Canadian Opera surpasses itself - with the ugliest Walküre I've ever seen

Oh dear, oh dear - some poor benighted stage-hand apparently forgot to turn off a light at the back of the stage in Canadian Opera's Die Walküre last night in Toronto. There we all were, back for Act 2 after a rather gloomy, galumphing but beautifully sung Act 1 and there was this lighted area at the back of the stage. The  front of the stage was a sorry sight: Wagner's gods had, apparently chosen to gather around the tree in a sandpit on a pile of rubble that had stood in for Hunding's hut in the dark and dreary 1st act. But now we got to see all the guts of a stage production: scaffolding, arc lights and ladders - the stuff that makes the magic but usually has the good grace to stay out of the magic.

Here, in what I assume was a stab at some 'nudge, nudge, wink, wink' post-modern deconstruction, here it all was - big, irrelevant and ugly as sin. And all lit up by this glaring light at the back of the stage that, as I said above, a stage hand must have forgotten to switch off. At first I thought something marvellous was about to happen back there. Perhaps a backdrop hinting at Valhalla or even a humble old everyday mountain - you know the ones the gods are supposed to be hanging out on. But when nothing happened and the light just shone and shone on what looked like a backstage rehearsal area, well, I started to worry that a stage-hand had forgotten to throw a switch and that perhaps I should tell someone because it was mightily distracting.

That said, there was not that much to be distracted from. The truly wonderful singers struggled through the limpest direction of singing-actors I've ever encountered. I did wonder, since producer Atom Egoyan is such a revered name in his home country's cinema, if perhaps he'd been a bit busy on a film-set somewhere and just phoned in his directions - what there was of them. Extraordinary artists like Christina Goerke as Brunnhilde were left to do the minimum of interacting with their fellow singers.

Act 2, to be honest, is tough for even a director like  Harry Kupfer, who can ignite his singers into almost too much action or the late Patrice Chereau who could make actors out of the most immobile singer. Act 2 is long and repetitive and requires Wotan to spend most of the time giving us a "Previously on the Ring" monologue that lasts for about an hour. There is some extraordinarily beautiful music in that act but if the dramatic action does not feed into it, even that music sags and lags. Here in addition to all the tired design cliches mentioned above, all  Egoyan gave us was Wotan digging Siegmund's grave or perhaps it was his own grave or the  grave of his freedom or some equally tedious symbolism. Oh who cares? He just looked plain daft wielding his shovel. But this production did not on the whole even dare to be daft, it was just dull beyond belief.

I still held out some hope for Act 3. After all the Ride of the Valkyries and all that follows is rattling good theatre and Wotan's Farewell is one of the greatest pieces of music ever written. But producers rarely miss an opportunity to muck it up. There are exceptions. Seattle's Stephen Wadsworth actually had the temerity to TRUST Wagner and his stage directions and gave us a moment of great beauty and nobility. As did the much-maligned "traditional" Otto Schenk production at the Met. But 2 minutes into the "Ride" (and yes, it was the same hideous set and that light was still on) and  I knew all was lost. It was time to beat a retreat before, yet again, that glorious, redemptive music was brought down to the level of a producer who can just about  haul himself up to  Wagner's big toe in terms of talent.  I have never, ever missed the third act and I have sat through  good, bad and atrocious Ring Cycles in Munich, London, Bayreuth, New York,  Seattle and Vienna. Those last twenty minutes make me glad to be alive but tonight I knew they would be an unbearable travesty.

I love Canada and Canadians. I wanted to believe that a land whose culture is so enmeshed with the natural world, the climate and the elements would give us a Ring that reflected all that. But it was Seattle who managed that. Canada, instead, could claim the prize for "Ugliest Wagner Production Ever" and believe me I've seen some doozies.

As I left the theatre in search of a comforting cocktail, I was feeling sorry for all concerned. Sorry for those poor, wonderful singers who work so hard and bring such  shining talent to the  dimmest of productions. I was sorry for the orchestra, tucked away beneath the stage doing wonderful work and having it cancelled out by what was going on above them. I was sorry for the audience - all those wolfed-down dinners for the Wagnerian early-start, all those pretty dresses dry-cleaned and smart suits pressed, all those furrowed brows as the more generous, open-hearted among them struggled to show how open their minds were too as they gazed at the mess onstage. I was sorry for Wagner who gave us such beauty but that very beauty seems to drive people entrusted with his dramas to balance it with extreme ugliness. WHY????

