SF Opera Ring Festival 2011: An Over-View

I was looking at the best way to give some overview of San Francisco's Ring Cycle 2011 when I came accross this. It appears that Janos Gereben at the  San Francisco Examiner has done a far better job than I might attempt

"The Ring of the Nibelung," the beloved cycle of Richard Wagner operas, is coming back to San Francisco for the first time since 1999, bringing with it all its splendor and heartbreak.

For almost a century and a half, opera audiences have flocked to any part of the globe where Richard Wagner’s “The Ring of the Nibelung” was being produced.

Now, once again, it’s San Francisco’s turn, and some 40,000 visitors from around the Bay Area and world are expected at the War Memorial Opera House between May 29 and July 3. There will be three cycles of the 17-hour colossus (15 hours of music) divided into four operas (Dates and Booking Information here.)  Including individual productions in the past three years leading up to the complete cycles, the cost of the venture is approximately $24 million.

Ticket income will not cover the cost to the opera, which relies on individual and corporate donations, but the financial, public relations and visitor attraction benefits to The City exceed the expense.

“For San Francisco, having the full ‘Ring’ cycle here is like hosting a Super Bowl or World Cup soccer for the arts,” said Kary Schulman, the director of Grants for the Arts. “We gain not just additional hotel stays, restaurant meals and shopping, but, because these are culture-goers, our other arts and visitor attractions are likely to benefit as well.”

The man responsible for the decision to produce “Ring,” opera general director David Gockley, emphasizes the size of the project, but from another angle.

“It is the most monumental piece of music theater ever conceived by the mind of man,” Gockley said. “Every rational force in our society mitigates against it being done. Yet it is done because there is an urge within us to see the truth and the fate of ourselves as humans played out on a vast, multilayered canvas. For anyone in my position, it is the dream of a career in opera to essay this Everest of challenges.”

So large is that challenge that this will be only the sixth time in the company’s 88-year history that “Ring” is presented. Previous years were 1935, 1972, 1985, 1990 and 1999. The first “Ring” came to The City in 1900, when New York’s Metropolitan Opera performed it on tour in the Grand Opera House, long before the War Memorial opened in 1932.

Beyond size, expense, tradition and fame, at the core of the “‘Ring’ experience” is the experience of basic human emotions expressed in unforgettably powerful ways. What makes it all work is as basic as the anguish of a father (Wotan) over the loss of his daughter (Brünnhilde).

This deep human sorrow hits the audience with unsurpassed impact in a combination of gorgeous music and deeply affecting drama.

“My ‘Walküre’ turns out terribly beautiful,” Wagner wrote to Franz Liszt in 1852, and the century and a half that has passed since only confirmed and amplified his judgment.

Francesca Zambello, who’s responsible for the San Francisco production, said Wagner’s vision of the world “demands a setting in which gods, goddesses, creatures, heroes and mere humans are all equally at home. Many set out on journeys that will take them through terrifying landscapes demanding courage, heart, understanding and sacrifice. As they are transformed, so are we who watch, and [we] sense their stories are also ours.”

Those journeys might sound familiar even to opera newbies: From ancient Nordic mythology to Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” to Peter Jackson’s film trilogy, there are recurring stories of the all-powerful ring and what befalls on mortals, and even gods coveting them.

“All of the great themes of the ‘Ring’ — the destruction of nature, the quest for power, corruption, the plight of the powerless — resound through the four operas,” Zambello said.

Unlike traditional staging of the Wagner operas, here “they are not bound to the 19th century’s industrial age, nor to Europe or some leafy Nordic realm of long ago,” Zambello said.

To make this happen, huge forces are coming together. World-famous Wagner specialist Donald Runnicles conducts an orchestra of more than 100. Principal roles are filled by acclaimed singers, and the rest of the cast includes some participants in the Merola Opera Program; veterans of Merola now take on major roles, and there are scores of stagehands, costumers, makeup artists, ushers and others involved.

For the months leading up to the big event in June, local arts organizations collaborate in presenting a wide range of programs centering on the “Ring.”

