 Browse |
 Categories |
 Music Genres » Opera |
 |
MusBook.com Forums
The heart of the MusBook.com community
|
Siegfried Idyll – acceptable Wagner?
Topics: 43 Posts: 61
|
Created about 1 year ago Katharina Wagner's idea of a performance by the Israel Chamber Orchestra at the Bayreuth Festival was surprisingly ambitious, and perhaps doomed to failure from the start. What was less surprising was the choice of repertoire for the prospective event: Siegfied Idyll. It could hardly have been anything else really, but practicalities aside, what sort of Wagner is represented by this work? True, it is based on themes from the Ring cycle, but the story of its composition seems almost calculated to give it an aura of harmless benevolence. Does the music bear that out? Or is there as much dark psychology in there as in the Prelude to Tristan, for example, which they could equally well have proposed for the event? |
Topics: 0 Posts: 16
|
Created about 1 year ago, Modified about 1 year ago Harmless benevolence - hmm, a lovely piece, but written for Wagner's wife Cosima, who subsequently ran the Bayreuth Festival for over 20 years after Wagner's death - not an ideal choice in retrospect. I think that the whole venture, while well-intentioned, was an error of judgment. There is a handful of non-operatic pieces by Wagner; even an American Centennial March, commissioned by Theodore Thomas from Philadelphia in 1876 . While this 'Grosser Festmarch' Philadelphia has made it to the Proms - its London Premiere was in 1896, and then there were four other performances - mercifully Wagner's arrangement of 'Rule Britannia' has not. |
Topics: 0 Posts: 55
|
Created about 1 year ago The Wagner family tree and the feuds between its members are almost as complex as those of Wotan's, and would make an opera in themselves. Richard Wagner's grandson Wolfgang, who has recently died, had 4 children; son Gottfried (born 1947) tried to make his father face up to the role in Nazi Germany played by Winifred Wagner, Richard's daughter-in-law (married to his son Siegfried). Siegfried died in 1930, Winifred (Wolfgang's mother) took over the Festival and counted Hitler as one of her friends. There are many films and photographs of Hitler with her at Bayreuth, and his use of the Bayreuth Festival for propaganda was considerable. An Israeli orchestra to play anything at all at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth? Perhaps it is the place, as much as the Wagnerian musical associations, which many will still find abhorrent. But the concert seems to be going ahead in the Bayreuth Town Hall, and I read somewhere that it includes works by Mendelssohn and Mahler, as well as the Siegfried Idyll - which will not be rehearsed in Israel. For his efforts, Gottfried was banned from the family home, and forbidden to see his father before Wolfgang died. We attended a talk Gottfried gave a few years ago, which included his showing family photos from Bayreuth in the 1930s, featuring Hitler. Gottfried's facial profile is similar to that of his great-grandfather, but his tall stature reflects genes from his great-grandmother, Cosima - Liszt's daughter. |
Topics: 3 Posts: 108
|
Created about 1 year ago http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JOzqvWoZ2U Yes, such a beautiful work; the story of it well known and Cosima's diary description of the first performance often quoted. Her diary entry for the previous day (Dec 24 1870) is also interesting: '...It is the first Christmas on which I am giving R. no present and will receive none from him - so that is all right...' A well kept secret, then, although she writes on Dec 25: 'Now at last I understand all R's working in secret, and also dear [Hans] Richter's trumpet (he blazed out the Siegfried theme splendidly and had learned the trumpet especially to do it)...' Richard and Cosima's son Siegfried had been born the previous year. This is a clip of him, with his wife Winifred and two of his children. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8EmDIOXaeQ As beautiful as Wagner's 19th century music is, the 20th century baggage which it has accrued and been burdened with is an ever-present, ugly stumbling block. ______________________ Louise |