But most of all I was sorry for me because as far as I know, I only get one life and well over half of it has gone by and still the rubbish Wagner productions keep coming. What I know for sure, as Oprah would say, is that this music has made my life better, bigger and more beautiful. And I've had a humble hope that I would be able to share that beauty in a theatre where the musical beauty would be matched onstage. But Atom Egoyan, Richard Jones and company, have other ideas. They have had  those ideas for far too long. Back in the 1990s, the great British essayist, Bernard Levin, wrote an open letter in "The Times" asking Wagner singers, John Tomlinson and Deborah Polaski in the atrocious Richard Jones "Ring" why they did not just refuse to sing in such tripe. He did not get an answer. Twenty five years on and still the tripe keeps getting shovelled our way.

Oh and if I have made a horrible mistake and a stage hand really did leave that light on, well, I'm sorry for him or her too because, even in a country with strong unions and lenient employment laws, that must surely be a sackable offence.

Last-minute Walküre in Bayreuth

On a hot summer's evening in Paris in 1988, two French friends phoned me from a Bed and Breakfast in Bayreuth, Germany. Marc and Pierre were  preparing to go to the opera. Nothing new - Marc and Pierre spent their lives preparing to go to the opera. Or in the case of Pierre, the more emotional of the two, recovering from going to the opera. Pierre lived his "vie lyrique" as he described the abiding passion of his life, at a very intense level.  Joan Sutherland's final "Lucia" left him too moved to speak for 24 hours.  "Parsifal" in virtually any production would leave him in a week-long state swoon. And that evening, there they both were, Pierre, the emoter,  and Marc, the organizer in a Bed and Breakfast just a few yards from the Festspielhaus. The following day would see the beginning of "Der Ring des Nibelungen." This Ring cycle would also mark the debut of a respected but not particularly well-known British bass, John Tomlinson, in the role of Wotan.

I did know Tomlinson's work. I had seen him sing to his coat as Colline in La Boheme at the ROH, and in the much more spectacular role of Baron Ochs in Strauss's Rosenkavalier at ENO. I knew that this was a Titan of a man onstage. Tomlinson, as  Wagner's flawed and troubled god,  could it seemed, move the character away from the gloomy, stately old man of some earlier productions and bring his volcanic energy to a much younger incarnation. I'd told my French friends as much. Thanks to Marc, the organizer, they had applied for Bayreuth tickets a couple of centuries in advance and were headed for a local bierstüberl in happy anticipation of an early sausage supper and a great evening of opera.

I, on the other hand, seem to lack the bit of the brain that plans. I had no ticket to Bayreuth but, as an Air France employee, I did have free air travel. Two minutes into my conversation with Pierre and I knew that I had to jump on a plane to Nuremberg and ride a train to Bayreuth where I would take my chances at getting a last minute ticket for the following day's Walküre..

Next day, there I was, walking for the first time in my life up the green hill to the Festspielhaus. I would like to say that I was moved and excited but, in truth, I was frazzled by the travel and anxious that this was a barmy undertaking that would leave me locked outside the theatre.  A small part of me hung on to a hope that I would get a returned ticket. Looking at the stately opera-goers headed up the hill was heartening. Many of them were quite old, some a tad infirm. Surely somebody would keel over before Die Walküre started?

Mark and Pierre were happily anticipating their evening. So, I saw at the top of the hill, were scores of hopeful, would-be opera-goers. Ticket hunters were everywhere and all more organized and alluring than I could ever hope to be. There were women and a few men dressed as Brünnhilde. There were several Wotans and  even a couple of Hundings. Some people had drawn cartoons on posters explaining their need for a ticket. Others held up simple banners. I had nothing.

The trumpeters came out onto the Bayreuth balcony to summon the audience. Marc and Pierre wished me luck and disappeared inside. So did most of those resourceful hopefuls. Soon, the bustling little square in front of the theatre was empty -except for me and the Bayreuth fire engine, oh and an English couple with their teenage son who had drawn lots: one act per family member.

