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Telegraph
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Simon Callow on the controversial birth of the Wagner cult
It takes some chutzpah to write an opera about Richard Wagner, that titanically complex figure (both as man and musician) who took opera to places it had never been before and rarely has since. Among the many problems is an obvious one: do you quote your composer's music, or attempt pastiche? Or ignore it altogether? In Wahnfried (2012), whose British première is being given at the fiercely enterprising Longborough Festival Opera in the Cotswolds this week, the composer Avner Dorman circumvents this problem by starting with the old ogre's death in 1883. His focus is the baneful evolution of the Bayreuth Festival into a stronghold of extreme Right-wing ideology, ultimately endorsed and personally protected by Hitler, for whom Wagner's work was the embodiment of everything in which he believed. During his lifetime, Wagner himself was hardly untainted by extremist thinking. His noxious 1851 pamphlet Judaism in Music, in which he compared Jewish musicians like Mendelssohn to vermin feeding off a corpse, had caused such a furore on its first appearance that the publisher withdrew it; undaunted, Wagner had it expanded and reprinted nearly 20 years later. Until nearly the day he died, he was wont to erupt into anti-Semitic tirades. And yet, with typical contrariness, he surrounded himself with Jewish colleagues; indeed, the first conductor of Wagner's last anguished and ecstatic opera Parsifal, dripping with Christian imagery, was Jewish: Hermann Levi. As Levi took his place in front of the orchestra for the dress rehearsal, Wagner was unable to refrain from remarking, quite audibly, to his wife Cosima: 'I don't know what I'd feel if I was being conducted by a Jew.' And yet he repudiated militarism and the Imperial pretensions of the new German Reich; his contradictions were legion. With his death, any ambivalence disappeared. His widow was a far more proactive anti-Semite than Wagner, and after his death in 1883, the Bayreuther Blätter, Bayreuth's inhouse magazine, became, with her encouragement, an increasingly strident conduit for the naked assertion of ethnic purity, with its concomitant proclamation of the supremacy of the Teutonic race. It is the alarming figure of Cosima who dominates the first act of Wahnfried. The opera's title is the name of the house Wagner built for himself in Bayreuth. Freedom from Illusion is the conventional translation, and in a sense, for Wagner it was just that: he had his grave dug in its garden in anticipation of what he felt to be his imminent demise, and would often go and stand in it for whole hours at a time. For Dorman and his librettists, the house's name is grotesquely ironic. First, under Cosima then, as she became frailer, under her son Siegfried, Bayreuth became increasingly associated with militant chauvinism. Siegfried's wife Winifred was an early and ardent partisan of Adolf Hitler, leader of the newly formed National German Workers Socialist Party. In 1923, she invited him to Bayreuth. His first port of call, however, was to Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an Englishman resident at Bayreuth, author of an idolatrous biography of Wagner, whose volubly expressed racial theories he had embraced. With the publication of The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, a two-volume outline of racial theory, Chamberlain himself became an international celebrity; the book was immediately acclaimed as a sort of bible of anti-Semitism, which naturally recommended him to the residents of Wahnfried. He never met his idol, but was eagerly welcomed by Cosima, who saw him as a useful idiot: 'we need a St Paul to establish this cult.' In 1908, Chamberlain abandoned his first wife and in the fullness of time married Eva, Wagner's first daughter with Cosima, which sealed his position as a central prop of the Wagner establishment. Hereinafter, he was the Sage of Bayreuth. Meeting Hitler, the Sage pronounced him 'Germany's saviour, the messiah of a counter-revolution.' This overwhelmed the gauche young Hitler: Wagner's music was the soundtrack of his life. In Mein Kampf, he recounts his first exposure to it: Lohengrin, the story of a mysterious outsider who finally attains the Holy Grail. Him, to the life. Seeing Rienzi, the story of a man of the people who defies the ruling class to lead his country, he felt that he had been given a vision of his own destiny. (He appears to have paid less attention to the end of the opera, in which Rienzi and his loyal followers retreat to the Capitol, where they burn to death). Hitler in turn made a great impact on his first visit to Bayreuth, above all with Winfred, who submitted helplessly to his fabled charisma. Their intense relationship, particularly after the death of Siegfried at the relatively early age of 61, ensured that Bayreuth was explicitly associated with Nazism – endorsed it, indeed. That relationship