Harp swirls for Czech Music Zoom class 1

My Opera in Depth course this term - half devoted to Janáček's Jenůfa, the other to Martinů's Julietta - had already been under way for three weeks before I launched the Thursday class, a more general survey of a genuinely Czech music from Smetana through to Martinů, with a preludial look at 18th and early 19th century works by Bohemian composers in the European lingua franca of the time. 

The main point, though, was to reach the epic at the heart of Czech musical experience, Smetana's Má vlast, which launches every Prague Spring Festival on the exact anniversary of this founding father''s death. And I was lucky to know the Czech Philharmonic's principal harpist since 2005, the vivacious Jana Boušková, who with her colleague Barbara Pazourová usually kicks off the stirring first symphonic poem in a magnificent sequence, 'Vyšehrad', capturing the essence of the proud castle which stands above the River Vltava.

Jana accepted the invitation without hestitation. I'd become friendly with her at Paavo Järvi's Pärnu Music Festival, the best in the world for connecting with musical hearts and souls; and indeed she was invited there because she'd played in the Má vlast which Paavo conducted in the 2016 Spring Festival.

That year Jana and Barbara played the opening statements of the work's main theme, plus cadenzas, together; as it's written in the score, the second harp plays the melody and the first elaborates. Jana has actually played alongside five of her students in a Prague Conservatoire opener conducted by the late, great Jiří Bělohlávek. The one I had to hand to show the class was with a mere five harpists (students minus Jana). 

Another beauty of our introductory session was that I moved on to the most celebrated of the six symphonic poems, 'Vltava' (still better known outside Czechia as 'The Moldau' - but in the transcription made by the harpist and contemporary of Smetana Hanuš Trneček, in Jana's performance at a Czech Philharmonic fundraiser in the Rudolfinum during the first Covid spare, to help fund Prague hospitals (the number you see on the top right is the figure in Czech korunas, which shot up throughout).On the CD featured up top, Jana has referred to Trneček's work, but the transcriptions of the first three symphonic poems and of the rest of the works on a superb disc are her own.

The students warmed immediately to Jana - how could anyone not? - and there was much emotional discussion of the high level of musical education and literacy in that remarkable country. It was also vital, when Jana grew up, to have music as the world you inhabited when life under the Soviets was not so good - and to think of touring to the unimaginable rest of Europe or America as a top player, as her mother did (her father was a flautist in the Czech Philharmonic, so the couple played beautiful Mozart, inter alia, together). If you click to enlarge the image, Jana isn't difficult to spot - she has the Prague Old Town skyline behind her.

Today we move on to the Hussite chorale used in the last two symphonic poems of Má vlast, 'Tabor' and Blanik', as well as in crucial works by Dvořák (Hussite Overture), Suk (Prague) and Karel Husa (Music for Prague 1968). I'm still mapping out what the other eight classes will bring, though I'll divide fairly equally between 19th and 20th centuries, and the four greats, as depicted in this postcard of which I'm so fond, will have the lion's share.

The 10-week course on Wagner's Tristan und Isolde ended the week before we started this one. We had a virtual post-course drinks on the Friday, to which Dame Anne Evans was able to return, having been voiceless in the final class. Many laughs were had by the small but very vocal group on that evening  (Annie second from left in the bottom row).

I was also  delighted to record a Tristan chat with Robin Ticciati on the heels of his run at Glyndebourne, concluded with an orchestrally unforgettable Proms performance.

Equally thoughtful (and the other great British conductor as far as I'm concerned) was Mark Wigglesworth on Jenůfa, squeezing in the time to speak during work with the BBC Philharmonic in Salford (hence the dull hotel room background).

Just recorded another Jenůfa conversation, this time with tenor Nicky Spence, which I hope to air on Monday. Indebted to Mark for suggesting Nicky would make an excellent guest when I was running the course at the Frontline Club. As he did, and I love the generosity of all these exceptional artists, true Menschen all - that goes for Jana and Anne every inch as much as the men. Further guests, TBC, will materialise on the Czech music course anon. Not too late to join - just comment with your email here; I won't print but I promise to respond.