Zambello said in his (sic) production, American history, mythology, iconography, landscape and “dreams all filtered into our palette as we constructed our stage world.”

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Opera Australia: The Ring Cycle - 2013

THE MELBOURNE RING CYCLE 2013

Given that there are a few years to go till  opening night, information is still a little sketchy. To keep up-to-date visit the wesite: Opera Australia. But in the mean time here is what is known so far. And below is an interview with Richard Mills from the Australian. More shortly.

Opera Australia will present The Ring Cycle at the Arts Centre, Melbourne, during November and December 2013.

The Melbourne Ring Cycle will be a journey through 15 hours of Wagner's music across four nights in the theatre. Opera Australia will perform three complete cycles during November/December 2013, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth.

The creative team will be led by two celebrated Australian talents - director Neil Armfield and conductor Richard Mills.

The cast will include:
Susan Bullock as Brunnhilde
Juha Uusitalo as Wotan
Gary Lehman as Siegfried
John Wegner as Alberich

Further cast details will be announced over the coming months.

Tickets to go on sale at the end of 2011

In for the long haul

YOU can almost hear the valkyries coming over the mountain: a hot wind blowing, the pounding of horses' hoofs and the famous war cry -- Hojotoho! -- all set to Richard Wagner's wonderfully bombastic music. For a long time Ring cycles weren't performed in Australia, at least not in their epic, four-part entirety.

Richard Mills

Now they're like buses: nothing, then several at once.

There have been two in Adelaide, in 1998 and 2004, and now Opera Australia will be presenting its first, long overdue Ring in 2013. It's a red-letter year for Wagner fans, being the bicentenary of the composer's birth. That's still more than two years away and so far only the broadest details of the enterprise have been announced: the principal cast and artistic team, and the venue at Melbourne's State Theatre.

For Richard Mills, though, the valkyries are getting louder and closer by the day. The success of this multimillion-dollar enterprise -- the benchmark by which world opera companies are judged -- and the verdict of notoriously obsessive Wagnerians rests with him: the man who would conduct The Ring.

It's already rocking his world. Mills, a composer, conductor and mild-mannered agitator, lives in a converted warehouse in Brunswick, in Melbourne's inner suburbs. When he greets you at the nondescript front door and leads you up the stairs to his studio, the first thing your eyes land on is a shelf of CD box sets, recordings of Der Ring des Nibelungen by all the master conductors: Solti, Furtwangler, Knappertsbusch, Boulez. Those, and a plastic horned helmet. Mills seems to enjoy mixing high seriousness with the faintly ridiculous.

"Technically, just in terms of conducting, The Ring is a much easier opera to conduct than Fledermaus or The Marriage of Figaro," he says, before introducing a metaphor he perhaps didn't think through.

"It's like driving the Titanic, or piloting a 747, as distinct from a DC-3 or a fighter, something that's much more agile and responsive. Whereas [piloting] a big ship is much simpler because its motions are much steadier in a way."

Mills certainly is taking the task seriously and feels the weight of responsibility. Better known as a composer than a conductor, he has written, among many other works, some of the most ambitious and successful new Australian operas in recent years. In his other job, he's the artistic director at West Australian Opera in Perth.

In terms of conducting Wagner in fully staged productions, though, Mills is a relative newcomer. He has conducted some "big chunks of Walkure", and in Brisbane in 2005 a concert of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde: a lucid, beautifully prepared performance. He was then to have conducted a short season of Tristan for WA Opera but had to pull out because of illness. So the Brisbane Tristan became his retrospective audition for The Ring.

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Tim Albery on Covent Garden's Flying Dutchman.

From an interview with Hugo Shirley over at musicalcriticism.com during the ROH's first run of the soon to be revived Albery Dutchman.


17 February 2009

Director Tim Albery has only been an occasional visitor to London's opera houses over the past decade. Yet just a few months after bringing a new production of Musorgsky's Boris Godunov to the Coliseum, he's back in the capital to direct Wagner'sThe Flying Dutchman at the Royal Opera House.