kept the Festival going, almost to the bitter end. Shortly after their first Bayreuth meeting, Hitler and his cronies attempted a putsch in Munich, for which they were jailed. From prison, Hitler wrote to Winifred to thank her for her support. Bayreuth, he said, was 'on the line of march to Berlin… a place where first the Master then Chamberlain forged the spiritual sword with which we fight today.' This is the remarkable and disturbing history which Dorman, who is Israeli-American, and his librettists confront in Wahnfried. Dorman's personal relationship with Wagner's music is complex: growing up in Israel, the child of three generations of Holocaust survivors, he was immersed in German music; the family played Schumann and Beethoven and Brahms, but never Wagner. Eventually, in America, where Dorman now lives, he encountered it and found, unsurprisingly, that his response to it was complex. He felt, as he puts it, that Wagner's position in music was unclear. Wahnfried is an exploration of that anomaly. Dorman says that writing the piece presented almost insuperable challenges. 'How does one write an opera in which one despises all the characters, all of whom see themselves as Wagnerian heroes?' His musical solution is to cut against the grandeur and breadth of much of Wagner's own music: the opera begins with four penny whistles tootling away. 'Treating this material,' observes Justin Brown, the conductor and commissioner of Dorman's opera, who is also at the helm for the Longborough production, 'requires a certain grotesqueness – a circus atmosphere. The beginning is actually jazzy. And very difficult to play. [Dorman] loves that: he's never happier than when writing something impossible.' The slide whistles have important work to do: the articulation of Chamberlain's racist pronouncements, Dorman says, is almost too heavy to handle: 'hence the slide whistles, which permeate the piece the way Chamberlain's ideas do.' The libretto's masterstroke is to introduce a figure called the Wagner Daemon who, says Dorman, represents the multi-faceted Wagner we know about, 'the Richard Wagner who actually lived.' In the opera, the Daemon attacks Chamberlain, telling him that he's completely missed the point. The Daemon is an almost simian figure, as was Wagner himself, who loved to terrify his guests by climbing up the side of the house or vaulting over the seats in the Festspielhaus. Dorman's Wagner-Daemon is clownish, getting together for a raucous reunion with Bakunin on the barricades, where indeed he had fought side by side with the great anarchist while still Court Musician to the Saxon king. And finally, he tells Chamberlain that he has completely missed the point about Wagner's racial theories. For Longborough, this production is a great coup. As Keith Warner, director of Covent Garden's mid-2000's Ring cycle: 'How many new operas are so funny, deeply moving and earth-shattering in one?' For Dorman, Wahnfried is driven by the need to comprehend 'the musical civilisation he helped to bring into existence. It's part of my history, part of my identity.'
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Renowned Wagner tenor Peter Seiffert dies aged 71
The renowned German opera singer Peter Seiffert has died at the age of 71, his agency reported on Tuesday. Seiffert, a celebrated interpreter of Wagner, passed away on Monday in his adopted home near the Austrian city of Salzburg after suffering from a severe illness. The Bayreuth Festival, the annual celebration of Wagner music, released an obituary stating, "The opera world loses a truly great, a wonderful singer with him." Seiffert, known for the lightness of his voice, portrayed the title role in Wagner's "Lohengrin" and Walther von Stolzing in "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" (The Master-Singers of Nuremberg) at the festival from 1996 to 2005. The festival noted that Seiffert impressed not only with his voice but also with his profound character interpretation. Bavarian Minister of Arts Markus Blume praised Seiffert, saying, "He was not just a singer but also a storyteller, magician and charmer." The conservative politician highlighted the strong connection Seiffert had with Bayreuth and the Bavarian State Opera, noting the audience in Bavaria adored him. Seiffert was born in 1954 in Düsseldorf as the son of singer and pop composer Helmut Seiffert. He began his career in the late 1970s at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf and Duisburg. From 1984 to 1992, he was a member of the ensemble at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. His career also took him to many major opera houses in cities such as Vienna, Milan, London and New York. Seiffert's signature roles included not only Wagnerian heroes like Parsifal, Tannhäuser or Tristan but also characters from French and Italian works, such as the title role in Verdi's "Otello." Seiffert was awarded the German honorific title of Kammersänger (Chamber Singer) for distinguished singers of opera and classical music multiple times.
