17-05-2025
Can Wagner and his family ever escape the shadow of the Nazis?
The idyllic setting of Longborough in the Cotswolds has long been the place to see Richard Wagner's epic music dramas. A statue of the German composer is even perched on the roof, looking down on effigies of those minnows Mozart and Verdi. A man with no small sense of his own greatness, Wagner would have loved it.
But this summer the festival is pushing Wagner off his plinth. A new opera,Wahnfried: The Birth of the Wagner Cult, is a provocative examination of his legacy by the 50-year-old Israeli composer Avner Dorman. First performed in Germany in 2017, Wahnfried will get its UK premiere in a new production by Polly Graham, the daughter of the Longborough founder Martin, who died in April.
What can