Albery's last Wagner production in the UK was his Scottish Opera Ring, produced at the beginning of the decade. This was widely interpreted as a critique of Blair's Britain, although Albery is quick to point out: 'We never mentioned those words when working on it'. I ask if his production of the Flying Dutchman will have any similar political undertow or will it aim to capture, like his ENOBoris Godunov, a feeling of temporal universality?

'The main thing, like the Ring, is that you're dealing with a myth. It's not gods on this occasion but a figure of myth, the Dutchman, who bumps into a very real world of people like Daland. In a sense, we're trying to create a world where this figure is a fantasy projection of all the people in this tiny community, a figure who both inspires fear and is attractive, offering the idea of escape from the restrictions of that world. So you want to create a suggestion of what that narrow little world is, while at the same time allowing him both to embody the myth and be concrete enough as a character.

'The community we enter is pretty modern but I suppose it's got a Baltic, Soviet-ish feeling with that; it's the present with that slight throwback feeling that you get from all the imagery that one sees in that part of the world. It's modern in a slightly wrecked way, where equipment might be there from before the Wall came down. The spinning doesn't take place in Daland's house, for example, it's in the place where the women work. The sense in this community is that there's just one place for the women to work. What the men do is they go to sea; a few people, like Erik, live on the land. But there are not a lot of choices. The space that the show takes place in is very unreal, the whole space is a dream, if you like: it's like a ship but it isn't a ship. You don't come in and say "I see, that's a real ship", or "I see, that's a real factory". I suppose what we're trying to accomplish is that it's clear from the start that we're in a kind of mythological landscape in which dreams are possible. And yet there's a lot about it that's concrete and real: men can pull ropes on a boat, women can sew in a factory and parties can take place.'

The function of dreams in the the opera, one of Wagner's great psychological innovations, is obviously central to Albery's interpretation. 'There's a dream going on in Senta's head and there's a dream going on in the Dutchman's head: he dreams of the person who'll save him, she dreams of the person who'll take her away from all of this. Erik has a dream of Senta going away with someone else; the women all join the Ballade as if they also have a dream of escape. For some of us it's just that the grass is always greener. The notion of escape and change is there for everybody; there are plenty of Dutchmen around who are living in this sort of psychological mayhem in their heads. Wagner obviously identified hugely with the Dutchman and the notion of the creative artist in the storm of creative chaos and self-destruction: being stormy is the only psychological state that those people can really function in.'

Albery agrees with the view that the opera is in many ways a 'curious hybrid'. He goes on to explain. 'When you've done the Ring, you hear bits that look forward to that conversational mode where you're never quite sure where you're going musically. That feeling emerges sometimes and then other times it reverts back to something that feels, in that context, incredibly old-fashioned. So it's a bit disarming to work on in that way, when you're just getting into staging it like the Ring and then there's a conventional duet and you have to find a way of dealing with that too: it's not easy.'

Continue reading at Musicalcriticism.com

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Die Meistersinger Von Nürnberg: ROH 2011 - You wait around all day and then three come along together.

Meistersinger, Royal Opera House, Graham Vick Revival 2011

So, there you are, it's raining, you haven't brought a brolly, there's no shelter and you have been waiting for what seems like ages on your bus when it eventually pulls up - followed by two more directly behind it. It feels a little like that at the moment with Meistersinger in the UK. First, WNO, then Glyndebourne and now we find the ROH is producing (or at least reviving) another - in little more that twelve months of each other. And we are still two years away from Wagner's bicentennial. Typical!

Overview


Another revival of Graham Vick's award wining - and highly regarded - production first seen in 1993

Cast:

Hans Sachs                Wolfgang Koch (An excellent Alberich under Simone Young -  here)
Walther von Stolzing   Simon O'Neill

Eva                            Emma Bell,
Magdalena                 Heather Shipp
David                         Toby Spence
Pogner                       John Tomlinson
Sixtus                        Peter Coleman-Wright                 

Credits:

Antonio Pappano    Conductor
Graham Vick           Director

Dates:

19 | 22 | 27 December (2011)
1 mat | 4 | 8 mat January (2012)

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Der fliegende Holländer: ROH 2011 - A Dutchman Without Redemption?

