The Last Missing Piece of the Kna’ Grail: Knappertsbusch’s 1955 Parsifal from Bayreuth

Richard Wagner Parsifal, Hans Knappertsbusch Bayreuth Festival, 1955 (Profil Hänssler, 2023) US | UK | DE

Dip Your Ears: No. 284 (Knappertsbusch’s 1955 Bayreuth Parsifal)

Kna’s long-lost Parsifal, the last one to await full issue, is now available. Was it worth the wait?

Parsifal-Aficionados had to wait a long, long time for this: The recording of the 1955 Bayreuth performance under Hans Knappertsbusch. An interpretation of primordial power, forward momentum, dynamism. A recording of vocal superlatives from the 30-year-old Fischer Dieskau as Amfortas; with Ramon Vinay and Martha Mödl at peak voltage. In short: One of Bayreuth’s finest hours. At least such were the rumors.

To make it even more tantalizing: For years, this Parsifal could only be experienced partially and unofficially. Namely only by way off an aircheck of a BBC broadcast of the second act. Adding further to the intrigue: The complete tapes were known to exist in the archives of Bavarian Radio; my colleague Klaus Kalchschmid had seen and heard them.

When said colleague Klaus and I visited the Wagner-discography expert Frank Schöneborn in Aachen, the latter – before putting on this aircheck as the very last snippet of Parsifal to listen to – pronounced: “Kna was at the absolute height of his powers here! And these singers… fantastic. It absolutely blows you away!” And this opinion was based on that old, wildly imperfect recording in, frankly, execrable sound. The musical instruments were hardly recognizable as such. The sound came and went. Everyone and everything howled; it was like listening to an old C-90 cassette that had been left in the glove compartment on a hot summer’s day.

Myth v. Reality

It’s a truism of record collecting, as any ionarts-reader will be aware, that the best recordings are always those that are the most difficult to source. Alas, the grail is ever only the grail in searching, rarely in finding. Now Profil/Hänssler has issued the tapes from the BR archives, at long last, closing the last remaining gap in the Parsifal/Bayreuth discography of Hans Knappertsbusch. Naturally you’ll wonder: Does the reputation survive the availability? Well, this much up front: The modest mono-sound of this release feels like high fidelity, compared to the BBC bits. The voices come out nicely, indeed. As far as the two dimensional orchestra goes, however, these tapes don’t begin to approach the vivid stereo image of the 1962 Philips recording. (But then, neither do any of the other Kna/Parsifal recordings, where every orchestra group – strings, brass, woodwinds – sounds the same.)

The tempos are, by Kna’s standards, on the taut side and similar to ’62; only in 1960 was he a shade less slow. In this, the recording is a nice and welcome contrast to the other (somewhat dreary) Knappertsbuschian Parsifals of the 50s. Amid the so-so-OK sound, you can also hear that, vocally, nothing went particularly wrong. Ludwig Weber’s Gurnemanz sounds a little taxed. Martha Mödl truly is at the height of her goosebumps-inducing powers as Kundry. Neidlinger’s attractively-evil Klingsor almost makes you want to switch sides, and Fischer-Dieskau’s Amfortas is decidedly not mannered, but fresh and surprisingly (given the character’s disposition, not the singer’s age) healthy. Ramón Vinay’s Parsifal, however, barks and lumbers, which is surprising, even if it actually suits the crude Parsifal of Act I rather well. Subsequently, Vinay proves, in lyrically convincing ways, that this was, indeed, a choice on his part. The chorus is more coordinated than in 1951, which, admittedly, is saying little. That ensemble would go on to improve, year over year. The Eduard Steingraeber Parsifal-piano, specifically made for the bells in Parsifal, sounds – how to put this… awful. Brash and not particularly bell-like, either.

This issue is a collector’s dream-come-true – and no self-respecting Parsifal-obsessed Wagnerian will forgo the experience of having and having heard this recording. For everyone else, it’s a case of “be careful what you dream about” – if you are among those, you can stick with your favorite recording of Parsifal, be it with or without Kna’, and know that you are not missing out on anything. (Jed Distler, over on ClassicsToday, likes it a bit better than I do, btw.)

The 1962 Parsifal Redeemed

As far as Kna’ and his Parsifals in general are concerned, that two-day listening session (and subsequent listening) have established quite definiteively to these ears (but also to Schöneborn, that the 1962 Philips recording is the best of all his Bayreuth Parsifals, and by a very wide margin. Not only is the sound in a completely different league from every other recording (which means that you can actually hear the instruments in the orchestra, as opposed to a vague, two-dimensional Wagner-like orchestral mixture), the orchestra and chorus are caught in much better shape than anywhere else, too. Also the interpretation is probably the most statisfying of Knappertsbusch’s, in doing well what he did well and avoiding some of the pitfulls that, on record at least, didn't translate quite so well... The singers are very good to good-enough: Only Irene Dalis will never be to everyone's taste; if one could airlift the 1953 Martha Mödl (Kna') or the 1970 Gwyneth Jones (Boulez) or the young 1985 Waltraud Meier (Levine) into this recording, one might. But Dalis is certainly not ruinous to the efforts and neither is George London, whose magnificent Amfortas adorns seven of Kna’s Parsifals (51 to 53, 57, 61 to 63) might arguably be 'least magnificient' specifically in this outing.

The second-most famous 1951 version, meanwhile, probably suffers probably most from direct comparison (entries are off, imprecise strings), but some of that has to do with the expectations it comes with. The same, ultimately, goes for the 1955, which is not, however, as bad as it might have reasonably feared to be, sound-wise. Something for the Parsifal-curious then – but if you are, you already knew that!

Knappertsbusch varies his tempi quite a bit. Turns out that his quickest, from 1962, is also his best, offering compassion rather than pathos. The ’51 recording sounds awfully grave and a bit uniform, with little energy. Knappertsbusch seems to start and re-start the orchestra over and over. At the dramatic peak, London is left to his own devices and when London passes his duties to Windgassen, the interpretation feels a lot slower than Levine’s, despite lasting just as long. The latter really brings out the augustness of this moment, perfectly timing orchestra and singers. A pity you don’t trust Peter Hofmann that he is quite cut out for the duties ahead. (Frank Schöneborn)

As a bonus: Below will follow a Knappertsbusch-Bayreuth-Parsifal Survey:

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Notes from the 2025 Bayreuth Festival: A New Meistersinger Production for Bayreuth

Also published in Die Presse: Bayreuth: Als hätte Monty Python bei den „Meistersingern“ Pate gestanden

A Laughing Matter: Matthias Davids and the Natural Humor in Richard Wagner

Bayreuth's new production of Die Meistersinger trusts the libretto and the music, to stage the work as the 'simple' comedy it is. That works, more or less.