Strauss conducting Tristan

'Now I’ve conducted Tristan for the first time, and it was the most wonderful day of my life'. I used the same quotation - the 27-year-old Richard Strauss to Wagner's widow Cosima, on 17 January 1892 - to introduce my review of the Glyndebourne performance at the Proms earlier this week, because I surmised Robin Ticciati felt that way on conducting his first Wagner opera for the first time too.The above photos were sent, signed, from Weimar to fellow-composer Humperdinck, whose Hänsel und Gretel Strauss premiered in that beautiful town in 1893. 

Tristan und Isolde at Weimar starred Strauss's future bride, Pauline de Ahna (also a favoured Elisabeth at Bayreuth) and his pupil Heinrich Zeller, for whom he wrote the insanely taxing role of Guntram in his hyper-Wagnerian first opera. There were no cuts - rare then, and still not so common now (the Aix production conducted by Rattle this year has a whopping one in the dialectics of night and day, love and death, the lovers indulge in before the Liebesnacht proper gets going. I think we should hear it all - there are no commonplace bars in Tristan). 

We have one precious sound-document of how Strauss approached this most elusive of all great masterpieces: a recording of the Prelude made in 1928 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (the best sound is on the DG pressing, but that's not downloadable here).

Yes, it's fastish - difficult to compare timings with other Preludes because there's a 'concert ending' which takes us to the Liebestod music - but the rubato, the ebb and flow, are masterly and above all human. That's the difficulty for the conductor to decide: human or oceanic? Others prefer slower tempi, surprisingly so Toscanini (but then remember that the biggest discrepancy in Parsifal Act Ones at Bayreuth was between Strauss and Toscanini, who took half an hour longer...). In my first Opera in Depth class on Tristan und Isolde, I played both the Strauss and this NBC recording.

All the students who spoke preferred the Strauss; I was delighted. Though it's very much a matter of choice and temperament, when Wagner only writes 'Langsam' ('slow') at the start. Conductors would be wise to observe his tempo fluctuations thereafter. Anyway, in the second class, I played the way to the climax in performances by Stokowski (very volatile, masterfully conducted, and played by the Philadelphia Orchestra) and, for slow-burn intensity, by Mravinsky and Pappano. Personally, I felt a 'yes, this is how it should be' once the drama of the Prelude properly flows from Ticciati at the Proms. You would be well advised to listen to the complete performance while it's still available on BBC Sounds (until the end of this month).

We've now passed the halfway mark in Class Five last Wednesday, and of course I have nothing in my head but the sounds of the 'Liebesnacht'. The compelling but deeply unsettling way that director Krzysztof Warlikowski handles it in Munich, with spellbinding performances from Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros (pictured above) and superlative conducting from Kirill Petrenko, seems to me the best approach I've seen. 

Soundwise, I'm constantly shifting in examples between so many recordings, but predominantly Lauritz Melchior and Kirsten Flagstad with Beecham (or Reiner), Bayreuth '66 (Nilsson and Windgassen with Böhm conducting), Vickers and Dernesch with Karajan, Margaret Price and Rene Kollo with Carlos Kleiber, Linda Esther Gray and John Mitchinson with Goodall. Linda is returning to talk to us next week, and Peter Rose will appear to discuss Marke's monologue. Later we hope to welcome Robin Ticciati and Antonio Pappano, and Anne Evans in the final class. More in the pipeline. It's rich!

