Watch Now: Carlos Kleiber: Traces to Nowhere.

Carlos Kleiber was one of the legendary conductors of his time, famous for his infrequent, but supreme interpretations. He had an unusual small repertoire for a major conductor, focusing on only a few symphonies, piano concertos and operas, and demanded unusually long rehearsals. Yet he managed to pull the finest efforts from his musicians because he made them believe in the music as much as he did.

On the 11th July 2004 Carlos Kleiber got into his car and drove from Munich, via the Alps, to his holiday home in the remote Slovenian village of Konjsica. There he wrote a final letter to a friend in which he bid farewell to the world. A short time later the conductor, increasingly plagued by illness and suffering, was found dead. 

The documentary ‘Traces to Nowhere – The conductor Carlos Kleiber’, represents the first film dedicated to the enigmatic personality of the conductor. The film follows in the traces of Kleiber’s final journey and, by means of the recollections of friends and others who knew Kleiber – including the first and only interview with his sister Veronika Kleiber – portrays a conductor as renowned for his difficult personality as his brilliant work. Eric Schulz’ film contains not only impressive shots of Kleiber himself but also most illuminative statements of the said friends and companions. Featuring Veronika Kleiber, Michael Gielen, Plácido Domingo, Brigitte Fassbaender, Otto Schenk, Alexander Werner, Manfred Honeck, Otto Staindl, Klaus König, Karl Friedrich Mess, Anne Kirchbach, Martha Scherer a.o.

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Watch Now: Sir Georg Solti Great Conductors In Rehearsal. Tannhauser

Rehearsing and conducting the Overture to Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner with the Süddeutsche Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra 

Available Subtitles: English, Spanish, French

0:00 1st Rehearsal 

30:31 2nd Rehearsal 

43:36 Performance 

This video recording provides us with a portrait of a man whose conducting technique contrasts fascinatingly with that of other conductors in the series. Sir Georg Solti's rehearsal and performance of Wagner's Tannhäuser Overture with the Süddeutsche Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra is a fine illustration of this conductor's insistence on absolute precision, his energetic style and his close familiarity with the score.

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Lecture: Reinventing Wagner After Hitler. London. Feb 2018

REINVENTING WAGNER AFTER HITLER

A lecture by Dr. Patrick Carnegy

German Historical Institute, 17 Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2NJ

6:30pm for 7pm, Thursday 15th February 2018

Dr Patrick Carnegy will argue that the significant German stage productions in the critical period from 1951 until 1982 were responses to the appropriations of Wagner for demonic ends by Hitler and the Nazis. West and East Germany, then divided, found markedly different ways for exorcizing the terrible ghosts. The common goal was to cleanse the inheritance and to build bridges between the concerns of our modern world and those of Wagner in his own time. Dr Carnegy believes these are still the driving forces behind many of the best productions of the past 30 years.

Patrick Carnegy was dramaturg of the Royal Opera House, 1988-92. Since he first visited Bayreuth in 1967 as critic for The Times, his principal research interest has been the stage history of Wagner’s works. He has contributed chapters to the ENO Opera Guides and to the Cambridge Opera Handbooks. His books include Faust as Musician: A Study of Thomas Mann’s Novel ‘Doctor Faustus’ (1973) and Wagner and the Art of the Theatre (2006, Royal Philharmonic Society Award; Special Jury Prize, George Freedley Memorial Award).


Tickets £20 including refreshments. (Limited free admission to Students, YPIA and under 30s who can join the Wagner Society (Click this link) for free and will be admitted to this event for free on proof of membership and if they have previously provided proof of status.)

Tickets are available on Wagner Society website by clicking the link above. You can pay with a credit or debit card or by PayPal. You can also register for the event and then send a cheque or bank transfer to the Society.

Location
Venue: German Historical Institute

Address:
17 Bloomsbury Square, Holborn, London, WC1A 2NJ, United Kingdom

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A Happy, Wagnerian Christmas - Despite Much To Make It Seem Otherwise

Its been a very odd year and possibly not the best for many, Politics have split many people in at least two very large economies: the UK and USA. The result of which will have some impact on other parts of the world. In the UK's example, the rest of Europe and in the case of the USA's, the world - especially the Middle East. Although one suspects that this influence may have an even greater, much wider, effect as the next three years roll on. And this ignores the large domestic upheaval in both countries. Events in both countries - whether directly or not I shall leave to the reader - have emboldened far-right elements in both countries and indeed elsewhere. Racism, xenophobia, misogyny and the worst traits of nationalism (not everything about liking one's country is wrong of course) are once again on the rise. Not that any of these have ever gone away. For whatever reason, those that hold such views feel more comfortable to express them - and in the worst cases act upon them. 

Senior, highly prominent, politicians seem to have been grasped by a form of irrationality not seen since the 30's and 40's where "expert opinion" is not only ignored but openly derided. I think it's been a long time since I had previously heard any politician cheerfully admit to not listening to experts in an area.  And never have I seen the leader of the largest economy and military in the world have a close - and continuing - adviser who has stated he wishes to see the destruction of government. It's an odd time when the advisor to the president makes a statement that sounds like it could have been written by Wagner during the writing of the Ring: 

“Lenin, wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Steve Bannon 2016.

Or what about the following? Wagner or the president of the USA 2014:

“You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell, and everything is a disaster, then you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be, when we were great.”

Poverty is on the rise. The state and many of its people seem pleased to pull the limited safety nets that exist to help the most vulnerable and poor. At the same time, a tiny percentage of cowardly terrorists seem to have proven quite successful in their aims: producing fear (at least two car accidents this year have thrown populations in Isreal and London into panic and fear of terrorism) and discord in all its manifestations.

So, it's not been an especially good year - for a lot of us. But that does not mean we should give up hope or indeed that things cannot, and will, change for the better. Politicians come and go, political movements the same.  National psyches can often spin in a new direction with extraordinary speed. And all countries have survived the most determined efforts by previous leaders to destroy those countries the rule. Empires less so but countries and people, yes. There are, should you feel the desire, little things one can do - rational argument will eventually win and public mood will grow more receptive to it. 

However, despite this, we still have things to cheer the soul on those long nights when all can seem bleak: family, friends, music, art, literature, poetry and of course WAGNER!