Straight into the chatter and hum – as a good third of the audience was still trying to locate their seats in the Festspielhaus – the Meistersinger Prelude growled up from the pit. Accordingly, those already seated busied themselves with hissing “Silentium!”, which, of course, only made the racket worse. But that was somehow befitting this opera, in which art and populace mingle so merrily. Eventually, Daniele Gatti and the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra prevailed, and the overture flowed, very horizontally, as if without bar lines, almost “La Mer”-like. Thus the 149th Bayreuth Festival – following its open-air concert and the children’s Tannhäuser – was officially underway.

A steep stairway rising into the stage-heavens, crowned by the Katharinenkirche, greeted the attendees of Matthias Davids’ new staging. Love letters are delivered via airmail: Walther von Stolzing (Michael Spyres) stands amid a gaggle of paper airplanes, arranged to form a heart, and catching the latest missive from Eva (Christina Nilsson). Alas, the staircase is not conducive to the coordination of their reputedly aborted exchanges, as Magdalene (Christa Mayer) is sent to fetch the accidentally-forgotten kerchief, clasp, and prayer-book, because she could never get back and forth in time. The visual gag of lowering her book in a basket on a string doesn’t quite replace the comedic back-and-forth in that tryst that never quite gets off the ground because Walther simply won’t get to the point. A minor point, granted, but to some degree indicative of the production, which sometimes misses out on the natural humor in the libretto by replacing it with jokes, slightly more heavy-handed, of its own.

Prügelszene, Act II

The revolving stage turns to reveal the Meistersingers’ rehearsal room. Andrew Edwards’ set and Susanne Hubrich’s costumes could be 1800 or 1980 – timeless, pragmatic, supplying atmosphere as needed, and ranging from postcard medievalism to a relatable here-and-now of emotions. Eva wears her festival-dirndl as naturally as she does jeans and a summer blazer. The Mastersingers, meanwhile, sport droll – almost silly – hats straight out of a Mainz carnival club. It’s not the evening’s only tightrope walk between wit and slapstick, and depending on one’s sense of humor, it is where any given viewer places that line that will decide whether the night was great or merely solid.

The production – and especially the first act – brims with small gestures: buffet humor, smoking-in-the-toilet humor, seating humor: the flip-up-seats in the rehearsal room are the same as in the Festspielhaus, and they pinch one of the Guild’s members’ back, even with cushions. At times it feels like Monty Python had a hand in the staging. But of course, they are up to distracting shenanigans and side-activities, because the Meistersinger-lot is bored during Pogner’s pompous speech. Rightly so, I’m afraid to say, because Jongmin Park lets the role down. He has a big, deep voice, but produced a hollow, expressionless barreling bellow, paired with stiff acting that would have been better suited to a 1960s Sarastro.

The whole lot of Mastersingers: Sachs: Zeppenfeld, Pogner: Jongmin Park, Vogelgesang: Martin Koch, Nachtigal: Marek Reichert, Beckmesser: Nagy, Kothner: Shanahan, Zorn: Daniel Jenz, Eisslinger: Matthew Newlin, Moser: Gideon Poppe, Ortel: Alexander Grassauer, Schwarz: Tijl Faveyts, Foltz: Patrick Zielke

Wagner, if it needs reminding (and pace Markus Thiel), certainly had humor – just not exactly slapstick humor. His was a deeper-seated, slyly mocking Saxon type. It’s everywhere in this piece, not just in the obvious situational comedy of Beckmesser. Speaking of which: Michael Nagy sang him with a delightfully purring voice and agile but didn’t always seem to take the character quite seriously – a pity, because it defangs Beckmesser unnecessarily and undermines the dramatic tension. His goofiness baited laughs, which is fine, but often papered over subtler moments, too. That Nagy can do otherwise became clear during his moment of reflection and the accompanying flicker of seriousness after the failed song trial.

While act II – with an oversized half-timbered dollhouse garnished with a phone booth turned into a Little Free Library – extends the first act’s world, the opening of Act III breaks from the squarely romanticized half-timbered idyll. Instead, we see Sachs’ realistically outfitted workshop, a chic oval set, smack in the middle of the stage. Sachs is shown gluing back together the stool David used to wallop Beckmesser in the riot scene, a business that gives him plenty of time to ignore David. Again, Matthias Davids offers solid, craftsman-like ideas here. In strict adherence to Chekhov’s law of not putting a freshly glued chair on the floor if no one will try to sit on it later, Beckmesser will, of course, be victimized a second time by that rude piece of furniture.

Spyres, Zeppenfeld, Nilsson, Mayer, Stier, Act III

Singers: Thanks to the bright, spontaneous voice of Christina Nilsson’s, a touch steely at the peaks and garnished with a pronounced ‘accent-vibrato’, her Eva was consequently easy to hear and occasionally even possible to understand. The first comment about Georg Zeppenfeld is always: “like a rock.” And like your above-average rock, he’s dependable, solid, sympathetic – and, dare one say it, just a tiny bit boring. Pale-ish, but on a very high level. Christa Mayer’s Magdalene had good diction but little warmth of timbre; by contrast, Matthias Stier’s rosy-cheeked David was a sonorous, entertaining delight from start to finish.

The “baritenor” label for Spyres is more marketing flourish than unique selling point, but his first Walther impressed: lyrical, with a creamy fullness, occasionally caramel-tinged but never overdriven, all evening long. Had it not been for the Meistersinger production earlier that month, at the MüPa Wagner Days (English review forthcoming, German review here), which featured Magnus Vigilius’ Walther, that would have been considered top of the line. But the latter (who also turned in the most moving Siegmund I have ever heard, at the previous “Budapesti Wagner Napok” (Bayreuth an der Donau: Die Wagner-Tage in Budapest sind ein Geheimtipp), had that added bit of youthful enthusiasm and irresistibly charming Sturm-und-Drang air about him, that made the character even more relatable and the story all the more touching.