Another journey with Tristan and Isolde

Staring next Wednesday afternoon (UPDATE - now 4 August owing to an emergency hospital visit last week), I'm back on Zoom again along with anyone who cares to join me for ten glorious (I hope) two-hour sessions on Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. This course is under the auspices of the Wagner Society of Scotland, for whom I embarked on what should have been four weekend courses at beautiful Gartmore House in the Trossachs on the Ring. We managed Das Rheingold and Die Walküre - that was during a September heatwave, sun burning early morning mists away outside my bedroom window pictured below - 

then Covid struck, so Siegfried had to go online, and I followed up with Götterdämmerung later in 2020. We had hoped to return to live events this September, but apparently the booking for two options fell through. So here we are on Zoom once again, and in my experience it's been a great opportunity to welcome more special guests than we could have done live. On the Wagner front, I've welcomed John Tomlinson to talk about Wotan-as-Wanderer and then again about Hagen; Susan Bullock, Anne Evans and Richard Jones, in what turned out to be a fascinating three-way conversation; Linda Esther Gray (the greatest of all Isoldes? Discuss - we will, hopefully with her); and, belatedly, Jay Hunter Morris, perhaps the best Siegfried currently with us. Who knows who we'll get this time, probably not so easy as artists return to work? But I'm making enquiries. 

If you're interested, message me here with contact details; I won't publish them, but I shall respond. It's £100 for the course, which I think is a bargain at £10 per session (which may well be longer than two hours, dependig on interest). If you can't attend all or any of the classes, I can send out Zoom videos the day after.

Stuart Skelton speaks

He mostly sings, of course - and this is his first Tristan year, making him for me the most convincing interpreter of the role I've ever seen on stage. I missed Vickers, of course,though his Act Three for Karajan is the only one in my opinion, and in our email exchange before the Wagner Society's evening on 21 July - Stuart answering questions in St Botolph's Church Hall at the end above, while pianist Kelvin Lim and I grin at the camera wielded by Jan Leigh - Stuart wrote back to my praise with the line that 'Vickers has always been, in so many ways, my hero, my example, my Vorbild'.

Anyway, how he can talk, too. The first half of our conversation focused on his role in the flawed but fitfully insightful ENO Tristan and Isolde (production images by Catherine Ashmore). Owing to transport meltdown - I should have gone on my bike, though I didn't want to turn up all sweaty on a hot evening -  I missed some of Stuart's preliminary chat about that production. What I did hear from him was how the video projection somehow changed according to how they were singing - voice-responsive, how fascinating. Shame the ubiquitous follow spot had to clash with it.

It was interesting to learn that the killer part is actually Siegfried, upon the altar of which/whom Stuart has no intention of sacrificing himself. Yes, emotionally Act Three of Tristan is the ne plus ultra, and you simply can't not give of yourself. But Wagner helps in the pacing of Act Three, those three amazing curves. You can afford to die vocally just as Tristan expels his last 'Isolde!', but not a minute sooner. (Below, with Heidi Melton in the ENO production).

Act Two is if anything tougher (ENO helped with the big cut in the night-day dialogue before 'O sink hernieder').

Stuart talked about the feelings engendered as he lies there, curtain up or down, during the dark strings of the Act Three Prelude, an amazing experience; the pianist he brought along, the excellent Kelvin Lim, demonstrated it for us. That helps the Tristan to be in the right 'zone'. He hopes to keep the role in his repertoire for as long as his career lasts, though he won't be singing it in English again; that was a special favour to ENO as he knew it. Imagine the mind leapfrogging between languages throughout the year in a role like that.

After the break, due to popular request, we discussed Stuart's career in the round, the amazing nurturing experience in Cincinnati and how timely everything seemed to be. Peter Grimes remains his touchstone role and informs everything else he does; Erik in The Flying Dutchman he could happily retire. Desert Island Discs? He listens almost exclusively to symphonic music; Celibidache's Bruckner 8 would be top of the list. Directors and conductors? He was discreet, but used the same phrase about those who haven't done their homework as Anne Evans had at the Frontline the previous week: 'when you hear the score crack, your heart sinks'. After two hours' chat, he boldly undertook to sing Siegmund's 'Winterstürme' to round it all off; Kelvin's playing suggested he could have gone on to give us Liszt's transcription of the Liebestod.

A very happy evening it was in the presence of a generous and very together top-rank artist. I've said it before, but these Wagner singers don't have the energy to spare for being dive/divi. That was born out by the four wonderful human beings I've had the privilege of interviewing over the past month or so - three Isoldes and, finally, a Tristan. I'm lucky.