And so, with this in mind, we wish all of our readers a happy Christmas with, in a world of rampant commercialism and where profit rules all, a series of video concerts made freely available by the
hr-Sinfonieorchester.

TW

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Study Weekend, University Of Oxford: Wagner & Philosophy. Oct 2017

Looks rather interesting. Some impressive tutors. Places still available. And only £77 for the full weekend

Wagner and Philosophy

Overview

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) has long been considered one of the most obviously philosophical of the great artists in the European tradition. This is in recognition both of the way in which his work was particularly open to philosophical influences and of the extent to which it has, in turn, stimulated significant philosophical responses. We will start by evaluating the importance of Schopenhauer’s philosophy for Wagner, before considering the extent to which the music dramas can be understood as presenting their own distinctive philosophical ideas. There will then be two different takes on philosophical approaches to Wagner, focusing on the most important and sustained instance of this in the work of Wagner’s one-time friend and colleague, Nietzsche, but also taking in twentieth-century responses from Adorno and others.

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RingQuest: Tolkien, A Ring, Heavy Metal & Paul Raymond Gregory

We are often surprised by how many people with an interest in Wagner - and the Ring cycle in particular - also have an interest in Tolkien and the Lord Of The Rings. At the same time, we find a greater than expected number with an interest in heavy metal music (but then a number of metal legends have cited Wagner as an influence - even if "traditional metal" has structurally closer links to baroque).

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Bayreuth Parsifal (2016) Now On DVD & Blu-ray

At least this production has actually made it to DVD. Be warned, there are people this will offend, although probably not as much as good old Monty Pythons excellent, Life Of Brian did to others once upon a time or the equally superb The Last Temptation of Christ

Deutsche Grammophonhas Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s acclaimed production of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal in time for the Festival season. This musical masterpiece was staged for the first time under the direction of Hartmut Haenchen in Bayreuth on 25 July 2016 and will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray from 21 July 2017. Cast: Klaus Florian Vogt as Parsifal, Georg Zeppenfeld as Gurnemanz, Elena Pankratova as Kundry and Ryan McKinny as Amfortas excelled in their roles.

Deutsche Grammophon established a multi-year, exclusive partnership with the Bayreuth Festival in 2016 with Tristan and Isolde: from now on, every new production will be released on DVD/Blu-ray.

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Listen To Bayreuth Festival 2017 - On Demand

First, apologies: the schedule and where to listen to this year's festival should have been auto upload prior to the first performance on the 25th July. It seems that did not happen.  Blame poor programming on our part. Blame the fact we did not check on summer holidays. Even we sneak off occasionally.  To rectify things to some degree, we have posted official links below to where you can still listen to the performances already broadcast. Clicking each link will cause the relevant pop-up player from Bartok Radio.  If you have a pop-up blocker installed you might want to disable it on this occasion. Some of the recordings do not start at the beginning of the performance. If this is the case you can simply forward through a little. There can be a significant amount of forwarding in the case of second and subsequent acts.

Götterdämmerung, of course, will not be broadcast till tomorrow, 3 August. The link will thus not become active till then.

DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG

Conductor Philippe Jordan 

Director Barrie Kosky 

Stage design Rebecca Ringst 

Costumes Klaus Bruns 

Choral Conducting Eberhard Friedrich 

Dramaturgy Ulrich Lenz 

Lighting Franck Evin

Hans Sachs, Schuster Michael Volle 

Veit Pogner, Goldschmied Günther Groissböck 

Kunz Vogelgesang, Kürschner Tansel Akzeybek 

Konrad Nachtigal, Spengler Armin Kolarczyk 

Sixtus Beckmesser, Stadtschreiber Johannes Martin Kränzle

Fritz Kothner, Bäcker Daniel Schmutzhard 

Balthasar Zorn, Zinngießer Paul Kaufmann 

Ulrich Eisslinger, Würzkrämer Christopher Kaplan 

Augustin Moser, Schneider Stefan Heibach 

Hermann Ortel, Seifensieder Raimund Nolte 

Hans Schwarz, Strumpfwirker Andreas Hörl 

Hans Foltz, Kupferschmied Timo Riihonen 

Walther von Stolzing Klaus Florian Vogt 

David, Sachsens Lehrbube Daniel Behle

Eva, Pogners Tochter Anne Schwanewilms 

Magdalene, Evas Amme Wiebke Lehmkuhl 

Ein Nachtwächter Georg Zeppenfeld

ACT ONE: CLICK HERE

ACT TWO: CLICK HERE

ACT THREE: CLICK HERE 

TRISTAN UND ISOLDE

Conductor Christian Thielemann 

Director Katharina Wagner 

Stage design Frank Philipp / Schlößmann Matthias Lippert 

Costumes Thomas Kaiser 

Dramaturgy Daniel Weber 

Lighting Reinhard Traub 

Choral Conducting Eberhard Friedrich 

Tristan Stephen Gould 

Marke René Pape 

Isolde Petra Lang 

Kurwenal Iain Paterson 

Melot Raimund Nolte 

Brangäne Christa Mayer 

Ein Hirt Tansel Akzeybek 

Ein Steuermann Kay Stiefermann 

Junger Seemann Tansel Akzeybek

ACT ONE: CLICK HERE

ACT TWO: CLICK HERE

ACT THREE: CLICK HERE

PARSIFAL

Conductor Hartmut Haenchen 

Director Uwe Eric Laufenberg 

Stage design Gisbert Jäkel 

Costumes Jessica Karge 

Lighting Reinhard Traub 

Video Gérard Naziri 

Dramaturgy Richard Lorber 

Choral Conducting Eberhard Friedrich

Amfortas Ryan McKinny 

Titurel Günther Groissböck 

Gurnemanz Georg Zeppenfeld 

Parsifal Andreas Schager 

Klingsor Derek Welton 

Kundry Elena Pankratova 

1. Gralsritter Tansel Akzeybek 

2. Gralsritter Timo Riihonen 

1. Knappe Alexandra Steiner 

2. Knappe Mareike Morr 

3. Knappe Paul Kaufmann 

4. Knappe Stefan Heibach 

Klingsors Zaubermädchen Netta Or, Katharina Persicke , Mareike Morr, Alexandra Steiner, 