Michael Nagy as Beckmesser, Act III

Gatti conducted fluidly and with finesse – not something one might have expected from rehearsals, apparently – coaxing an exceptionally beautiful, wafting “Fliederduften” from the orchestra. He did grow ever louder in Act II, which pushed his Sachs to the brink of audibility, which might have been avoided: In this conversational piece, after all, you’ll want to understand as much of the text as is humanly possible. The near-unanimous, enthusiastic cheering already between the acts suggested that Davids’ idea (the director’s, not the character’s) – to simply let Meistersinger be the Meistersinger, after two cerebral, over-interpreted Bayreuth stagings, Katharina Wagner’s and Berry Kosky’s – made sense. Do not be mislead by the most-publicized picture of the production, which shows a neon-colored blow-up cow arching over the Festwiese, which has the halmark look of what some (misguided, but that's for another day) people might call a "Eurotrash" or "Regietheater" production. It was the very opposite. Some Bayreuthians may have even felt a warm Wolfgang-Wagner glow, during this appeasing, traditional production. (Incidentally, Michael Schulz’ seasoned Budapest production works along the same lines and does it even more successfully.)

The applause was strikingly friendly, but also surprisingly brief. Fair enough, because the production surely wasn’t bad, it simply could – and will – be better, still!

Michael Spyres, Act III

All pictures courtesy Bayreuther Festspiele, © Enrico Nawrath

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Notes from the 2025 Bayreuth Festival: Camping Masterclass and Macbeth at the Foot of the Green Hill

Also published in Die Presse: Partystimmung bei „Macbeth“

Wagner-Light – and not even that much Wagner

The free-to-all Open-Air Festival Opener is a welcome opportunity to combine Green Hill Flair and camping gear.

The 149th Bayreuth Festival has opened, but eyes are already fixed on next year: 150 years of Bayreuth – though, strictly speaking, only the 113th actual Festival season (39 pre-, 74 post-1951). The grand plan? All ten canonical Bayreuth operas plus, for the first time on the Green Hill, Rienzi. Reality and the treasurer had other ideas. So now the plan is a bit more modest if still unique, thanks to Rienzi.

Is that a good thing? Bayreuth doesn’t have to offer “unique” – it is unique. Tradition, simply by being tradition, has value. In fact, that’s Bayreuth’s main draw. Yes, tradition is constantly subverted here (which is itself part of the tradition)– but the frame of tradition ought to be handled carefully. If the festival were to start putting Meyerbeer on the Bayreuth stage (as people sometimes – unwisely, inexplicably – suggest they do), it’d be the first step toward the festival losing the plot and surrendering to the arbitrary. Opening the Festspielhaus to Rienzi, meanwhile, does no harm nor need it be the ledge of a slippery slope. Incidentally, the staging is meant to be a one-off, performed nine times, before being passed on to other opera houses.

That the team of Magdolna Parditka and Alexandra Szemeredy orients its production more along the lines of Wieland Wagner’s 1957 Stuttgart Rienzi and the 1939 Karlsruhe version of the score, rather than attempting some Frankensteinian “complete” version, is heartening. That the other production will be a so-called “AI Ring”, visually drawing on all previous Ring-productions and fed by cues from the ‘staging’ (as opposed to “directorial”) team, can faze no true Wagnerian, especially with Thielemann conducting. Granted, it sounds like it will be more likely “interesting” than “good” but worst case: close your eyes and perk the ears. A lesson learned from Jay Scheib’s Augmented Reality Parsifal.

Back to the present: the third Festival Open Air served as a warm-up act. The Festival Orchestra, “almost voluntarily,” took to the stage for this open-access concert at the foot of the Green Hill – right between the stage and the VIP zone/champagne tent. A few trees are in the way (nothing a generously ambitious axe couldn’t solve in the coming years), but people adapt. The crowd? Plenty of youth, musicians’ families, locals, and some early-arriving festival-goers. Cherry tomatoes, cubes of cheese, bottles of Kulmbacher beer, and glasses of Aperol were the currency of the evening. Territorial skirmishes – already two hours before the concert – were managed politely, amid a display of Germany’s native talents for camping, picnicking, and spontaneous order.

Atmosphere was everything – as it should be. The acoustics? Well, like at similar open-air festival in Schönbrunn, Munich’s Odeonsplatz, Berlin’s Waldbühne: decent under the circumstances, but only loosely related to actual concert music. To pretend otherwise would be silly, just as it would be pointless to measure such an event by the standards of a concert-hall performance. Pablo Heras-Casado, this year’s conductor of the Parsifal , kept the mood lively. Gershwin’s Girl Crazy overture brought out a “SummerStage-in-Central-Park” vibe. Beethoven’s Fifth (the first movement) thundered along with delightful furiosity. That the strings struggled a little with the evening’s humidity could be overlooked – the important thing was the oomph.

Three excerpts from Verdi’s Macbeth fit the Meistersingerian festival motto (“Wahn, überall Wahn”) – though the work isn’t exactly most people’s idea of open-air party-time. For that, Johann Strauss’ Thunder and Lightning Polka (“ Unter Donner und Blitz was far better suited: an encore gratefully seized upon by an audience whose joints, after four hours of sitting on the ground, were celebrating their own 150th anniversary. “Next year, better bring a chair,” advised a nearby, seated lady from her enviably comfy-looking camping gear – in a tone part helpful, part pitying. You live and you learn.
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Production Photos from the Bayreuth Festival's Tristan & Isolde

The year before Katharina Wagner assumed her quasi-inherited reign on the Green Hill – Richard Wagner’s Festival House in Bayreuth, she gave her Festspiel-debut as a director with a production of Die Meistersinger. It being one of the most difficult-to-stage operas, for technical but also for political reasons (in Germany), Katharina Wagner delivered a controversial, partly panned product which I thought (and still think) was actually, sneakily, extraordinarily clever. She takes a shot at the all-too-quick conversion from rebel to reactionary and the danger of an original reformer becoming precisely the kind of gate-keeper to block all future reform which is necessary to keep anything – tradition included – alive: Topical for opera in general and especially so just before assuming leadership of such a festival.

Now, eight years later, she has put forth her second Hill-production, again amidst the air of scandals and succession-battles: her half-sister and co-director for the last eight years, Eva Wagner-Pasquier has allegedly been booted from the Festival grounds; Christian Thielemann, the ingenious conductor and a controversy-magnet himself, has been named musical director (a newly created position) of the Festival.....

Full review on Forbes.com. Click on excerpted images below to find a higher resolution version of the full picture.

