Janette Griffiths on Wagner

So who could play Wotan in the movie? And, no, he doesn't have to sing.

2011-10-18T03:45:00.000-07:00

I recently took a deep breath, packed my bags and went off to Los Angeles to pitch my "Winter Music" script to studio executives at a Screenwriting Expo Pitch Fest. These are a form of speed-dating for screenwriters. I'll post a longer account of that experience on my new website janettegriffiths.com

For now, let's just say that pitching a dramatic story with comic elements whose protagonist is a bass/baritone who wants to sing Wotan, is a hopeful and touchingly optimistic undertaking in a Pitch Fest where the buyers all seem to be looking for 'action, thriller, broad comedy in the style of "Jackass"'. But I plodded on, into the ballroom of the Westin, LAX and recited my 5 minute version of my 120 page script. And oddly enough, the guys on the other side of the table, listened, laughed and took my one-sheet (the poster-style page that evokes the story.) BUT they all asked the same question: Who could play the lead male? He's a 48 year old Italian-American, greying dark hair, powerfully built, a quietly intense man who carries his reputation as one of the world's greatest opera singers discreetly. And to add to the complication, he's a bass-baritone and not a tenor. However, he does not have to sing. So that helps.

But the general feeling from both sides of the pitching table, was that today's male leads lack the dramatic weight, the Old World 'gravitas', the true grown-up charisma that my character, Leo, needs. I do have one actor in mind but I'd be curious to hear any suggestions from any of you.

Wotan Takes Back the Ring

2010-01-03T20:30:00.000-08:00

Wotan Takes Back The Ring

Richard Wagner dispatches the god Wotan, his most complex, conflicted and, therefore, fascinating character in the Ring on the penultimate day of the Tetrology. By the time we reach day three and Siegfried, the troubled god is traversing the earth’s ‘broad back’ as the libretto so often reminds us, disguised as the wise and weary Wanderer. An encounter with that lumbering young lummox of a hero that RW created in Siegfried splits the old man’s spear in two, his powers are gone and he retreats. From then on it’s down to his daughter, Brunnhilde to sort out the ensuing mess. This has always struck me as an eccentric bit of story-telling: create a charismatic character, make us think it is his story, then get rid of him. Any Hollywood script guru would tell you this is dramatic folly.

Nobody would dare change a note or a syllable of the old German genius’s epic, of course but in Seattle’s third outing of its ‘green Ring’ since 2001, Greer Grimsley’s tireless, commanding Wotan/Wanderer dominated the cycle, despite that third day departure. When Grimsley first sang the role in the 2005 Seattle production, I was struck by his secure technique, stamina, vocal power and beauty of tone not unlike that of the great George London. I didn’t think he had quite convinced himself, or us, that he was the Head God. He certainly believes it now and and so did I. This was a world-class performance so, Covent Garden please take note: next time Bryn Terfel pulls out of a Ring because his kid has broken a finger, try calling on this great American bass-baritone.

And then there is Stephanie Blythe as Fricka- probably the finest mezzo-soprano singing on any opera stage anywhere in the world today. Had Wagner given the Goddess of marriage and family a greater presence in the cycle this Ring would have been Blythe’s. Seattle made the wise decision to make the most of her glorious, lush, sumptuous mezzo and dramatic presence by bringing her back as the Götterdämmerung Waltraute and even as Second Norn.

There were some significant newcomers to Ring roles this year - most important the arrival of American, Janice Baird, as Brunnhilde and the Dane, Stig Anderson as Siegfried. The tall, slim Baird looks wonderful and is a fine actress - she has spectacular high notes and can create great dramatic excitement; she was, however, let down by a wobbly middle range and some off-pitch singing, most notable, alas, in the Immolation scene.

Stig Anderson had been indisposed by a viral infection during the first cycle but had soldiered on. By the time I saw him in the second cycle his performance went from a worrying, weary-sounding start in Siegfried to a magnificently sung death scene. That’s quite an achievement in this thankless role that makes so many vocal demands but provides so few dramatic rewards.

Another key newcomer, Australian Stuart Skelton, made a stunning debut as a lyrical, romantic and youthful Siegmund - his voice ideally suited to the role.

San Franciscan, Denis Petersen’s first Seattle Mime was also a magnificent debut. It is a tribute to the immense acting and singing talents of Petersen and the returning Richard Paul Fink as Alberich that the comic scene between the two wretched dwarfs in the second act of Siegfried was one of the most memorable of the whole cycle.

Kudos also to Chorusmaster, Beth Kirchhoff - the great male chorus of Vassals in Götterdämmerung,Act 2 sounded fantastic - virile, powerful and they acted well too.

Robert Spano returning to the Seattle Opera pit for his second Ring since 2005, gave us a sweeping, lyrical Ring let down just occasionally by some erratic French horns.

Director Stephen Wadsworth and designer Thomas Lynch have made few changes to their production. The ‘back to nature’ theme, so appropriate for the Pacific Northwest setting, remains a refreshing response to the many and varied, and invariably ugly European ‘concept’ Rings. One small quibble, and it takes us back to where we began with Wotan and Fricka: the Seattle team have decided that Fricka is not a shrew. That’s fine - Patrice Chereau came to the same conclusion in the Bayreuth Centenary production in 1976. But for my taste, Wadsworth has taken this idea a step too far - Wotan and Fricka constantly smooch, caress and gaze so moonily and sappily at each other that this writer started to wonder if they might not be better suited to a weekend at a Sandals resort for couples instead of going to live on Valhalla. But it’s a small flaw in what remains probably the loveliest Ring to be seen anywhere in the world.

Only at a Seattle Ring

2009-03-27T12:42:00.000-07:00

It's coming round again - The Seattle Ring - the 'green' Ring that looks to the gorgeous natural setting of this Pacific Northwest City for its inspiration, will be back in August 2009. There's a major cast change - Janice Baird replaces Jane Eaglen as Brunnhilde but the sensitive, intelligent and beautiful production by Stephen Wadsworth will be unchanged. On its last outing, Wadsworth had given the end of Gotterdammerung (sorry can't find umlaut key) a rethink and had come up with what is, for me, one of the most moving and visually stunning Ring finales ever. Last time I attended this Ring, I had the good fortune to find a houseboat on Lake Union (through good old Craigslist). What better way to spend a hot August week than listening to Wagner's music, lectures by Seattle's education guy, Perry Lorenzo and a cast of guest speakers from across the globe, then return to the house on the water and go for a swim.