A little late on detailing this (and ROH Meistersinger) but it has been very busy in the world of Wagner this past month. But, better late than never. I will produce updates as they arrive of course.

This is the first revival of Tim Albery’s 2009  "redemption free" one act production. I think it would be fair to say that in its last outing it recived mixed reactions from the critics. It is certain that reviewers all found the production "dark", "depressing",  "bleak" or similar. One assumes that their negative or positive reviews were thus a response to this genuinely "doom" ridden production - see snippets of reviews below . The previously well received, Anja Kampe  returns as Senta,  German Heldenbaritone Falk Struckmann, takes over from Terfel as the Dutchman.. Endrik Wottrich sings the role of Senta’s poor old  rejected lover Erik,  Danish bass Stephen Milling– previously Hunding in Die Walküre and Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte -- takes the role of  Senta’s father.  Jeffrey Tate, takes over conducting duties  from Marc Albrecht.

Anja Kampe

Falk Struckmann

Performance Dates: (2011)
18 | 21 | 26 | 29 October
1 | 4 November


Cast


Der Holländer: Falk Struckmann

Senta:              Anja Kampe

Daland            Stephen Milling

Steersman:      John Easterlin

Mary:             Clare Shearer

Erik:               Endrik Wottrich

CREDITS

Director:                 Tim Albery

Set designs:            Michael Levine

Costume designs:   Constance Hoffmann

Lighting design:      David Finn

Movement:            Philippe Giraudeau

Conductor:            Jeffrey Tate

Reviews For 2009 The Flying Dutchman Royal Opera House:

Rupert Christianse: The telegraph:

"Tim Albery's admirably lucid and focused production frames these two unforgettable interpretations with an abstract but undistractingly modern setting, designed by Michael Levine. A curved iron sheet, artfully lit by David Finn, suggests a dirty trawler, the unquiet sea and a bleak northern port, but the atmosphere is also rich with the menace and magic of a ghost story, and the austere stage picture is enlivened with plenty of spectacular and spooky effects."

Hugo Shirley: Musicalcriticisim.com

"Tim Albery's approach is unusual since it posits an unflinchingly tragic view. To be sure, opting for the 'Dresden' ending, without the post-Tristan reprise of the 'redemption' theme in the final bars, removes much of the certainty of the drama's conclusion. However, Albery's vision swings beyond ambiguity into tragedy to such a degree that it threatens to undermine the whole opera. Quite apart from anything else, it makes for a pretty bleak evening for the audience and results in a dramatically weak conclusion: as per the programme's synopsis, here 'Senta remains behind, alone".

Barry Millington: Evening Standard

"Albery is fortunate to have the brilliant designer Michael Levine, for it is his imagination, enhanced by the lighting of David Finn, that provides most that is memorable: the black shadow that envelops the stage at the first appearance of the Dutchman’s ship, the lowering from the flies of the sewing factory, and the raising of the stage to reveal the below-deck quarters of the Norwegian crew".

Keith McDonnell: musicOMH

"Maybe Albery needs a course of Prozac, especially as the preciously few dramatic moments, the rain drenched drop curtain during the overture, the appearance of the spectral ship and Senta's ballad, tended to grow organically out of Michael Levine's ingenious designs than Albery's direction." 

Andrew Clements: The Guardian

"The basis of Michael Levine's set - a curving plane that could be the deck of a ship, or its prone hull - is essentially timeless and non-specific, but Constance Hoffman's costumes fix the action firmly in the present, in a small, north-European seafaring community. It's the bleak confines of the women in such a community that fuel Senta's obsession with the story of the Dutchman. Her fantasy, symbolised in the model of the Dutchman's three-masted ship that Kampe clutches like a comfort blanket, seems as much about escape from the endless drudgery of that claustrophobic life as it is about idealised love; she is after redemption as much as the Dutchman is"

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Opera North: Das Rheingold

If you live outside of any major city and it's opera houses it is near-on impossible to see or hear the Ring Cycle "live".(The Longborough Opera festival is perhaps one of the few exceptions). There are number of reasons for this but (and as discussed recently on my piece about the new "reduced" ring) cost and the logistics of finding provincial theatres able to accommodate Wagnerian forces are two important ones.

