–2 June 2013 To mark the 200th anniversary in May 2013 of Wagner’s birth.
Few aspects of late nineteenth-century and subsequent cultural developments remain untouched by Wagner’s influence. The conference seeks to place this influence in context, embracing the multitude of
artistic and non-artistic disciplines that have felt the composer’s impact. The full programme is under construction and will be announced soon.
Keynote lectures will be delivered by:

• Barry Millington, entitled ’200 Not Out: Wagner the Ultimate All-rounder’
• Michael Ewans, entitled ‘Two Landmarks in Wagner Production: Patrice Chéreau’s Centenary Ring (1976) and Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s Parsifal (2004)’
• Heath Lees, entitled ‘Transformation at Tribschen: how a French literary trio became a Wagnerian musical trio’
• Tony Palmer, the director of the feature film ‘The Wagner Family’, will screen his highly controversial film accompanied by a discussion session.

Round-table sessions will focus as follows:

•  An international panel (convened by Dr Malcolm Miller) of guest speakers – scholars, practitioners and journalists (including German conductor Roberto Paternostro, former conductor of the Israel Chamber Orchestra) – will consider the controversial issue of performances of Wagner in Israel and by Israeli musicians, particularly the recent appearance of the Israel Chamber Orchestra at Bayreuth in August 2011.
• A panel comprising scholars and practitioners from the University of Leeds and Opera North, considering Opera North’s current Ring project.

Program Highlights:

Thursday 30 May 2013

• BARRY MILLINGTON: “200 Not Out: Wagner the Ultimate All-rounder” 

14:00-15:30: PARALLEL SESSION 1a

• Katherine Syer (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA): The Art of Narration: Sieglinde’s Nightmare and the End of a Curse
• Solomon Guhl-Miller (Rutgers University, USA): The Impact of Byron and Goethe on the Character of Wotan in the Drafts and Sketches of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre
• Daniel Paul (Psychoanalysis, Clinical Psychology, USA): Wagner and Incest

14:00-15:30: PARALLEL SESSION 1b

• David Trippett (University of Cambridge, UK): Wagner’s Italianism, Bellini’s Norma, and Sinnlichkeit
• Malcolm Miller (Institute of Musical Research, Open University London, UK): Spinning the Yarn: Intertextuality in Wagner’s use and re-use of his songs in his operas
• Cathal Mullan (NUI Maynooth, Ireland): Wagner as Song Composer: A New Perspective for the 21st century

16:00-17:00 WORKSHOP 1

• Christopher Newell (University of Hull, UK), Wagner for the Uninitiated: A Director’s Perspective
• With soprano Rosamund Cole and pianist Martin Pickard

Friday 31 May 2013

10:00-11:00 Keynote

• MICHAEL EWANS: Two Landmarks in Wagner Production: Patrice Chéreau’s Centenary Ring (1976) and Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s Parsifal (2004)

11:30-13:00: PARALLEL SESSION 2a

• Gwen D’Amico (City University of New York, USA): Opera and Politics: Die Meistersinger at the Intersection of New York City and World War II
• Jane Angell (Royal Holloway University of London, UK): ‘Our Wagner’: the reception of Richard Wagner’s music in England during the First World War
• Aleksandar Molnar (University of Belgrade, Serbia) ‘Went up in smoke The Holy Roman Reich/All the same for us would stay the holy German art.’ Political implications of Hans Sachs’ final monologue in Wagner’s Meistersinger in Germany from 1867 to 1945

11:30-13:00: PARALLEL SESSION 2b

• Matthias Wurz (Music University, Vienna): Exploring 20th Century Vocal Tradition in Wagner’s Opera: Conductor Berislav Klobucar and Soprano Birgit Nilsson
• Peter Kupfer (Meadows School of Arts at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX, USA): Wagner Productions in the GDR: A Statistical Approach
• Lydia Mayne (Stanford University, USA): Was ist Deutsch? Wagner’s use of dialect and rhyme in Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg

14:00-15:30 ROUNDTABLE: Wagner and Israel – panel members

• Chair: Dr Malcolm Miller (Institute of Musical Research)
• Dr Margaret Brearley (author of Hitler and Wagner: The Leader, the Master and the Jews, and formerly Archbishop of Canterbury’s Adviser on the Holocaust)
• Noam Ben-Ze’ev (music critic, journalist, Haaretz)
• Roberto Paternostro (conductor, former director of Israel Chamber Orchestra)
• Prof Na’ama Sheffi (Professor of History, School of Communication, Sapir College, Sderot, Israel; author of The Ring of Myths: The Israelis, Wagner and the Nazis)