I lost heart and drifted back down the hill to have a cup of tea on a patio next to the  more ornate old Margrave theatre. In all my years of opera-going, I had never failed to get in at the last minute. I would always declare airily that: "Wagner (or Puccini or Verdi or Strauss) knows I love him and will look after me." They always had but now, in his spiritual home, Wagner had abandoned  me.  Forlorn and disappointed I wandered back up to the theatre. I even walked round it a couple of times, thinking that I might be able to hear something, anything but all I could hear was birdsong and the distant hum of traffic. The audience spilled out. Pierre and Marc were in a state of high excitement. "Tomlinson est epoustouflant!" cried Pierre. "C'est un Wotan volcanique! Titanique!" Well yes, I knew that. "C'est la plus grand soirée de ma vie lyrique!" added Pierre never a paragon of tact.  And back they all went inside - all except me. I wandered around the lovely gardens on the hill, admired the flower beds and tried to take consolation, as did all my great composers, in nature.  But roses and beech trees and blackbirds brought no comfort that evening. I debated returning to the B and B but I couldn't resist returning to the Festspielhaus one more time. The audience flooded out into the gardens again. Pierre was in near-swoon again when, Marc, ever calm, logical and organized said, "Now that you are here, why don't we see if you can, perhaps, just look inside the theatre?" He led me towards the door and up the stairs. Nobody stopped me. I was walking up the stairs inside the Bayreuth theatre! Soon I was in the box that Marc and Pierre were sharing with two other people. The auditorium was empty during the long meal-length interval. I could gaze at the theatre and imagine all that I was missing. I had settled for doing just that when I heard Marc asking a passing usherette if "Madam could, perhaps, just stand at the back of the box for the last act?" "Why would she do that?" asked the usherette, "when the other people went home and she can sit down?"

I was in! And I was in for  Wotan's great farewell, what I consider, the most moving and beautiful passage in the whole Ring Cycle if not in the whole of western music.  The lights dimmed, I took my seat. I did not, of course, see Barenboim making his way to the podium. This was, after all, Bayreuth where he was probably in blue jeans and t-shirt under the roof that Wagner himself had decreed should be installed over the orchestra pit. So in the absolute darkness that is Bayreuth, I waited for the arrival of the Valkyries, and, later for Wotan/Tomlinson himself.  I would like to say that I sat thrilled and moved beyond description. I would like to say that, as for Pierre, it was the greatest evening of "ma vie lyrique." However, the shock of my sudden arrival overwhelmed the performance itself. Throughout the Valkyries ride and the first entrance of Wotan, I was too stunned to take in much of the action onstage. And when I did...when I finally did.....

Well, the Kupfer production was thrilling in its energy and drive but visually his use of geometric, laser-lit shapes was disappointing and unexciting. As for Tomlinson, well he played Wotan as he would continue to play him for most of his career - as a raging,  foaming at the mouth, mad-dog of a god.  Alas, and how heartfelt is that 'alas', I never quite agreed with that interpretation. Vocally, back then, the man was stupendous and  tireless. Neither he nor any of the other singers were served by a production that, while exploding with energy, still lacked visual excitement. Dark, dark sets and dreary laser cubes of light replacing Wagner's flames. For me Sir John found his Wagnerian calling when he went on to pour  that unflagging drive and energy into Hans Sachs in Graham Vick's gorgeous production at Covent Garden. There we had one of the greatest performances of the 20th century.

..

Guests at the Lohengrinhaus - now and then.

Hot high summer here. My plans to trace the walks that Wagner did from this house have been temporarily shelved while we wait for the promised cool breezes to blow in this evening.  A few intrepid Wagnerians have made the 40 minute journey from downtown Dresden to visit the 2 rooms in this house where Wagner and first wife Minna lodged, and to walk the few yards across the country road to the elegant hunting lodge cum castle with its beautiful views across the high-summer countryside where the fine Wagner museum is housed.

Should you care to visit, the journey is quite simple: take the number 4 tram direction Laubegast, change at Schillerplatz and take the 63 bus to Graupa - Tchaikowski-Platz. The museum entrance is across the street and a few yards back down the road. Sometimes the 63 bus terminates at Pillnitz but never fear, another bus will come along in a matter of minutes and take you all the way. Should you decide to visit anytime in the next week, let me know and I will be happy to make you a cup of tea. The museum is open Tue-Fri 10-1700 hrs and on weekends and holidays from 10-1800.