Seattle is unembarrassed in its celebration of Wagner during Ring Week. I'm pasting a shaky (sorry) video clip of the fountain behind the opera, here as an example.
I can't imagine this ever happening in Germany!

"Wagner without Fear" - my favourite guide to Wagner

2009-03-23T16:55:00.000-07:00

This is not a new book. I was surprised to see that the first edition goes back to 1998 but William Berger's "Wagner without Fear" is one of the most enjoyable, informative, loving and entertaining books on this very trying genius that I have ever read. I picked it up at Seattle Opera last summer. I was in town preparing a feature for BBC Music Mag (US edition) on Seattle's ongoing, rather astonishing passion for Richard Wagner. I'd taken in a Ben Heppner recital, the International Wagner Voices Competition and a knock-out Aida with my best-ever Amneris, Stephanie Blythe. For the sake of my bank balance, I try to stay away from the shop at Seattle Opera. Their Ring-related stock is tasteful, often beautiful, sometimes amusing. There's a little corner for second-hand books on opera that often throws up a treasure I can't afford. And anyone passing through should treat themselves to Seattle education director Perry Lorenzo's insightful and entertaining CD guide to the Ring.

But this summer, I wandered in - I always do, and there was William Berger's 442 page guide to Wagner. I'd intended to save it for the bus journey back up to Vancouver. It looked like a dip-in kind of a book. I read it in one go. Berger welcomes us to the art of Richard Wagner and takes us on through his 'strange life and career', all the operas, guides to 'Wagner Issues' (anti-Semitism, nationalism among others) Wagner on CD, Wagner on Film, Wagner Soundtracks and rounds it all up with "Making the Hadj" - a pithy guide to a trip to Bayreuth.

If this all sounds like standard fare for a Wagner guide, Berger's combination of vast and deep knowledge with a sense of humour and an awareness of how uncomfortable and absurd Wagnerian ecstasy can be, make this the one book to buy for any of your friends who are contemplating a plunge into the Wagnerian ocean. Not only does he explain the plots and tell the reader what to listen for musically, he also provides sections such as: "Basics: When to Eat, Drink And Visit the Restroom", "Lobby Talk" (In Walkure this is "a note about horses and music") and, my favourite, the refreshingly honest: " Rough Spots and How to Get Through Them."

Flying Dutchman at Covent Garden -staring into the void again

2009-02-22T03:20:00.000-08:00

How often in our lives do we stare for hours into blackness? I ask because I have been staring at black for hours recently in Venice, Vienna and just two days ago, in London. And no, I haven't been staring at the midnight sky which is not black anyway, but deep, deep blue and offers relief in the form of stars, a moon and the occasional cloud.

The black I've been staring at has been on opera stages: A "Walkure" in Venice, a "Don Carlos" in Vienna and "The Flying Dutchman" at Covent Garden in London. The Walkure gave us a Winterstorm scene where the coming of spring is played out against a black backdrop. Depressing and pointless. The "Don Carlos" was justified in as much as the Spanish Inquisition setting is one of the blackest periods of history. But it was during that performance that I fell to thinking about the abnormality of just looking at black. And how it makes us feel.

Now Covent Garden gives us a new Flying Dutchman. I'm not quite sure why. The stunning and audacious Ian Judge production (1992-2000) gave us a great ship's prow jutting out into the auditorium, blood red sails, a boat that transforms into a spinning room, a spinning room into a harbour. It was bold and beautiful and wildly exuberantly romantic. www.ianjudge.com

And so, in true Covent Garden tradition, they've replaced it with something dull and ugly. They did this with Salome. Sir Peter Hall gave us an opulent, burnished, decadently beautiful and unsettling world. So, after a brief outing, the loony Covent Garden management gave us, instead, Bondy's dull grey import from Paris. They got rid of that and gave us lots of flowing blood in another forgettable production that seemed to be centered around a naked executioner (?!) . Ditto for Eugene Oneguin which went through far too many expensive incarnations, given its infrequent showings, before it arrived at the rather lovely current version.

And now, oh my, the poor old Dutchman gets frogmarched through another operatic black, boring world. The whole thing starts out well enough - during the overture we are confronted with a magical misty gauze that appears to have rain streaming down it. In what may be a coincidence, the curtain billows and folds in such a way that from where I was sitting,a tall dark shadow seemed to form at regular intervals across the gauze. A symbol of the Dutchman? Or just a happy chance of a curtain fold? Behind the curtain a light beams out at us at regular intervals. I got quite excited and anticipated a scene of a great harbour, a lighthouse and those blood-red sails on a black mast approaching in the distance. Yes, I know traditional but take a look at what Judge did with some of those elements. Broadway has never done better.

Covent Garden certainly didn't on Friday. We were faced with a black set. All the guts of the Royal Opera House stage were on display on either side - lighting fixtures, scaffolding etc. The great Bryn Terfel appeared - always a thrilling moment. He was pulling a giant length of mooring rope that rose high up into the wings. For an insane moment I believed that he was going to pull his blood red sails onto the stage. He walked and sang magnificently and pulled. And I waited. After a while I started to wonder if he wasn't just walking an enormous dog or a dinosaur. I started to wait for it to appear. Perhaps it would symbolize, I don't know, the great black dog of the Dutchman's depression? The dinosaur that the Dutchman had become? Whatever it was, it remained in the wings. Damn!

I've obviously been looking at far too many silly productions in my two decades of opera-going. This production wasn't silly - not at all. But it was ugly and depressing and gave not a hint of the great romantic work that this opera is. If you don't want to deal with the romantic nature of the Dutchman, I'd advise staying well away from Wagner's opera. Tim Albery didn't, alas.

He came up with the usual ruse of setting the story in modern times. That's okay but not particularly exciting. Are we so limited in our imaginations that we can't empathize with lives lived before we were born? If the chorus don't look like Amy Winehouse wannabees, is their singing of less power and interest?

