Siegfried reaches Brünnhilde in the nick of time

Or rather, did so on 9 March, shortly before lockdown, in the last of my Spring term Opera in Depth classes at Pushkin House. Siegfried may well be the opera I've learnt most about, loving it so much the more as a result, in all my years teaching the course. Die Walküre I already adored; there have been shorter courses on works I came to adore, but as a result not quite so much to wonder about, and certainly not over 10 Mondays.

I wrote previously here on how the sheer buoyancy of the first act and the nature-magic as well as weird humour of the second got us through difficult times (little did we realise that the gloom of 31 January would be overshadowed by something much bigger). With the final Siegfried-Brünnhilde duet we returned to the darker world and lurking violence beyond the fairy-tale, conspicuously so in Harry Kupfer's disturbing Bayreuth production with Anne Evans and Siegfried Jerusalem (pictured above). I did begin to wonder if we'd get there, given two more visits too welcome to turn down, and a third (from Vladimir Jurowski) which might have happened on the last Monday, but didn't (hopefully we'll get to see him some time during the Götterdämmerung term).

No matter; our visiting Siegfried and Mime could not have been more revelatory. First came Richard Berkeley-Steele, such a convincing stroppy teenager in Phyllida Lloyd's Ring for English National Opera (pictured above right with John Graham-Hall as Mime; Lloyd's was the best Twilight of the Gods I've seen as a staging - sorry indeed that, after the individual instalments, no complete cycle ever followed). Civilized, eloquent, witty, Richard warmed to the students as quickly as they warmed to him.

When I spoke to Richard's  wife, Susan Bullock, and Catherine Foster in a Birmingham 'Brunch with Brünnhildes', the nitty-gritty of how to survive was paramount. Another Wagner tenor I've interviewed in London, Stuart Skelton, said that while he could manage Tristan, he'd never sing Siegfried. Tristan, Richard says, is more emotionally demanding - that third act! - but Siegfried has killer traps. Consulting his well-thumbed score, he pointed out how high it sits. Siegmund in Die Walküre has a high A at the end of Act One, which is tough because he's been singing heroically in a lower register. In the first scene of Siegfried Act One, the hero has 42 high notes, all Gs, G sharps and As - and that's not even the big stuff of the forging scene (picturd below, Richard with a photo of him in that scene at ENO and his precious vocal score of Siegfried). The end of Act Two is endless top notes, ending with a top  B flat, and Act Three is tough, ending with 'that horrific final duet, 40 minutes of late Verdi. If you're doing it well, you're surfing and could go on longer, but it's a huge undertaking.'

Fundamentally, though, you could sing it as 'rough-edged Tamino', so long as the conductor is sympathetic and looks after you (he cites the late, much-missed Jeffrey Tate, Vladimir Jurowski and Mark Wigglesworth as the greatest); and parts of Act Two are Schubertian. We'd been talking about Alberto Remedios, the Siegfried we'd come to admire the most for the sheer beauty and youthfulness of the sound in snippeted passages from the ENO recording, and Richard told me how he'd met him when he was a student at the Royal Northern College of Music in the 1970s. ENO was visiting Manchester with its Ring, the first time Richard had ever seen it - another box ticked here when he said he thought Norman Bailey was 'the greatest bass-baritone probably ever, and also the loveliest man' (agreed on both counts). Years later Richard was asked to audition to cover Lohengrin at ENO  - he actually sang three performances, which started him off on the Wagner path - and Alberto, by then half-retired, came in to work with singers, said 'what're you doing, kid?' (Liverpudlian accent). 'I said, "oh, I'm doing Lohengrin, I don't know about this Heldentenor stuff". And he picked me up by my coat and said, "we're not Heldentenors, we're lyric Heldentenors, and don't you forget it! Then you'll be alright'" '. That was good advice - just do it, don't try and pretend to be something you're not.

I'd love to delve into more, but for the time being let's move on to our third special guest of the term, Graham Clark, with whom Richard and Sue put me in touch. It was such a thrill to have a visit from the great man in between watching scenes of him and Jerusalem in Kupfer's Bayreuth Ring - incontestably the best duo on any film of the tetralogy I've seen (not to mention the live performance, which was one of the greatest experiences of my life). I hadn't seen him face to face for probably about 20 years, and he looked exactly the same - all the more extraordinary since he has been through two bouts of cancer, and is now - he assured us - right as rain.