Bele Kumberger, Sophie Rennert 

Altsolo Wiebke Lehmkuhl

ACT ONE: CLICK HERE

ACT TWO: CLICK HERE

ACT THREE: CLICK HERE

DAS RHEINGOLD

Conductor Marek Janowski

Director Frank Castorf 

Stage design Aleksandar Denić 

Costumes Adriana Braga Peretzki 

Lighting Rainer Casper 

Video Andreas Deinert, Jens Crull 

Technische Einrichtung 2013-2014 Karl-Heinz Matitschka

Wotan Iain Paterson 

Donner Markus Eiche 

Froh Daniel Behle 

Loge Roberto Saccà 

Fricka Tanja Ariane Baumgartner 

Freia Caroline Wenborne 

Erda Nadine Weissmann 

Alberich Albert Dohmen 

Mime Andreas Conrad 

Fasolt Günther Groissböck 

Fafner Karl-Heinz Lehner 

Woglinde Alexandra Steiner 

Wellgunde Stephanie Houtzeel 

Floßhilde Wiebke Lehmkuhl

ACT ONE: CLICK HERE

DIE WALKÜRE 

Conductor Marek Janowski

Director Frank Castorf 

Stage design Aleksandar Denić 

Costumes Adriana Braga Peretzki 

Lighting Rainer Casper 

Video Andreas Deinert, Jens Crull 

Technische Einrichtung 2013-2014 Karl-Heinz Matitschka

Siegmund Christopher Ventris 

Hunding Georg Zeppenfeld 

Wotan John Lundgren 

Sieglinde Camilla Nylund 

Brünnhilde Catherine Foster 

Fricka Tanja Ariane Baumgartner

Gerhilde Caroline Wenborne 

Ortlinde Dara Hobbs 

Waltraute Stephanie Houtzeel 

Schwertleite Nadine Weissmann 

Helmwige Christiane Kohl

Siegrune Mareike Morr 

Grimgerde Simone Schröder 

Rossweisse Alexandra Petersamer

ACT ONE: CLICK HERE

ACT TWO: CLICK HERE

ACT THREE: CLICK HERE

SIEGFRIED

Conductor Marek Janowski

Director Frank Castorf 

Stage Design Aleksandar Denić 

Costumes Adriana Braga Peretzki 

Lighting Rainer Casper 

Video Andreas Deinert, Jens Crull 

Technische Einrichtung 2013-2014 Karl-Heinz Matitschka

Siegfried Stefan Vinke 

Mime Andreas Conrad 

Der Wanderer Thomas J. Mayer 

Alberich Albert Dohmen 

Fafner Karl-Heinz Lehner 

Erda Nadine Weissmann 

Brünnhilde Catherine Foster 

Waldvogel Ana Durlovsk

ACT ONE: CLICK HERE

ACT TWO: CLICK HERE

ACT THREE: CLICK HERE

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Wagner On The True Meaning Of: Reality, Love, The Ring, Wotan, Brunhilde and More

Wagner And Rockel - 1865

"But it is not the repulse of Alberich by the Rhine-daughters - the repulse was inevitable owing to their nature - that was the cause of all the mischief. Alberich and his ring would have been powerless to harm the gods had they not themselves been susceptible to evil."

Everything totters round Brunhilde, everything is out of joint; in a terrible conflict she is overcome, she is "forsaken of God."

"I cannot believe that you have misapprehended my meaning and intention: only it seems to me that you have attached more importance to the connecting links and parts of the great chain than they, as such, deserve; and as if you had been bound to do this, in order to read into my poem your own preconceived ideas"

"I was prepared to give up Art and everything if I could once more become a child of Nature. But, my good friend, I was obliged to laugh at my own naivete when I found myself almost going mad.".

Of course I do not mean my hero to make the impression of a wholly unconscious creature: on the contrary, I have sought in Siegfried to represent my ideal of the perfect human being, whose highest consciousness manifests itself in the acknowledgement that all consciousness must find expression in present life and action.

At the end of " Rhine Gold " when Loge watches the gods enter Walhalla and speaks these fateful words: " They hasten towards their end who, imagine themselves so strong in their might," he, in that moment, only gives utterance to our· own conviction; for any one who has followed the prelude sympathetically, and not in a hypercritical, cavilling spirit, but abandoning himself to his impressions and feelings, will entirely agree with Loge.

And now let me say something to you about Brunhilde. You misunderstand her, too, when you attribute her refusal to give the ring up to Wotan to hardness and obstinacy. Can you not see that it was for love's sake that Brunhilde sundered herself from Wotan and from all the gods because where Wotan clung to schemes, she could only-love?

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The Wagnerian On Facebook

I'm Waiting

You might not be aware, but The Wagnerian has its own Facebook page, been one for years, to be honest. Where have you been? We mention it now because there are a number of Wagner-related items that we share there - and over at Twitter, - but never, due to time and other reasons, appear here or the Newsletter. (Newsletter? Yep. Enter your email address in the box on the right of the main page here on the site. Says "Subscribe via email).

Should you want to also keep up to date with this. then stroll over to the link below, like the page and extra daily Wagner goodness (as some terrible marketing type might say) can be yours too.

The Wagnerian Facebook Page

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Watch Now: The Making Of WNO Ring Cycle

A short series of documentaries looking at the 2016 staging of Washington National Opera's Ring cycle.

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Alex Ross: Wagner In America

Alex Ross returns to his native Washington, D.C., in this afternoon symposium on Wagner connections to American culture.. Fascinating. 