Saturday 1 June 2013

9:30-12.00: PARALLEL SESSION 4a

• Jane Ennis (William Morris Society, UK): William Morris’s Sigurd the Volsung and Wagner’s Ring
• Michael Allis (University of Leeds, UK): The Diva and the Beast: Susan Strong and the Wagnerism of Aleister Crowley
• Michael Papadopoulos (University of Leeds, UK): Varg í véum: Wagnerian Werewolves and Messiahs in Tolkien

9:30-12.00: PARALLEL SESSION 4b

• Joseph E. Morgan (Boston, Massachusetts, USA): Wagner’s Re-conception of Weber’s German Nationalism
• Golan Gur (Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany): Richard Wagner and the Discourse of National Identity in Musicology around 1900
• Irad Atir (University of Bar-Ilan, Israel): Judaism and Germanism in Richard Wagner’s Art

14:00-15:30: PARALLEL SESSION 5a

• Marina Raku (State Institute of Arts Studies, Moscow, Russia): Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago As An Experience Of ‘Russian Wagnerism’ In The Soviet Era
• Anna Predolyak (Krasnodar State University of Arts and Culture, Russia): Wagner and Russian Musical Culture of XX – XXI Centuries: Problems of Influence And Perspectives for Development
• Vladimir Marchenkov (Ohio University, USA): Gesamtkunstwerk: Life-Transforming Art

14:00-15:30: PARALLEL SESSION 5b

• Matt Lawson ( Edge Hill University, UK): Wagner in American Cartoon
• Anna Ponomareva (Imperial College London, UK): Inspiration or Translation: Belyi’s Novels of the Moscow Circle
• Radosław Okulicz-Kozaryn (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan): ‘Where the King Spirit Becomes Manifest…’: Stanisław Wyspiański in search of the Polish Bayreuth

16:00-17:00 WORKSHOP 3

• Kristina Selen (Opera Studio Oxford, UK): ‘Deeds of Music Brought to Sight’: Anna Bahr-Mildenburg as Isolde

Sunday 2 June 2013

9:30-11:00 PARALLEL SESSION 6a

• Chantal Frankenbach (California State University, Sacramento, USA): ‘The Apotheosis of the Dance’: Gestures of National Transcendence in Wagner’s Artwork of the Future
• Jonathan Waxman (New York University, USA): Richard Wagner’s Prose and its Impact on the Development of the Symphonic Program Note in the Twentieth Century

9:30-11:00 PARALLEL SESSION 6b

• Dragana Jeremić Molnar (University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia): Richard Wagner’s Construction of Reality: ‘Finite Province of Meaning’, ‘Subuniverse of Meaning’ or ‘Deviant Symbolic Universe’?
• Lauma Mellena (University of Latvia): Richard Wagner productions in 21st century Latvia
• Plamen Kartaloff (Sophia Opera and Ballet, Bulgaria): The Universe Called Wagner, and Us. Der Ring des Nibelungen, Director’s Perspectives

11:00-11:30 Tea/Coffee

11.30-13.00 WORKSHOP 4

• Daniel Somerville (University of Wolverhampton): Dancing Wagner: What Can Embodiment of Wagner’s Music Reveal

 FULL DETAILS OF ALL ACTIVITIES CAN BE FOUND BY CLICKING HERE 

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SYMPOSIUM “WAGNER AND US”: MELBOURNE 5–8 DECEMBER 2013

UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE 5–8 DECEMBER 2013

Scheduled to coincide with the performances of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in Melbourne, 18 November–13 December 2013, the symposium “Wagner and Us” will explore and critique Richard Wagner’s continuing cultural, political, and historical importance to contemporary society. The symposium, convened by Professor Kerry Murphy, is jointly hosted by The University of Melbourne and The Richard Wagner Society in Melbourne.

Topics to be covered include Wagner in Australia, Wagner and Anti-Semitism, Wagner in the Theatre, and the ‘Wagner Industry’, and others.

Invited Keynote Speakers include Patrick Carnegy (UK), Eva Rieger (Germany) and John Deathridge (UK).

It is anticipated that a Conference Proceedings will be published.

Full Details Click Here

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Starting Saturday On BBC Radio 3 - "Wagner Week". Highlights Listed

From Saturday May 18, BBC Radio 3 will begin "Wagner Week", a series of programs specially commissioned to celebrate Wagner 200.