Isoldes at the Frontline

Three came along to my Opera in Depth class at the Frontline Club, head- and heart-devoted this term to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, and what amazing times we had.

First there was Linda Esther Gray, one of the greatest Isoldes ever as her studio recording and the live performance on YouTube for Goodall testify. We're now long-term friends, as you can perhaps tell.

Relatively new friends are Dame Anne Evans and Susan Bullock CBE, Annie and Sue as I think they prefer it, who visited yesterday, and a better double act I couldn't imagine. See way down this blog entry for another, slightly more embattled Wagnerian duo-chat at a Birmingham 'Brunch with Brünnhildes'.

Linda's talk was very emotional; she didn't mind  my playing excerpts from the Goodall recording but inevitably it stirred up deep feelings, and you know from every phrase she says that this is a woman who can't be anything other than she is, a total giver. I'll save the insights until I can reproduce them in her own words from the recording I made of most of that session - a good two hours' talking with a fun photosession at the end.

The plan with Anne and Sue was that they should arrive for lunch - always excellent at the Frontline Club, since the owner stocks it with food from his huge estate in Norfolk - and then talk for an hour and a quarter, after which I could finish Act 3 by going through the last of Tristan's huge monologues with examples all around it and on to the Liebestod (which in fact we got earlier in the shape of Anne's very beautiful performance with Tony Pappano, conducting his first Tristan at the Monnaie). It was clear, though, that not only were the two ladies totally relaxed with my adorable, engaging and loyal students, but that there was no end to what they had to say. Looks as if I'm alarming or boring them here; can only assure you that wasn't the case.

So we heard about the generosity of Anne's coaching Sue as Isolde - SB remembering chapter and verse about what helped her - and their joint memories of Reginald Goodall, complementing Linda's several weeks earlier. About the directors who know the music and can demonstrate it on the piano - David Alden and Richard Jones - and those who arrive at the first rehearsal 'and you hear the spine of the score crack' (ie it's only just been opened). Or the ones who just use a CD booklet; expectations ran high for a Ring at Bayreuth from a distinguished director, who disappointed by doing just that and bringing nothing fresh to it.

To complement Anne's Liebestod, I also played Sue's 'Träume' from the Wesendonck Lieder, on a recital disc I rated very highly for the BBC Music Magazine; such clarity in the text, such marvellous dramatic pauses - Reggie's wisdom, though Malcolm Martineau must also be praised for his part in that. Frida Leider came out tops for her long-term youthfulness and bel canto approach; Margaret Price's peerless recording was also cited, and the advice she gave both singers (a modest woman, she ascribed her success there to Carlos Kleiber). We also, ahem, discussed the problems with the ENO Tristan that's just finished, and what an Isolde needs to do to get through the part and deliver the great Liebestod at the end that everyone's been waiting for.

It also became abundantly clear: these two great ladies should be running ENO. Then Mark Wigglesworth, having achieved a quadruple whammy of musically amazing productions this season, could come back and - how about this? - the Artistic Directorship be shared between David Lan of the Young Vic and Richard Jones (because I didn't think for a minute that Richard would want to do it on his own). Most important, perhaps, they would revive ENO's role as a training ground for young British-based singers, as they both were when they learned their trade there. It seems to me that the flood of talent from the music colleges has never been greater, but how many of these singers are appearing there? Whereas, you just look at the Garsington Idomeneo and see what a difference sensible thinking and wise casting can make.

Not going to happen? Well, as with Brexit, we can dream, can't we?

So, I owe the students a precis of what I would have talked about re the last 20 minutes of the opera in our tenth and final class. But what we did watch was the Tristan fantasia sequence from the best film I've ever seen about the dedication of a great performer, Humoresque (1947).

John Garfield is talented, hard-working violinist Paul Boray, his hands and his sounds represented superbly by Isaac Stern. Joan Crawford strikes a rare note of truth as the married society woman who starts out by thinking of a musician as a plaything, then falls deeply in love but can't share her man with his music.