With that in mind, and given the financial difficulties large parts of the "arts" in the UK find themselves, it is pleasing to find Opera North, who will begin this summer with the first part of their four year Ring Cycle - in concert.

Cast
Wotan	Michael Druiett
Alberich	Nicholas Folwell Peter Sidhom (Sept only)
Loge	Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke
Fricka	Yvonne Howard
Erda	Andrea Baker
Fasolt	James Creswell Brindley Sherratt (Sept only)
Fafner	Gregory Frank
Freia	Giselle Allen Lee Bisset (Sept only)
Froh	Peter Wedd
Donner	Derek Welton
Mime	Richard Roberts
Woglinde	Jeni Bern
Wellgunde	Jennifer Johnston
Flosshilde	Sarah Castle

Conductor	Richard Farnes
Artistic Consultant	Dame Anne Evans
Concert Staging and Lighting Design	Peter Mumford

More at Opera North.

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Glyndebourne Meistersinger - BBC "In Tune" with Vladimir Jurowski and Gerald Finley

Glyndebourne

Yes, it's that time of year again: lambs are skipping across the British countryside (well big lambs by now); hikers have put on their best shorts, hitched a knapsack over their shoulder and traverse, what they hope, are public walkways over golden fields; young lovers take to the countryside oblivious to all but each other; lone romantics take to their bicycles, a well worn copy of some Wordsworth poems in their pocket, looking for a shady tree to read under; copies of Cider With Rosie are... Or at least that would be the case if they were not all competing for space with oddly dinner suited individuals dragging  picnic baskets behind them, accompanied to the sound of clinking bottles of Moet (well the tickets were just so expensive  - nothing left for luxuries)

Yes, the ever magnificent, Glyndebourne  opens its doors today and Britain's Country House Opera Festival season is truly underway. And this years festival sees something special for us Wagnerians: at long last their first staging of Meistersinger .

To ready himself,  BBC Radio 3's Peter Trelawny, spoke to the conductor Vladimir Jurowski and the productions Hans Sachs - Gerald Finley -  during Fridays "In tune". You missed it? Never-mind, it will remain available to listen to online for the next six  days.

 Listen here: In Tune, BBC Radio 3

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In Germany's opera capital, it's not over until all three fat ladies sing (With added Tristan fist fights)

While a number of  opera houses around the world are apparently struggling to stay afloat (See, for example todays announcement that NYC Opera are to lay-off staff and leave the Lincoln Center, or cuts in funding from the British Arts Council.) over at Deutsche Welle  Rebecca Schmid examines the unique situation in Berlin which  boasts three state subsidized opera houses. Despite efforts to "rationalize" this unusual  excess of opera houses  she concludes things  will not change anytime soon - and suggests  why. And of course, there is Wagner related trivia


" A fistfight apparently broke out after the premiere of Richard Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" at the Deutsche Oper amid boos for the stage director."


" I was punched in the arm for taking notes during the same production (the usher told me that the opera makes people particularly sensitive)".


"During a new production of Richard Strauss' "Salome" last month, elderly couples laughed in carefree enjoyment at a scene in which the protagonist wraps her legs around Jesus' waist as he hangs in agony from the cross".

Deutsche Oper

On any given weekend, opera-goers in Berlin are hard pressed to sift through their options. Between tightly knit productions under the internationally coveted conductor Daniel Barenboim at the Staatsoper, the regular appearance of star names at the Deutsche Oper, and a flood of zany shows at the Komische Oper, one wonders how these myriad opera houses manage to co-exist in one city.