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Richard Wagner To Star In Anime Series ClassicaLoid Season Two

Well, this is going to get a bit complicated. We are more than aware of the dangers of stereotyping - especially, stereotyping our more than diverse readership. However, we feel a large number of you have perhaps never experienced, in any detail, the joy, bewilderment, poetry, investigation of Jungian, existentialist, feminist, LGBT, political, themes often presented in an average Japanese animated TV series. Or for that matter,  had that feeling of occasional horror -  other times, disgust -  of its occasional misogynistic themes. Anime (the Japanese term for hand or computer created animation) is the name given to the entire genre, but within that are many, sub-genres of varying complexity. From the relative simplicity of Kodomo (children's), shōjo (girls'), shōnen (boys') anime (although even here one might find the odd reference to Jung or philosophy) right the way through the, very odd, pornography of hentai (Japanese for "pervert"). And there are many, many more classifications and subgenres, But even this makes things too simplistic as there can be much crossover, sometimes at a dizzying pace. To add to this we must say that a newcomer to anime can be further bewildered by how much it relies on the "uniqueness" of Japanse culture. This is especially so of that culture's own nature, ancestral worship based, polytheistic religion: Shinto (that description is far too simple, but this is not the place for a deep investigation). What all of this means is that watching many anime series for the first time - with their own peculiar internal logic and reliance on the viewer having an in-depth knowledge of its history, themes, and greater culture - can make watching a random episode of Twin Peaks seems like a proverbial "walk in the park." It can require a lot of work from the viewer and the need to just simply  "stick with it" early on. We mention all of this should you be, like us, the slightly Wagner "obsessive" and wish to investigate season two of the comedy anime series ClassicaLoid.  Here, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Bach, Schubert - or at least their "Loids" - will be joined by a youthful Wagner and  Antonín Dvořák  - who will be appearing as a pygmy hippopotamus (told you this might get "odd")

A description can never do such a series justice and thus we have presented the "Schubert" episode below, to provide you some idea what to expect should you wish to pursue it. Crunchy Roll (one of the main, legitimate sources of subbed anime outside of Japan and where you can watch it free,  with adverts or a paid subscription -  should you find yourself pulled into this very unique world of anime.) describes the series as:

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ROH To Revive Warner's Ring Cycle . Cast Details Added

No. Before you ask, we have no idea why or what either

The Royal Opera House will, once again, revive Keith Warner's, sometimes troubled, production of the Ring between  September and  November (three cycles) 2018. It will be conducted by the ROH's resident musical director Antonio Pappano. Hopefully, by next year, he will have overcome his busy schedule and boredom of listening to the Ring (reported here two years ago)  and have studied other conductors interpretations - only to expand and develop his own, of course.

Details are a little sketchy at the moment, but the following cast members can be found:

(Edit: It has been pointed out that tucked away on the ROH website is a, nearly, complete cast listing. Our apologies, Blame lazy researchers. We shall castigate them by buying them tickets to every night of the next available revival of a La bohème, conducted by a mediocre conductor. Or indeed, any conductor. For a full cast list click here and then the relevant part of the Cycle and the night you wish to attend. It will take three clicks but there you are).

Stefan Vinke as Siegfried.

Sarah Connolly as Fricka

Gerhard Siegel as Mime 

Emily Magee as Gutrune

John Lundgren as Wotan

Stuart Skelton as Siegmund

Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde

Lise Davidsen as Freie and Third Norn.

Dates

Mon 24/09/2018 Das Rheingold

Wed 26/09/2018 Die Walküre

Sat 29/09/2018 Siegfried

Mon 01/10/2018 Götterdämmerung

Tue 02/10/2018 Das Rheingold

Thu 04/10/2018 Die Walküre

Sun 07/10/2018 Siegfried

Tue 09/10/2018 Götterdämmerung

Tue 16/10/2018 Das Rheingold

Thu 18/10/2018 Die Walküre

Sun 21/10/2018 Siegfried

Wed 24/10/2018 Götterdämmerung

Fri 26/10/2018 Das Rheingold

Sun 28/10/2018 Die Walküre

Wed 31/10/2018 Siegfried

Fri 02/11/2018 Götterdämmerung

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John Cage, Frank Scheffer, Nikolaus Lehnhoff & The Ring in 4.24 Minutes.

In 1987 John Cage commissioned Frank Scheffer to record Nikolaus Lehnhoff's Ring at the Bayerische Staatsoper. Of course, being both Cage and Scheffer this was not to be a straightforward recording. Instead, the entire cycle was to take the form of a short experimental film lasting only 4.24 minutes. Using single frame technique, Scheffer referred to the I Ching to decide, by chance, when to take each single frame. This fascinating recording can be seen below. 

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Bayreuth Ring 2017: Tickets Still Available

How times have changed! Some of us can recall having to wait years for tickets to Bayreuth - especially a Bayreuth Ring.  But that appears to be no longer the case. Once again, while everything else has sold out for this year's festival, tickets are still available for cycles one, two and three. - details below. Whether this speaks of things at Bayreuth, "Ring Heads", this particular ring or something else we shall leave to your imagination, although, one suspects that once this cycle has been replaced unless things go very badly, you will not be able to get tickets at this late a stage. Anyway, should you have the time, money and inclination, tickets can be bought online, now, by following this link to the Festival's official online booking site.

Dates Available: 

• Ring I

  Rheingold I Saturday, 29 July 2017

  Walküre I Sunday, 30 July 2017

  Siegfried I Tuesday, 1 August 2017

  Götterdämmerung I Thursday, 3 August 2017
• Buy tickets 

  Ring II

  Rheingold II Tuesday, 8 August 2017

  Walküre II Wednesday, 9 August 2017

  Siegfried II Friday, 11 August 2017

  Götterdämmerung II Sunday, 13 August 2017
• Buy tickets 

  Ring III

  Rheingold III Wednesday, 23 August 2017

  Walküre III Thursday, 24 August 2017

  Siegfried III Saturday, 26 August 2017

  Götterdämmerung III Monday, 28 August 2017

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Alex Ross Gives Update On Wagner Book - And Evidence

Some of us have been waiting, somewhat patiently, for news on the always erudite - and enjoyable to read - Alex Ross's planned book about Wagner and "Wagnrianism" titled, unsurprisingly enough, "Wagnerism". Well, as we begin our Wagner and Norse Myth month (more on this later), we find that it is indeed not a myth and that he has compiled 13 chapters of 15. Even more reassuringly, he provides photographic evidence, - see below. Bravo! For those unaware - there can surely be few - Alex is a regular columnist and music critic for the New Yorker (but we won't hold that against him) and author of the excellent, popular books on "modern" classical music: The rest is noise: listening to the Twentieth Century and follow-up Listen to this.  And while we  wait, ever patiently, for him to get a move on, you can watch a talk he gave on Wagner a few years ago,

From Alex's blog: 

"In recent years I have made various claims to the effect that I am writing a book called Wagnerism. Above is photographic evidence demonstrating that I have, indeed, produced a considerable pile of paper imprinted with words, although skeptics might wonder whether any given page of the manuscript contains nothing more than typographically varied repetitions of the sentence "All work and no play makes Jack an ambivalent boy." I have completed a very rough draft of thirteen out of fifteen chapters. Hitler is dead, and the story is therefore winding down. Taking a first pass at the manuscript is Minnie, who steps into the role once filled by my dearly missed feline assistants Penelope and Maulina."