There are some wonderful moments in the score by Franz Waxman, not least to accompany a giddying New York montage which must owe something to Eisenstein, but the climax of the film - and I don't think there's a spoiler here, as we start in 'the present' with the violinist distraught by his loss - is the suicide of Crawford's character while we hear a kitsch-brilliant arrangement of music from the Act Two love scene and the Liebestod arranged for violin, piano (Oscar Levant, brilliant throughout - I've just bought a second-hand copy of one of his autobiographies) and orchestra.

We get ten whole minutes of music accompanied by telling details in Jean Negulesco's direction like the man on the beach throwing a stick for his dog as Crawford's Helen Wright wanders distractedly, distressedly past and finally into the waves and under the water (whereupon the soundtrack goes temporarily blurred as well).  Here's the trailer, which inevitably accentuates the melodrama and underplays the wise, wisecracking commentary of Levant's character - who comes off very well in the screenplay by Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold - but does give you a sense of the musical lushness; sounds like Waxman stitched together some of the themes especially here.

If you'd like to catch more Wagner chat, I'll be in conversation with Stuart Skelton, on recent evidence the best living Tristan, at a Wagner Society event on 21 July. Details here. Before that, I'm offering some Proms-related classes in what I hope will be a mini summer school next week, starting on Tuesday 19 July. Next season's Opera in Depth course is more or less planned if not carved in stone: Don Giovanni (five or six weeks), The Nose (two or three weeks) and Le Grand Macabre (two weeks) in the autumn term; Der Rosenkavalier (six weeks) and The Snow Maiden (four weeks) in the spring term; and Otello (five weeks) and Pelléas et Mélisande (five weeks) in the summer term. If you're interested, email me at: david.nice@usa.net

Finally, we are getting some bitter laughs about our looking-glass land at the moment from the likes of Frankie Boyle, John Crace and Marina Hyde, but for sheer pleasure this treatment of Cameron's farewell ditty comes tops. I noted in sending the link to anyone who might not have seen it - gone viral, apparently - that Cameron hums the tritone, used among other things by Wagner for Fafner-as-dragon and as a dreaded putative 'Stalin subtext' in Shostakovich and Prokofiev (they knew, at any rate, when to use it).

Into Wagner's realm of night

The end of the above scene in ENO's Anish Kapoor-designed Tristan and Isolde, as photographed (like other images from the production) by Catherine Ashmore, is where we've reached in Class Five of this term's Opera in Depth course at the ever welcoming Frontline Club. Brangäne has extinguished the torch and we're ready to send the lovers into each other's arms this coming Monday with Albert Coates' frenetic 1929 excerpt featuring Frida Leider and Lauritz Melchior. Let the Liebesnacht begin!

It's daunting to realised that one could spend at least three times ten weeks on this fathomless and perhaps unfathomable masterpiece. I spent two hours alone last week on the opening scene of Act Two so we'd better get a move on. We also have two visits coming up - the first from Linda Esther Gray, the second from Sue Bullock and (hurrah, just confirmed) Anne Evans.

Having never previously listened to the Goodall studio recording in detail, I hadn't quite appreciated how it's his finest Wagner, for me at least: in Tristan, and possibly (just) Parsifal, I can take slow tempi so long as the music always burns (which it did for Goodall; alas, Ed Gardner doesn't get away with the extremes at ENO - Isolde's Act One narrative is the first of several places where the tension drains away).

And, yes, I know and love her as a friend, but I think I can be objective enough to say that Linda (pictured below in the Welsh National Opera production) is one of the three Isoldes to whom I constantly return for the music examples - the other two being Margaret Price (who of course never performed the role on stage) and Birgit Nilsson. Flagstad? Too weak on the Beecham recording, too matriarchal for Furtwängler;  I must get hold of the Reiner.