But it's the drabness, the sheer ugliness that got me down. The spinners become workers at sewing machines, labouring under a battery of garish and, painful to my eyes, fluorescent lights. The ghost sailors emerge to molest poor old Senta, who has to come on stage and get roughed up in another garishly, fluorescent-lit set. And all the while we gaze at the black and I just longed for some blood-red sails. If nothing else, I suppose all these grim black productions served to teach me how much colour matters in our lives and how powerful it is when well used on a stage.

The singing was magnificent, particularly Bryn Terfel as the Dutchman, Hans-Peter Konig as Dalland, Anja Kampe's Senta and Torsten Kerl's Eric. The ROH orchestra their usual stunning Wagnerian selves under Marc Albrecht. But another black day at the Garden alas.

Wagner on the London Underground

2009-02-17T08:22:00.000-08:00

Returning home from a lecture on the future of conventional film-making (not bright) by director, Mike Figgis, at the ICA, I walked up to Bond St and got on the tube there. The Underground has a policy of playing classical music in their stations to scare away young yobos. Lots of Mozart and Beethoven but tonight we got Wagner's exquisitely tender Siegfried Idyll, the piece that I use several times in my script to denote moments of serenity and contentment in love. Wagner composed this music for Cosima to mark the birth of their son, Siegfried. He rehearsed it with a small orchestra in secret and arranged to have it played outside her bedroom on the morning of her birthday, December 25. Anyone who has seen Tony Palmer's film, Wagner, will recall the beautiful sight of the line of musicians walking in single file through the snow , cellos and tubas under their arms, to the door of the villa in Tribschen on Lake Lucerne in Switzerland.

What would Wagner make of its current use? I was delighted and wafted through the station in high spirits. I commented to the Indian ticket seller on how lovely it was. He agreed and said he loves it too, but that it also seems to do its job of keeping the kids moving right along...

Wagner in Vienna and a confession

2008-12-29T11:26:00.000-08:00

The second weekend in December brought me to Vienna to write about Haydn. 2009 will mark the 200th anniversary of his death. My weekend included Eisenstadt and the Schloss Esterhazy and trip to the

wine town of Rust to sample the sort of wines that Haydn would have drunk.

Vienna was disappointly rainy but I took consolation in the opulent Princess Elizabeth suite of the Hotel Imperial. The hotel is right next to the Musikverein so everyone you can name in music has stayed here - including Wagner who has a plaque in his honour to the right of the entrance. He stayed here for two months in 1875 while productions of Tannhauser and Lohengrin were being put on at the Vienna State Opera. Concierge Michael Moser tells me that his suite would have been just a few doors down from mine.

This weekend, Gotterdammerung is being performed. The Vienna Tourist people tell me I have a ticket that I can pick up at the ticket office. But when I go, an unsmiling ticket agent tells me that I owe them 192 Euros. This is beyond my budget and I scuttle off feeling guilty and found out even though I'm officially a guest of Vienna.

Then I feel a sense of relief. I won't have to sit through Act One! I love the Ring and have seen a dozen versions over the years. I love Twilight of the Gods but that first act demolishes me. The Norns are great, Siegfried's Rhine journey phenomenal, Waltraute's appearance on the rock heart-rending when she reminds Brunnhilde of how much Wotan misses her. But then, for me, it all becomes too, too much. I'm ready for a glass of wine and a pee. I need to stand up, move, talk but here comes Siegfried pretending to be Gunther or Gunther being Siegfried like some lumbering teutonic version of a Whitehall farce, and I lose the will to live.

So the mean agent at the ticket office had liberated me. I could do what I really wanted to do- go to the Christmas market at Schonbrunn, eat a kartoffelpuffer (potato pancake but I love that word) drink some gluhwein, then amble back to the opera sure in the knowledge that Act one will have claimed a few victims and that, if I stand by the cloakroom, one of them will totter out and hand me their ticket for the remaining two acts.

In the event, I'm given two "stehplatz" standing seats by an American couple headed for dinner. I take the tickets and head to the back of the orchestra stalls. I find myself in the place where my opera adventure began in 1982. Twenty six years ago, devotees (and standees are always devoted) would tie scarves to mark their place. Respectful Viennese would never remove them. I tied my scarf, saw Tosca and my life was changed forever. Twenty six years later, I'm tying my scarf again when a young man says, "You're Janette - you're Janette Griffiths". I blushed as other standees turned to stare. "You don't remember me. I'm Nicholas Legoux - a bass. We met in Covent Garden ten years ago. I read "The Singing House" and loved it."

Oddly enough, I had thought fleetingly just a week earlier of this young fan and felt sorry that other opera novels hadn't followed. "We will have dinner at the Cafe Mozart", said Nicola as we settled in for Act 3.

Michael Moser, the concierge at the Imperial had told me that 'the production is beautiful - simple and quite moving. I won't give anything away but the final moments moved me to tears."

They moved me to tears too. Vienna's Gotterdammerung uses video to excellent effect - swirling waves as the Rhine maidens reclaim their gold and, as the great achingly beautiful final theme sweeps over us, in the back of the stage, barely visible, a lone couple embrace - Adam and Eve? Cleansed, we begin all over again.

At the Cafe Mozart, Nicola tells me of his travels singing Leporello and Figaro as far away as Japan. Vienna State Opera hasn't yet called. "It's so difficult to get an agent," he sighs. I know about this and also reflect on his enthusiasm to stand through a 5 hour opera . I can think of several professional Wagner singers who would have always prefered to stay home in front of the tv but Nicola is there leaning on the barrier listening with love to Mozart, Wagner and Verdi. "I have recommended your book to so many of the standees," he tells me.

I go back to the Imperial full of kartoffelpuffer and gluhwein, and fall asleep serenely happy. Life has tied itself together in one of those rare and lovely bows - 26 years ago I discovered opera in Vienna, over a decade ago, a young man in Covent Garden discovered my book. And on a chill winter's night just before Christmas, as Wagner's great myth took us from the end of the world back to the beginning, we met up again -books and opera, words and voices and music all elegantly tied together over a quarter of a century.

Pitching my Wagner movie in my pyjamas

2008-04-21T04:44:00.000-07:00

A movie with a Wagner theme. Not the story of the composer's life. British director Tony Palmer took that on over a decade ago with mixed results. (How can a film on such a flawed, complicated genius be anything other than flawed and complicated?)