The Independent
04-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
London Symphony Orchestra conductor Antonio Pappano goes underground — he takes the Tube to work
Antonio Pappano has gone underground since leaving The Royal Opera for the London Symphony Orchestra. 'Now, more often than not, I take the Tube, which I never did when I was at the opera house because I had a car service,' he said. 'This is a more streamlined organization, if you like.' A 65-year-old conductor who was Covent Garden's music director from 2002-24, Pappano succeeded Simon Rattle as the LSO's chief conductor last September and has a quick commute from his home in Hampstead to the LSO's Barbican Centre home. He is leading the orchestra on a 13-concert U.S. tour to California, Florida and New York that culminates this week with its first Carnegie Hall appearances since 2005. 'Everything is very much based on the voice for Tony because of his opera background,' said Maxine Kwok, an LSO violinist since 2001 and a member of its board. 'So it all comes down to emotions and how you would phrase things if you were singing.' Pappano was born in England and moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, with his family when he was 13. A son of a voice teacher, he became a rehearsal pianist at the Connecticut Grand Opera at 17 and then at New York City Opera at 21. He worked as assistant to Daniel Barenboim on 'Tristan,' the Ring Cycle and 'Parsifal' at the Bayreuth Festival and debuted in 1991 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and in 1994 at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Barenboim was music director. 'I probably shouldn't have been in front of some of the big symphony orchestras, Chicago Symphony, for sure. That came a little bit too soon,' Pappano said. 'But I survived and then hopefully you learn from those mistakes of timing. In terms of the long-term positions I've had, I don't think I've put a foot wrong.' He was music director of Oslo's Den Norske Opera from 1990-92, Brussels' Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie from 1992-2002 and Rome's Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia from 2005-23, often working with his wife, vocal coach Pamela Bullock. While Pappano grew up in the U.S., he has concentrated his career in Europe. 'There's a lot of turmoil in the States, well, all over the world at the moment, and I don't miss that,' he said. 'I'm concerned about the way America is going, if I'm honest. I also worry about the degree to which art in general is treated like some kind of elitist domain to an even greater degree than it is over here. We have to fight that sentiment over here because the easiest thing to cut in a budget is the arts budget.' Clive Gillinson, then LSO's managing director, engaged Pappano for a 1996 recording of Puccini's 'La Rondine' with Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Roberto Alagna at London's Abbey Road Studios. 'I thought he should be given a chance as a symphonic conductor because there was very little track record,' said Gillinson, now Carnegie Hall's executive director. 'To be honest, in those early days, I didn't think he was a great symphonic conductor. It took him time." Pappano led his first LSO concert performance the following January at the Barbican. 'It was clear right from the get-go that he kind of got the LSO and we very much got him,' said Neil Percy, a principal percussion who has been with the LSO since 1990. 'It's in his soul, man. You can see it in his skin. He just understands opera kind of like no other conductor that I've ever been fortunate enough to work with.' Pappano debuted at The Royal Opera in Puccini's 'La Bohème' in 1990 and was 32 when he became its youngest music director, following distinguished predecessors Rafael Kubelik, Georg Solti, Colin Davis and Bernard Haitink. Pappano announced in March 2021 he was switching to the LSO, an ensemble known for its work on movie soundtracks that include 'Star Wars.' Rattle had moved to the LSO in 2017 and decided he wanted to switch in 2023 to Munich's Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. 'We're chalk and cheese, as they say in England," Pappano explained. 'With Simon Rattle there's an incredible precision in the approach to the playing,' said Kathryn McDowell, who succeeded Gillinson as the LSO's managing director. 'It's a different sound with Antonio Pappano... it's got a real sort of sheen.' Pappano is continuing to lead Covent Garden's production premieres of Barrie Kosky's staging of the Ring, with 'Die Walküre' opening May 1, 'Siegfried' next season and 'Götterdämmerung in 2026-27, but his successor, Jakub Hrůša, will be in charge of the full cycle in 2027-28. When Pappano conducted the finale of Maher's Symphony No. 1 in Naples, Florida, last week, he was struck by a realization. 'I've never had anything like this under my hands. What a lucky sod I am,' he recalled thinking. 'That life underneath every note, that was always the calling card of this orchestra. If you could stoke that flair, that theatricality that they have, it's quite something.'