The bus ride from Schillerplatz to Graupa is lovely, passing  vineyards, briefly following the Elbe and stopping at a number of villages with quaint half-timbered houses and opulent gardens.

Wagner, for all his bad press, was a highly gregarious man and often complained that, while he needed solitude for his work, as soon as work was over for the day, he needed company. He received quite a few visitors here at the Lohengrinhaus including his great friend, Röckel,  the active socialist, with whom he'd later participate in the 1848 uprisings. But the visitor with whom his own fate was to be intertwined was a mere boy of 16 when he came to visit Wagner. His name was Hans von Bülow and he would become a conductor and the greatest champion of Wagner's work. He would also marry Cosima only to have Wagner father two daughters with her while  they were still married. Cosima would eventually leave him after much soul-searching and make what was, apparently, a very happy marriage with the very difficult Wagner.

Imagine all that potential intrigue under the roof of what was then a humble farmhouse.

Richard ist Leipziger

Mention Leipzig in a conversation and someone is bound at some point to close their eyes, sigh and say "Ah yes,

the divine Johann Sebastian - the city of Bach." Well, yes and no, Bach was born in Eisenach. His greatest champion, Felix Mendelssohn,  is another name associated with Leipzig. He was born in Hamburg.  But there's another composer whose name does not seem to be instantly associated with Leipzig - and he was born there.

Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig on 22 May 1813. His birthplace has long since disappeared and in its place now stands a shopping mall known to Leipzigers as 'the tin can' because of its shiny, sheet metal exterior. When I visited a couple of weeks ago, I wandered through the mall and tried to calculate exactly which shop was located on the spot where he was born. As far as I can make out, there's either a chocolate shop (Arko) or a juice bar marking the place where the man who was considered one of the greatest geniuses of the 19th century entered the world.
"Richard ist Leipziger" Thomas Krakow, head of the Leipzig Wagner Society and the composer's tireless local champion, likes to remind us. Yes, Wagner left for Dresden at a young age and yes, once a grown man he was endlessly on the move, fleeing creditors, chasing unfulfilled dreams of success in Paris and going on to  find immense fame throughout the western world.

Last year's 200th anniversary of his birth gave Krakow and his fellow Leipzig Wagnerians a chance to remind the world that this attractive, dynamic city is Wagner's home town. A Wagner Symposium was held, his early opera "Die Feen" was performed and on 22 May itself, a big outdoor party was held on Richard Wagner Platz just yards away from the chocolate shop.

A new statue was erected just around the corner from Richard Wagner Platz.It's an interesting and unusual work - with a very young Wagner in a blue frock coat standing in front of a vast dark silhouette of himself - a shadow. Of the immense reknown that was to be his? Of the immense talent contained inside that small frame? Or of the man's own shadow side? Of his reputation as an anti-Semite who work would be hijacked by the Nazis years later? Only the viewer can decide. I'd be interested to hear your views.
I was in Leipzig on February 13th and had the good fortune to join Thomas Krakow, when he and the other local Wagnerians laid a wreath in the composer's favourite fuschia colours in front of a bust of Wagner behind the Leipzig Opera House.
 But for a music lover with tastes broad enough to embrace both Bach and Wagner, perhaps the most moving moment of a visit to Leipzig is a visit to Bach's tomb in the St Thomas Kirche. Just a few feet away is the font where  Richard Wagner was baptized....

Oh yes, there is also a Wagner Café right on Richard Wagner Platz. There's a Lohengrin figure in full chain-mail waiting to greet customers, and big paintings of Wagner on the walls. Alas, the new owner, a Polish lady, prefers Michael Bublé

"Homeland" as grand, even Wagnerian, Opera

"Homeland" starts a third series on September 29th.  Ever late to the party, I've just caught up with Season 2 and watched the finale last night.  I wept during the immensely moving final moments, as Brody walked off into the dark woods alone. Then, I got to thinking how closely some scenes in this 21st century tv drama resemble Wagnerian opera.