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What Are We to Make Of Toscanini.

Toscanini with Wieland Wagner

David Denby, at the New Yorker, discusses and reevaluates Toscanini while simultaneously reviewing Harvey Sachs' new biography of the conductor - released to coincide with the 150 year anniversary of Toscanini's birth.

What is the most familiar piece of classical music? The most thoroughly roasted chestnut? A piece so overplayed that it has passed into the automatic schlock-recognition zone of every American? Surely it is the final, galloping section of Rossini’s “William Tell” Overture—the Lone Ranger music, the musical image of righteousness on horseback. The music seems almost a joke. But there was one conductor who rode this piece as if his life, and the lives of his players, depended on it.

I remember my parents calling me out of my bedroom. The year was 1952, so I must have been eight. On our television, a tiny black-and-white screen sunk into a large mahogany console, an old man with a full head of white hair and an elegantly clipped mustache was beating time with his right arm and leading a furious performance of the horse music. I certainly knew the tune (“The Lone Ranger” TV series began running in 1949), but I didn’t know it could sound like this—the skittering string figures played with amazing speed and clean articulation, the entire piece brought off with precision and power, the muscular timpani strokes outlining phrases and asserting a blood-raising pressure under the crescendos. You can easily see this performance right now, exactly as I did, on YouTube: Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony in the televised concert of March 15, 1952. If you listen with good headphones, the sound, though hard-edged, is solid and clear, and the astonishing performance comes through. Toscanini was then two weeks shy of his eighty-fifth birthday.

For many years, Arturo Toscanini was the pinnacle of musical excitement for classical-music lovers in this country—and also for many casual listeners, who enjoyed the sensation of having their pulse rate raised. He was at the center of an American experiment in art and commerce that now scarcely seems credible: late in the Depression, in 1937, RCA, which owned two NBC radio networks, created a virtuoso orchestra especially for him, and kept it going until 1954. The NBC Symphony gave concerts in New York that were broadcast on national radio, and then, starting in 1948, on national television.

RCA hyped Toscanini, and the media responded gratefully, some would say shamelessly: Toscanini was widely profiled and photographed, lionized and domesticated by Life and countless other publications. His NBC years were probably the high-water mark of classical music’s popularity in America. Some of that popularity was doubtless swelled by the excruciating and often condescending music explainers ubiquitous on the radio, in books, in schools, all eager to sell great music to the masses. Still, it was not unusual for earnest middle-class children to struggle with an upright at home, to sing Handel in a school chorus, to play Mendelssohn in the school orchestra. At the time, both amateur and professional musicians, listening to the NBC Symphony broadcasts, did their best to play along.

RCA issued dozens of recordings made by Toscanini and the orchestra (most of them from broadcasts), as well as selected performances made with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra, with Toscanini’s white face and hands emerging from solid black in Robert Hupka’s mystically glamorous album photographs. Toscanini’s way with music by Beethoven, Berlioz, Brahms, Verdi, Wagner, and Debussy could make the work of other conductors seem dawdling, nerveless. He famously stuck to the score, ending arbitrary practices and interpretive excesses. He drove to the climax; lyrical details were suavely caressed but pressed into the onward rush. The sound he produced with any orchestra was lean, transparent, surging, radiant. “Architecture with passion” was what the young pianist Rudolf Serkin heard in a performance of the Brahms Second Symphony. Other celebrated conductors, including Bruno Walter, Pierre Monteux, and, at times, Wilhelm Furtwängler, acknowledged that he was the greatest of conductors—some said “incomparable.” Having played the cello in the first performance of Verdi’s “Otello,” in 1887, Toscanini is also the invaluable link between the nineteenth century, when so much of the operatic repertory was written, and the modern opera house.

In the nineteen-thirties and during the war period, admiration for him went well beyond music. Opera, always central to the culture of Europe, became at that time a matter of nationalist bluster and political maneuvering. After 1931, Toscanini refused to conduct in Italy, resisting Mussolini, who dangled honors and official posts; he was thereafter reviled in the Fascist press. Hitler pleaded with him to honor holy German art and preside over the Wagner rites at the Bayreuth Festival. When Toscanini turned him down, his recordings and broadcasts were banned in Nazi Germany. Instead of going to Bayreuth, he worked in 1936 and 1937 with the newly formed Palestine Orchestra (later the Israel Philharmonic), an ensemble largely composed of Jewish refugees. Toscanini did not make speeches; he stuck to business. But his sentiments were widely known, and he became a lodestar for anti-Fascists. After the war, Isaiah Berlin pronounced him “the most morally dignified and inspiring hero of our time—more than Einstein (to me), more than even the superhuman Winston.”

In recent decades, however, Toscanini’s musical reputation has faded badly. Some of his old fans have shifted their loyalty to the work of other conductors—to Furtwängler, say, whose soulful expressiveness and spontaneity have been held up as musically and emotionally superior to Toscanini’s fiery propulsiveness. In the revisionist view, Toscanini rushed through passages that other conductors would turn into contemplation or mystery or sheer loveliness. He offered a maximum of line, a minimum of texture; he was all athlete, no philosopher. Beethoven and Verdi formed his aesthetic, and he never moved into the twentieth century, ignoring the dazzling rhythmic and harmonic explorations of Stravinsky, Bartók, Schoenberg, Berg.


The critic and composer Virgil Thomson complained of a lack of personal culture in Toscanini, which allegedly resulted in a “streamlining” of the classics. Theodor W. Adorno, the Marxist philosopher and theorist of twelve-tone music, appalled by Toscanini’s radio concerts and his employment by corporate America, tagged him as a proponent and victim of commodity-fetish capitalism. In effect, Adorno said, Toscanini turned every piece into a chestnut. Picking up from Adorno, the music historian Joseph Horowitz, while acknowledging Toscanini’s greatness in “Understanding Toscanini” (1987), ridiculed his temperament and public persona, casting him as the false messiah of the middlebrow music-appreciation racket. Both Adorno and Horowitz indulged in scathing contempt for radio listeners in the Toscanini era. It incensed them that classical music—for a brief period—became part of mass culture.