All images courtesy Bayreuth Festival, © Enrico Nawrath

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Production Photos from the Bayreuth Festival's Götterdämmerung

After the excellently sung, superbly conducted, and rather warmly received Rheingold, Walküre, and Siegfried, the last of the tetralogy’s operas, Götterdämmerung, felt like a triumph. Never mind the boos, when Castorf came out, which were eventually overtaken by the counter-bravos… the show was grand, the singing just about as good as it can be possibly wished, the orchestra continued very nearly at the impossibly high standards set by the Rheingold, and the hours just flew by. Even the usually interminable first act was enthralling throughout, and maybe for the first time no one minded Waltraute (Claudia Mahnke) waltzing on stage late in the game to prolong matters by chatting with her sister for seemingly forever...

Full review on Forbes.com. Click on excerpted images below to find a higher resolution version of the full picture.

All images courtesy Bayreuth Festival, © Enrico Nawrath

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Production Photos from the Bayreuth Festival's Siegfried

...Wolfgang Koch, who continues his smarmy, drunken, sleazy, seedy Wotan with most admirable gusto and believability, certainly shows that it’s not for lack of will or skill on his part… seeing that he gets plenty to do in the third act, when he summons Erda. It’s perhaps the most touching moment of this Siegfried, when the washed-up Wotan, ex-lover, gets together with Erda, his aged, long-time favorite ho, for a spaghetti dinner and too much wine, in a scene full of recriminations and regrets and make-up blow jobs. When Wotan-Wanderer is supposed to pay up (the waiter catching Erda in flagrante), he realizes he’s just a bit short on cash and with the words “Dort seh’ ich Siegfried nahn!“ (“Woha, I think Siegfried approaches!”) he’s off, properly welshing and leaving Erda with the bill and the audiences in stitches. It’s not the only moment that garnered laughter, but there could have still been more, seeing that Siegfried is supposed to be a comedy and that Castorf certainly has the irreverent streak that lends itself to comedy....

Full review on Forbes.com. Click on excerpted images below to find a higher resolution version of the full picture.

All images courtesy Bayreuth Festival, © Enrico Nawrath

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Production Photos from the Bayreuth Festival's Walküre

After coming off the Motel / Route 66 Rheingold, overloaded and exciting, weird and captivating, Frank Castorf’s Walküre must seem conventional. Or maybe it should be called Aleksandar Denić’s Walküre – because what dominates this first day of the Ring is the massively impressive set of a Wild East farm that slowly turns into a Baku oil rig, celebrating “Oil Workers’ Day” in bold Azerbaijani lettering. (If you browse the “Petroleum industry in Azerbaijan” Wikipedia page, you get nearly as good an idea of the set design as looking at the production photos.) It’s an impressive, massive, sprawling wooden construction on the revolving stage with a tower higher than the proscenium arch, a barn with the whole front opening up to reveal the insides, and a raised patio with connecting flights of stairs. Oh, and two live turkeys grace act one, in a cage to the side, behind chicken wire, being fed by Sieglinde. Kwangchul Youn has really come into his own as an actor – and his Hunding was menacing yet curiously and pleasingly dignified, which also goes some way in describing his vocal contribution....

Full review on Forbes.com. Click on excerpted images below to find a higher resolution version of the full picture.

All images courtesy Bayreuth Festival, © Enrico Nawrath

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Production Photos from the Bayreuth Festival's Rheingold

After two years of being voraciously booed in every performance of every run, Frank Castorf’s production of the Ring cycle at the Bayreuth Festival appears to have turned the corner. At the first performance of Das Rheingold in this third year of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, there were maybe one or two brief boos and then it was all enthused hooting and hollering for the cast and especially Kirill Petrenko, who is now of course the designated artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic. I believe it was Patrice Chereau (whose “Centennial Ring” production was also ferociously jeered at first, before it became the most applauded and lauded production in the history of Bayreuth) who said that in Bayreuth, “after three years, it becomes tradition”. With time ever speeding up, we have arrived at “after two years, it becomes tradition”...

Full review on Forbes.com. Click on excerpted images below to find a higher resolution version of the full picture.

All images courtesy Bayreuth Festival, © Enrico Nawrath

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Bayreuth After Wolfgang

This post was initially published on WETA 90.9 FM's classical column on September 1, 2008.

It seemed worthwhile unearthing this bit I wrote seven years ago, ahead of my posting reviews of this year's Ring and Katharina Wagner's new production of Tristan.

If Munich’s annual Opernfestspiele is the largest opera festival in Europe, and Salzburg the most glamorous, the Bayreuth festival (just two hours to the north of Munich and conveniently without overlapping) is the most iconic.

Munich can boast with quantity and variety (46 performances in 34 days, 20 different operas), Salzburg with location and star power. “The Green Hill” in Bayreuth meanwhile is the nexus of all things Wagner. The annual point of pilgrimage for Wagnerians around the world has even near mystical qualities… a fact to which the eight year waiting list for tickets contributes.

But Bayreuth seemed in troubled waters for the last few years with squabbles between the Festival Director “for life” Wolfgang Wagner and the Bayreuth Trust (which includes influence and funding from the Bavarian State Government) breaking out over the future leadership of the Festival. Wolfgang Wagner, the master’s grandson, wanted to anoint his daughter of second marriage (with Gudrun Wagner, née Armann) as the new director. Apart from lacking the statutory power to stipulate his successor, that daughter, Katharina Wagner, was eyed with suspicion as too young, too inexperienced. Her niece Nike Wagner – daughter of Wolfgang’s genial and more artistic brother Wieland and artistic director of her Weimar Festival – bickered loudly and very undiplomatically in all the German Feuilletons about revolutionizing post-Wolfgang Bayreuth.

Wagner might have supported revolutionary activities when in Dresden, but his successors in Bayreuth shiver at the very idea. Nike Wagner became a persona non grata at the festival. Not the least to prevent Nike Wagner from bringing her ideas to this most traditional of opera festivals, Wolfgang Wagner clung to the directorship and – given his deteriorating vitality – seemingly to life, also. Wolfgang Wagner’s daughter from his first marriage meanwhile, Eva Wagner-Pasquier,herself the seasoned artistic co-director of the Aix-en-Provence Festival, was once vetoed by her father as the potential successor by her own father – presumably to keep the chances alive for the succession of Gudrun’s daughter. The curtain-raiser for the convoluted end-game of the Bayreuth ascension was to be Kathrina Wagner’s direction of Die Meistersinger at last year’s festival – by all accounts an impressive and intelligent feat.