What I didn't know is that shortly before he went to sing in Kupfer's peerless Ring (picturd below), he had a heart attack during an Italian performance. Given his basic fitness and stamina as a major sports coach, he recovered - and even now, at the age of 78, he'd been preparing for two cameo roles which probably won't happen owing to the coronavirus. At least the ENO Marriage of Figaro, on which he'd been working with the mostly youngish cast, got one airing before the shutdown.

So full is Graham of an almost terrifying elan vital that I can't just sum up all the stories and insights he took us through. But I think for all of us there was a special fascination in the detail with which he discussed the different ways a Mime might enunciate the two words with which he tells Siegfried what happened to his mother Sieglinde, 'Sie - starb'. It also seems that he was possibly the only member of the cast who dared to try and change Kupfer's mind about some of the ideas concerning the role. Certainly there's not been a better characterisation, though Heinz Zednik and Gerhard Siegel are equally amazing in different ways.

So - now Pushkin House is closed for the foreseeable future, and I have to master the art of Zoom to hold online classes for next term - ten Mondays, 2.30-4.30pm, starting on 20 April - which we divide 50-50 between Strauss's Elektra and Puccini's Madama Butterfly. I'm hoping we will still be linked up that way with Sue Bullock, who has had the singular advantage of singing not only those title roles but also Clytemnestra, as she was due to do with Kirill Karabits in Bournemouth and Birmingham before the plugs were pulled. The temporary format does at least mean folk can join in from all over the world. If you're interested, just leave me a message with your email; I won't publish it but I'll be sure to contact you. And if you'd like to learn about Siegfried in similar depth to the classes past, do join me in September - hopefully by then things will be back to something like normal - for the third year of my lecture series for the Wagner Society of Scotland in lovely Gartmore House near Stirling in the Trossachs. Full details on the Society's website here.

Meanwhile (Good Friday) I've just put up a piece about online staged Parsifals for The Arts Desk.  You'll also find Bruno Walter's incandescent Columbia Symphony Act 1 Prelude there, and here's his Karfreitagszauber excerpt sans voices. Everything is indeed in bloom right now and it's another blue-sky day.

An audience with Siegfried

I'll admit I had my doubts about interviewing Heldentenor Stefan Vinke for the Wagner Society. I'd only heard a touch-and-go tenor solo in Mahler's Eighth at the Proms; I asked the keen young organiser, Henry Kennedy, if I could wait and see until I'd reviewed the Royal Opera Siegfried in the recent revival of Keith Warner's Ring cycle. After all, it would be ungallant and embarrassing to be sitting there with him if I'd written anything adverse.

My doubts were more than banished: this was easily the best Siegfried I've heard after Jerusalem's in Kupfer's Bayreuth Ring. A colleague whispered in my ear at the end of Act One, 'I shouldn't be saying this to another critic, but that was sensational, wasn't it?' - and it was. Though at the beginning of Act Two he was recovering from an allergy attack in the interval, Vinke had all the extraordinary stamina needed to come out sounding fresh as a daisy in the final duet with Nina Stemme's  Brünnhilde- indeed, it's the only time I've heard that with both singers sounding equally good. Talk  photos courtesy of the Wagner Society's Ben Tomlin - I'll spare you the ones of me gesticulating, but I rather like them for once - while the images of the Royal Opera Ring are by Bill Cooper.

Unsurprisingly, given his well-acted characterisation, Vinke turned out to be a supremely intelligent and engaging person. Which leading Wagner singer isn't? Well, both he and Stemme the following week in Stockholm could mention one exception each to the general rule of collegial Wagner singers (though they didn't name names, and I didn't press). But they both agreed that, yes, supportiveness and team spirit were paramount in Wagnerworld.

How I wish this interview had been recorded, since all he had to say was fascinating and often very funny (Wagnerians need a sense of humour too - look at Birgit Nilsson)  It turned out that, though the splendid idea of Siegfried's kissing Mime on the top of the head before rushing out into the forest in Act 1 was Warner's, the likable characterisation was one with which Vinke was in agreement. He certainly doesn't see the young hero as brute or born killer, more wild child who has the intuition and intelligence to learn from his experiences in a way we should find touching.

If a director wants a different view, then he expects to be told why, as he was by Graham Vick, whose ability to listen, think over and return to explain, one way or the other, he very much admires. It was clear he had no respect for Frank Castorf at Bayreuth, who could never come up with a convincing justification for his random ideas. We listened to Vinke in the end of the forging sequence on the Seattle recording, complete with rhythmically accurate hammering - not possible, he said, at Kirill Petrenko's fast tempo in Germany - and he reacted by acting a lot of it out while listening: critical, but not unduly so, of what he'd achieved there. I can't embed it but it's here, and worth a listen.