Neither Paris, New York, nor any city in Italy - where opera runs through people's veins - can boast three state-subsidized opera houses. Following German reunification in 1990, Berlin effectively inherited two state operas, the Staatsoper in the east and the Deutsche Oper in the west, as well as the Komische Oper, a smaller house around the corner from the Staatsoper that caters to opera for the masses.

Given that Germany possesses one-seventh of the world's opera houses, perhaps the density in the capital shouldn't be surprising. Neither should the fake blood and nudity that curiously infiltrate many productions. As a German saying goes, everything is allowed as long as you don't bore the audience.

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Parsifal as Proto-SF: Wagner, Parsifal, Schopenhauer, Philip K Dick and The Matrix Trilogy

Time for more Wagner miscellanea? Already?

In the following highly entertaining eassy,  Andrew May, explains how Parsifal directly influenced the work of the legendary Science Fiction  author  Philip K Dick (If you are unfamiliar,  you may know Dick from such film adoptions of his work as: Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly - among others. Although none, apart from  Scanner perhaps, do justice to his literary style or the complexity of his work). May argues this influence is  found especially in Dick's novel "Valis". He also argues that Parsifal may have  influenced those thieves of anything "esoteric" the Wachowski brothers and their "Matrix Trilogy". An argument partly confirmed, as we shall see, by Don Davies (composer on all three Matrix films) who we discover "quotes" the Tristan Chord throughout the soundtrack of the final Matrix Movie

Parsifal as Proto-SF

by Andrew May

This paper was first presented at Interaction, the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention held in Glasgow in August 2005, as part of the academic track organized by the Science Fiction Foundation. The slides presented at the convention can be found in PDF format here.

Parsifal is an opera by Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883). It's a very unusual opera, which has baffled and intrigued audiences since it was first performed in 1882. Most operas are about larger-than-life human relationships and emotions, and Wagner's earlier works are no exception. But Parsifal is different. It's all about ideas -- very abstract ideas of philosophy, metaphysics and theology. I would argue that this places Parsifal firmly in the realm of speculative fiction. Moreover, the focus of speculation in Wagner's opera is remarkably similar to that found in the novels of Philip K Dick and in the Matrix trilogy.

Parsifal is discussed extensively in Philip K Dick's 1981 novel, Valis. Indeed, for some readers, Valis may be the only context they have ever encountered Parsifal. Chapter 8 of Valis contains a nice little précis of Wagner's opera, which we can use as a starting point:

The leader of the grail knights, Amfortas, has a wound which will not heal. Klingsor has wounded him with the spear which pierced Christ's side. Later, when Klingsor hurls the spear at Parsifal, the pure fool catches the spear - which has stopped in midair - and holds it up, making the sign of the Cross with it, at which Klingsor and his entire castle vanish. They were never there in the first place; they were a delusion, what the Greeks call dokos; what the Indians call the veil of maya. There is nothing that Parsifal cannot do. At the end of the opera, Parsifal touches the spear to Amfortas's wound and the wound heals
Expanding on that, an act-by-act synopsis would go something like this:

• Act 1: The knights of the Grail are miserable because of Amfortas's suffering. However, there is a ray of hope -- some mysterious writing has appeared on the surface of the Grail prophesying the coming of a redeemer, who is described as "the guileless fool". Right on cue, Parsifal turns up and starts behaving like a guileless fool. So much so, that the knights get fed up with him and kick him out.
• Act 2: Parsifal's wanderings take him to the castle of Klingsor, the evil sorcerer who has stolen the holy spear. Klingsor tries to destroy Parsifal by various means, eventually sending the witch Kundry to seduce him. However, as soon as Kundry kisses Parsifal, he becomes enlightened and understands everything. He sees through Klingsor's illusions and recovers the stolen spear.
• Act 3: Parsifal returns to the land of the Grail, where he uses the spear to cure Amfortas and absolve Kundry of her sins. The opera ends with the very strange words "the redeemer redeemed".