Associated Press
04-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
London Symphony Orchestra conductor Antonio Pappano goes underground — he takes the Tube to work
NEW YORK (AP) — Antonio Pappano has gone underground since leaving The Royal Opera for the London Symphony Orchestra. 'Now, more often than not, I take the Tube, which I never did when I was at the opera house because I had a car service,' he said. 'This is a more streamlined organization, if you like.' A 65-year-old conductor who was Covent Garden's music director from 2002-24, Pappano succeeded Simon Rattle as the LSO's chief conductor last September and has a quick commute from his home in Hampstead to the LSO's Barbican Centre home. He is leading the orchestra on a 13-concert U.S. tour to California, Florida and New York that culminates this week with its first Carnegie Hall appearances since 2005. 'Everything is very much based on the voice for Tony because of his opera background,' said Maxine Kwok, an LSO violinist since 2001 and a member of its board. 'So it all comes down to emotions and how you would phrase things if you were singing.' Pappano was born in England and moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, with his family when he was 13. A son of a voice teacher, he became a rehearsal pianist at the Connecticut Grand Opera at 17 and then at New York City Opera at 21. He worked as assistant to Daniel Barenboim on 'Tristan,' the Ring Cycle and 'Parsifal' at the Bayreuth Festival and debuted in 1991 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago and in 1994 at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Barenboim was music director. 'I probably shouldn't have been in front of some of the big symphony orchestras, Chicago Symphony, for sure. That came a little bit too soon,' Pappano said. 'But I survived and then hopefully you learn from those mistakes of timing. In terms of the long-term positions I've had, I don't think I've put a foot wrong.' He was music director of Oslo's Den Norske Opera from 1990-92, Brussels' Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie from 1992-2002 and Rome's Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia from 2005-23, often working with his wife, vocal coach Pamela Bullock. While Pappano grew up in the U.S., he has concentrated his career in Europe. 'There's a lot of turmoil in the States, well, all over the world at the moment, and I don't miss that,' he said. 'I'm concerned about the way America is going, if I'm honest. I also worry about the degree to which art in general is treated like some kind of elitist domain to an even greater degree than it is over here. We have to fight that sentiment over here because the easiest thing to cut in a budget is the arts budget.' Clive Gillinson, then LSO's managing director, engaged Pappano for a 1996 recording of Puccini's 'La Rondine' with Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Roberto Alagna at London's Abbey Road Studios. 'I thought he should be given a chance as a symphonic conductor because there was very little track record,' said Gillinson, now Carnegie Hall's executive director. 'To be honest, in those early days, I didn't think he was a great symphonic conductor. It took him time.' Pappano led his first LSO concert performance the following January at the Barbican. 'It was clear right from the get-go that he kind of got the LSO and we very much got him,' said Neil Percy, a principal percussion who has been with the LSO since 1990. 'It's in his soul, man. You can see it in his skin. He just understands opera kind of like no other conductor that I've ever been fortunate enough to work with.' Pappano debuted at The Royal Opera in Puccini's 'La Bohème' in 1990 and was 32 when he became its youngest music director, following distinguished predecessors Rafael Kubelik, Georg Solti, Colin Davis and Bernard Haitink. Pappano announced in March 2021 he was switching to the LSO, an ensemble known for its work on movie soundtracks that include 'Star Wars.' Rattle had moved to the LSO in 2017 and decided he wanted to switch in 2023 to Munich's Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. 'We're chalk and cheese, as they say in England,' Pappano explained. 