Vinke loves working with the top Mime of our time, Gerhard Siegel, who's also sung Siegfried, and will listen to his suggestions; at one point. Siegel asked why he was wearing himself out with so much stuff before a big entry, advising him to save himself a bit, which he did.

Conductors: he made an interesting comparison between Antonio Pappano, who marks out key points but allows singers some freedom in between before everything comes back in line, and Kirill Petrenko, who controls more bar by bar, note by note: he prefers the former, but respects both approaches.

Trained in organ studies and choral music, Vinke has a firm favourite in the concert repertoire - Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, which following its heyday when Strauss commended Elgar as 'the first English progressivist' at the 1902 Lower Rhine Festival in Dusseldorf, still meets with resistance in Germany (so do the symphonies; so does Sibelius, so Elgar's in good company). Still on the list? The Emperor in Die Frau ohne Schatten, coming soon, and the time when he can sing Loge, Siegmund and Siegfried in a single Ring cycle (two of the three are imminent). Lively responses to some interesting questions, and then he was off on a rainy Saturday afternoon to indulge his kids in shopping down Neal Street. Great guy.

Three Kings, Three Rhinemaidens

Epiphany today brings Casper, Balthazar and Melchior, though not in the Bach cantata for the day (but here they are in Dürer's Adoration of the Magi anyway),

while on Monday in the first of this term's Opera in Depth course classes we embark on a four-year journey through Wagner's Ring, starting in the depths of the Rhine with Woglinde, Wellgunde and Flosshilde (pictured here by Arthur Rackham teasing Alberich).

Cantata first. This time in 2013, on my first attempted Bach cantatas journey, it was the resplendent BWV 65, 'Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen', decking out the arrival of the kings with the panoply of strings, two oboes, two oboi da caccia and two recorders. Clearly Bach wanted to do something completely different for the following year in Leipzig, 1725. BWV 123, 'Liebster Immanuel, Herzog der Frommen' continues at its heart two deeply expressive arias - as in BWV 65, also for tenor and bass. The tenor's expressively emphatic  refusal to be daunted by the 'cruel journey of the cross' is  underlined by two oboi d'amore (such a different sound from the caccia variety, for inwardness, of course).

I don't for once buy John Eliot Gardiner's description of the bass's 'Lass, o Welt, mich aus Verachtung' as 'one of the loneliest arias Bach ever wrote' - how can it be when the flute hovers above the voice and the continuo line, and the major key prevails? Admittedly the text of the outer sections is bleak, and there's a plaintive cadenza in one of the settings of the word 'Einsamkeit', 'loneliness'. The opening chorus is in the dominating minor, but in a lilting 9/8 with pastoral trills and grace notes for the wind, and the concluding chorale, in another flowing metre, ends piano. Another treasure at the highest level.

So looking forward to my second Ring journey in the 28 years I've been taking an opera appreciation course. Our Rheingold half of term - the second half is devoted to Janacek's From the House of the Dead to tie in with the new Royal Opera production, now conducted by regular Opera in Depth visitor Mark Wigglesworth - links with Vladimir Jurowski's four-year adventure at the Royal Festival Hall. Das Rheingold is on 27 January; predictably, tickets are like gold dust. Singing Alberich for the first time is Robert Hayward, who came to the Frontline Club at the end of last term to talk to us not only about his Wagner roles but also - since we had just brought it to an end after five weeks which confirmed for me that it's even more astounding than I used to think - about Musorgsky's Khovanshchina.

Last autumn Robert sang the role of Ivan Khovansky in the revival of David Poutney's Welsh National Opera production (pictured above by Clive Barda for WNO shortly before the prince-in-decline is assassinated. He was also very nearly in the superlative Prom performance conducted, and never better, by Semyon Bychkov).

Robert also portrayed the Walküre Wotan in Opera North's semi-staged Ring, as involved and moving a performance of that killer role as any I've seen.

He says it will be interesting to find the humanity in Alberich, as he has also done with Ivan Khovansky and Scarpia, a role which he says could happily sing in three runs a year for total contentment.

Here he is with me at the Frontline - should have got a student to snap us spontaneously while we were in conversation. But you get the idea, that he's a very affable, modest and down-to-earth person. Extraordinary that he started out as a counter-tenor - he is going lower, which is to say higher, by the year.

