Wagner
“Leitmotifs Through the Aether”
A Tribschen idyll...Wagner with Eva
May 22, Happy 203rd birthday to Maestro Richard Wagner! On the evening of 19 May 2016, the Richard Wagner Society of SA hosted ABC broadcaster and programmer Simon Healy to give the annual Brian Coghlan Lecture on Leitmotifs Through the Aether:Wagner’s Operas in Broadcasting History. In a highly detailed and fascinating talk, Simon spoke (in his classic, Classic FM voice) of the technological advances through the last couple of centuries, referring first to the ancients and their perception of the ‘aether’ as the fifth element, onward and upward to the telegraph, which really paved the way for mass communication since….
Continue Reading →A Wagner Timeline
As Robert W. Gutman observed, “cannonades preluded the birth of Richard Wagner“.* When he passed up, from Venice to Valhalla, almost seventy years later, he had been working on “The Feminine Element in Humanity”, a concept bearing some similarity to work of another German giant, Goethe, and he expired in the arms of his wife, Cosima. Betwixt 4 am on 22 May, 1813, and 3.30 pm on 13 February, 1883, the greatest music dramatist that ever lived led a hectic, crowded life, one that defies encapsulation, even by the very best biographers. You’d need to spare a couple of decades, travel a…
Continue Reading →Impressions of Die Walküre
Josef Hoffman design for Act I, 1876
Richard Wagner Society, 3 April 2016 The Society had a lovely afternoon discussing ‘Visions of Die Walküre,‘ when Wagner enthusiasts spoke of varied productions across the map, and three distinguished speakers (plus yours truly) gave some formal shape to the issues. Neville Hannaford reviewed leading recordings, from the Chereau/Boulez centenary production at Bayreuth to the visually impressive (albeit quirky – Hunding’s hut is represented as a circle of stones) but weakly-acted Valencia offering. He selected Bayreuth as the best naturalistic version, featuring the best Siegmund (Peter Hoffman) and Hunding (a formidable Matti Salminen, who also appeared at Valencia). …
Continue Reading →Valkyries
Painted by Emil Doepler
PREMIERE: 26 JUNE 1870 in MUNICH. It was done as a ‘stand-alone’ piece, not part of the Cycle, and reaction was mixed. But Wagner wasn’t going to allow 26 year’s worth of work down the drain and ultimately, as both part of the Ring cycle and alone, it stands atop the operatic ramparts. Discussion: February 10, 2016 at Adelaide Symphony Orchestra Performance: February 13, 2016 at Festival Theatre, Adelaide Die Walküre shows Wagner blossoming as musician and dramatist. In the words of Ernest Newman, “he abandoned himself luxuriously to the sheer joy of music-making, both enlarging the scale of his…
Continue Reading →Pierre Boulez
(26/3/1925 – 5/1/2016) I hold a box set of records of a Bayreuther Festspiele production of Die Walküre conducted by Pierre Boulez, who died on Tuesday last. Other conductors work hard to give audiences what they want to hear: the famous baton-less Pierre worked the crowd towards liking what he wanted: atonal purity and the trampling of populism. As Michael Tanner, in his Wagner, recounts, the Boulez/Chéreau production of The Ring in Bayreuth “moved from provoking physical violence in 1976 to unqualified triumph in 1981” (at page 57).He recognised the need to dare and to irritate – that failures paved…
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