No, I want to adapt a big, funny love story about a bass-baritone who longs to sing the great role of Wotan, and find true love in the process. Forgive the Hollywood logline but I've been practising those all week and that's the best I can do. I had a script, I had a one page synopsis but the biggest hurdle turned out to be reducing a 480 page novel that had become a 120 page script and gone on to be a two paragraph synopsis into less than 25 words.

And I'm doing it with that nagging sense that anyone who looks at this will snigger - Wagner? Opera? Not a hope in hell. I like to respond that "Amadeus" took on Mozart and Salieri (who?) and swept the Oscars. Or that a movie about a band of geriatric musicians in Cuba packed them in across the planet.

But Wagner? Oh my, the associations are so toxic. My bass-baritone, Leo, knows that. So do the musicians he works with. In the original novel, he says to his new love, Rose: "I think it would have been very difficult to have been a singer when he was alive, to know that he was such an obnoxious man and yet to want to be part of that extraordinary music. It's easier now that he is dust." So "now that he is dust," I want to pitch my "wildly romantic, acerbically funny" (said the book blurb) story to movie producers.

I know that with its mix of big romance and daffy English eccentrics, I'm putting a foot in Merchant-Ivory country (think "Howards End" or "Room with a View".) And with the "ordinary woman meets world's greatest singer", I'm on "Notting Hill" territory.

I've got snow, I've got great love and I've got that glorious final scene of Die Walkure when Wotan bids farewell to Brunnhilde. I believe that if that theme weaves in and out of the story, people who fear Wagner as "heavy", "difficult" etc will discover the ecstasy that this music induces in people. National Review editor, Jay Nordlinger, called that passage the greatest piece of music ever written.

I recall a Covent Garden Ring with Haitink conducting in the Gotz Friedrich production. James Morris sang Wotan. There's a passage just after "freier als ich der gott," where the music leads us into a rapture that does not quite relate to the dramatic action or lyrics. But by then we don't care. On that day (it was a general rehearsal) I walked out the Royal Opera House not quite sure that my feet were anywhere near the ground. I wasn't alone. A couple of flute players from the orchestra wanted to go for a drink but both said they needed to be pulled off the ceiling before they could make it to the pub.Next thing I knew it was 3 hours later and I was in the coffee shop at the Royal Festival Hall - with no real idea how I got there. Wagner will do that. It scares some people because he reaches down and unleashes very deep emotions.

And that's what I want to put into my story but by making my protagonist a wise compassionate man, perhaps I can move Wagner away from a lot of the ugliness that has surrounded him.

Still, pitching this movie is not going to be easy. So when an email dropped into my inbox from Virtual Pitch Fest last week suggesting that I "pitch in my pyjamas" I couldn't resist. For a small fee, with the low dollar, I can pitch a dozen producers, agents and managers in Hollywood -all from the comfort of wherever my laptop has landed. I don't own pyjamas but I donned my red fleece dressing gown, my free towelling slippers from some hotel or the other, poured a glass of wine and here, looking out on the daffodils in Ealing, West London, began pitching. It's 5 am in Los Angeles. I suppose some hyper-active loony is headed for the gym but in theory, the 'Coast' is still deep in slumber. We'll see what they have to say.

Cosima Wagner's Diaries - Richard Wagner preferred blondes

2008-04-19T01:26:00.000-07:00

Cosima Wagner's diaries are an intimidating read. In their original form they comprised 21 notebooks - kept in a Munich bank vault for years then transported to Bayreuth under police escort on 12 March 1974. Over a million words record what her beloved Richard ate and drank, when and where he walked, when he worked, what he said, when he dreamed and what he thought. And this was a man who had an opinion, alas, on everything.

The diaries stop dead when he died of a heart attack in Venice on February 13th 1883. Cosima held the dead Wagner in her arms for 24 hours. Then she accompanied the body back to Bayreuth for burial. She would live on for another 44 years but she never wrote another word.

Unconditional love of another human being does not make for happiness. Cosima adores her man but oh my she suffers. She has serious problems with her sight - not easy for a dedicated writer, and she longs endlessly and often rather casually for death. She suffers but very ambiguously from her man's infidelities - cryptic mentions are made of her own unhappiness during his dalliance with novelist Judith Gautier. At the end she suspected a liaison with Parsifal flower girl, Carrie Pringle.

But there is a surprisingly cosy side to the Wagners' life. They dance around the Christmas tree, gossip over coffee at lunch. She is awoken one night by "Richard in a purple night shirt, wandering around looking for his cheque book." He brings in a hairdresser to dye her hair blonde. Cosima comments that she is happy to go grey but Richard likes her blonde.

Wagner often travels by train and, compulsive communicator that he was, sends telegrams from every railway station. So, in the 19th century, instant communication almost rivalled today's emails. Imagine if this man had been around today. We'd have all been trembling as we opened Outlook Express. "Oh blimey! More spam from Richard!"

Wagner, King Ludwig and Bavaria

2008-04-12T10:23:00.000-07:00

Wagner had, unsurprisingly, immense physical energy and, like his predecessors Beethoven and Schubert, he spent many hours hiking in the woods and mountains of his native Germany. Later, when he was based in Switzerland he walked the Alps with Frederick Nietzche.

In The Ring of the Nibelung, he takes us through the forests, along the rivers and up to otherwordly summits to which both his imagination and his immense physical stamina had led him. He has a festival dedicated entirely to his work in Bayreuth which nestles in the gentle hills not far from Nuremberg. But a traveller in search of the natural world that inspired The Ring, Lohengrin, Tannhauser and Tristan will also find it in the land and castles of Wagner’s patron Ludwig II of Bavaria.

Wagner was living in Stuttgart and was, as ever, up to his eyes in debt when Ludwig sent his secretary to summons the creator of Lohengrin to his presence. Suspecting a creditor’s ruse to gain access to him, Wagner refused to see the man. When he finally agreed, a chapter in his life opened up that left even Wagner, with his grandiose self-image, dazed. He was soon staying at the king’s residence at Hohenschwangau where the mythical world of his operas helped feed the fantasy world of a monarch who already had considerable problems facing reality.