You can see him in the Barbican performance of Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle with Rinat Shaham and the National Youth Orchestra conducted by Mark Elder tomorrow night. Here's what Robert Beale thought of yesterday evening's Manchester performance on The Arts Desk. Meanwhile, if you're willing or able to come to this term's Opera in Depth, just leave me a message here with your email - I won't publish it but I promise to respond. Further details here in The Wagnerian (my own flyer is rather different).

UPDATE (7/01) - the first Sunday after Epiphany, its subject Christ lost and found by his parents in the temple (cue another Dürer above) follows directly on its heels this year, so here we are with the next in line to the one which moved me so much - the (by contrast) three-quarters bright BWV 124, 'Meinen Jesum laß ich nicht' (it was performed on 7 January in 1725, too). I find it intriguing that Bach should carry over one oboe d'amore from BWV 123, because the context is wholly joyful this time - you'd have thought he'd want a straight oboe, but maybe this exquisite variety creates an extra sense of intimacy against the horn-doubled cantus firmus of the opening chorus (Rilling's oboists, as I've already mentioned, are superlative). The pain comes in the tenor's 'Und wenn der harte Todesschlag', so very operatic with the jabbing repeated notes of the strings to which the oboe d'amore and the voice respond. Operatic, too, is the bass recitative, with its chromatics and it run on the word 'Lauf'. The soprano/alto duet which follows is sheer dancing delight, albeit with only continuo complement. Delicious, of course, from Arleen Auger and Helen Watts - what a joy these soloists are on the Rilling set.

Around Wagner in Budapest

Seven full days in Budapest, six of them given over to Wagner starting (with the exception of Das Rheingold) at 4pm: it's been a lot to digest and while I've posted about the full Ring + Rienzi + Parsifal experience on The Arts Desk and on the blog about a day up the Danube by train and back again by boat, I felt I ought to cover the peripherals around the musical experience to be followed by a final fling on the animals in the two city zoos.

Let this be a retrospective diary of sorts, then, starting with 15/6, arriving with only an hour or so to spare before the 6pm start of Das Rheingold in the evening - a beautiful, balmy one, as you can see in the picture taken from the balcony of the Müpa concert complex after Rheingold looking out on the ziggurat which seems to have sprung up at the same time as the halls, no-one seems to know quite why, and the Danube looking north towards the Buda hills. And let me introduce you to the American couple who put on a show of their own at all six performances.

Apparently they travel the world to see Wagner, being something of a Bayreuth fixture, and while many folk I spoke to tutted at their show-offiness, I thought their ritual walkabout before and during the intervals of each opera added a bit of extra theatre. You'll gradually note that each day brought forth a new colour in design, though since I wasn't going to behave like a paparazzo, what you mostly won't see is that he wears colours to match her dress, hat and parasol somewhere in his apparel.

We stayed for the duration of the Ring in an apartment kindly loaned by J's friend Marie-France, Belgian Ambassador living in a very done-up old building on the north-east side of Buda's Castle Hill. We got back late after Rheingold, having failed to find an appropriate eatery open near to the Residency, but we did sit on the terrace drinking champagne with Marie-France into the small hours. On getting off the No. 2 tram to cross the Chain Bridge, we'd had a splendid post-Valhalla encore from a man on the musical glasses: this is the reprise of his Khachaturian Sabre Dance.

On 16/6, Walküre day, late rising meant a leisurely breakfast at the excellent Coyote Cafe near  Batthyány Square, then a climb up the nearest steps past a fine neo-Gothic/Medieval mansion

and down again

via a park below the walls with one of several old Budapesters sleeping quite happily in the company of pigeons

to the northern end of the citadel. I noted the Museum of Musical Instruments with its Bartók Archive but never got back to visit either that or Bartok's house out at the Buda Hills (saved up for a future visit; there were too many options and not enough time).

A storm was about to break

so we took refuge under the awning of the nearby Hungarian Kitchen and had an average lunch in pleasant surroundings,  watching the downpour

as well as the lady opposite inspecting it from her first-floor window.

and afterwards looking at the decoration on neighbouring buildings in the street, modern like the one opposite and otherwise of varying antiquity.

It has to be remembered that the Buda Hill, naturally a strategic point, has been so overrun by various hordes and wiped out at various times that very little of the original fabric remains. And now Orbán in his vulgarity is making things worse around the Royal Palace. These bullet-holes are a reminder of the storming of Buda by the Russians before the end of World War Two.