It's unfathomable that the Goodall studio Tristan, only once released on CD in mid-price format, has stayed out of the catalogues so long. This is for me the greatest love duet of them all, and how it burns towards the crisis. Ah, some will say, but you need to have heard the live performance sung in English. I did, at a time when I was too young to appreciate what I was getting, but now there's another chance: amazingly, someone has put up a Radio 3 broadcast of one of the ENO performances I must have seen on YouTube. It's Remedios* rather than Mitchinson, a seriously underrated tenor, but that's no drawback. Maybe you will have listened to it before I have a chance.

Other glories include Stokowski's music-minus-three Liebesnacht (with bits of Act Three thrown in for good measure), strings portamento-ing like crazy but the freedom and rubato just magnificent.

As for the ENO production, well, read what I thought about it on The Arts Desk: a mixed bag, as anticipated, but with a magnificent performances from Stuart Skelton (the best Tristan I've seen on stage - I missed Vickers, of course). He's amazing, as he must be, in Act Three, the best staged of the three with an incredible video-projection effect of dark blood streaming back and forth between the vulva-like bit of rock and the pyjamaed old Tristan.

Equally fine are Karen Cargill (Brangäne, just possibly an Isolde in the making despite being a mezzo, but she must sing Berlioz's Dido first) and Matthew Rose (sorry, Peter, he really is very, very good - not better than you, just different - and Kramer's production gives him a hard job). Kapoor's second and third act designs work hard to combine with Kramer's visions, though the costumes are a bad mismatch. I'm waiting to see an opera production this year that has anything like the coherence of Ivo van Hove's Kings of War or the riveting Huppert/Warlikowski Phaedra(s) which knocked me for six at the Barbican last night. If everything in the ENO Tristan had joined up with Kapoor's theatrically workable (just) vision pictured below, it might have come somewhere close.

All that remains to be added is that it's cheap journalism to claim that on this production rests ENO's future, as I've seen colleagues who should know better write and say. The artists have nothing to prove - they've already won three awards this season and turned in superlative performances of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, The Force of Destiny (which has just won a Sky award, though on account of Bieito's very messy production I'd have given it to Tcherniakov's Shostakovich) and The Magic Flute this season. And if Kramer comes over as having lots of good ideas and not yet the wherewithal to connect them, that has little to do with how good an Artistic Director he'll be. In conversation with Tom Service on Radio 3's Music Matters, he came across as a little OTT in his 'I'm so passionate about...'s, but again, with strong observations in among the apparent gush. Let's give him a chance, and see if he can undo the ills and banish the strange aversion to fundraising of the Pollock regime so far.

By way of peaceful coda, here's Linda at the Glyndebourne lake the other weekend. She came with me to a well sung but production-wise not very funny Barber of Seville (I'm pinning higher hopes on the forthcoming Béatrice et Bénédict). We felt the same about it. Very pleased to have met the very promising and affable new Artistic Director, Sebastian F Schwarz, who showed up at the press drinks - full marks for that - and had the benefit of Linda's wisdom. I hope by now he's listened to the Goodall recording, as he said he was going to do, and been amazed.

*14/6 Update - I only learned from Linda this morning that Alberto Remedios died on Sunday. Tomorrow's ENO performance is being dedicated to him. Just listening (rather than listening and watching, which I did a fair bit - great Walter in Meistersinger) makes me realise what a golden sound it was, and very youthful.

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.

Dame Eva by her pupil Linda

Our beloved friend Linda Esther Gray has taken up her poetic pen again: having chronicled with painful truth the saga of her own meteoric career as the greatest Isolde of her time - hurry up, someone, and post her Liebestod with Goodall on YouTube, as it's the best I know - and what went wrong, she's now devoted the best part of two years to doing her teacher Dame Eva Turner sympathetic justice.

The biography's subtitle, 'A Life on the High Cs', comes from a priceless anecdote. A sailor saw green Eva hanging over the rails on one of her many Atlantic voyages and commented 'I see you are not used to life on the high seas, ma'am'. To which, quick as a flash despite her indisposition, she replied: 'On the contrary, my man, I make my living by them'. Si non e vero, e ben trovato.