Fans of science fiction may perceive a number of striking parallels between the plot of Parsifal and that of The Matrix. I'm not sure if these parallels are a deliberate homage to Parsifal or just an accident. It's well known that the Wachowski brothers are avid readers of all kinds of things, and that a lot of their reading found its way into The Matrix in one form or another. Equally, I've seen The Matrix described as a kind of intellectual Rorschach test where you can find anything you want if you look hard enough! Whether they are coincidences or deliberate allusions, the plot parallels between Parsifal and The Matrix can be summarised as follows:

The connections between Parsifal and The Matrix go beyond similarities of plot. The music, if nothing else, contains deliberate references to Wagner, as the following quotation from Don Davies (composer on all three Matrix films) shows:

"When we were spotting [Matrix] Revolutions the word "Wagnerian" came up very often. And the reason was because, you know Wagner was very much a fan of Schopenhauer. He was actually obsessed with the Schopenhauer ideas of will and representation... And it was significant enough to both Larry and Andy [Wachowski] and myself that we felt working on the third part of this trilogy, which is significantly about philosophy -- no less Schopenhauer than Hegel and Kant and Heidegger and Kierkegaard, but still definitely Schopenhauerian and also Nietzsche, who was a close friend of Wagner's up until Parsifal, when they had a falling out. One of the things I did in acknowledging this Wagnerian tradition of philosophy in multi-media drama was that I quoted the Tristan chord over the Deus Ex Machina. [Quoted at music.ign.com]

That's a great phrase -- "this Wagnerian tradition of philosophy in multi-media drama"! Wagner's operas are certainly multi-media dramas, and Parsifal does have a lot of philosophy in it. And in that respect, The Matrix films are its direct lineal descendants.

The previous quotation mentioned Schopenhauer, who was certainly the biggest influence on Wagner at the time he was writing Parsifal. However, Wagner was an avid reader (a bit like the Wachowskis!) and he drew on many other sources as well. Some of the books he's known to have read in connection with Parsifal are as follows:

• Chrétien de Troyes: Perceval (12th century)
• Wolfram von Eschenbach: Parzival (13th century)
• Meister Eckhart: sermons (13th century)
• Hafez: poems (14th century)
• The Upanishads (translated by Duperron, 1804)
• Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation (1844)
• Burnouf: History of Indian Buddhism (1844)
• Ramayana (translated by Holtzmann, 1847)
• Spence Hardy: Manual of Buddhism (1853)
• Renan: Life of Jesus (1863)
• Sutta Nipata (translated by Coomaraswamy, 1874)

The Grail legends, mediaeval mysticism, Schopenhauer, Buddhism, Hinduism... all the subjects you would expect to find in the New Age section of Waterstones or Barnes & Noble in the 21st century! Yet here was Wagner reading these books way back in the 1860s and 70s! Even the Life of Jesus was an early example of the now-popular "Jesus the man" genre, rather than a straightforward New Testament commentary.

On the face of it, Parsifal is a Christian opera. The Grail is the cup of Christ, the spear is the weapon that pierced Christ's side, and Parsifal defeats Klingsor using the sign of the cross. But in Wagner's hands, Christianity is transformed into something distinctly unorthodox. Heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, Wagner believed that Christians no longer understood the true meaning of their own religion:

"This act of denying the will is the true action of the saint: That it is ultimately accomplished only in a total end to individual consciousness -- for there is no other consciousness except that which is personal and individual -- was lost sight of by the naïve saints of Christianity... This most profound of all instincts finds purer and more meaningful expression in the oldest and most sacred religion known to man, in Brahmin teaching, and especially in its final transfiguration in Buddhism. [Letter from Wagner to Franz Liszt, dated June 1855]"

There is probably very little truth in that statement, viewed in the light of modern scholarship -- but the important thing is that it's what Wagner believed to be true at the time he wrote Parsifal.