All in all it was a terrific plot of brothers, step-daughters and –mothers, changing alliances and broken contracts, and all in a battle over the ascendancy of the Wagnerian throne. Operatic stuff, you might say, and it has happily filled the cultural sections of newspapers for some time.

Unexpectedly and in keeping with great drama, Wolfgang Wagner’s young second wife Gudrun, who had domineered behind the scenes, died. No one would likely admit to her passing having been a relief for the many involved in the future of Bayreuth, but it certainly did hasten efforts in coming up with a workable compromise.

Step-daughters Katharina the Young (30) and Eva the Quiet (63) have made their peace for now – leaving Nike the Wily out in the rain. Not even a last-minute ‘application’ of Nike Wagner teaming up with ex-Salzburg, Paris and future New York City Opera General Director Gerard Mortier changed anything about that. If their last-hour bid was even meant to be taken seriously, it likely wasn’t seriously considered by the Bayreuth Trust’s board who made their decision for the succession of the Festival leadership today.

Wolfgang Wagner, who few trusted to have the energy necessary to effectively run the Festival, can now lean back with the future of Bayreuth securely in the hands of his branch of the family. To see him take his last bow after the last performance under his reign (Parsifal, last Thursday), became a touching affair.

Judging from the Wagner-daughters’ concept for the future of Bayreuth, a happy end might come of the tussle, after all. The happiest part of it being that is has come to an end, at all. A conservative approach to the tradition ensures that that which has made the Festival special will remain in place. Bayreuth will continue to show the 10 Wagner operas of the Bayreuth canon – and only those. For Rienzi, Das Liebesverbot, and The Fairies, Wagnerians must continue to look elsewhere. Hardly too much to ask of them.

Innovation for innovation’s sake – a common disease of many traditional institutions – is shunned. Meanwhile weaknesses are reckoned and named. The quality of the singers in Bayreuth has been less than that at the great Wagner opera houses in Berlin, Munich, New York, Vienna et al. Few of the great Wagnerian singers are willing to spend their summers only at Bayreuth when they could more profitably make shorter appearances at different festivals. Money and determination will have to aid mere reputation to improve matters here. Audiences won’t continue to give standing ovations to the well-below average vocal performances forever. The same can be said for the conductors who appear at Bayreuth who have been – Bayreuth’s future musical consultant Christian Thielemann excepted – less than inspiring. Even Daniele Gatti’s Parsifal this season was short on the mystical and long on, well, length.

More emphasis will also be placed on how the Festival markets itself. Just relying on one’s own importance combined with a rather dusty approach to press relations will eventually not suffice for keeping Bayreuth vital. Katharina Wagner is the woman for this – and has already introduced concepts like a public viewing and internet streaming of (her) Meistersinger that found nearly 40,000 viewers: more than could watch the performance live over a regular 7 year run. Marketing, however, does not mean gratuitously offending existent clientele nor breaking with traditions for the sake of breaking with them. Hopefully this will also include adjusting its 19^th century-style PR division.

The rest of the Wagner/Wagner-Pasquier program emphasizes matters still or already in place – not the least the continued choice of intriguing and innovative directors who challenge the status quo, balanced with traditional productions that avoid being backward. Their rather reticent plan, devoid of revolutions or surprises, might disappoint those who hoped for creativity out of upheaval, creative destruction. It will come as a great relieve to those who believe in Bayreuth’s skill to innovate within the bounds of a strong and strict tradition. Even to those who cherish Mortier’s ability to give institutions of ‘high culture’ a shot of adrenaline (or cocaine) – I among them – it must seem unlikely that Mortier’s work would actually have advanced Bayreuth as much as he can any other institution (like the City Opera of New York or Madrid’s Teatro Real), while offering a potential of irrevocable loss of customs where customs are held so particularly dear.

Boredom won’t overcome Bayreuth if the quality of its performances is first class. And seeing that few of its productions have failed to outrage the reactionaries, hopes are high that they will continue to do so in the future.

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Image of the Wagner Sisters by Johannes Simon / Getty Images

Bayreuth 2012: Parsifal, a Gift of Greatness

In 2008 I was stunned by Stefan Herheim’s Bayreuth Parsifal, into that year’s last performance of which year I had stumbled through dumb luck. Although underwhelmed by the hit-or-miss maestro’s—Daniele Gatti’s—conducting, I was mesmerized by the Parsifal-as-Germany-and-Bayreuth-through-the-ages superstructure that Herheim fits so seamlessly onto the opera. Five years later, in its second-to-last run at the Festival house, this well possibly greatest of Bayreuth productions since Chéreau’s Centennial Ring, impressed even more, with its impossibly ingenious blend of macro-, micro-, and meta-structures.

Herheim was unhappy with the means (rehearsal time, money) at his availability for his productions’ last revival (which is, strangely but tellingly disliked by the current Bayreuth administration), and he nearly didn’t come. Thankfully he did come, and he produced—again, with little touches and flourishes added while generally streamlining the production—something absolutely great. Grown men left the Festspielhaus after act 1 with tears in their eyes, so powerfully moving was the story of Parsifal, Herzeleide, and Gurnemanz (as the nucleus of the German family), and that of Germany mid 19^th century to the outbreak of World War I, told. After Christmas celebrations at Wahnfried (‘looking for the redeemer’) towards the end of act 1, the Kaiser’s optimistic soldiers gather and march out into war, depicted with original footage at the back of the stage, to Wagner’s words of “Faithful until Death”. Making soldiers march off into a suggested or historical real war is not a novel idea for opera productions, it just hasn’t been made to work as powerfully. What would be camp in Aida, or unbearable kitsch in Giulio Cesare (more of Salzburg’s shockingly distasteful production later this week), becomes overwhelming here. Loss of innocence, calamity, and redemption turn out to fit like a glove on both, the Parsifal-, and the German-history narrative. At least if it is cunningly enough designed.

Profound humor and tangible drama are always at hand with Stefan Herheim, as are the bucket loads of German symbolism he throws in. What makes the production great, not just brilliant, is that you can miss a good lot of those allusions—Blauer Engel, Charlemagne, Palatine Chapel, Wagner’s original Parsifal set, Wieland Wagner’s neo-Bayreuth Parsifal set, Trümmerfrauen, Wilhelm Buschean archetypes, etc. etc., thanks to both Gesine Völlm’s inspired costumes and Heike Scheele’s ingenious sets—and still get the powerful drift of the production.

