Songs of Richard

(North Adelaide, 13 July 2025)

This was a very pleasant presentation organised by the Richard Wagner Society SA, wherein South Australian mezzo soprano Fiona McArdle, with Josh van Konkelenberg on grand piano, presented a selection of the non-operatic songs of Richard Wagner.

Fiona made her professional debut in 2017 as La Ciesca in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi with the State Opera of South Australia. With the company she also played Magdalene (Der Meistersinger von Nürnberg) and second saleswoman (La Vida Breve). Fiona completed her Master of Music at the New England Conservatory, Boston, USA, 2018. Role highlights within her studies include Frantik, Crvek and Kohout (Cunning Little Vixen), Xiao Qing (Gilgamesh) and Véronique (Doctor Miracle). During her time in the USA Fiona worked with Pittsburgh Festival Opera, playing Mistress Zimmerlein in The Silent Woman, and she was part of the premiere of Symphony New Hampshire’s The Essential Ring Part I and Part II [The Readers’ Digest version of The Ring – Ed.] as Flosshilde and First Norn. From Boston, Fiona moved to London, UK, in late 2018. Here she made her lyric soprano debut in the role of Mimì (La bohéme) with Hampstead Gardens Opera (2019). Fiona’s past performing experience includes touring Australia with South Australian company Co-Opera: Opera on the Move. With the company she appeared as La Zia Principessa (Suor Angelica), Suzuki (Madama Butterfly), and Dorabella (Così fan tutte).*

Fiona has a truly beautiful voice and commented on the history and context of a selection of obscure, and well-known, songs from the maestro, which she sang, including from Goethe’s Faust, composed in 1831, where his sister Ottilie played Gretchen in a Leipzig theatre performance of the work. (“Gretchen am Spinnrade”). Wagner may have re-worked these later; as he modestly recalled in Mein Leben: “…the directors of the Leipzig theatre regarded me for a long time as a very doubtful person…It is true that I still tried my hand at sketching out compositions to Goethe’s Faust, some of which have been preserved to this day…”

During Wagner’s unhappy time in Paris (1839-1842), he composed several songs in French, for some of which he received his first ever fee. (“Der Tannenbaum”; “Dors mon enfant”; “Adieux de Marie Stuart”).

These were not a success, but their filament-like sensitivity shone though in Fiona’s singing and Josh’s accompaniment. As they did with the magisterial and patriotic “Gruß seiner Treuen an Friedrich August den Geliebten”, his musical homage to the King of Saxony (12 August, 1844). “The King and royal family were visibly touched...” as Wagner recalled.

The grand finale and highlight, of course, were the well-known Wesendonck Lieder, stunningly sung and played, and which gained extra resonance from the simplicity of the performance setting, of a stage in the shadowy light of a wintry Adelaide afternoon.

After the well-earned appreciation, learning that a member of the Society had a birthday that day, Josh van Konkelenberg extemporised “Happy Birthday to You” as Wagner would have written it – a brilliant cabaret-turn. Kudos all around.

[*Quoted from the State Opera SA website.] [One last thing: We have to add this, with apologies-in-advance for spoiling the otherwise splendidly happy mood. Fiona began her talk and performance with a Welcome to Country, which is only to be expected these days; no real problem with that. However, she added the increasingly blistering phrase, “Sovereignty was never ceded.” One has to go not only to history books to see how factually and intellectually bankrupt is this phrase, but also to the High Court, where Justice Gibbs, in Coe v Commonwealth [1979] HCA 68, said this, at [12]:

“If the amended statement of claim intends to suggest either that the legal foundation of the Commonwealth is insecure, or that the powers of the Parliament are more limited than is provided in the Constitution, or that there is an aboriginal nation which has sovereignty over Australia, it cannot be supported. In fact, we were told in argument, it is intended to claim that there is an aboriginal nation which has sovereignty over its own people, notwithstanding that they remain citizens of the Commonwealth; in other words, it is sought to treat the aboriginal people of Australia as a domestic dependent nation…The aboriginal people are subject to the laws of the Commonwealth and of the States or Territories in which they respectively reside. They have no legislative, executive or judicial organs by which sovereignty might be exercised. If such organs existed, they would have no powers, except such as the laws of the Commonwealth, or of a State or Territory, might confer upon them. The contention that there is in Australia an aboriginal nation exercising sovereignty, even of a limited kind, is quite impossible in law to maintain.” Quod erat demonstrandum.]