Wagner was impressed by the symbols of religion, even though he knew they were nothing more than symbols. He realised that a symbol such as the Grail could be very powerful even if there was no literal truth to it:

"An old legend existed in southern France telling how Joseph of Arimathea had once fled there with the sacred chalice that had been used at the Last Supper... I feel a very real admiration and sense of rapture at this splendid feature of Christian mythogenesis, which invented the most profound symbol that could ever have been invented as the content of the physical-spiritual kernel of any religion. [Letter from Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, dated May 1859]"

As he was putting the finishing touches to Parsifal, Wagner made his views on religious symbolism even more explicit in an essay entitled Religion and Art (1880):

"Whereas the priest is concerned only that the religious allegories should be regarded as factual truths, this is of no concern to the artist, since he presents his work frankly and openly as his invention."

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See Glyndebourne Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg live - for free!

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg GFO 2011: Chorus ensemble. Image Alastair Muir

As you are surely already aware, Glyndebourne's first Meistersinger is sold out. But not to fret, should you so wish, you still have two opportunities to see and hear it:

Option 1: The Cinema:
Cinema relays of live operas are growing in both frequency and popularity. This summer Glyndebourne will take full advantage of this trend and a number of  performances from the Festival can be seen at a cinema, hopefully, near you. For a full list and booking information please go to the festivals site here: Glyndebourne Festival on Screen    

Option 2: Free:
Glynbourne has gotten together with the Guardian newspaper to provide free online video, access to the last night of Meistersinger. This can be accessed either at the Glyndebourne site or at the Guardian's website. And if you cannot be at a computer that day or time? It will remain viewable for a further 6 days thereafter on-demand - and still free!

For more information visit the Guardian here: The Guardian teams up with Glyndebourne this summer

And the time and place?

Day: June 26, 2011
Time: 1:40 pm (British Summer Time)

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Gerald Finley, " Wagner actually makes you sing to the best of your ability": Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - Glyndebourne 2011

Glyndebourne's first Meistersinger (and only their second ever Wagner production -  as discussed here) will soon be upon us. Over at musicalcriticism.com,  Mike Reynolds interviews Gerald Finley about Wagner, Glyndebourne, Jurowski,  David McVicar and his first  appearance in a Wagner Opera

'It's like going to a vocal spa...I am working at the role from the inside of the music. '

In a few days time, on Saturday 21 May, the 2011 Glyndebourne season gets under way with an historic first: the biggest production it has ever mounted, Wagner's very own festival opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.   And leading the cast, in his own first Wagnerian role in costume onstage, is Canadian bass baritone Gerald Finley.   With orchestral rehearsals in full swing, and with the enormity of the undertaking becoming daily more apparent, we caught up with Finley during a break in his crowded day on the Sussex Downs. 

If he was feeling the pressure, he certainly did not show it: relaxed, articulate, he talked enthusiastically about the role of Hans Sachs, the challenges in singing the character, the Glyndebourne production and his very special affinity with the opera house that will be his spiritual home for the next couple of months.

I started by asking about Finley's approach to tackling a major Wagnerian role for the very first time.   What were the difficulties and how was he going about them?   "The thing I am learning from this incredible immersion in the score, and the role of Hans Sachs, is that Wagner actually makes you sing to the best of your ability.   I have in fact sung Wolfram [in Tannhäuser] before but only in the recording studio.   So this is my first theatrical assumption of a major Wagnerian role – in at the deep end, as you might say.   But when the part was offered to me, I accepted to do it at Glyndebourne, mainly because I knew that the long rehearsal period would allow me to get to know every aspect of the opera and the chance to do myself justice in the role.   And it is so rewarding – it is a very human story, worth looking at time and time again, full of incredible musical detail to which you have to pay scrupulous attention.  I am finding it a wonderful experience".

Without giving too much away, what sort of production has David McVicar come up with?   Any similarities with the deconstructionists like Katharina Wagner?   "No, not at all!   What I can tell you is that it is not set in its original period (the mid sixteenth century) but it is set in a time of social change and the look of the piece is Romantic, which is great for the costumes.   McVicar has approached his Meistersinger from the score, and from what it says about the people in the opera and their relationships with each other.   These after all are real relationships: they say things about the characters onstage and they say things about people and society today.   The production is not out to surprise, nor to offend, nor to provoke.   It is full of what I would call nice humanist touches.   I find it intelligent and engaging".

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