After the swastika flags of the second act (loss of innocence) unfolded and fell, Eva Pasquier-Wagner and Katharina Wagner appeared before a small group of eager, submissive American music critics. Seated at last, belatedly, they were ready to answer two, three questions, all on the deferential side of the potential spectrum. The sisters succeeded in saying very little per word spoken, cleverly exposing wanting questions for their inherent contradictions along the way, and spurning any suggestion of intra-sibling acrimony. They believably suggested, too, that their work was really a continuation of what Wolfgang Wagner had done, by similar if not exactly the same means. That’s plausible, but deserves the caveat that Wolfgang Wagner knew how to throw his conservative clients the occasional bone (by directing himself, if necessary), and never picked directors who were out to scandalize gratuitously (even if scandalize they did). Appointing Jonathan “My-Hitler-salutes-and-my-swastika-collection-are-cool-because-I’m-such-a-rebellious-intellectual-leftist” Meese as the next Parsifal director, or complete novices like J.P.Gloger for the current Dutchman, suggests at least a shift of emphasis. An interesting question to ask might have been whether the Wagner sisters—in light of the Wagner family’s history, Meese’s anointment, Herheim’s Parsifal, and the little Dutchman scandal earlier this summer—could elucidate the difference between a good swastika, and a bad swastika.

Instead, Herheim’s third act attempts to answer that question when it lowers a vast mirror, nearly as wide as the stage, and shows the audience, now facing itself, that they are the future, and thereby the answer to the questions that are still open. (This is an ending that, slightly transformed, Hans Neuenfels’ Lohengrin mirrors (as it were), when he makes the title character walk toward the audience, not away from them.)

Musically, Parsifal was in very good hands with Philippe Jordan, whose fluid and subtle musical direction fit right in with those of Thielemann and Nelsons. Kwangchul Youn’s Gurnemanz started slightly wooden, but already by the end of the first act he so embodied his figure, and sang with such quiet command and regal authority, that any wistful memories of a Nostalgia-Gurnemanz of choice (Kurt Moll, in my case) were eradicated. Susan Maclean’s Kundry, much like her Ortrud, made more of her character dramatically than vocally… to which her voice, frayed on top notes but with luscious mezzo-lows, contributes on both ends: If that rawness makes Waltraud Meier’s Kundry/Ortrud/Klytemnestra great these days, why not Macleans’? She hasn’t, granted, Meier’s letter-perfect diction, but unlike her more famous colleague, she throws herself into productions in a way that place the director’s intentions well before her ego. The overall result is mesmerizing, which is what counts when viewed in the house. Burkhard Fritz valiantly performed the singing adult incarnation of Parsifal, for whom three youngsters do much of the excellent acting which was timed to fit notes and text exactly—such as Boy-Parsifal’s limp little hands slumping on the floor right on the double bass pizzicati to “Matt hängen die Flügel”.

This Parsifal is a gift, Wolfgang Wagner’s legacy from beyond the grave, and one of the truly great moments of Wagnerian drama. For the foreseeable future, any Parsifal at Bayreuth will do well if it can only avoid comparison to Herheim’s.

Pictures (below) courtesy Bayreuth Festival, © Enrico Nawrath

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Bayreuth 2012: Tannhäuser is a Gasser

When Sebastian Baumgarten looks for truth in opera, he looks beyond the smooth execution of a stage apparatus, beyond settings that create a more or less creative tension to known and recognizable plots. He seeks out the cracks that allow a view behind the façade, at something more elementary, to the very core of the message he perceives in an opera. At the core of Tannhäuser he has found the conflict between the Apollonian and the Dionysian.

You could miss some of that, sitting through his Bayreuth Tannhäuser at the Festspielhaus. Disastrously received when it premiered in 2011, it was the production I expected the least from in this year’s run, deeply suspicious of Joop van Lieshout’s domineering set called “Technocrat”, a self-sufficient eco-fascist community that recycles its own waste and creates its own drug – alcohol – for regulated occasions of being wasted. (We recall Marxism 101: “Religion… the opiate of the masses.”) We are also supposed to think of Wagner’s prophetic, occasionally pathetic warnings against scientific and technological progress.

The Venusberg is the Wartburg’s own dungeon of experimentation, sexual and otherwise, which features strange creatures, some copulating like apes, others variously described as electric rays, amoebas, or dancing spermatozoa. (Hint: It’s the latter, and they go with the strangely transfixing x-ray videos projected at the back of the stage… Good thing I hadn’t put too much money on my electric ray-as-electricity-supply theory.) Because Baumgarten has much to tell, the action on stage starts well before the music, continues through the intermissions, and continues still, after the score says it’s all over. These pre-, post-, and intermezzi provide flavor (including a communal prayer of the Wartburg crew, set to the German anthem’s melody), but are missable. Fortunately: After all, intermissions are better invested in necessary drink, nourishing sausages, and revitalizing water-wading.

The essay “Bayreuth as Bioethics Laboratory: An Appreciation of Baumgarten’s Production of Tannhäuser” in “The Wagner Journal” is a splendid source for digging into the meaningful depths of this production, and gives answers and clues that will escape the roving eye of a one- or two-time concert-goer. For example that the self-inflicted, stigmata-like wounds of Elisabeth are (“possibly”) a result of child abuse by her uncle, Herrmann, Landgrave of Thuringia, or that Tannhäuser’s body is covered with Kaposi’s sarcoma (KSHV, associated with AIDS) in the third act. There is legitimate dispute as to whether Elisabeth suicidally gases and recycles herself (Wolfram helpfully closes the hatch and pushes her back in, when she briefly changes her mind), or merely leaves the Wartburg society through the workers’ and maintenance entrance of the biogas tank. The above mentioned essay takes the former view, in a newspaper article the production’s dramaturg Carl Hegemann, perhaps to diffuse German outrage, the latter.

On paper much makes sense, and it’s always good to give modern productions the benefit of the doubt for containing more clever thoughts than oneself could ever muster. But it is better still if many of these ideas communicate readily. That’s not the case in the first act, apart from the pregnant Venus (Michelle Breedt), who does make a ton of sense: Firstly Wagner designed her as a compendium-character that included Holle (with overtones of Fricka/Freia), the goddess of birth, death, and reincarnation. Secondly: For Tannhäuser (Torsten Kerl) to leave a pregnant Venus adds plenty, desirable tension to his return to the upper world, and makes Venus’ desperation at his abandonment considerably more poignant.

