Opening the shrine, then down into the Rhine

Ten glorious Wednesday afternoons on the Wagner opera that always leaves me feeling whole have flown by, dovelike. I'll confess that musically I can do without the final transfiguration; it doesn't really take us any further, and unless you have a production where Parsifal moves on, feels a bit 'here we go again' in the non-action, too. But tears always come to my eyes in the Good Friday Magic music, whether in the opera or in the concert. It took the visit of John Tomlinson to drive home how beautiful and unusual the words are. The gist is that humans may look to God, but nature looks to humans to treat it kindly. Wagner's ecological thoughts, which permeate the Ring, chime so strongly with us today.

The oboe solo gave me my first big emotion a day or so after the big operation in July - my wonderful students Janet and Ian Szymanski sent me a Jacquie Lawson card which begins right there: total surprise. It starts above at 41m45s in what remains my favourite recording of Parsifal since I undertook to listen to every one from start to finish for BBC Radio 3's Building a Library. Kurt Moll and James King sing, where necessary, with such tenderness. You may well want to listen to the whole act, and indeed the complete recording is up on YouTube - it's otherwise too expensive to buy second-hand as a CD set. 

Our more recent visitors could not have been more generous in their time or human warmth. Linda Esther Gray (two below me in the second from right row vertical-wise pictured above - click on the image to make it bigger) not only went back to the notes she'd taken when working with Reginald Goodall for the Welsh National Opera Parsifal - our loss that she felt it wasn't right to participate in the EMI recording - but also provided fresh tales which don't feature in her autobiography (which she intends to update, and I'm cheering her on, will help where I can). One of my American students asked her about the Dallas Walkure - preserved in not at all bad sound here on YouTube - 

and we got the extraordinary history of a visit to one of the generous wealthy Friends of the Dallas Opera, who greeted her with 'oh gee, it's so good to have you. Pavarotti was here last week and when he went away the poodle was dead.' 'I said to her, what are you talking about? And she said, "well, he didn't come at the beginning, he came about 2 o'clock in the morning, and sat down in a chair, and when he left, the poodle was dead." He thought it was a cushion. This is absolutely true, I've just remembered it...I told the Friends, now what you all need to remember is that my aria in Act One begins "Du bist der Lenz", and at the end of it you've all got to clap. They thought I was being serious - it had in fact got very serious - and the President of the opera house had to stand up and say, "now, Linda has a very strange sense of humour - don't clap" '. It's a treasurable two hours. And of course there was plenty of time for seriousness. Here are a few of us, including Linda, listening to Astrid Varnay and reacting.

John Tom (second from right, secon row down - again, click to enlarge) was equally generous with his time, and voice - he sang a great deal of Gurnemanz's part in Act Three for us. 

His anecdotes included one about being summoned by Barenboim to step in as Gurnemanz in Vienna the day after he'd sung Hans Sachs at the Royal Opera = 'and when Daniel asks, you don't refuse'. At Vienna Airport there was a police car on the runway, lights flashing. They drove to the Opera House with the siren goinga. They arrived at the stage door 20 minutes before curtain-up. He hadn't ever sung Gurnemanz in this Vienna production. It's a role he could still do at 77, but more physically demanding ones with six-week rehearsal periods, obviously not - 'my legs won't let me'.

Another phenomenon, and so generous with his visits: he'll be back to discuss the Rheingold Wotan now that we've started Opera in Depth Mondays in the depths of the river, and we'll see him in the Bayreuth Kupfer production (pictured above), the greatest experience of his life. After the talk, we watched him in Kupfer's Berlin Parsifal, which followed on almost immediately from the last year of that Bayreuth Ring; so meaningful in every line, and moving to tears (pictured below with Waltraud Meier and Poul Elming). 

