Wagner
Wahnfried
(19 August 2026) Quoth Richard Wagner: “Here where my delusions have found peace, let this place be named Wahnfried.” Haus Wahnfried was a brisk walk from our hotel, on the corner of Richard-Wagner-Sraße and Wahnfried Staße, and includes a modern renovated building containing costumes, dioramas and other artefacts from Wagner’s operas, together with the villa itself, renovated after WWII and supplemented by further work after Wolfgang and Winifred Wagner gave Wahnfried to the city of Bayreuth in 1973. Financed by King Ludwig II (his bust fronts the house), Wahnfried was built from 1872 to 1874. Wagner and his family moved…
Continue Reading →150th Bayreuth Festival
(18, 19 & 20 August 2026) The Varnished Culture finally got into Bayreuth (two trains, one bus via Pegnitz) and stayed at the funky Liebesbier Urban Art Hotel. The original Festival took place from 13 to 17 August 1876. The beautifully-mad King Ludwig funded the Festspielhaus. Wagner, writing in his autobiography (Volume 2), said “the dangerous road along which fate beckoned me to such great ends was not destined to be clear of troubles and anxieties of a kind unknown to me heretofore, but I was never again to feel the weight of the everyday hardships of existence under the protection…
Continue Reading →Wagner at the Movies
[Richard Wagner Society of SA, Adelaide University, 17 August 2025] Although Wagner, in his essay, foresaw “The Artwork of the Future,” as a communal matter, a ‘fellowship of all artists,’ it is hard to contest Stephen Whittington’s surmise that had Wagner lived in the time of film, he would have been something of an intractable auteur. What one would give to see a discussion between Wagner and Jack Warner, or for that matter, with Errol Flynn. Yet as Stephen pointed out in his entertaining and informative Brian Coghlan Memorial Lecture, the Maestro looms large in the Hollywood firmament (to borrow…
Continue Reading →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…
Continue Reading →Simone and the Valkyries
Die Walküre, Sydney Opera House, 15 November 2024 (Simone Young, Conductor /Sydney Symphony Orchestra/Stuart Skelton, Siegmund/Peter Rose, Hunding/Vida Miknevičiūtė, Sieglinde/Tommi Hakala, Wotan/Alexandra Ionis, Fricka, Roßweiße/Anja Kampe, Brünnhilde/ Helena Dix, Helmwige/Madeleine Pierard, Gerhilde/Natalie Aroyan, Ortlinde/Deborah Humble, Waltraute/Margaret Plummer, Siegrune/Kristin Darragh, Grimgerde/Liane Keegan, Schwertleite) The Sydney Opera House does not have the capacity to mount a proper Ring Cycle, but its beautiful concert hall can put on a brilliant concertized version, and Die Walküre offers a chance to savour the key spoke in Wagner’s wheel without the distractions of the monumental amount of staging required for a full-scale production. Instead there were…
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