The second act, meanwhile, works splendidly on its own, even though it had been least changed from the year before. There’s little need for the set(ting) of van Lieshout, as Baumgarten makes splendid points about Tannhäuser through his Personenregie. The Dastardly provocation of Elisabeth, for example, as Tannhäuser dances to his song about free-wheeling love, ever more explicitly, with the pregnant, salaciously lollipop sucking Venus. Or about the moralizing racket of the Wartburg crew, who monopolize religion and righteousness to send people for repenting and rehabilitation to “ROM(E)”—a brainwashing procedure on the Wartburg premises (keep Clockwork Orange or Scientology in the mental background)—and charge good money, collected in trunks labeled “LOOT”,  for it, too. (Luther 101: keywords “Letters of indulgence.”)

The song contest is very neatly and closely tailored to Wagner’s text and his characters, whether the jealous Wolfram (Michael Nagy), the tediously-virtuous Walther (Lothar Odinius), or the irascible, aggressive Biterolf (Thomas Jesatko) with his Dr. Strangelove act. The latter especially throws all his anger at Tannhäuser for having allowed at the moral rebel to make the virtuous Wartburg boys horny with his tales of physical love and gyrating dance. At Tannhäuser’s mention of the Venusberg, the circular lion cage of lust comes out of the floor again, for graphic illustration of his transgressions. Elisabeth, in reaching out from stifling morality to physical sensuality (within measure) is Tannhäuser’s pendant in the opera, not Venus’… Tannhäuser being the one who reaches for structured love from a state of licentiousness. Baumgarten makes the move explicit in that he has Elisabeth briefly visit the den of sin with Tannhäuser, to check it out, but ultimately reject it.

If this production was a success—and it was very well received by the increasingly indiscriminately enthusiastic audience—it had as much to do with more ideas coming through, or clearing out a few distracting elements from the first and third act since 2011, or the audience simply getting used to Baumgarten’s story-telling designs, as it did with the vast musical improvement over 2011. When Thomas Hengelbrock tried to bring his Historical Performance Practice approach and lots of sound ideas to the Green Hill, he was met with indifference, if not hostility by the orchestra, and got as far as the prelude with this approach, after which the music reverted to ‘the usual’, but less inspired. Hengelbrock withdrew, gave up, or was asked to be busy elsewhere—whichever the case, Bayreuth’s new house-conductor Christian Thielemann took over, and delivered at least as ravishing an account as he had in The Flying Dutchman; flexible, sumptuous, and ever supporting, never covering the singers.

The singers, too, had faltered by all 2011 accounts, which cannot be said of this cast, with its new and improved Tannhäuser and Venus. Pronunciation and especially diction was impeccable throughout, from the preachy Reinmar (Martin Snell) to the stoic, strapping, stentorian and mildly sadistic Herrmann (Günther Groissböck). That’s particularly pleasant in Bayreuth which, to the relief of veterans and chagrin of newbies, doesn’t believe in supertitles. Michelle Breedt, unleashed from her 1960’s Brangäne, was a dramatically most compelling, queerly seductive Venus, Michael Nagy a fresh-voiced, agile Wolfram (with room to develop dramatic nuance), and Torsten Kerl a hard working, ultimately very successful Tannhäuser, if dying of AIDS/guilt at opera’s end can be considered very successful. The same for the gas-recycled, clear and even-voiced Camilla Nylund, who sublimated her sexual longings in an ecstatic religious experience and shed, by way of ritually removing the ‘looted’ jewelry she had donned, her associations with the moralizing crooks of the Wartburg society.

With a high musical score, and effective if not always lucid drama, this so maligned Tannhäuser was a most happy surprise, a moving opera experience that effortlessly bested the veteran Tristan and newcomer Dutchman.

Pictures (below) courtesy Bayreuth Festival, © Enrico Nawrath

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Bayreuth 2012: Tristan - Solid, Stolid, Staid, and Not a Little Boring

Bayreuth’s 2012 Tristan, directed by Christoph Marthaler, is now—after seven cycles—on its way to the recycling bin. It will go there with nary a tear cried after. The veterans among the usher-girls (the “Blue Girls”, even though their uniforms have been changed to an unpopular gray) who have seen this production some two dozen, thirty times, will heave a collective sigh of relief. Solid, stolid, staid, with a good and even cast, but without anything or anyone outstanding, except for Jukka Rasilainen’s excellently dramatized and very well sung Kurwenal, this Tristan is largely inoffensive, deliberately dour, and not a little boring.

Certainly the production’s heart is in the right place. Marthaler goes for deliberately minimalistic acting (already less minimalist now than originally), which should suit Tristan as an intimate opera about conversation very well. A glance or a touch of hands can and should be more powerful in this work than lofty operatic gestures. It’s just that the rest of the direction, including Anna Viebrock’s sets and costumes, doesn’t bring that quality out much. It focuses instead on the aspect of the passage of time and waiting. Dresses, hairdos, and the color schemes of mustard yellow, hunting green, and dark tan seem to come straight out of the 60s or—for whom that isn’t any longer a valid reference—Mad Men. Amid this: timelessness and aging by way of stasis.

Good and plain Tristan (the reliably voiced Robert Dean Smith, for whose personality this production seems to be tailored since he’s always that kind of Tristan) never ages, but the people around him do: Most notably Kurwenal, who starts virile and ends up a touching old dodderer by the third act. The latter brings by far the most moving couple of hours of this production, tenderly embedding the duologue between feverish Tristan and Kurwenal. Isolde (Iréne Theorin) is so lost in her own world that during the confrontation of the second act, she regresses into an infantile state and points, transfigured and transfixed, to a few flickering lights that promise to go out, as if the cloak of darkness might yet cover her illicit love, and instate a happy end. No such luck.

The sets grow out of the ground one level after another, each act’s set pushing the previous one’s one floor up… “like growth rings of a tree”, Viebrock suggests. By act three, the walls of an old ocean liner’s musty reading room tower above the dreary yellow office-building’s interior with decidedly hideous wallpaper, which in turn are situated above a modern day dungeon, on the water damaged walls of which Viebrock’s guiding stars – light tubes in various shapes (subtly spelling “TOT”) – hang and flicker. From the moving, suspended neon lamps of the first act, depicting a starry sky and ship’s passage, to the tubes that sputter in Tristan’s underground refuge (“ a storage depot for burned out bulbs”), light – “Day” – follow Tristan and Isolde, no matter how much they try to avoid it.