'With Simon Rattle there's an incredible precision in the approach to the playing,' said Kathryn McDowell, who succeeded Gillinson as the LSO's managing director. 'It's a different sound with Antonio Pappano... it's got a real sort of sheen.' Pappano is continuing to lead Covent Garden's production premieres of Barrie Kosky's staging of the Ring, with 'Die Walküre' opening May 1, 'Siegfried' next season and 'Götterdämmerung in 2026-27, but his successor, Jakub Hrůša, will be in charge of the full cycle in 2027-28. When Pappano conducted the finale of Maher's Symphony No. 1 in Naples, Florida, last week, he was struck by a realization. 'I've never had anything like this under my hands. What a lucky sod I am,' he recalled thinking. 'That life underneath every note, that was always the calling card of this orchestra. If you could stoke that flair, that theatricality that they have, it's quite something.'
New York Times
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
How Directors Mine the Gold at the Heart of Wagner's ‘Ring'
Is it oil? Is it youth? Is it tactile? Invisible? For Wagner, the magic gold that is stolen from the bottom of the Rhine at the start of his four-opera 'Ring' cycle, setting the plot in motion, was a tangible, shiny nugget. It is embedded in the riverbed, his libretto says, and its gleam fills the water until the dwarf Alberich, mesmerized by the powers it can unleash, rips it from the rock, to the despair of its guardians, the three Rhine Daughters. Shaped into a ring that circulates among different characters over the rest of the 15-hour cycle, the gold confers authority but also wreaks havoc, inspiring envy, betrayal and death. Over the past 50 years, directors — including Calixto Bieito, whose staging of 'Das Rheingold,' the first 'Ring' installment, opens at the Paris Opera today — have interpreted the gold not as an actual piece of metal, but as an embodiment of whatever is the most precious (and corrosive) resource in the world of a given production. In a free-associative 2013 staging at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, where Wagner first presented the 'Ring' in 1876, Frank Castorf suggested that the gold was the fossil fuels that flow through and degrade virtually every aspect of contemporary society. This is part of a decades-old trend toward treating Wagner with audacious freedom — viewing his librettos as allegorical starting points, and updating and transmuting his plots and props to highlight certain themes and steer well clear of the old horned-helmet-and-breastplate clichés. 'Lohengrin' might take place in a laboratory rather than medieval Antwerp; the title character of 'Parsifal' might be dressed like a Latter-day Saints missionary. Bieito said in an email that in his production, the gold is depicted, in part, as cryptocurrency, a component of his staging's allegory of the ever-continuing rise of Big Tech. Bieito's Paris 'Ring' takes its place among a burst of major productions of the cycle around Europe, some still unfolding. I spoke to the directors of cycles in London, Munich, Brussels and Bayreuth about their approaches to the almighty gold, illuminating some of the vast range of possibilities when it comes to staging the most influential epic in opera history. These are edited excerpts from the conversations. Barrie Kosky The gold comes from the earth, and it's a part of nature. But Wagner also makes it a bit outside nature: It's glistening in the water, it's not of the water. We chose to present it in the beginning as a kind of fluid that comes out of an old, burned-out tree. I wanted to give this sense that the gold is like fat from the tree, like the blood from the veins of the earth. I wanted it to have a very organic feel, a sort of gold goo, like gold blood. And we make very clear that this tree also reflects part of the body of Erda — Mother Earth — who guides us through our 'Ring.' In our production, Mother Earth is dreaming her dream, which is also our dream, so the gold comes from her body and flows out of her body and is stolen from her body. It's a metaphor of what we've done with precious metals for thousands of years. To extract metals from stones, pan gold from water, find diamonds, we've literally ripped these elements out of the earth's body. And of course they're beautiful, but they've also