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Kent Nagano To Begin "HIP" Performance Of Ring From 2020,

Kent Nagano and  the Concerto Köln have begun a project to reproduce a "Historically Informed Performance" of the Ring during 2020 to 2021. 

In their most recent collaboration, Concerto Köln and  Kent Nagano, pursue a unique project: in cooperation with scientists at the University and Musikhochschule in Cologne, by taking on Richard Wagner’s tetralogy, “The Ring of the Nibelung”. Their undertaking will provide the international opera scene with new impetus in historically-informed approaches to musical-theatrical works of the 19th century.

Jochen Schäfsmeier (Managing Director, Concerto Köln): “Concerto Köln is as honoured as it is inspirited to approach Wagner’s “Ring” together with Kent Nagano and to be able to make an important contribution to the historical performance practice of 19th century music.”

"Richard Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung” is probably one of the most researched compositions yet nonetheless, a systematic approach to the tetralogy from a historically-informed perspective has not been attempted thus far." Kent Nagano

For the first time, the entire “Ring” is to be viewed from an early music movement perspective: the instrumental and vocal styles as well as the staging at the time of Wagner will be examined over a period of several years and compiled to form a historically-informed performance concept.

Kent Nagano (Artistic Director): “It is due to historical performance practice that nowadays there is a much different understanding of many composers and their works than was standard 30 or 40 years ago. Moreover, thanks to historicized approaches, we have gained knowledge about instruments and playing techniques which opens up to us new, pioneering pathways into the interpretation and performance of our music.

Richard Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung” is probably one of the most researched compositions yet nonetheless, a systematic approach to the tetralogy from a historically-informed perspective has not been attempted thus far. It is therefore all the more important that such an undertaking is tackled and that, in romantic repertoire now as well, normality in terms of sound which seemed irrefutable so far is called into question.

I have collaborated together with Concerto Köln for several projects in the past and am convinced that I have found two most competent partners in the Cologne ensemble and the Kunststiftung NRW who are able to provide the scientific basis for a historically-informed reading of Richard Wagner’s “Ring”. Together we will pursue this endeavor and bring the music to the stage!”

The simultaneously scientific as well as artistic undertaking on such a mammoth scale requires tremendous effort with the additional aim of becoming a guide to performance practice of 19th century music and opera. The outcome, interpreted by Concerto Köln and Kent Nagano, will be performed from the 2020/21 onward. All research findings will be published in Open Access.

Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Wagner (Kunststiftung NRW): “For the Kunststiftung NRW, the support of the project, “WAGNER-READINGS”, is of significance in a number of ways. For several years, supporting artistic research has played a major role within the Kunststiftung’s funding programs – albeit with a primary focus on theater, dance and literature; examples of this being the Christoph-Schlingensief guest professorship for scenic research at the Ruhr University in Bochum, the Pina Bausch fellowship and the Thomas Kling lectureship at the University of Bonn. With “WAGNER-READINGS”, the base of support is expanded to the area of music, bringing art and research together in a so to speak ideal-typical way by conducting research into the complex correlations involved in the musical-theatrical production of Wagner and translating the results into artistic practice.”

Initial work already began in May of 2017. The official go-ahead for the project is a symposium in September, 2017. Financial support is provided by the Kunststiftung NRW and the Freunde von Concerto Köln e.V. Additional support is provided by the Strecker-Stiftung and MBL Akustikgeräte GmbH & Co. KG.

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Wagner's greatest roles

How does it feel to encounter, at first hand, the Herculean demands made by Wagner’s most iconic roles? By Arnold Whittall

In both Rienzi and Tannhäuser (again, in contrast to Holländer), the title-role is given to a tenor, seen by Wagner as the ideal sound for conveying his musical embodiment of flawed heroism. If Rienzi is primarily about the psychology of political ambition, Tannhäusercomes closer to Wagner’s own world in exploring the psychology of the artist in society. To be convincing, the singer tackling Tannhäuserneeds to confront unusually demanding challenges. While he often seems to treat individuals, as in his dialogues with Venus, Elisabeth and Wolfram, like public meetings, Tannhäuser’s encounters with the real public (primarily in Act 2) serve to highlight his private, self-obsessed concerns. This poet is never at ease in either the private or the public arena, and the music Wagner invents to chart his decline and fall moves from almost hysterical eroticism (the ‘Hymn to Venus’) to melancholic despair (the Rome Narration). At least one celebrated tenor – Jon Vickers – found the role so distasteful that he refused to tackle it. Others have ruefully noted that Siegfried and Tristan are in some ways easier – musically and dramatically more rewarding, that is. And it has certainly never been easy for producers to find a style of staging that deals convincingly with the clashes between the real world of the Landgraf and his court on the one hand and the fantasy realm of Venus on the other.When the 31-year-old Richard Wagner completed Tannhäuser in April 1845, he had already taken a giant step away from Grand Opera conventions. Der fliegende Holländer, first staged two years earlier, had turned away from what, for Wagner, was the one-dimensional, cardboard cut-out dramatic world of Spontini, Auber and Meyerbeer, while not rejecting the more local, more German operatic traditions of Beethoven and Weber. In this context Tannhäuser, and the title-role in particular, seemed something of a reversal, if not quite to Spontini and Meyerbeer, then to Wagner’s own successful version of Grand Opera, Rienzi (begun in 1838, first performed in 1842).

Wagner’s next opera, Lohengrin, offers a very different confrontation between the real world of 10th-century Brabant and a realm that seems to transcend mundane reality – the Grail knights’ Monsalvat. If the determining quality of Tannhäuser is an all-too-human fallibility, that of Lohengrin is a godlike self-assurance. Both qualities are, in the end, more destructive than anything else, but it is understandable that singers warm more immediately to the lyrical poise that distinguishes much of Lohengrin’s part. More tenors seem at home with this than with Tannhäuser’s trials and tribulations, though some – René Kollo is one – have managed equal conviction in both, at least on disc. As singers might sometimes ruefully confess, Lohengrin is a role to tackle when your voice still has its youthful bloom and your career is poised to take off; Tannhäuser is best taken on when you are well-established and have nothing to lose. Basses, baritones and bass-baritones might also use this latter formula in relation to the great antagonistic pair in the Ring cycle – Wotan and Alberich.