If you read Uwe Friedrich’s interview with Peter Schneider (Friends of the Bayreuth Festival 2012 Almanach), the 73 year old Austrian conductor comes across like a young radical, ever probing Wagner-discoverer. He reconsiders the scores anew every time he conducts them, he goes back to the original manuscripts, and he laments that famous colleagues of his take things for granted, only because ‘that’s how Knappertsbusch did it, so it is right.’ This cumulates with this statement: “To question tradition, over and over, and to come up with new solutions brings me a lot of pleasure, actually.” Had I conducted the interview, I might have had to ask: Who are you, and what did you do with Peter Schneider? This person sounds more like Thomas Hengelbrock or Pierre Boulez, than the predictable, reliable Kapellmeister we know.

Perhaps it comes as a relief then, that in the house, when the music plays, it’s back to the Peter Schneider one expects… except not at his best. The tempi of this Tristan were comparatively stiff (the extremely flexible Thielemann and even Nelsons being admittedly tough competition) and, a swift overture excepted, on the slow side. The orchestra was usually too loud and the singers were constantly covered. The latter mattered little for text-comprehension, though, since hardly anyone in the cast bothered much with diction, and by the time the Liebestod came around, Theorin, though vocally admirable throughout, might as well have vocalized her lines. Kwangchul Youn’s King Marke wasn’t half as superbly regal and authoritative as would is his Gurnemanz, much like Michelle Breedt couldn’t quite unleash her Brangäne from the dreary surroundings.

In 2015 Tristan will return to the Bayreuth Festival, conducted by Christian Thielemann and directed by the lady of the hill, Katharina Wagner.

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Bayreuth 2012: Lohengrin, a Rat’s Tale About Humanity

“Three years may be the acid test for a production” says Hans Neuenfels about the 2012 performances of his Lohengrin in Bayreuth. That’s quite a reasonable statement in Bayreuth, where it is possible, up to a point, to continue fine tuning a production from inception to the end of its run. If it still – or especially – works, even after the cast has changed, it might be considered a success.

And Neuenfels’ Lohengrin is a success. For starters in its musical manifestation in 2012, with a good cast headed now by Klaus Florian Vogt’s Lohengrin, and utterly compelling, sensitive music-making from the pit, where Andris Nelsons held the reins of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra. Visually – “it’s the one with the rats” – the production is compelling and gorgeous (unless you suffer from acute musophobia), dramatically it makes wonderful sense, and the craftsmanship of every of its aspects is top notch. It doesn’t rival Stefan Herheim’s Parsifal for profundity (part of which lies in the nature of the respective operas), but it’s one of those productions that anyone who has seen it, shan’t be forgotten for a very long time.

The chorus of rats – large brown ones for the Brabantians, smaller white ones for the women’s chorus, and adorable little pink ones as flower girls and ring bearers – is the easy hook for those detractors who like superficial deviance from an expected norm to distract them. But they serve several purposes: They’re a good looking and diverting bunch of rodents. They make an accessible point about crowd- and collective behavior. And they make blocking of the chorus spectacularly successful: There’s not one awkward moment of parading choruses shifting uneasily onto and off stage – which is saying something about a Lohengrin production. Perhaps best of all, the chorus is obviously having a blast in their costumes, and such enthusiasm always helps.

When the rats finally shed their exterior and take human form (King Heinrich, a mild sufferer of musophobia himself, is now no longer disgusted by the crawling, clawing masses) they exemplify a general convergence to humanity: The rats upward from a lowly existence, Lohengrin human-ward from his lofty, god-like standing. The latter is touchingly illustrated when Vogt’s Lohengrin walks towards the audience in his final scene, rather than taking the next swan down the river Scheldt. One minor blooper of sorts: When Lohengrin reveals his name, the now humanoid Brabantians seem to have already guessed it, because they stand at attention wearing belts that brandish a big “L”. Perhaps they rashly assumed his name was “Ladislav” or “Leroy” and got lucky, except not lucky enough, since Lohengrin of course cedes all warring activities to Gottfried, who then climbs out of a large egg, looking half way like a bird fetus, and feeds the ex-rats with bits of his umbilical cord. (The latter being one of the production’s more obscure metaphors).

Whatever Neuenfels doesn’t say through directing his singers, Reinhard von der Thannen says through his impeccably aesthetic sets and costumes which are a pillar of this production’s (visual) magnificence. The black-swan/white-swan gowns for Ortrud and Elsa in Act II are one example, the sharp delineation between Ortrud/Telramund and Elsa/Lohengrin another, or perhaps most poignant in the last scene, where Ortrud, like a crazed Ophelia, wills herself a Queen against all realities by donning Elsa’s white, with a costume of plumes (but upside down), a white copy of Heinrich’s scissor-cut paper crown, and expressively smeared makeup. To complementary dress effect, Elsa appears in mourning-black.

Samuel Youn, in his third year as the Herald, managed to deliver the solid dramatic presence on stage he had lacked in the Dutchman, and rang out his part with clarity and brawn. The young Wilhelm Schwinghammer was the ARD Competition third prize winner just three years ago, and showed more promise than readiness then. Boy, how they grow up. Now he walked on stage as a sonorous Heinrich the Fowler, and filled the shoes of Georg Zeppenfeld, the production’s previous Heinrich, hitchlessly, and very impressively. Thomas J. Mayer, whom I found mildly lacking was Wotan/Wanderer in Munich’s Ring (Walküre/Siegfried), displayed a non-committal sounding voice that didn’t always definitively settle on a tone, but was helped by his dramatic abilities—much like Susan Maclean’s ultimately gripping Ortrud which started on the feeble side before reaching operating temperature.

Annette Dasch struggled for her Elsa to break through to the audience, but she did that commendably, helped by the keen support from Nelsons. Dramatically at least, it’s better when Elsa is on the weak side and partnered with a Lohengrin like Klaus Florian Vogt’s, than when even a fine Lohengrin like Jonas Kaufmann’s is out-sung by his Elsa, as the latter was by Anja Harteros in Richard Jones’ Lohengrin from the Munich Opera. Vogt, whose acquired taste of a glass-bell like voice is becoming increasingly accepted, appreciated, and loved, was made for roles like Lohengrin. Already in the 2006 Lenhoff’-Braunfels Baden-Baden production under Nagano he showed how the introverted Wagner characters are right up his alley, and how his uncanny ability to have the chorister-flavored voice float above the orchestra’s emissions rather than powering straight through them, enables him to imbue these roles with a great lyrical quality. On top of that he brought real force to the table, which led to the most enthusiastic reception of any artist in the whole fifth week of the Festival.

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