Highlights include:

Wagner and His World

Donald Macleod explores the connections and relationships that helped establish Wagner as the most revolutionary musical thinker of the 19th century. Includes:

Beethoven
1/5 Donald Macleod explores how Beethoven's music heavily influenced Wagner.
First broadcast: 20 May 2013 

Weber and Bellini
2/5 Donald Macleod explores Wagner's early love for the operas of Weber and Bellini.
First broadcast: 21 May 2013

Meyerbeer and Palestrina
3/5 Donald Macleod explores how Wagner first cherished, then rejected, Meyerbeer's influence.
First broadcast: 22 May 2013

Liszt.
4/5 Donald Macleod explores the relationship between Wagner and Liszt.
First broadcast: 23 May 2013

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Donizetti: "La Favorite" Arranged for Two Violins by Richard Wagner

Imagine, if you will, that you are a young 26 year old artist living in Paris in 1840. And not any old artist mind, but a composer of long, sprawling operas. You have just completed one such opera that will soon make your name and provide you with some economic stability - but which you will eventually, at least publicly, reject - called Rienzi .

At the same time, you have just written the first prose draft of an unusually concise work called The Flying Dutchman -  a work completely unlike anything that you have conceived so far and which may well set you on a  path to "revolutionize opera". You also have the loyal support of one of the most famous opera composers in Europe - Meyerbeer.

However, despite all of this, you and your young wife are  right now,  this very day, living in poverty - and once again you are heavily in debt and hiding out from debtors. How then might you earn a little money so that you do not end up like a character in an opera not yet written by another future composer: in Paris, forced to burn your manuscripts to stay warm and no doubt singing about tiny little frozen hands"?

If you were Richard Wagner you might turn, among other things, to earn a very meager living by correcting proofs of other peoples operas. Indeed, if you were Richard Wagner you might end up doing so on Donizetti's La favorita. But what if you were Richard Wagner, living in such conditions, and given the opportunity to earn, using your far from meager talents, the  princely sum of 500 francs to  prepare a piano vocal score and arrangements for various instrumental combinations, of said opera. Would you do it? Of course you would.

And so we are left today with the recording below of La Favorite Arranged for Two Violins by Richard Wagner. Alas, on this recording the producers added a spoken narrative, written by opera director Michael Dißmeier, and read in German by Daniel Morgenroth to fit between the 19 excerpts. It "breaks the flow" somewhat, but if it starts to irritate, you could always just play Wagner's' arrangement and ignore the rest completely. Available below on Spotify complete, you can also listen to some excerpts on youtube here, here and here.

But before doing so, we thought you might find the "article" below from the San Francisco Call's (now The San Francisco Examiner) opera article "Through The Opera Glass" (published 27 July 1890) to be of some amusement.

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British Library to Hold "Wagner Weekend" 8-9 June 2013

This looks rather interesting, with some names very familiar to regular readers. Far too many speakers to mention here (full details at the British Library's website) but they include: Sir John Tomlinson, Mark Berry, David Trippett, Emma Warner, Hilda Brown, Roger Allen and a company of young actors from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

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Tannhauser: Pilgrims Chorus & Finale

Two productions: Bayreuth and the MET. Not picked specifically because they were "traditional" stagings but because they were the only relevant clips on Youtube. 

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Audio Discussion: The Düsseldorf Tannhauser.

Recorded earlier today as part of WQXR's "Conducting Business" series. Chaired by Naomi Lewin,  a panel consisting of:  ENO's John Berry, Parterre Box's James Jorden,  and  the Washington Post's Anne Midgette  discuss Deutsche Oper am Rhein's "controversial" Tannhauser and a certain form of Regietheater in general.

For clarification, the term "Eurotrash" is being used extensively in some debates (although oddly, few seem to be debating the impact any of this might have on  the living members, and their ancestors, of those many groups that suffered the sort of death and torture that was described in the production. Apart that is, however briefly, one of those groups itself). For europeans, and especially those in the UK  confused by the term, it appears commentators are not using it to refer to the TV program presented by Antoine de Caunes and Jean-Paul Gaultier. Instead, it  seems to be loosely applied in three different ways. For those supportive, of the Regietheater movement it appears to be used when the production in someway "goes wrong" (this is how WQXR's editorial seems to use it).  However, for those highly critical of  Regietheater, "Eurotrash" seems to be interchangeable with the term "Regie" and is used in a derogatory manner - as indeed is the abbreviated "Regie". Finally, there seems to be an another group that use the term to describe, oddly enough,  productions that have a certain visual and narrative aesthetic as defined in the movies of Andy Warhol and Russ Myer.