Wagner was now in a position at the Bavarian court where he could order Wagnerian motifs to be played from the turrets in the morning. He had royal greetings performed by oboists of the First Infantry regiment and pulled off his greatest coup when he recreated Lohengrin’s Arrival for the king alone. On a cool November evening in 1865 a shimmering figure emerged from the mist of the lake below Ludwig’s castle. Wagner had arranged for the adjutant general to dress as Lohengrin and sail across the Alpsee in a boat pulled by a small skiff covered by a wooden swan. A delighted Ludwig ordered a repeat performance.

Wagner’s piano still stands in a room in the castle that overlooks the lake. On a winter’s day when tourists are few, snow covers the pines, the Alpsee is frozen and Ludwig’s dream castle Neuschwanstein drifts in and out of the mists, then, in a quiet moment, the true spirit of the composer can be felt as myth and nature entwine.

Wagner, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Clint Eastwood

2008-04-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

Here in Britain, Citroen have fallen back on the tired old Ride of the Walkyries for their latest promotion. So Wagner gets an outing, riding, as usual, with his warrior-woman creations. But he's appeared in some more surprising places over the past few years. How could one ever connect Jerry Seinfeld and his relentlessly unromantic Manhattan life of obsessive trivia with Wagner? The link turns out to be Seinfeld co-creator, Larry David. His "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode "Trick or Treat" opens with Larry whistling the Siegfried Idyll for his wife, and explaining to her the work's romantic background. Richard Wagner wrote it for his wife, Cosima, to mark the birth of their first son, Siegfried. He wanted to surprise her on her 25 December birthday so he arranged for a small orchestra to come to the Swiss villa where they were living. The musicians lined themselves up on the stairs outside her bedroom and woke her with this gentle, lyrical work. Larry David, of all people,knew this and explained it to Cheryl.

In the "Trick or Treat" episode, he is overheard by a militant Jewish neighbour who attacks his liking for this music as anti-semitism. After a typical CYE tangle of outrageous events and loud arguments - this time involving Halloween and toilet paper - Larry takes his revenge on the neighbour by stationing himself outside the man's house at dawn and conducting The Meistersinger overture. As my Canadian friends would say: "Larry David and Wagner - who'd have thunk?"

Dozing the other night in front of a Clint Eastwood movie , "Absolute Power", on the tv, I suddenly heard the Tannhauser overture. The movie told a convoluted tale of a burglar, Clint who witnesses a corrupt US president, Hackman, stand by while his security men murder his mistress. Ed Harris is cast as the world-weary detective called in to investigate. In one of those, "lonely cop with feelings and intellect," scene, that I thought was reserved for Inspector Morse, Harris is show, home alone, pondering the case to the accompaniment of Wagner's Tannhauser.

Wagner and Paris - just look on the letterbox .

2008-03-31T13:38:00.000-07:00

No, not another account of Richard Wagner's generally miserable stays in the city.

Just last year, a Parisian friend was passing the poky, dark entrance to the courtyard where the composer once had rooms on the Rue Jacob in St Germain des Pres. For once, the locked front door had been left open. She couldn't resist the chance to see yet another of Wagner's many temporary homes. But once inside, she realized that she had no idea just which apartment had been his. A current resident was crossing the courtyard.
"Excusez-moi, Monsieur? Can you tell me where Richard Wagner lived?" The man thought for a moment, frowned, then said, "Why, you just look on the letter box. The apartment number will be under his name." A lovely thought - that a hundred and fifty years on, that letter box might still be there, elegantly calligraphed missives dropping into it, while the utility bills and junk mail fill its neighbours.

A few blocks away on the quays of the Seine across from the Louvre is the Hotel du Quai Voltaire. Wagner stayed there too, as did Sibelius, Camille Pissaro, and Oscar Wilde among others. Last year, for my birthday on January 22nd, I had, what I thought was the brilliant idea of renting Wagner's old room and celebrating right there, where according to the hotel reception, he worked on part of Die Meistersinger. I'd have to verify that with Britain's Wagner experts, Messrs Millington or Spencer ,but until I do, the idea of sleeping in a room that might have been the birthplace of the great quintet or even a few bars of the prize song is beguiling. Alas, last year, the builders were in the room - boom boxes and bum cleavage are not quite what I had in mind. Still, it's a plan to file away for a future grey Paris winter.

Absolute Happiness – Ben Heppner and Wagner at the Salle Pleyel

2008-03-24T14:16:00.000-07:00

Absolute Happiness – Ben Heppner and Wagner at the Salle Pleyel

Ben Heppner missed the live Met broadcast of Tristan und Isolde on Saturday. Robert Dean Smith, his replacement did a fine job. But I felt a little nostalgic for big Ben from BC – especially given a stunning concert performance of his that I attended in Paris just over a year ago. Heppner gave two Wagner concerts in Paris last year – within 2 weeks of each other and at two different venues. The first at the Theatre des Champs Elysees featured Siegmund’s glorious music from Die Walkure.

I had arrived in Paris a couple of days earlier and had noted the dates. But, in an extraordinary moment of stupidity, managed to miss this first concert. I knew where it was, I’d noted when it was. Then I went off for tea and very delicate little French pastries at La Duree on the Left Bank and somehow, I got addled. When Ben Heppner was greeting spring over on the Right Bank, I was standing in the frozen pizza section of the Montparnasse Monoprix wondering whether to go for a good solid Margarita or throw in a bit of pepperoni for good measure. Next morning when I wandered to the theatre to try for a ticket and found that all that glorious sound had gone off into the ether the previous night, well, had there been a nearby bench, I would have sat down and wept.

All was not lost. Heppner was coming back to the Salle Pleyel and this time he was bringing Tristan with him. I got there on the right day and got a good seat. But I wasn’t that excited. I prefer the joy of a young Siegmund greeting spring and love to the mournful, drawn out delirium and death of Tristan. I knew that Heppner had had a few health problems. And I had no expectations from a dramatic point of view. This was a concert performance. The man would have to stand there in a tux, alone, in front of an orchestra and make us believe that he is raging, brooding, wounded Tristan - yearning unto death.