Other guests are lining up this term: Christopher Purves, who's sung the Rheingold Alberich twice recently, in Zurich and at the Royal Opera (so much to ask him), and, when we move on to Iolanthe, conductor Chris Hopkins and a return visitor, John Savournin, who's promised to gather other singers from Cal McCrystal's funny and beautiful ENO production. 

Mahler Part Two has kicked off, and so far I've asked Catherine Larsen-Maguire, who pulled off a triumph in the Seventh Symphony with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland (one of our Arts Desk folk in the north raved about it; rehearsal pictured above by Ryan Buchanan), and Edward Gardner, who has elected to talk about Das Lied von der Erde. Rich times ahead.

Zooming Das Rheingold, Iolanthe and Jephtha

The summer course on Parsifal in association with the Wagner Society of Scotland won't have quite ended when I descend to the bottom of the Rhine for my Autumn term Opera in Depth Zoom course on 9 October. But thanks to Paul Schofield's excellent book The Redeemer Reborn, proposing Parsifal as 'the fifth opera of Wagner's Ring', I feel halfway back in the world of the tetralogy already. Scholfield's tenet is fortunately merely a peg on which to hang his perceptions about the links between Wotan and Amfortas, Siegfried and Parsifal, Brünnhilde and Kundry, Alberich and Klingsor. 

A practisiing Buddhist, Schofield is plausible on how intensely Wagner studied the religion at the time when he was embarking on an eastern version of the Parsifal theme, Die Sieger - and I'm grateful to him for fuller outlines on that. In fact, all Wagner operas connect, from the redeemable curse for blasphemy shared by the Dutchman and Kundry, the parallels between Tannhäuser's Venusberg and Klingsor's realm, onwards, and while the reincarnation idea is interesting, it's not the most potent aspect of the book, which is beautifully and clearly written. As usual in most studes of Wagner, there's nothing about the music of this infinitely rich swansong- though Schofield proves himself capable of writing about it in his description of what happens at the end of Götterdämmerung, but as far as it goes it's provided good food for thought. The comparisons between different mythologies are especially enlightening.

We had the most marvellous Kundry/Act 2 class with Linda Esther Gray, but I'll write about that in a separare post. John Tomlinson, a generous supporter of the courses, will be coming to talk about Gurnemanz next week, and we'll watch part of Act 3 with him in Harry Kupfer's production. Meanwhile, Barrie Kosky's Rheingold has offered plenty of food for discussion. My review of it is here, and I'll add another of Monika Rittershaus's images. This one is of Sean Panikkar's handsome Loge with his toad-in-a-bag, having tricked Alberich in Nibelheim.

Though I don't think all the ideas work, the musical-dramatic fusion between singer-actors and orchestra, thanks to Pappano, is absolutely remarkable and minimised the discomfort I had sitting on my special cushion for over two and a half hours. I used to like Rheingold least of the four Ring operas, but I've come to treasure its modernity, its satire, its infinite possibilities for staging. Some folk have already complained that I go on to more Gilbert and Sullivan - some didn't get it even after passionate pleading for The Yeomen of the Guard in two classes - but Arthur certainly knew his Richard, and like all good parodists, he loves what he spoofs so brilliantly. Serse/Xerxes made me fall more in love with Handel, so I'm happy to spend three Mondays on Jephtha. Once again, all details here (click to enlarge and contact me if you want to sign up). 

ENO Xerxes, Class of '85

The wonderful Jean Rigby (on the right top in the above Zoom class, with Ann Murray top left and Christopher Robson bottom right) played her part, back when I was running my five classes on Britten's Albert Herring, getting others to come along who'd been in the immortal Glyndebourne production directed by Peter Hall. So we had, not all at the same time but all with so much to say, Nancy (Jean), Sid (Alan Opie), Albert (John Graham Hall, so funny), Mr Upfold (Alexander Oliver, ditto) and Florence Pike (Felicity Palmer, another hoot). I think that counts as some sort of historical reunion - and of course all concerned said it was among their favourite operatic experience of a lifetime. 