Note: unless there is some discussion from any group (especially Jewish groups) directly impacted by Nazi atrocities, we intend to carry no more on this story.  Please do not ask.

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New BBC TV Documentary: "Pappano’s Essential Ring Cycle"

"Honest! The fish I caught in the Rhein was this big"

Lets hope it is a little less "one-sided" and "idiosyncratic" than the last BBC Radio 3 Wagner documentary. But given that we hear Pappano is something of a Wagner "fan", and that he certainly has the background to have a clear understanding of Wagner and his work, we have much hope.

Celebrating the bicentenary of Richard Wagner’s birth, Sir Antonio Pappano presents a 60-minute documentary which seeks to unravel the genius of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, one of the towering achievements of opera and a work which has challenged producers, conductors and performers alike, since its inception.

Filmed in London, Bayreuth, Bavaria and Switzerland, Pappano presents a unique insight into the story of this masterpiece from the people who perform it. In particular, he shares his insights into the extraordinary theatre at Bayreuth, exploring what it shows us about the theatrical world Wagner wanted to create. With expert comment from artists who appeared in the recent Royal Opera House production of The Ring, including Bryn Terfel, Susan Bullock and Sir John Tomlinson, the programme includes rehearsal footage from each of the four operas and performance from the 2005-7 production staged by Keith Warner.

Friday 17 May
7.30-9.00pm
BBC FOUR

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WNO To Revive Die Meistersinger. Bryn Terfel To Return.

Given that Richard Jones’ production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg for WNO received, rightly, unanimous praise it should probably come as little surprise that WNO would revive it at some time in the future. Well, it seems that future date is 2016. Bryn Terfel will return with the production

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WNO's Artistic Director Discuses: Lohengrin, Fascism and Wagner

In his typically erudite manner, Welsh National Opera's David Pountney discusses the process that went into the creation their new production of Lohengrin, Wagner, fascism and the recent events in Dusseldorf.

I am very excited by the prospects for our new Lohengrin, firstly because Lothar Koenigs, our excellent Music Director, is passionate about the music of this symphony for a German revolution, and secondly because, if all remains on course as we devoutly pray, it has a superb cast with a strong element, as there should be for a company like WNO, of the home grown. That is quite an advantage given that its proximity to Wagner’s actual birthday on May 22 (Lohengrin opens on May 23) means that it is in competition with an avalanche of celebratory Wagner going on all over the world.
One performance with which Lohengrin will not be in competition now is the production of Tannhäuser in Düsseldorf which has just been cancelled after protests that the Nazi/Holocaust interpretation and its execution caused some members of the audience to be physically ill. There have been some very surprising statements by the theatre management, almost seeming to apologise for the fact that their production has had a visceral effect on the audience, which up to a point you might think was the idea of a theatrical event. Perhaps a certain line has been crossed.

The story will no doubt feed the anxiety of some members of many audiences about what might await them on stage in the plethora of productions marking Wagner’s anniversary. Wagner was himself in all senses an extremist – musically, dramatically and personally – and his art invites extreme responses from fanatical adoration to hatred. He was also undoubtedly anti-Semitic, and a revolutionary nationalist, and with historical hindsight this combination obviously takes on an unsavoury whiff of Fascism, particularly as the Fascists subsequently exploited this connection. However, throughout the 19th century, nationalism meant not national aggrandisation, in the Hitler sense of “Lebensraum”, but national liberation. This left-liberal brand of nationalism seems strange to us now, but essentially the decision by Wagner to go back to German mythology for his subject matter was made with the same intent that the German speaking Smetana chose to set Czech subjects, or the Russian “Mighty Handful” were steered by their “dramaturg” Stassov to go back to Russian history and mythology. As every Welshman will understand, the assertion of identity through language and mythology is one of the essential building blocks of national consciousness, and the aim of the 1840’s revolutions, in which Wagner enthusiastically took part, was to create national unity under the banner of democracy and free speech, and wrest power away from the repressive cluster of princes, bishops and kings who ruled the many small principalities that made up 19th century Germany. 

Continue reading at his blog at WNO. Recommended

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Not The First Difficult Tannhauser Production: Meeting Venus

Edit: Given recent events, it seemed an appropriate time to delve into the archives and bring this to your attention. Originally upped a few years ago it seems to have taken an entirely new meaning - especially as this "production" also ends without a set.