been instruments of greed and evil. Whether that evil is the gold mines or diamond mines in Africa, or whether it's what people have done for gold, what has happened to them — that's the brilliance of Wagner's metaphor, it's timeless. Especially with the 'Ring,' you have to find something that is both archaic and contemporary. That is the challenge of Wagner. Romeo Castellucci As a symbol, the gold means many, many things. But in my opinion, the main meaning is about desire. The gold, at least at the beginning of the 'Ring,' takes the place of sexual energy, sexual attraction, the sex drive. The first image in our production is the female body covered in gold: the Rhine Daughters, who are naked and painted in gold. There is a lot of water falling from the ceiling, and the water washes away the gold, which melts off the bodies and goes all over the floor. Alberich tries to hug the body of one of the women; he tries to embrace them, and makes himself dirty with the gold but can't really embrace it. You cannot touch this gold. It's everywhere, in a way — like desire. It's an idea, it's not an object. It drives you in a direction, but it's not an object. It comes from the water and it's still a kind of water, completely liquid. It changes shape; it's constantly in transition. The shape of the gold is the shape of yourself. It's kind of an energy — a dangerous one, because everyone who touches the gold dies, in a way; you cannot truly realize desire. I don't think it has anything to do with capitalism. It's much more profound, more symbolic. It's not so simple, in my opinion. Tobias Kratzer For me, the gold is not just a symbol for money, which is probably the most likely interpretation. I wanted to give it a more magical touch. For me, it's almost a source of magic that can't be controlled, not by the gods or the mortals. And everyone has to deal with it somehow. In the first scene of my 'Rheingold' — it's all set in an old church that's being renovated — the Rhine Daughters are teenagers, dressed kind of like in the Netflix series 'Stranger Things,' who have found something underneath the floor. A universal power, one might say. It gives them magic abilities; they can change into different shapes. One turns into an old woman, one turns into a goat, one turns into a young girl. I never show it as gold. It's more of a golden fog, but it can materialize as gold water, or an object. But it's more of an element — not the element of gold, exactly, but something that can be used. And it's a little tongue-in-cheek, how Alberich is catching this fog in kind of a plastic bag. It is then in a glass tube in the second scene, acting like something of a secret power. It's more of an ingredient: If you bring it into contact with other objects, it transforms them or gives them other qualities. But by the end, it can also be used to do the only thing that neither gods nor men can do: to change time, to reverse time, to fast-forward time. Valentin Schwarz The 'Ring' is not so much about a given prop, an object, but about the carrying of the thoughts and emotions of the characters who own these objects and who put their wishful projections onto them. The 'Ring' is about generational conflict, about putting trauma onto the next generation, and unresolved conflicts and questions. And it's about dominance and power and influence. So it was a kind of epiphany: We thought of the innocence of a child. After all, the ring itself is quite useless in 'Rheingold,' like a child. So we came up with this idea of the gold being a child, who is stolen in 'Das Rheingold' and over the course of the cycle gradually ages into the character of Hagen, who enters the plot in 'Götterdämmerung.' And at the end of that opera, our Hagen realizes that the child of Brünnhilde and Siegfried, who is not in Wagner's libretto but who we invented, is threatened with the same fate, the same abuse, that he experienced. A child can't speak at first, but develops feelings and grows. At a certain point, it was important that this child becomes a part of the cycle, develops consciousness, and becomes a character in his own right. But Hagen is not the end. With the child of Siegfried and Brünnhilde, these ideas and traumas perpetuate; they go on and on. There is no end to a 'Ring.'