Towards the begining of this last episode, "Homeland" took our fated lovers, Brody,  the prisoner of war who was 'turned' by his Al Qaeda captors, and Carrie, the CIA agent who routed him, back to the cabin in the woods where they first consummated their decidedly twisted and complex love.  Carrie is bi-polar, functioning on meds but prone to wild flights of intuition and impulse, that have helped bring her and her blighted lover through torture, terrorist plots and betrayal to this moment of stillness and  serenity in the cabin on the  golden, autumnal lake.

I loved those scenes in the cabin where they dare to hope for some sort of peaceful, 'ordinary' future for their love. As in so many great love stories since the beginning of time, these lovers have no logical chance of a happy outcome. Brody is a damaged, marked man - both the CIA and Al Qaeda will want him dead when he has served their purpose.  And yet, they, and we persist in hoping against hope for  a happy  future.  Like the doomed twins Siegmund and Sieglinde in Wagner's sublime "Walküre", Brody and Carrie snatch a moment of joy before the real world intervenes.

I was  reminded again of Die Walküre as they made their escape towards the dark woods between the US and Canada. In Wagner's opera, Siegmund, a very Brody-esque character who has suffered and suffered and is a lone, sometimes violent man as a result, finds love with Sieglinde. (She is, in fact, his long-lost twin sister but that is a whole other story.) Her husband and his men have vowed to kill him and in the throes of immense, overwhelming passion, the two lovers escape into the forest. Ah, the forest! What a leitmotif it has been in this series - just as it always was for Wagner and in so many great myths.

I read recently  that "Homeland" show-runner, Alex Gansa, believes that  the love story is the heart of "Homeland" so he confirms what I feel and what has touched me so deeply in this show. As the story has developed from a straightforward "is he/isn't he?" to the much more complex and human questions of love, trust, betrayal, Carrie and Brody have come to reside in the same place as another pair of legendary Wagnerian lovers,  "Tristan and Isolde".  In the original vinyl box-set of the 1966 Karl Böhm recording of Tristan, there were some extraordinary sleeve notes that expressed in words what Wagner's opera was trying to do in words and music. It talked of how the lovers longed for night, oblivion, the eternal because their impossible desire could not exist in the light of day and reality and the real world's practical concerns.    So much of the Carrie/Brody love story has taken place in dark places, in a dark, dark world of prison cells, interrogation rooms, bars. Their brief respite in the sunlit cabin can only foreshadow more darkness. Or perhaps not?

Hollywood  "Story" guru Robert McKee's  describes the basis of story as being drawn from the  eternal conflict in human beings, of the fight between "being" and "becoming".  As McKee explains, we all exist on at least two planes. Philosophers sometimes divide them into 'being' and 'becoming'.

"Being" translates into private experience where time doesn't exist, where true feelings lie. Being is heart, mind, love, soul, taste, desire...Being is all we'd like to keep stable in a constantly changing world. Being is our ability to love absolutely in spite of distance and the passing of time. Being is what makes us what we are.

"Becoming" is the public realm. The necessary structures, rules, limits imposed on us in order for society to function.  Institutions must change to adapt. Time hurtles along. Nothing is constant. So the human dilemma is: "How do you keep what you value permanently in your heart while you are constantly being forced to change and adapt?"  This is the dilemma that faces Carrie as she leaves Brody to make his way alone through the dark woods.  Will she be able to keep Brody in her heart when everything in her life, her ambition, her dearest friend, her love for her country, her moral compass and the separation of time and distance all militate against him?


I also believed in and was moved by Peter, the CIA hitman's refusal to kill Brody - at the time. Afterwards, I asked myself questions  and I may well be proved wrong. As I watched,  however, I was reminded of another great scene in  "Die Walküre" where Brunnhilde, the warrior goddess, comes to offer Siegmund a home in Valhalla with other fallen warriors provided he renounces love. But Siegmund refuses because his love for Sieglinde transcends everything else.  Brunnhilde is dismayed but forced to examine everything she believes and values. By the end of the opera she renounces her warrior status for the chance of love. When Peter told Estes that Brody's death would kill Carrie, I thought of that. Oh and isn't the superb Claire Danes as Carrie, the personification of what Wagner really intended his Valkyries to be - not fat, foghorns in horned helmets but brave, beautiful, driven warrior women.