We love this film and can't recommend it enough. A biting satire on the opera world: musicians, singers, conductors, producers managers and even unions (occupational and European). And yet at the same time it manages to retain a love of Wagner, Tannhauser and the entire rather messy business of both producing an opera and being human. Add to this a glorious ending that makes full use of Wagner's text and it may be the best use of any Wagner opera in the movies. While all but ignored at its premiere in 1991 it has gone on to gain something of a cult status. If you get the chance track down a copy, add it to your Christmas list, do anything but we would recommend seeing it. It has become a film we always tend to drag out at least once a year.

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The Late Jonathan Harvey discuses the creative process behind "Wagner Dream"

"I wanted Wagner to haunt the opera like a ghost, present but not full-bodied. What better way to haunt than through harmonic nuance (particularly for Wagner)? Johnathan Harvey

We thought it might be time to resurrect this fascinating Article from 2008. This is important with the up and coming premiere of the first fully staged production of this  work in the UK by WNO - alongside a new production of Lohengrin.  Of course, what makes WNO's production even more interesting is that they will not be presenting it in English as has been previously. Instead, the libretto has been re-written in German and most fascinatingly Pali (see here)

First written by late Johnathan Harvey in 2008. It documents his creative process in general but does so through the example of his opera "Wagner Dream". It was found over at Erudit.org in PDF. You will note it refers in parts to images of the score. These can be found by downloading the original PDF - freely available by following this LINK.  All images here are added by The Wagnerian and are taken from the 2007 DNO production

HOW DO I COMPOSE?

(Reflections on Wagner Dream)

Jonathan Harvey

CIRCUIT VOLUME 18 NUMERO 1

How do I compose, precisely? Let’s start by narrowing the beam of focus. We will take the first note of my new opera, Wagner Dream. Then see what happens.

It is an E flat played by the horn (fig. 1). There is an ensemble of 22 players and a cast of 17 actors and singers. The ensemble sits onstage in Pierre Audi’s pro­duction, reversing Wagner’s magical Bayreuth hidden orchestra. We see the conductor standing very near Wagner, as if they are bonded, one the embodiment of the other’s mind - the orchestra offering no illusion about magical, unprovoked sound.

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12 People Sought Medical Treatment After "Nazi" Tannhauser. Director Claims Censorship

"Why shouldn't we cast Tannhaeuser as a perpetrator, a war criminal? In my staging, Tannhaeuser is forced by members of the Wehrmacht to shoot a family. The staging is about individual guilt during the Nazi era" Kosminski'

Update. A Rheinoper spokesperson has now confirmed that it was 12 people who sought medical treatment or visited their doctor after seeing Burkhard C. Kosminski's controversial new production of Tannhauser.  Prior to this the number of people had not been mentioned. The announcement may be in part due to criticisms received by Deutsche Oper am Rhein  over artistic freedom following cancellation of the production. This included criticism from the "Friends Of Deutsche Oper am Rhein" who had said people should be able to make up their own minds about the production

At the same time, Kosminski has called the decision "a kind of censorship". It seems he had expressed a desire to enter a discourse to calm tempers and concerns on all sides. However, his proposal to stage such a discussion was ignored.

In an interview this weekend he defended his staging stating that modern audiences would or could not understand Wagner's drama.

"What interests me is the great, archaic theme of guilt" He told Der Spiegel . "Why shouldn't we cast Tannhaeuser as a perpetrator, a war criminal? In my staging, Tannhaeuser is forced by members of the Wehrmacht to shoot a family. The staging is about individual guilt during the Nazi era"

After protests and outrage because of the stark depiction of the murders of a family by performers in Nazi uniforms and a depiction  of a gaschamber, the opera announced on Wednesday,  that Tannhäuser would continue as a  concert performance. A proposal to change some scenes was rejected by Kosminski on artistic grounds

Oded Horowitz, speaking for the Northern Jewish Community welcomed the decision saying, "There is a risk that the suffering of the victims is trivialized by an inflationary use of Nazi symbolism,. You have to be very sensitive". However, he was keen to point out that the Jewish community did not not generally interfere in artistic matters. His statement goes further than that from local Jewish community leader Michael Szentei-Heise who described the production as simply "tasteless" and proving a disservice to Wagner's work.

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New Wagner Book: Wagner's Melodies - David Trippett

Following on from our overview of Wagner related publications due this year, we are attempting to provide a more detailed overview of each book. We will start with David Trippett's intriguing Wagner's Melodies. Note, due to a publishers misprint, we originally noted that this was to be available from May 31. It seems that should have read April. It is thus now available. 