I was sitting next to a small bird-like French woman in her mid-eighties. We had a minor skirmish when I complained about my uncomfortable seat and she accused me of being a typical Parisian whiner (?!). Then the Orchestre National de Paris played the Parsifal prelude. My neighbour turned to me with tears in her eyes and said “Cette musique, c’est le bonheur absolu.” Absolute happiness. “On a de la chance de le savoir.” Yes, she was right. We are both lucky to know how much this music can add to a life. Then Ben came and Ben sang. But he didn’t just sing. He stood there in that stiff dinner jacket and white tie and turned into the dying Tristan before our eyes. The big old boy from British Columbia morphed into this wild, tormented, tragic hero.

The audience in the Salle Pleyel leapt to its feet. And the French aren’t generous with their standing ovations. Another French friend of mine, a gifted concert pianist has described his experience of discovering Wagner as comparable to the initial stages of falling in love. I’ll save that for another entry. In the meantime, I wish Ben Heppner a speedy recovery. With less than a handful of Tristans on the planet, we need them all – particularly one who can do what he did on that December night of ‘bonheur absolu’ in the Salle Pleyel.

Tristan und Isolde live from the Met - but please DON'T pass the popcorn

2008-03-22T10:47:00.001-07:00

On this freezing March Easter weekend, my Saturday looked to be perfect – a dress rehearsal of Carmen at the Royal Opera House in the morning and, if the tube is behaving, a quick lunch and onto the Metropolitan Opera’s live transmission of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the Gate Cinema in Notting Hill.

I discovered these broadcasts last year in Vancouver. On Canada’s West Coast, the time difference has us up early – 10.30 for a normal opera, 930 for a Wagner. This has one huge advantage in our downtown cineplex. The popcorn concession for regular cinema has not yet opened. Muffins are available and coffee – both measuring very low on the Richter scale of noise made while being consumed. Then, during Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, one lone man wandered downstairs during the second intermission and found the fatal popcorn. Surely the noisiest foodstuff known to man –a Richter eight or nine – so why do we sell it during a cinematic performance that demands that we hear?

Daniel Barenboim discussed the current disdain for hearing and listening in last year’s Reith lectures and, perhaps, when Jack Black is crashing through his latest dysfunctional screen-life, none of us need to hear the details. But when that man made his way up the aisle in the Vancouver cinema last year, clutching his bottomless (they are always bottomless) bag of popcorn, I knew that Puccini was going to come out the worse for the encounter. Manon Lescaut, alone in that notorious ‘desert outside New Orleans’, started to sing “Solo, (crunch) perduta (crackle) abandonnata (rustle – sound of hand rummaging deep in bag for the buttery bits at the bottom.) And unlike the sweet wrapper that takes a mere whole aria to unwrap, popcorn never ends. Popcorn in cinemas has to be the closest mankind will come to a brush with eternity.

But I kept faith in the culture of Old Europe. Corn, as any geographer will tell you, is an American crop so, even if we have succumbed to this very American snack while we watch a Hollywood film, surely the Gate in Notting Hill, must know that you cannot eat popcorn during Wagner? Oscar Wilde was right about many, many things but very wrong about Wagner’s music. It isn’t so loud that you can talk through it (I paraphrase). Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde with its endless yearning, its great ocean of desire, (and not for more butter and plenty of salt) is full of silences, pauses, great orchestral drawings in of breath before we are carried ever upward to Wagner’s unique form of ecstasy.

Oddly enough, the young woman at the concession stand at the Gate understood this. She was obviously not an opera goer but she had realized that ‘popcorn and opera don’t go together.’ Alas, her manager apparently does not agree. And so I walked away crestfallen from the Gate. At 30 pounds a seat, I wasn’t going to risk it. So here I sit back at the house listening to Radio 3, very sorry that I missed Deborah Voigt and the Met debut of Robert Dean Smith. For cinema managers who need guidance on this matter here is a quick list of acceptable opera foods if we really must, and it would seem that we really must, be stuffing something into our mouths at every waking moment of our day.

FOOD THAT YOU CAN EAT AT A MET BROADCAST IF YOU SIMPLY MUST:
Soup (no crusty baguettes to go with it mind!) , pureed vegetables, lightly scrambled egg but no bacon, fruit compote, yogurt (but not with bits of fruit in it – particularly not pineapple or any kind of apple) chocolate mousse – milk, dark or white – is always acceptable but no slurping your spoon.

DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT EATING:
Popcorn, crisps, bagels, kit-kats, crunchie bars, snickers, raw carrots, courgettes or peppers, battered fish, fried chicken, steak and kidney pie.

Cinema personnel requiring further information should feel free to contact me at :thesinginghouse@gmail.com

Wagner's Death in Venice

2008-03-21T15:04:00.000-07:00

Richard Wagner lived the last months of his life in the Palazzo Vendramin on Venice’s Grand Canal. He died there of a heart attack on February 13, 1883.The room in which he died is open to the public, along with two other rooms on the mezzanine of the palazzo which these days serves as the winter quarters of Venice’s casino.

Wagner drew on mythology as the inspiration for operas such as the colossal Ring of the Nibelungen, and his own life and death are wreathed in myth and fantasy. Was he, as was claimed, the best-read man of the nineteenth century? The subject of more books than any other person except Christ. A womanizer? Had an argument with his wife Cosima over Carrie Pringle, a young Scottish soprano, set off the heart attack that would kill him? Did Cosima really hold him in her arms for 24 hours after he died?Romantically inclined visitors to these rooms in Venice even claim that, when the breeze from the canal blows in the right direction, you can still catch the scent of one of Wagner’s favourite French perfumes.

All that is sure on the guided visit to the Wagner rooms is that they contain replicas and some originals of the composer’s manuscripts and letters (including one from father-in-law Franz Liszt) a copy of the couch on which he died and that, while you wander, some of the most sensuous, luminous, transcendent music ever to issue from a human brain will be playing in the background.I think that’s quite enough for one Saturday morning in Venice.

Guided tours only – on Saturday mornings. Reservations should be made by phone on Fridays between 10 and 12am at + 39 349 5936990. The tours are free but with a donation suggested. Address: Palazzo Loredan-Vendramin-Calergi, Cannaregio - Venezia

Seattle Opera Re-opens - The American Bayreuth?