With Serse, I'd originally hoped that we might reassemble some of the stars of the new English Concert recording following on from an electrifying live performance. It's become my Desert Island Handel. Emily D'Angelo, Lucy Crowe and Paula Murrihy are megastars, but the first two very kindly told me they were busy (Emily on a new Handel production, Lucy on end-of-term stuff with her kids), while Paula I'd already prevailed upon to talk Octavian just before the Irish National Opera Rosenkavalier, along with conductor Fergus Sheil (and what a triumph that turned out to be). In the end Harry Bicket, whose skill is total in entwining orchestra with voices and who was working on a new production of Pelléas et Mélisande in Santa Fe, came along for a much-appreciated ten minutes at the beginning of one class. Before I move on, tell me if you know a more fiery piece of Handel than D'Angelo singing 'Crude Furie' (there is an equal, below, from La Murray, but can you get better than either?)

Get this recording: it's superlative in every way. 

Then we hit another bullseye - not only Jean, who'd played Amastre, Xerxe's discarded lover disguised as a man, in the groundbreaking ENO Xerxes directed by Nicholas Hytner, but also Christopher Robson, the Arsamene - and, wonder of wonders, the great Ann Murray, thanks to an Irish friend who knew her well, Joe Brennan.

She turned out to have as wicked a sense of humour as La Palmer, and had us all in stitches with candid reminiscences (not least about Charles Mackerras, who of course was never the easiest conductor to work with, but rightly a perfectionist). Yes, it was history: the production which marked the start of the Handel opera revival. It's been revived frequently and would still work now. The whole Channel 4 film is up on YouTube, but horribly distorted (I picked up a second-hand DVD). Three clips are, I hope, to the point. In the first Jean's major solos as Amastre have been stitched together.

The second has a duet everyone remembers - and not just because duets are rare in Handel operas, more because the English translation helped to make it such fun (the whole thing works in English, I think): Robson's Arsamene in a lovers' spat with the wonderful Valerie Masterson's Romilda.

And finally, the English version of 'Crude furie' from Murray. Piquant that the subtitles are the Italian original. Special visual rewards here, as always thanks to Hytner and the commitment of his singers. Ticks all boxes as a Great Operatic Performance.

What miracles of substance and design the ENO programmes were in those days. I still miss the chameleonic and brilliant Nick John, whose untimely sudden death was a shock to all of us. This is the cover of my first Xerxes programme - I caught it for the first time in the 1988 revival, which included the above three singers.

Inside, style and useful detail were one.

Now three weeks into my summer Wagner course on Zoom, and enthralled as ever by the peculiar world of Parsifal, I dug out my ENO programme from 1986. The articles and quotations within are numerous and useful even now. I confess to some shame in not remembering more about it than I do, since Goodall was conducting (I wasn't a fan in those days of his extended lengths) and - will you look at this insert, placed to the right of the programme cover. Jerusalem singing in German to an otherwise English cast was parallel to an earlier experience I had at the Royal Opera, when Rita Hunter sang the Trovatore Leonora in English to Carlo Bergonzi's very Italian Manrico ('what are you saying? I cannot understand you').

Only ten two-hour-plus Zoom classes will do for Parsifal, especially as I have to make way for guests. John Tomlinson will return towards the end, when we go back to his Gurnemanz in the Kupfer production, but already in the second class we had sense and inspiration from Andrew Gourlay, whom I saw in action live for the first time in a terrific complete Firebird score with the National Youth Orchestra. He's made a very careful selection of music to form a suite, with minimum interference and hardly any filling-in of vocal lines. Here he is top right, and this time I've done a close-up in case it's too difficult to make him out (I have 60 students and even though not all can make it live, we're still on two screens).

You can watch Andrew conduct the LPO in the whole suite here on YouTube, though I heartily recommend the Orchid CD:

Still my favourite performance of the Prelude is Bruno Walter's.

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.

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.