Wagner's Melodies
Aesthetics and Materialism in German Musical Identity
David Trippett, University of Cambridge
Hardback
ISBN:9781107014305
Publication date:May 2013
460pages
21 b/w illus. 17 music examples
Dimensions: 247 x 174 mm

Since the 1840s, critics have lambasted Wagner for lacking the ability to compose melody. But for him, melody was fundamental – 'music's only form'. This incongruity testifies to the surprising difficulties during the nineteenth century of conceptualizing melody. Despite its indispensable place in opera, contemporary theorists were unable even to agree on a definition for it. In Wagner's Melodies, David Trippett re-examines Wagner's central aesthetic claims, placing the composer's ideas about melody in the context of the scientific discourse of his age: from the emergence of the natural sciences and historical linguistics to sources about music's stimulation of the body and inventions for 'automatic' composition. Interweaving a rich variety of material from the history of science, music theory, music criticism, private correspondence and court reports, Trippett uncovers a new and controversial discourse that placed melody at the apex of artistic self-consciousness and generated problems of urgent dimensions for German music aesthetics.

Features

• The first study to link the emergence of the Natural Sciences and technological thinking to Wagner's aesthetics of expression
• Interweaves a wide variety of source material from the history of science, music theory, music criticism and aesthetics, including material from private correspondence, newspapers and court reports, as well as published books
• Translates a great many sources into English for the first time and uncovers a new, controversial discourse on melody within nineteenth-century German aesthetics

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction
1.German melody
2.Melodielehre?
3.Wagner in the melodic workshop
4.Hearing voices: Wilhelmine SchröderSDevrient and the Lohengrin Recitatives.
5 Vowels, voices, and ‘original truth
6. Wagner's material expression
Excursus: Bellini's Sinnlichkeit and Wagner's Italy
Epilogue.

"Wagner sits at the centre of a veritable spider's web in this book, where the disparate threads of a practical and theoretical discourse about melody in the nineteenth century meet. Artistic creativity and the scientific spirit are spun together in a convincing image surprisingly close to discourses about music in the twenty-first century … Among recent studies about Wagner and his world, David Trippett's is one of the few with something genuinely original to say and should be read by anybody with a serious interest in the subject.'

John Deathridge, King Edward Professor of Music, King's College London

David Trippett is a University Lecturer in the Music Faculty, and a Junior Research Fellow at Christ’s College.

He is interested in elisions between sound and writing, the ways in which different technologies have influenced the recording of history, and the concomitant tension between sound as a physical object and a carrier of aesthetic ideas. His primary research focuses on nineteenth-century intellectual history, Richard Wagner, and the intersection of German aesthetic thinking with the growth of the natural sciences. Other interests include Franz Liszt and post-Classical Weimar; relations between new media, historical media, and modernism; and performance theory, including the grey area between improvisation and composition, projections of identity in performance, and theories of musical reproduction after Walter Benjamin.


For your interest; David, who has written a number of articles on Wagner, wrote part of  the programme notes for the 2009 Bard Festival Wagner and his World entitled: “The Triumphant Revolutionary”. If you click below you can read this, plus the entire programme (made available by the Fisher Center) Or should you wish you may download the entire programme as a PDF. Highly recommended. 

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Wagner on Beethoven

Brought about by listening to Wagner's piano transcript of Beethoven's 9th (below should you have access to Spotify). I think it is sometimes easy to forget the, admitted, influence Beethoven and especially the 9th had on Wagner.  All of the following is taken from Wagner's Biography "My Life" which, despite its occasional unreliability,  remains some of Wagner's clearest prose work and can be read or downloaded in full and for free by clicking this link

"Another work also exercised a great fascination over me, namely, the overture to Fidelio in E major, the introduction to which affected me deeply. I asked my sisters about Beethoven, and learned that the news of his death had just arrived. Obsessed as I still was by the terrible grief caused by Weber's death, this fresh loss, due to the decease of this great master of melody, who had only just entered my life, filled me with strange anguish, a feeling nearly akin to my childish dread of the ghostly fifths on the violin. It was now Beethoven's music that I longed to know more thoroughly; I came to Leipzig, and found his music to Egmont on the piano at my sister Louisa's. After that I tried to get hold of his sonatas. At last, at a concert at the Gewandthaus, I heard one of the master's symphonies for the first time; it was the Symphony in A major. The effect on me was indescribable. To this must be added the impression produced on me by Beethoven's features, which I saw in the lithographs that were circulated everywhere at that time, and by the fact that he was deaf, and lived a quiet secluded life. I soon conceived an image of him in my mind as a sublime and unique supernatural being, with whom none could compare. This image was associated in my brain with that of Shakespeare; in ecstatic dreams I met both of them, saw and spoke to them, and on awakening found myself bathed in tears."