2008-03-21T03:48:00.000-07:00

“Seattle is a city that is given to earth tones,” says Speight Jenkins, general director of the Seattle Opera. “I’ve never liked that. So when we were remodelling the opera house,I told them that I didn’t want an earth tone in the house.”

Seattle Opera’s general director Speight Jenkins is a man of immense passion and enthusiasm and one of his greatest passions is for the work of Richard Wagner. So when his newly renovated opera house re-opened on August 2 with a performance of Parsifal,it came as no surprise to see a Rheingold rainbow in the form of a light show playing on the metal arches and scrims that project from the façade.

As for the interior decor, Speight Jenkins got his wish – he usually does; there are no earth tones to be seen in the building that has emerged from the shell of the old theatre. Instead the curving glass façade, the silvery grey of the foyer and the teal green seats in the auditorium itself all reflect the colours and moods of the surrounding Pacific Northwest with its rains and ocean and forest. That same natural setting contributed to the first Seattle Ring back in the seventies when company founder, Glynn Ross, another passionate Wagnerian, realized that the region’s mountains, lakes and forests were reminiscent of the Alpine landscapes that inspired Wagner.

When he also realized that, apart from New York’s Metropolitan Opera,no other North American house was mounting a full Ring Cycle, he took a very courageous leap and, to the astonishment of the opera establishment, launched the complete Ring of the Nibelungen in his small, geographically remote company. The tradition grew with the arrival of Speight Jenkins and went on to encompass other Wagner operas. Today, with the exception of Bayreuth itself, Seattle Opera has become the opera house most enamoured of Wagner’s work. After the 2001 Ring Cycle, the Times Literary Supplement said that “Jenkins’ version of the great Nibelungen Cycle reaffirms his company’s stature as North America’s pre-eminent Wagner house.”

In the land of Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks and Grunge rock, the locals have caught Speight Jenkins’ enthusiasm and flock to performances of the difficult German genius’s music. And Jenkins does not patronise his public. Productions are sometimes traditional, more often modern and, in the case of the current Parsifal, more than a little ambiguous in their interpretation of Parsifal’s meaning. Jenkins and his company do, however, provide a variety of lectures, symposia, free CDs etc to prepare the public for what they will see. And, if they still have any remaining questions after the five hour performance, Speight Jenkins himself hosts a question and answer session. In the old theatre that was held over a cup of coffee in the foyer. Now there is a lecture hall specially set aside for the purpose.

Microsoft has sponsored the new season. Wagner, who in his lifetime, struggled endlessly to obtain the patronage of the rich and successful of his world, would be amused but probably not surprised to see that the most contemporary citizens of one of our most modern cities have taken it upon themselves in the 21st century to support him.

Seattle Ring Cycle 2005

2008-03-21T03:46:00.000-07:00

Seattle Opera - McCaw Hall
Wagner
DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN G.Grimsley, S.Blythe, RP Fink, M.Plette, S. Milling, G. Saks, P.Kazaras, T. Harper, E.Podles, R. Berkeley-Steele, MJ Wray, J. Eaglen, A. Woodrow. Dir: R.Spano. Dir.esc: S. Wadsworth. 7,8,10, 12, 15, 16,18,20, 23, 24,26,28 August

Seattle loves Wagner and has been presenting Ring cycles in the city of Boeing and Microsoft since 1976. Director Stephen Wadsworth has repaid that love with a green and loving Ring. Green in the realistic sets – the gods dwell in a forest glade based on a local beauty spot. And loving in the relationships between these oh-so-human deities – Wotan and Fricka exchange frequent embraces between marital arguments. Conducting his first Ring, Robert Spano brings finely judged pacing, sparkle and weight to an orchestra that benefits from the excellent acoustic in the renovated McCaw Hall. The other major debut is Greer Grimsley in his first Wotan. He has an oaky, tireless bass- baritone that occasionally echoes the sublime George London. His Wotan remains a work in progress, lacking a little in presence as if Grimsley does not yet believe that he is the god of all the gods.

Richard Paul Fink’s powerful, assured Alberich commands the stage in Rhinegold. In the opening scenes he has to compete with the production’s stunning Rhinemaidens – suspended on harnesses, swooping, soaring and somersaulting as they sing. Stephanie Blythe’s glorious mezzo brings warmth and compassion to Fricka but the most dramatic moment belongs to Ewa Podles’s Erda who emerges out of the mossy forest floor to bring her own brand of velvet-brown, sexy contralto comfort to the troubled Wotan.

In Die Walkure, Margaret Jane Wray’s thrilling, laser-like soprano lacks the doomed Sieglinde’s vulnerability. Wray is surely just passing through Hunding’s hut on the way to Brunnhilde’s summits. Siegmund on the other hand, as sung by Richard Berkeley-Steele is lyrical and tender but lacks the heroics necessary for Die Walkure’s great sword declamations. The immense Stephen Milling is a stentorian, menacing Hunding. Seattle loves Jane Eaglen’s Brunnhilde. And when she is singing full throttle this reviewer loves her too but there is a worrying gap in the middle range of her voice that renders it almost inaudible at times. Alan Woodrow’s Siegfried acts with jaunty confidence and humour, singing heroically if not always beautifully but growing in vocal stature to deliver a moving death scene in Gotterdammerung. In the revised (since 2001) immolation scene, the cavorting Rhinemaidens reclaim their Ring as the grey, ageing gods rise on a pedestal amidst the smoke of Valhalla’s ruins. Wotan and Fricka embrace - recalling bad Hollywood films where family values must survive but by now we don’t care for the rapturous love theme brings with it the pristine forest of Rhinegold. Now fresh shoots grow on the logs. In Seattle’s green Ring, beyond the destruction caused by gods and man nature returns, nature endures.

Seattle Ring 2001

2008-03-21T03:45:00.000-07:00

The Ring Cycle - Seattle Opera -13, 14, 16 and 18 August 2001:

Long before Boeing , long, long before Microsoft, the city of Seattle lived off lumber from the great forests that cover its nearby mountains. And then came word that gold was to be found in those same mountains and desperate men thronged to the town. In their wake, came women brought in to be married off , not always willingly, to these wild woodsmen. For a while Seattle mined the gold miners selling them provisions before they set out on an invariably vain quest out into the unwelcoming forests where even today bears still roam and occasionally show up in suburban back gardens. A hundred years ago the centre of the original city was much lower and parts of this underground world can still be visited beneath the hollow sidewalks of downtown’s Pioneer Square.