Our setting off for Müpa on the three afternoons of the main Ring operas saw us weave our way through the local streets down to the riverside - this is a shot from the next, sunnier, hotter day -

cross the Chain Bridge and take the No. 2 tram to the halls - always a lively mix of locals and Ring-goers. I noticed on one return journey especially how lively and expressive the Budapesters are in public places, a bit like the Neapolitans (who in turn struck us as so vivacious alongside the sober Romans on our first visit to the great southern cornucopia-city).

Arrival in good time meant one of those delicious lemonades laden with chopped-up fruits in which the Hungarians excel - at Müpa I always had one with cherry syrup; since J won't permit a shot of the ritual since he's in it, I have to settle for a look at the diverse crowds gathering.

Something I either missed before Rheingold or which only happened in the three-acters, was the Bayreuth-style brass fanfares on themes from the Ring, played on escalators, the balcony where we often sat, and in the main foyer. Here's the Volsung call to action, first of more little films with which I'll plague you in this post.

Below is The Couple nicely framing love's young dream, typically attractive Budapesters who give you an idea of how pleasantly mixed the audiences were (see it as a homage to Weegee but with youth replacing poverty). Lots of Brits and Americans - so a bad idea to give supertitles in Hungarian and German only - but very many Hungarians. I'm told a good seat for the whole tetralogy is 250 euros, which I'd gladly have paid for the best Wagner imaginable - indeed, this Ring means I don't need to see another in its entirety for another 10 or 20 years.

And now, here's the second interval summons of the day, the annunciation of death .

Shortly before it, I noticed the wild skies, the mix of sun and rain,

and rushed to the other side of the hall where on the north-facing balcony I found what I was looking for.

The second of those images is even more pertinent than anyone who hasn't seen the always imaginative visuals for Fischer's concert staging can imagine: up in Valhalla in the gods' scenes of Rheingold, we see just such a crane, against a clear blue sky actually, and after a glimpse of the building itself - which must have been new when the film was made 10 years ago - there's a rainbow too, of course.

Not sure why I don't have a film of the fanfare to the third act, just one more shot of the dramatic massing of clouds at sunset.

17/6, Siegfried day: sunny but windy and chilly in the shade. As it was the weekend Marie-France was at liberty. So, too, was her adorable Alsatian Király ('king' in Hungarian), a rescue dog who was in a terrible state when he first came to the German Embassy but is now a sleek soppy who leaps all over you. His favourite toy is a battered plastic watering can.

We had only to walk five minutes up some of the steps and along to breakfast with our adored and brilliant friend Ildikó, who's made a life back in Hungary after her days as cultural diplomat in London, a city she loves and a post which suited her - but it wouldn't under the new regime. She now works for an animation company, independent of the government. Her breakfast could hardly have been more sumptuous,

and the views from her balcony rather wonderful - you can just see the Parliament Building in the distance here.

Our stroll back to the Embassy took us down more steps further along, with street scene duly adjusted,

back past a splendid Baroque fountain with two sides to the statue

and up along Donáti Utca, where the neighbouring mansion is even more splendid.

This Saturday was fatigue day - it's tough on the spectator not having two days' grace between the three big Ring operas - so we napped until it was time to make our usual way to Müpa. And there, as we sipped our lemonades, was The Couple, in blue this time.

I'll give you the three fanfares in close succession this time.

One more sunset shot between Acts 2 and 3, looking towards the Buda Hills.

18/6, Götterdämmerung day. I'd noticed a Bach-linked service at the Evangelical Church on Castle Hill, so appropriately in Luther anniversary year, I found myself singing along to one of his chorales - in Hungarian, thanks to the hymn-book.

The pastor set up the organ and choral numbers to come, presumably telling us that the organ had been restored and that these were old and new pipes.

The congregation sang very lustily, backed up by the choir in the organ gallery (general shot - obviously they're not singing at this point).

What a balance to the decadence of Wagner's endgame to come. As I had time before meeting Ildikó, Marie-France and J for lunch over the river, I did the touristic thing of sitting with a lemonade opposite the much-restored cathedral, which I remember disappointed me in its Victorianness on my first visit in 1983, so I didn't go in. At least the restoration gives the best possible tower to the skyline.

Then down past a very overwrought Art Nouveau building

to Ildikó's favourite cafe-restaurant, Gerlóczy , facing a quiet triangle with a statue in the heart of Pest. Not sure why she's looking so startled here, but I loved the white outfit with the red adornment.

Then along the streets with the big buildings to Ildikó's car

with only just enough time to catch The Couple - she's going up in flames ready for the Immolation -

before the first fanfare, for the Dawn Duet, which turned out to be identical to the third so you're only going to get it once (or rather twice, from the balcony - three times was for indoors).