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Full Text Of "The Coming of John" - W.E.B. Du Bois

W.E.B. Du Bois

"...he sat in dreamland, and started when, after a hush, rose high and clear the music of Lohengrin’s swan. The infinite beauty of the wail lingered and swept through every muscle of his frame, and put it all a-tune. He closed his eyes and grasped the elbows of the chair, touching unwittingly the lady’s arm. And the lady drew away. A deep longing swelled in all his heart to rise with that clear music out of the dirt and dust of that low life that held him prisoned and befouled." W.E.B. Du Bois

Then as the sheen of the starlight stole over him, he thought of the gilded ceiling of that vast concert hall, heard stealing toward him the faint sweet music of the swan. Hark! was it music, or the hurry and shouting of men? Yes, surely! Clear and high the faint sweet melody rose and fluttered like a living thing, so that the very earth trembled as with the tramp of horses and murmur of angry men.

He leaned back and smiled toward the sea, whence rose the strange melody, away from the dark shadows where lay the noise of horses galloping, galloping on. With an effort he roused himself, bent forward, and looked steadily down the pathway, softly humming the "Song of the Bride,"—

"Freudig gefuhrt, ziehet dahin."

W.E.B. Du Bois

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Alex Ross "Black Wagner: The Question of Race Revisited." Full Wagner Video Lecture:

The Keynote address from Wagner World Wide 2013 - University of South Carolina.   

Alex Ross discuses a side of Wagner and his work (and indeed opera and the arts) sadly less investigated.

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K Wagner: New Bayreuth Director Will Have Limited Impact. Wants Less Interference

Festspielhaus. 1895

Katharina Wagner has said that the Bayreuth Festival's new third director (who starts on Monday), Heinz-Dieter Sense, will have limited powers in the running of the festival. "He will help us, especially in administrative formalities," said Wagner. Both she and her sister will continue to have full control of the Festival, its budget and artistic direction she continued.

If this might perhaps make the new "director" feel a little "unwanted" at the festival one cannot help but ponder what he might think as she went on, ""Previously, our father, Wolfgang Wagner was the sole director and shareholder of the Bayreuth Festival. Under him there were, for example, far less binding rules from collective agreements." This  also had advantages for productions. "If after the allotted rehearsal time, a director said "Let us repeat this scene again", it was much easier to accommodate this request." Indeed, she regrets that the festival has become less of a "family affair". This is in contrast to comments from both Nike and Gottfried Wagner.

She also went on to note that both she and Eva Wagner-Pasquier, had not confirmed that they would be staying on at the festival after their contracts expire in 2015. Whether this is the case will depend on the outcome of ongoing negotiations. One important part to this seems to be that both Wagner's are requesting much more funding for the festival to compensate for a growing wage bill. One also assumes it may depend on whether  they are successful in their re-applications for the job.

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"Me And My Shadow" Richard Wagner In Germany

A five part article from SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Wagner's Dark Shadow: Can We Separate the Man from His Works?

Born 200 years ago, Germany's most controversial composer's music is cherished around the world, though it will always be clouded by his anti-Semitism and posthumous association with Adolf Hitler. Richard Wagner's legacy prompts the question: Can Germans enjoy any part of their history in a carefree way? 



Stephan Balkenhol is not deeply moved, overwhelmed or delighted. He doesn't brood over the myth and the evil. It doesn't bother him and he isn't disgusted. He rolls a cigarette, gets up, digs around in his record cabinet and pulls out an old "Tannhäuser" by Richard Wagner, a Hungarian recording he bought at a flee market. He puts on the record, and the somewhat crackling music of the prelude begins to play. Balkenhol sits down again and smokes as slowly as he speaks. He doesn't mention the music, and he still doesn't feel deeply moved, overwhelmed or delighted. For him, it's just music.

ANZEIGEThat makes Balkenhol, 56, an exception, an absolute one among those who concern themselves with Wagner. Balkenhol remains unruffled. He drops two steaks into a pan, and as they sizzle, "Tannhäuser" fades into the background.