Anyway, this will be the essential sourcebook for just about everything Dame Eva did and said in public - about the private life less will be known, though Linda speculates that the long-term relationship with Anne Ridyard was more than professional: 'seeing them together, they were never less than the sum of the parts and were in many senses - one. They just felt like an old married couple by the time I knew them with all the history that might suggest'. So, something to celebrate: rock-solid Eva could never claim, as an obituary reported Dame Flora Robson as having said, that she never knew happiness in love.


But it's the greatest Turandot of all time that the book is really there to celebrate, and it's an extraordinary thing that when you listen to the recordings of 'In questa reggia' you can tell how the voice must have pinged to the back of the theatre - an impression you don't always get when hearing CDs of Gwyneth Jones or Christine Brewer. I love all the stuff about how Eva made it big in Italy at a time when foreign artists were usually a one-month sensation, and indeed about the state of opera in the UK up to that time.

It's also surprising to discover what an eloquent and wide-ranging mind she was from her own words: the advice on singing is sterling, the choice of Desert Island Discs on two different occasions very eclectic. This wasn't just a diva who lived for her vocal art, though that was quite some art, and not entirely about size and volume. We think that the best recording to show her style is the 1928 'D'amor sull'ali rosee' from Verdi's Il trovatore, with Beecham the supportive conductor. It's there on the CD that comes with Linda's book but it's also on YouTube. Order your copy of the biography here.

24 hours in Lyon

A flying visit, to see Wagner at the Opéra, which turned out to be not so much the keenly-anticipated 'Fura dels Baus Tristan' as one which was the most satisfyingly sung, acted and played across the board of any I've encountered live. Arrived Friday noonish, headed over the Saone and settled on the first good-looking place for lunch I could find - which turned out to be the Restaurant Un Saint-Jean hiver at No. 14 Rue de Lanerie, partly because the building has one of the finest sculptured Gothic facades in the old town


and partly because the lunch menu promised Lyonnais specialities straight from the market. And excellent the first two courses proved - a salad of foie de volaille followed by andouillette (not to all tastes, but I'm a bit of an offal man). Dessert not so good, or maybe the wrong choice, three minis fatta in casa with coffee. Food theme continued with a whizz around Vieux Lyon trying to take streets I hadn't walked before - hence along the appropriately statued Rue du Boeuf


with another old carved shop 'sign'


up to the heights, this time skirting the Roman ruins and finding an odd little park in a zone populated by that unattractive species, the French schoolkid


and back via the bourgeois shopping centre with its great doorways


and a splendid (though no doubt less so in the multiplex interior) Pathe cinema.


It might have been the grey, muggy and intermittently rainy afternoon, or my own overtaxed mood, but I found Lyon on a second visit rather tired and skanky. I asked my taxi driver about the Somerset House-style fountains in the Place des Terraux which had so sparkled on a winter visit, and he told me they'd been broken for a long time and no-one had as yet attempted to fix them.

Anyway, a journey inside the belly of the black, shiny whale Jean Nouvel has made of the 1830 Opera House is always a striking, if rather claustrophobic experience. It suited the dream-world of La Fura dels Baus's Tristan vision rather well (production photo by Bertrand Stofleth showing the marvellous Ann Petersen recumbent)


And, happily transported by the first act - the second less so - I enjoyed standing at the long, light bar of the preserved 1886 foyer


as well as looking down on it from above.


One other plus: I've never had a quieter night in a hotel than in Room 407 of the Hotel des Terraux, built on the site of a graveyard which my ancestor Huguenots ransacked: a bit dark, since the only window looks on to the courtyard, but not a sound did I hear from midnight to 8am. Thus returned a little refreshed, after so many early rises and late nights, for the wedding on Saturday. Oh, and I do recommend splashing out on a trip to see an opera in Lyon: in this instance you would have heard a Tristan you'd have been happy to encounter anywhere in the world, Bayreuth included, at a ticket price of anything from 5 to 95 euros.