The comparisons could go on: Saul as the bass-baritone (even though he's a tenor in real life) - the father figure - sometimes Wotan, the Walküre's troubled god watching his turbulent Valkyrie/Carrie take action where he cannot.  Sometimes Tristan's King Marke,  stepping into the lovers' night world to remind them of the real world and their duties in it.


Yes, "Homeland" has a few audacious plotlines that many of us don't buy but anyone who has ever set foot in an opera house is used to that.  And yes, some  fans are crying foul and don't want a love story in the midst of all the intrigue and deception. I am the first to be annoyed when love stories are tacked on to movies just to thicken the plot but I think the clever writers here have moved Carrie and Brody beyond avatars in a video game to a superior status as mythic lovers. And why shouldn't our  contemporary culture produce its own figures of myth? Why do they always have to come from the past? I think these lovers are the quintessential expression of a mythical love in the early 21st century - in a world riven by terrorism, fanaticism and violence a love  between flawed, broken people that transcends betrayal, fear, separation. My but it would make a great opera.

Wagner Encounter in Canada's Kootenay Mountains

I was driving back to Vancouver from Nelson, British Columbia one October afternoon and had decided to take the route up past Ainsworth Hot Springs towards Nakusp and on through the mountain to Vernon. It was a day and night of torrential rain. I stopped and soaked in the Springs, visited the sweet little town of Kaslo and was fiddling with the CD player in the rental car when I came to New Denver.

The afternoon was darkening and the mountain range that lined my route was disappearing into low cloud. I pulled into New Denver in the hope of finding a cup of tea and a decent cake, and soon saw that this was a small one-street town. The autumn colours gave it charm. As I was driving down the main street, my eye was drawn to a photo of a man in a shop window. His was an Edwardian face that I thought I knew: CS Lewis? Elgar? What on earth would they be doing in the middle of rural BC? I did a U turn, parked the car and got out to look.
"
The Edwardian man was none other than Arturo Toscanini - his face gazing sternly out from a CD cover. But by now, it was the adjacent window that had my attention. The Dream Ring" was the title of a box CD sitting in dead centre. Somebody, whoever it was who owned this surprising little shop, had, as far as I could make out, created his or her idea of a perfect Ring by mixing various singers into one dream performance.

The shop also served as the information centre for the nearby provincial park which went by the name of, and I am not making this up, the Valhalla provincial park. The shop was closed but a lone woman was walking along the street and seemed to be heading towards it. I watched her approach. It was one of those rare days when we seem to be aligned with whatever it is that runs our universe. Of course, this lone woman would be headed to this particular store, of the score of businesses on the street. And she was. But she was the wife of the maker and mixer of all that recorded music. I sensed that she didn't quite share my enthusiasm (not surprising really. I was in a state of high excitement. Toscanini and Richard Wagner in the shadow of the Valhalla Provincial Park!) She let me in and let me look around. Her husband, Richard Caniell, had worked for RCA in New York, where he had attended most of Toscanini's concerts. Caniell is the founder of Immortal Performances Recorded Music Society www.immortalperformances.org - a non -profit organization that offers some stunning Toscanini performances along with that Dream Ring - Mr Caniell's fantasy mix of the greatest voices of the Golden Age of the Met into a virtually seamless recording. Kirsten Flagstad, Lauritz Melchior and Friedrich Schorr's Wotan. I had maxed out the Visa and couldn't afford the Ring but I decided to take that 'Edwardian man' that I'd glimpsed in the window, along for the rest of my ride through the driving rain and the mountain passes. I purchased an "Arturo Toscanini - all Wagner" featuring Tannhauser, Tristan, Walkure, Lohengrin and Gotterdammerung with a rehearsal segment from 1947.

As dusk settled, Arturo Toscanini and I set off - he giving fairly good-natured instructions to the orchestra and croaking along with the music, I, negotiating some hair-raising bends in the battering wind and rain ad zero visibility. The maestro, Lauritz Melchior, Helen Traubel and I arrived safely several hours later. I like to think that some other great spirit, the creator of all that glorious music was overseeing our progress. After all, surely he must , waft by the Valhalla Park from time to time.

Wagner on the London Underground

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...

Pitching my Wagner movie in my pyjamas

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

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

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

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 .

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.