To the end of the world with Wagner

Just over three weeks ago, my Siegfried class on Zoom left the hero and Brünnhilde about to make passionate love on the mountaintop. Just after Wotan-as-Wanderer took his leave a couple of weeks early, John Tomlinson came along to talk especially about the unforgettable experience of working with the late, great Harry Kupfer on the last truly first-rate Bayreuth Ring (I haven't been since - I was so lucky to see that one - but I have it on the authority of all top Wagnerians that what I state is true). Very generous with his time, his tributes to his fellow singers and above all how there's no room for uncollegiality when you're dealing with such superhuman demands - he was quite damning about the world of Italian opera to work in by comparison.

Now we face das Ende, aka Götterdämmerung, The Twilight of the Gods. and it's a daunting task: for this longest opera in the tetralogy, probably 10 two-hour sessions on Monday afternoons won't be enough, so I'll have to be especially careful with the time. I'm delighted that the Wagner Society of Scotland, which 'commissioned' the Zoom Siegfried since for obvious reasons I couldn't make my third annual visit to Gartmore House in the gorgeous Trossachs for a full-on extended weekend of 11 lectures, has members who want to continue: that means that if Gartmore is 'on' next September, we'll move on to Tristan und Isolde. The morning mists from last September up there - in an extraordinary late summer heatwave - seem appropriate for when we reach the Dawn Duet in the second class.

And my profound thanks to the Wagner Society of London, which forwarded my flyer and has given me a considerable upturn in numbers which were already rather good. Below is the pdf - for details in a readable size, click on it to enlarge. And email me to enrol, if you like the look of it. The beauty of Zoom is that you don't have to be present 'live' - I can send out video and/or audio recordings after the event.

Anselm Kiefer's response to Wagner (two of his massive canvases reproduced above) is much on my mind, as I'm delighted to see that Alex Ross devotes a few pages to him towards the end of his magnificent cultural history from the composer's time to the present day, Wagnermania. I've just reviewed it for the BBC Music Magazine, but 180 words weren't enough to give much chapter and verse, so here are a few things that especially struck me. All are related to the paradoxes of Wagner and his legacy, which of course survived the Twilight of the Nazis to rebound more vitally and ambivalently than ever. 

 In 1924 the Kirsteins of Boston took advantage of Bayreuth's first season after the First World War. They were advised by staff at the hotel where they had reservations to go and stay with a 'co-religionist', and they saw nasty displays of 'patriotism', Yet teenaged Lincoln (pictured above somewhat later) was so impressed by this world 'profoundly dedicated to the realization of the unreal' that more than two decades later he co-founded what would become the New York City Ballet with George Balanchine. 

In 1936 the Afro-American sociologist, writer and civil rights activist W E B Du Bois visited Bayreuth. The date is extraordinary, since Hitler had already begun his commandeering of the Wagner shrine. Du Bois discovered that German antisemitism 'surpasses in vindictive cruelty and public insult anything I have ever seen; and I have seen much'. Yet at the same time he could stay where he wanted and be waited on. The contradictions are merely parallel to those in Wagner and his works. As for anyone thinking that Wieland Wagner broke the mould in 1961 by casting Grace Bumbry as the first 'black Venus' in Tannhäuser, Luranah Aldridge - by all accounts an impressive, true contralto Erda, was chosen by Cosima Wagner to sing one of the Valkyries at Bayreuth in 1895 (illness intervened).

Ross also reminds us that in The Great Dictator, released in 1940, Chaplin uses the music of Wagner's Act 1 Prelude to Lohengrin twice:  with negative connotations as background to an hysterical send-up of Hitler, and in the great peroration to 'a new world, a kindlier world' towards the end of the film. As I wrote in the review, Wagner will always be bigger than any homages, denigrations or misappropriations can portray him.

Wagnerabend in Belgrave Square

They do these kind of events very well, the Germans, and returning to the ambassador's residence was bound to be a pleasure. Especially as the programme had been arranged by the organisers of the Wagner 200 events this year, Mark Eynon and top Wagner expert Barry Millington (my former editor at the BBC Music Magazine, also the one who was kind enough to kickstart my Prokofiev book, pictured above with Sue Bullock and her husband Richard Berkeley-Steele. Georg Boomgaarden, the genial German ambassador, is seen between two of the heads).

What kind of Wagner fare can you serve up in an intimate space? They managed a good mix. La (or should that be Die?) Bullock launched stylishly with top pianist Llŷr Williams in the Tannhäuser greeting, 'Dich, teure Halle'. Janice Watson sang two of the Wesendonck Lieder (actually the two I find least interesting, but they were well done all the same). Here are the four artists in one of two official photos; the shots of the trio at the top and of Sir John Tomlinson in conversation with Barry are mine.

The coup was to bring the Bullock-Berkeley-Steeles together in the Dawn Duet from Götterdämmerung. Williams somehow managed to conjure an orchestra in the sunrise, and in came the two, each standing naturally and lovingly while the other sang. I'd forgotten what point SB brings to the German text, all the better in a small room. She's a fabulous recitalist: her Crear Classics disc of the Wesendoncks, Britten's The Poet's Echo and Prokofiev's Five Akhmatova Poems with contrasting flavours of Strauss, Quilter and Rorem is outstanding (it was our Vocal/Choral disc of the month in the BBC Music Magazine's March 2007 issue) .

Apparently another CD of songs with Malcolm Martineau is due for release shortly; and she's to be heard in recital at the Wigmore on 22 March.

To round off the little homage, Williams made effortless work of the Tristan Liebestod in Liszt's insane transcription (all those tremolos!). Eynon gave a felicitous speech, and didn't need to sell the highlights of the forthcoming festival to me: I'll be going to Kings Place to hear Watson's song recital and Williams's presentation of Wagner piano pieces alongside other Liszt transcriptions.

That greatest Wotan of the 1990s, Sir John Tomlinson, was there in the audience at the ambassador's residence, wrapped up in the music; he'll be presenting a read-through of the entire Ring libretto in the British Library on 9 June (date now confirmed thanks to Barry's message below). Dame Gwyneth, alas, couldn't make it, though she'll be masterclassing as part of the festival; now there's a diva I want to meet. The programme of events so far confirmed is on the Wagner 200 website here. Millington and SJT discussing plans below.

The whole event was entirely genial; the ambassador (to the right of Berkeley-Steele, ie to his left, in the photo below) and his wife are very cultured folk - not always the case in that world - and J likes them very much indeed. Sue Bullock has always struck me as completely natural in person (we first met her at pianist Phillip Thomas's 50th birthday party). I managed to have a chat with RBS about Phyllida Lloyd's English National Opera production of Götterdämmerung in which he sang Siegfried: absolutely the best staging of that particular opera I've ever seen, even if I had my doubts about the others (good in parts). Ardent Wagnerians apparently felt the same - one went to see it six times - and we all lament the fact the cycle never had another chance.

Meanwhile, roll on the festivities in the round. My priority is to get to see Die Feen as done in concert by Chelsea Opera, though sadly a Sussex Das Liebesverbot later in the year has bitten the dust. Collectors can tick off a few gaps in the Wagner list, though to be honest there aren't that many worth bothering about.

The following Monday, the Italians held a parallel tribute to Verdi at their ambassador's very beautiful residence in Berkeley Square. This turned out to be an actor reading excerpts from Verdi's letters and memoirs translated by Gaia Servadio and Royal Opera chorus master Renato Balsadonna playing excerpts from Nabucco, La Traviata, Aida and Otello on the piano. Interesting enough, but we missed la voce cantata.