During the first interval, Marcell Németh of Müpa kindly arranged for me to meet Peter Eötvös, whose hand I wanted to shake after the huge impact of his Halleluja - Oratorium Balbulum last November. I also wanted to say how much it had meant to discover the novels of his good, and sadly late, friend Péter Esterházy, who wrote the wonderful Halleluja libretto. 'I will tell him,' he responded with what turned out to be characteristic wit. 

He was here for the cycle - first time since Chéreau's in Bayreuth - and he thought he was grasping for the first time the full richness of the score, as well as understanding the text better thanks to the Hungarian supertitles (his German, incidentally, is good). We spoke about the incredible acoustics; he thinks the orchestra sounds marginally better in the pit which was part of the original design rather than on the platform. Had I not spoken to him, I might not have known that he's going to be conducting his Senza Sangue in a double bill with Bluebeard's Castle in, of all places, the Hackney Empire (which recently played host to a Hungarian Magic Flute). Such a nice man, though the music might teach you to be a bit afraid. Anyway, here's the bridal fanfare just caught at the end of the first interval.

I'm not a fan of backstage glad-handing unless the event has been overwhelmingly good. This certainly was, and it seemed churlish not to congratulate Iréne Theorin not just on her birthday but also for singing her first Brünnhildes on consecutive nights. As I wrote on The Arts Desk, she seemed as fresh as a daisy after a tireless final stint - and the most ferocious Act Two I think I'll ever witness in a Ring. In the absence of decent publicity pics - Müpa has not been great on that front, even for production images of the whole - here's a rather dark shot of the diva with her flowers.

She made a robust speech, Fischer a touching one, and we further chatted outside her dressing room, which the adoring management had strewn with rose petals; it smelled heavenly.

Among the singers we got to chat with the terrifying Hagen, Rúni Brattaberg from the Faroe Islands, a pal of our good friend and fellow-bass Peter Rose and a very genial chap (what a battle of Nordic giants this Götterdämmerung was). Here he is with Ildikó.

That seemed like a good place to leave friends and prepare for the next stint. J was leaving the next afternoon, so we spent a blissful morning on 19/7, Rienzi day, taking it easy on Margit (Margaret) Island, a wonderful oasis for the Budapesters. I'll return there for my zoo pics entry, as there was a delightful little one with nesting storks in the middle of the park. For now, let's leave it at the Parliament seen through one of the lime trees which line the embankment, the blossom smelling heavenly in June,

and from the Margit Bridge.

In the absence of fanfares for the Rienzi performance - with another Hungarian orchestra, neatly cut down to three hours, though I'd have liked to hear the music for the 'pantomime' about Lucretia - I only have one token shot from the day, of our Couple who were still here for the last two operas.

20/7 was Frei-tag, which I've already chronicled, so on to 21/7, Parsifal day. I finally managed to meet up with young Eszter, whom of course I also saw in November at a lovely tea-house she recommended and who'd stayed with us when applying to music colleges here; she got a place at the Guildhall but not a grant. Now she's at the Liszt Academy, being worked to the bone and having got a small stipend for coming top in all her subjects, but she wants to try again for London. We had lemonades and I a bite to eat - it was too hot for Eszter - opposite the Academy

where I'm pleased to see the European Union flag flying alongside the Hungarian one by the statue of Liszt

and I'm sure Sir Georg Solti, whose statue stands alongside the Academy, would approve of that.

I love the little down-a-few-steps stations and the  two-carriage metro trains which ply the first line to be built in Budapest, taking you up to the Liszt Academy and beyond to the big park with the museums and the zoo (Thursday morning's excursion).

Then it was a last tram-journey back to Müpa. The Couple dressed quite restrainedly for this one. I do have a pic of them in the crowd, but best that you catch them to the right as the brass play the 'Dresden Amen' before Act 1 of Parsifal. Followed, inevitably, by the other two, suiting the format to perfection.

I passed on the post-show hubbub backstage this time, but took the liberty of snapping the curtain call when the orchestral musicians appeared on stage - a nice touch that I've also seen Pappano initiate. 

Here's Ádám with his single rose, musicians to his right and Vienna Boys to his left. 

And the great Violeta Urmana with Klingsor, male chorus, more instrumentalists and Flower Maidens.

So that completes the Wagner stint (though I had a wonderful, if rushed, morning after prior to departure). Let's end as we began, with a sunset shot, this time a week later.