Balkenhol is a sculptor who was commissioned to create a sculpture of Wagner. He has until May 22, the composer's 200th birthday, when the new monument will be unveiled in Wagner's native Leipzig. This is the year of Wagner, but Balkenhol is keeping his cool. He isn't worried about creating a realistic likeness of the composer, with his distinctive face, high forehead, large nose and strong chin. Wagner was somewhat ugly, and Balkenhol won't try to portray him any differently.

The Composer Who Influenced Hitler

He won't need a great deal of bronze. Wagner was 1.66 meters (5'3") tall, and Balkenhol doesn't intend to make the statue much taller. He wants to give the sculpture a human dimension, avoiding exaggeration and pathos: a short man on a pedestal. But that wouldn't have been enough, because it would have belied Wagner's importance, so Balkenhol is placing an enormous shadow behind the sculpture. People can interpret it as they wish, says Balkenhol: as a symbol of a work that is larger than the man who created it, or as the dark shadow Wagner still casts today.

Music and the Holocaust come together in that shadow: one of the most beautiful things created by man, and one of the worst things human beings have ever done. Wagner, the mad genius, was more than a composer. He also influenced Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, even though he was already dead when the 12-year-old Hitler heard his music live for the first time, when he attended a production of "Lohengrin" in the Austrian city of Linz in 1901. Describing the experience, during which he stood in a standing-room only section of the theater, Hitler wrote: "I was captivated immediately."

Many others feel the same way. They listen to Wagner and are captivated, overwhelmed, smitten and delighted. Nike Wagner, the composer's great-granddaughter, puts the question that this raises in these terms: "Should we allow ourselves to listen to his works with pleasure, even though we know that he was an anti-Semite?" There's a bigger issue behind this question: Can Germans enjoy any part of their history in a carefree way?

The Nazi years lie like a bolt over the memory of a good Germany, of the composers, poets and philosophers who gave the world so much beauty and enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries: Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Wagner and the Romantics. Nevertheless, the Germans elected a man like Hitler and, under his leadership, unleashed an inferno. In only a few years, a nation of culture was turned into one of modern barbarians. Is it not also possible that Germany's illustrious past in fact led it irrevocably towards the rise of the Nazis? Could the philosophical abstraction, artistic elation and yearning for collective salvation that drove the country also have contributed to its ultimate derailing into the kind of mania that defined the years of National Socialism? After all, it wasn't just the dull masses that followed the Führer. Members of the cultural elite were also on their knees.

Some were later shunned as a result, at least temporarily, like writer Ernst Jünger, poet Gottfried Benn and philosopher Martin Heidegger. But the situation is more complicated with Wagner, because he wasn't even alive during the Nazi years. Nevertheless, Hitler was able to learn from him. There was a bit of Wagner in Hitler, which is why the fascist leader also figures prominently in our memory of the composer.

It also explains why the shadow over the composer's legacy is so big. Any discussion of Wagner is also a discussion of denatured history, and of the inability of Germans to fully appreciate themselves and the beautiful, noble sides of their own history. Anyone who studies Wagner can perceive two strong forces, the light force of music and the dark force of the Nazi era. There are many people who cannot and do not wish to ignore this effect. They are at the mercy of Wagner's power. These are the types of people at issue here, people whose lives have fallen under Wagner's spell and who don't know what to make of their fascination.

Hitler as Wagner's CreationJournalist Joachim Köhler, 60, described the dark side of Wagner in an especially drastic manner in his 1997 book "Wagner's Hitler -- The Prophet and His Disciple." In the 500-page work, published in German, Köhler portrays Hitler as Wagner's creation. When Hitler heard the opera "Rienzi," Köhler writes, quoting the Nazi leader, it occurred to him for the first time that he too could become a tribune of the people or a politician.

Wagner's hateful essay "Judaism in Music" offered Hitler an idea of how far one could go with anti-Semitism. The composer invokes the downfall of the Jews. Köhler detected plenty of anti-Semitism in Wagner's operas. Characters like Mime in "Siegfried" and Kundry in "Parsifal," he argued, are evil caricatures of the supposedly inferior Jews. Köhler felt that "Parsifal" anticipated the racial theories of the Nazis, quoting propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as saying: "Richard Wagner taught us what the Jew is."

In the 1920s, Wagner's daughter-in-law Winifred invited the young Hitler to attend the Bayreuth Festival on the Green Hill in the Bavarian city of Bayreuth. When he was in prison writing "Mein Kampf," she sent him ink, pencils and erasers. According to Köhler's interpretation in 1997, the Green Hill was a fortress of evil and Wagner the forefather of the Holocaust.

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