It is a measure of the proliferation of Ring performances and recordings in the years since 1950 that complaints are sometimes heard that the Wotan sounds more like an Alberich, or even (though less commonly) that the Alberich sounds implausibly noble and godlike. Occasionally there are singers (Sir John Tomlinson has been a prominent example in recent times) who can seem as convincingly in character as both villain and hero – as Hagen or Wotan. It has also been argued that the noble, even sacerdotal vocal qualities that singers such as Hans Hotter or Theo Adam brought to the role of Wotan short-change those less savoury aspects of the character, like the deviousness which Wagner’s text relishes in Das Rheingold and Siegfried. On the other hand, no one wants to hear Wotan bidding a soulful farewell to his daughter in Die Walküre in tones that might serve equally well for Alberich’s ragings against fate.

That Wagner has endowed both characters with an unusually wide range of attributes – something which helps to explain the attractions of the roles to singers – is especially evident in their encounter in Act 2 of Siegfried, where adumbrations of both comedy and tragedy are starkly juxtaposed. In turn, a particular attraction of what is probably Wagner’s most highly regarded role for a bass-baritone – Hans Sachs – is the blend, not so much of villainy and heroism, but more that of ‘poet and peasant’, artisan and armchair philosopher. It takes special reserves of stamina for the singer to sustain the kind of relaxed good humour needed throughout the long third act of Die Meistersingerand then to assert benign but decisive authority in the final address, rather than projecting a desperate determination to last the course, and to deal adequately with those hair-raising high Es. A persuasive Sachs certainly needs to be more of a Wotan (or Wolfram?) than an Alberich, as the most memorable interpreters of the role on disc, from Friedrich Schorr to Gerald Finley, can testify. Wagner showed few if any signs of wanting to give his female singers an easier time than their male colleagues. Saintly submissiveness might be called for, suggesting a cliché-ridden acceptance on Wagner’s part of woman’s primary nurturing role, but this is usually onlythe starting point for a transformation which reinforces the decisive function of women in promoting and effecting dramatic resolution. Sopranos are well aware that there’s no point in thinking of tackling Brünnhilde if you quail at the prospect of launching those high Bs in your very first lines in Act 2 of Die Walküre. The part’s rhetorical range across three nights is phenomenal, although Wagner is usually credited with a shrewd awareness of the need to provide passages to be coasted through in the interests of husbanding resources, especially when the character is on stage for so long, as in Act 1 of Götterdämmerung. In the end, however, Wagner takes no prisoners and those singers (Astrid Varnay and Gwyneth Jones inevitably come to mind) who are the most successful are those who recognise that aesthetic refinement matters less than sheer visceral conviction.

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Paul Heise's life is Richard Wagner.

An overview of Paul Heise's (creator of Wagnerheim)"obsession" with Wagner.

Paul Heise's life is Richard Wagner.

The Annapolis resident has immersed himself in the 19th-century German composer's Ring Cycle for over 35 years, dropping out of graduate school and giving up jobs to study the set of four epic operas.

Heise has a website devoted to his analysis of Der Ring des Nibelungen, http://www.wagnerheim.com (heim is home in German), which features more than 1,500 pages of information.

"I've never met anyone quite so single-minded," said Elliott Zuckerman, a retired St. John's College tutor who once had Heise in a class about another Wagner work, "Tristan and Isolde." "He really has had one thing in his life."

You know, when you read a piece of literature or hear a piece of music that gets inside you? This thing got inside of me. It was as if I'd woken up in some way. That was it. It rendered me permanently unemployable.

Zuckerman said Heise's conclusions about the Ring are as "good as any others" and was impressed with the breadth of what Heise posted online. "The website is remarkable and incredibly complete and very apt these days with renewed interest in the Ring," Zuckerman said.

Heise's love affair with the music began when he was 18 and heard a sampling of the work for the first time on the radio. "It was a goose bump moment," he said.

The Annapolis native immediately went to a store to find a recording. He took it home and listened - nonstop - to all 19 records. "I dropped the needle and I was instantly hooked," he said. "I stayed up 24 hours. You know, when you read a piece of literature or hear a piece of music that gets inside you? This thing got inside of me. It was as if I'd woken up in some way. That was it. It rendered me permanently unemployable."

That's a bit of hyperbole, but not that far from the truth. Heise has held a series of jobs over the years, including a stint as a juvenile probation officer, but he's also taken long breaks to focus on his research. He's currently a part-time gate attendant at Quiet Waters Park in Annapolis.

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Sex and The Married Wagnerian

One from the archives: 7 years ago (where does the time fly?) our editor published the following. Followed a few weeks later by part two- which can be found here by clicking here.  We have gained many, many new readers since then, and find the audio parts especially worth revisiting for their benefit alone

I am presently reading - it has been sitting here for months - Laurence Dreyfus's "Wagner and the Erotic Impulse" (see here for a review). As tends to happen (Jung and all that synchronicity nonsense no doubt) while skimming through the Wagner Journal this morning, I find, what appears to be at first glance, an interesting, mainly, Marxist/Feminist critique of the book by J.P.E. Harper-Scott. Indeed, from a quick read, Harper-Scott seems to suggest that in Wagner's works - especially the Ring and Tristan  - Wagner is making pre-Marxist statements about male/female "power relationships" and women as "economic currency" - I think. (it's about much more than this but this might be described as it's central thesis - the essay, not necessarily the works.) Anyway, it begins:


"Wagnerian women

When it wanted to conduct an inquiry into the erotic qualities of Tristan und Isolde, the New York City public radio station WNYC invited the vintner and opera fan Natalie Oliveros onto its ‘Evening Music’ programme. After listeners had been presented with virtually all of the second-act love duet the presenter asked his guest what she thought about the sexual content of the music. ‘It’s what we call tantric sex,’ she answered with a giggle, ‘and I wonder if Richard Wagner himself could last like that. I think that every woman just once in their life would like to have that kind of passion and emotion and experience that kind of love that you hear in the music. I think he was probably a very giving lover.’