Dark forests, mountain summits, bears, gold, unwilling wives and a hidden underground world. Is it any wonder that the Seattle Opera has established itself as one of the leading proponents of Wagner’s Ring Cycle? When General Director Speight Jenkins was casting around for a director for this new Ring production seven years ago, he expressed a wish for a “green Ring” in a naturalistic setting that would correspond to the surrounding Pacific Northwest landscape. His team of director Stephen Wadsworth, designer Tom Lynch and lighting director Peter Kaczorowski has given us a Ring that after years of Rings in space-ships, tunnels, Victorian drawing rooms is refreshingly free of any concept. From the moment of the exquisitely realized Rhine Maidens entry on to the scene ( securely attached by harnesses and moved around on wires by hidden helpers in the flies, the fearless and excellent singers swoop and dive and turn several complete somersaults 20 feet above a stage of iridescent deep-water blue), Wadsworth draws us so deeply into the emotions and psychology of Wagner’s characters both divine and mortal that no additional theories need to be grafted on to this colossal work. Stick with us, the whole Seattle team seems to be saying , with these gods and mortals and the nature that we now know so well and Wagner’s epic will flow as naturally as the Rhine itself. It does. The longeurs that this spectator has so often experienced in the first act of Gotterdammerung were absent. And even Siegfried, often a low point for any but the most dedicated Wagnerian, was the fastest-moving and most engaging that I’ve every experienced.

Lynch’s beautiful naturalistic sets from those watery Rhine depths up to Brunnhilde’s rock and the frozen winter world of the Norns support Wadsworth’s strong dramatic reading. The characters kiss and hug a lot in this Ring. Wotan, Phillip Joll, and Fricka, the wonderful, opulent-voiced Stephanie Blythe, continue to embrace and show genuine affection as they sing through their conflicts in Walkure’s Act 2. At one point he courts her with a flower picked from Valhalla’s slopes. A cynic could call this a West Coast “touchy feely” Ring but by showing a still-loving if disenchanted Fricka, Wadsworth gives this often shrewish character a pivotal role as the moral centre of the drama. When the gods ascend into Valhalla, Fricka holds back anxious and unsure. When her wish for Siegmund’s death is granted, she is there on stage to witness his end.

Wadsworth has said that he doesn’t want any of the women in the Ring to appear to be victims. And certainly the two most likely candidates, Freia, (Maria Plette) the gentle goddess of youth and Sieglinde, the doomed twin (sung with warmth, power and beauty by an utterly secure Margaret Jane Wray) are both feisty, independent women. Faced with a brutish Hunding who makes a point of imposing his kisses on her in front of Siegmund, this Sieglinde sweeps the table clear of all its symbols of her imposed domesticity before running off to share a night of love with her brother.

As the cycle progresses, British soprano, Jane Eaglen’s Brunnhilde emerges as a warm, loving Wonder Woman character. Both General Director, Speight Jenkins and Wadsworth have expressed the opinion that the supposed “redemption through love theme” that closes Gotterdammerung is more a celebration of Brunnhilde. Vocally the clarion-voiced Eaglen is increasingly worthy of celebration, particularly in Gotterdammerung where with Nilsonesque assurance she commanded the stage from the moment of her entrance. On the previous two days, the contrast between her loud and soft passages was occasionally too marked. Under Wadsworth’s sensitive coaching her acting has improved tenfold since I saw her Brunnhilde in a Scottish Opera Ring several years ago.

A cruel twist of fate helped to make this a woman’s Ring. In what could be the worst nightmare of any opera house director attempting to present the tetralogy , Speight Jenkins lost his Siegfried, the longest role in the cycle. Canadian tenor Alan Woodrow, who sings regularly at ENO, was the hope of many as a great new heroic tenor. But, alas, 24 hours before his debut, he tripped over a treadmill while accompanying his wife to the gym and severed a quadriceps muscle. Unable to walk, he sang through the first cycle from the wings while his cover, English tenor, Richard Berkeley-Steele, acted his part on stage. Jenkins later decided that this would be an unsatisfactory solution for the two remaining cycles and with some extra coaching from the director, the valiant Englishman went on to sing a part for which he had never rehearsed with an orchestra.

He showed no sign of nerves and if not quite a heroic tenor, he acted with ease and agility and gave us the rare sight of a slim, strong, youthful Siegfried.

The British contribution to this Ring was completed by Welsh baritone Philip Joll in the role of Wotan. Lacking in some majesty and a lot of volume in Rheingold, Joll summoned the necessary warmth and power to make Wotan’s Farewell the essential emotional climax of the Ring that it must be if the rest of the cycle is to move us.

Outstanding male performances came from Richard Paul Fink as Alberich and the exciting young Danish bass, Stephen Milling, as a volcanic, menacing Hunding and an equally stentorian but deeply vulnerable Fasolt.

Replacing an ailing Armin Jordan, Franz Vote conducted a sensitive, balanced Ring that perhaps lacked fireworks and was occasionally let down by the horns but grew in assurance as the days progressed.

At the end of their previous Ring Cycle, Seattle Opera earned admission to the Guinness Book of Records by staging the biggest fire on a public stage. Wadsworth and Lynch decided, wisely, that they could not follow such spectacle. Instead the scene literally flows from a distant, smouldering funeral pyre behind a carved wooden screen in the Gibichung palace, to a brief glimpse of the gods in the depths of the Rhine and on to the rebirth of nature and life as new young trees appear on the slopes of what could be Seattle’s own Mt Rainier.

A few final words on the driving force behind this Ring, the extra ordinary general director, Speight Jenkins. Where in Europe would a general director conduct a question and answer session on anything pertaining to the Ring day in question? On each performance day, Jenkins arms himself with a microphone, stands in the foyer of his theatre and for 90 minutes, answers the most obscure and erudite questions. When he was preparing this Ring, Jenkins asked for a commitment from his production team to return in 2005, 2009 and 2013. On this first showing, they have given us a Ring that confirms Seattle’s emerging reputation as an American Bayreuth. Tickets sell out a year in advance so mark those dates in your calendars now.