Careful! It’s a trick question, and not for the reason you might think. In 1980, the compact disc was actually standardized at 74 minutes to accommodate the length of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony – specifically using Wilhelm Furtwängler’s 1951 Bayreuth Festival performance as a template. No orchestra in the world would be able to get through it in 40 minutes – not even conducted by Charles Munch, as in this astonishing recording:
Yet one more way, albeit it unintended on the part of the composer, in which Beethoven caused the world to hear music differently.
One of the first African American singers to conquer the international opera stage, soprano/mezzo-soprano Grace Bumbry has died. Her career spanned some 40 years.
Born into humble circumstances in 1937 – her father was a railway clerk and her mother was a teacher – she grew up in segregated St. Louis, learning early on that if she hoped to pursue her dreams, she would have to get out.
As a teen, she entered a radio contest for a shot at a scholarship to the now-defunct St. Louis Institute of Music. It was a blind competition, with Bumbry singing from behind a screen. After she was declared the winner, the conservatory declined to admit her because of her race. They offered to give her private lessons instead. She declined and received scholarships to study at Boston University and Northwestern University, where she attended masterclasses with Lotte Lehmann. She followed Lehmann to the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara.
Bumbry launched her career in Europe at a time when Marian Anderson (from whom she received encouragement) and Leontyne Price were blazing trails at home.
She also had the support of Jacqueline Kennedy, who may have had a hand in her debut at the Paris Opera House in 1960, as Amneris in Verdi’s “Aida.” Two years later, Bumbry was invited to the White House to perform at a state dinner.
In 1961, she made headlines as the first Black singer to perform at the Bayreuth Festival, dedicated to the works of Richard Wagner. (We all know how enlightened Wagner was in matters of race.) Bumbry was cast as Venus, the goddess of love, in “Tannhäuser.” She received 42 curtain calls, and the ovation lasted some 30 minutes.
Then she signed a contract with Sol Hurok, manager of Arthur Rubinstein and Isaac Stern, and he saw to it that she became a star on both sides of the Atlantic.
She achieved success in the mezzo roles of Carmen, Delila, and Princess Eboli, and the soprano roles of Salome, Norma, Tosca, and Medea, among others.
Her Metropolitan Opera debut was as Eboli in Verdi’s “Don Carlo” in 1965. In 1985, when “Porgy and Bess” finally made it to the Met, she sang opposite Simon Estes. It was a long journey for “Porgy.” The opera was first performed on Broadway 50 years earlier.
Bumbry sang in the world’s leading opera houses, was widely decorated, and left behind many fine recordings. She died yesterday in Vienna at the age of 86.
For Good Friday, here’s my annual posting of Leopold Stokowski’s sublime Houston recording of the “Good Friday Spell” from Wagner’s “Parsifal.”
As an added bonus, enjoy a fascinating 1927 recording of the Transformation Music and Grail Scene from Act I, set down at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. The recording employs the original bells designed by Wagner, which were later melted down by the Nazis for ammunition during World War II. A rare opportunity to experience “Parsifal” as Wagner actually knew it. (The bells begin at 5:57.)
Muck had been associated with the Bayreuth Festival since 1892. He became its principal conductor in 1903. Between 1901 and 1930, he conducted “Parsifal” at Bayreuth 14 times.
IMAGE: Set design by Paul von Joukowsky for the 1882 Bayreuth debut of “Parsifal”
Karl Muck was the target of anti-German sentiment during his time as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which, unfortunately, happened to coincide with the First World War. Be that as it may, he was held in the highest regard by fellow musicians and thought by many to be one of Wagner’s finest interpreters.
Here’s a fascinating 1927 recording of the Transformation Music and Grail Scene from Act III of “Parsifal,” made at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. The recording employs the original bells designed by Wagner, which would be melted down by the Nazis for ammunition during World War II. So this is a rare opportunity to experience “Parsifal” as Wagner actually knew it. (The bells begin at 5:57.)
Muck had been associated with the Bayreuth Festival since 1892. He became its principal conductor in 1903. Between 1901 and 1930, he conducted “Parsifal” at Bayreuth 14 times.
PHOTO: Metal canisters used to produce Bayreuth bell sounds from the 1880s to about 1929.
They can’t all be Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss II, or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In fact, it’s more often the case that they turn out to be Franz Xaver Mozart, Soulima Stravinsky, or Siegfried Wagner.
The latter were all musicians who strained to find their place in the sun, but in the end there was no escaping the enormous shadows of their old men.
You certainly couldn’t fault Siegfried Wagner for not trying. In his quest to continue the family business, he wrote no less than 18 operas. And the ones I have heard are not bad! Unfortunately, most of them seem to be in the tradition of Engelbert Humperdinck, whose most famous opus, of course, is “Hansel und Gretel.” But I happen to be easily charmed by fairy tale operas, so count me in!
“Der Bärenhäuter” (“The Bear-Skin Man”), “Der Kobold” (“The Goblin”), “Schwarzshwanenreich” (“Realm of the Black Swan”), and “An Halle ist Hütchen schuld” (“Hattie is to Blame for It All”) all contain fantastic or supernatural elements, but none of them bear the archetypal resonance of the “Ring Cycle,” much less push music into bold new harmonic territory like “Tristan und Isolde.” You have to admit, that’s a tough row to hoe, and none of Siegfried’s operas have entered the standard repertoire.
Of course, being a Wagner, everything was tied up with the old man. Siegfried was director of the Bayreuth Festival from 1908 to 1930. There is a delicious irony in the fact that Papa Wagner, an über-nationalist, anti-Semite, and all-around amoral satyr – whose bludgeoning music dramas fairly seethe with an obsessive focus on the redemptive power of women – would sire a child who would turn out to be homosexual. Perhaps he tempted fate by giving him such a butch name. A far cry from Wagner’s prototype of the he-man without fear, Siegfried became affectionately known to family as “Fidi.”
In the wake of a national scandal involving accusations of homosexual behavior among certain aristocrats in the Kaiser’s circle, the Wagners thought it was high time for Siegfried to take a bride. At the age of 45, he married 17 year-old Winifred Klindworth, who would later become a fanatical admirer of Adolf Hitler. She bore Siegfried four children. All of them would be closely involved with the workings of Bayreuth and uncomfortably close to the Nazi Party. The youngest of Siegfried’s children, Verena Wagner Lafferentz, died only weeks ago, at the age of 98.
Marriage did not “cure” Siegfried of his proclivity for the company of men. He died in 1930. At the very least, Nazism is one controversy he managed to avoid.
Happy birthday, Siegfried Wagner, on the 150th anniversary of your birth. You were certainly the nicest of the Wagners. You may not have been a chip off the old block, but in the Wagner family, to have been so would have been somewhat more than a mixed blessing.
The overture to “Der Bärenhäuter” (“The Bear-Skin Man”):