And what are her qualifications for saying this? Well, in addition to being a vintner, Oliveros, who is addressed on the show by her professional name Savanna Samson, is a hard-core pornographic actress with Vivid Entertainment, the world’s largest producer of pornographic videos. Is there any composer other than Wagner for whom the association with porn would not seem immediately ludicrous? Or, to put it another way, is it only in Wagner that we can find such a suggestive parallel between tonal music whose functional control of desire and (denied) resolution is radically reduced to its fundamental elements (essentially a teasing focus on variously powered dominant chords) and an art form whose current dominant style similarly treats human bodies, and particularly female ones, literally as body parts, as partial objects of desire, many-holed machines for producing orgasmic outcomes from certain inputs conceived in orthodox fashion?


It seems that there is something naughty and at the same time very masculine about the erotics of both Wagner and mainstream pornography, and listeners to the WNYC show seem to be invited to be uncertain whether it is the music, the woman talking about it, or the combination of the two that is most meant to make their blood flow. In a certain sense, Savanna Samson is a typical operatic woman. Within the masculinist–capitalist ideological space she inhabits, she is a sexual commodity serving the function of gratifying male desire at the same time as expressing male power over her.

It is interesting that although she gives a woman’s response to Tristan, focusing on what she sees as the sexual experience from a woman’s perspective (one which in its tenderness and patience is entirely at odds with the obscene haste and functionality of modern pornographic film), that response is folded straight back into the ideology. Here is a woman who is up for it, available for purchase ($29.95 a month from her website), and happy to present her male listeners with advice on how to impress a woman like her sexually (be as tender a lover as she imagines Wagner to have been; physical appearance irrelevant). Many operatic women are judged according to their success in performing this kind of function, and criticised if they don’t. Turandot is monstrous precisely because she refuses to submit to this purchase arrangement; the Dyer’s Wife (in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten), who refuses to submit to pregnancy, is taunted by a chorus of her unborn children; Brünnhilde is placed defenceless and asleep behind the very effectively secured shop window of her fiery rock until any man who evinces the right purchasing power (fearlessness, in this mythic codification of the exchange) can take her away for his private consumption" J.P.E. Harper-Scott
Now, how many other composers journals would have that sort of discussion? Who said academia needs to be boring.

To continue reading Harper-Scott's essay, buy a copy of the Journal or subscribe. More details here:  The Wagner Journal

EDIT: I have just been informed that Harper-Scott has made the full essay available on his blog. Go there to read his new introduction and then to the article itself as a PDF - J.P.E. Harper-Scott:Wagner, Sex, and Capitalism . But don't forget to go to the journal's website also. Go on, you know you want to.

 The radio show cited by Harper-Scott at the beginning of his essay below:

Blue Wagner:

What makes Tristan und Isolde so sexy? Anthropologist Helen Fisher weighs in on just how Tristan gets the juices flowing. Also, adult film actress/"Vivid Girl" (and Tristan fanatic) Savanna Samson chats with George Preston about the lusty side of Wagner's music—and shares recordings of her favorite "sexy-voiced" singers.

Tristan Mysteries: Highlights

"It's a well-known fact that music can arouse more than just the ears. On this installment of The Tristan Mysteries, Amy O'Leary uncovers the aphrodisiac qualities of Wagner's opera. Also, George Preston examines the sex-appeal of Tristan from the clinical—and decidedly non-clinical—point of view, with anthropologist Helen Fisher and adult film star/"Vivid Girl" Savanna Samson.

Contributors to The Sexual Mystery include:
Terrance McNally, Playwright & Librettist
Colin Levin, an opera student at the Oberlin Conservatory of MusicA Soprano who wishes to remain anonymous

Executive Producer, The Tristan Mysteries: Limor Tomer
Producer/Host, The Sexual Mystery: Amy O'Leary
Producer/Host, Blue Wagner: George Preston
Web Producer, The Tristan Mysteries: Brad CresswellThe Tristan Mysteries is supported, in part, by a grant from The Corporation for Public Broadcasting."

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Watch Now: Tristan Und Isolde. René Kollo & Gwyneth Jones

Again, made freely avaible by Euroarts. One of our early Tristan's on the then newly emerging DVD format.

This performance was recorded (in HD) in Tokyo during the Deutsche Oper Berlin's 1993 Japan tour.

René Kollo - Tristan

Robert Lloyd - King Marke

Gwyneth Jones - Isolde

Gerd Feldhoff - Kurwenal

Peter Edelmann - Melot

Hanna Schwarz - Brangäne

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Jirí Kout - conductor

Götz Friedrich - stage director

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Watch Now: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Deutsche Oper

Made available, freely, by Euroarts. It may help one take one's mind off of all sorts of insanities.

This magnificent production of Wagner's masterpiece at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, brilliantly directed by Götz Friedrich and staged by Peter Sykora, was not only a great success in Berlin but in Tokyo as well.

Solisten/Soloists:

Wolfgang Brendel - Hans Sachs

Victor von Halem - Veit Pogner

David Griffith - Kunz Vogelsang

Barry McDaniel - Konrad Nachtigall

Eike Wilm Schulte - Sixtus Beckmesser

Lenus Carlson - Fritz Kothner

Volker Horn - Balthasar Zorn

Peter Maus - Ulrich Eißlinger

Otto Heuer - Augustin Moser

Klaus Lang - Hermann Ortel

Ivan Sardi - Hans Schwarz

Friedrich Molsberger - Hans Foltz

Gösta Winbergh - Walther von Stölzing

Uwe Peper - David

Eva Johansson - Eva

Ute Walther - Magdalena

Peter Edelmann - Ein Nachtwächter

From the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos - conductor

Götz Friedrich - stage director

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Listen To The 2016 Bayreuth Parsifal.

NRK KLASSISK Radio is rebroadcasting, the 2016 Bayreuth Parsifal today at 16.00 GMT
. Full details below. To listen, simply click this link. You might also have to press play, but no matter your native language, hopefully, the play icon should be universally comprehensible - top of the page. Any difficulties, facebook or tweet at us. We will try and get back to you.

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