For me, Holy Week usually means it’s time to trot out Wagner’s “Parsifal,” but in light of the death of tenor Peter Seiffert, here’s a delectable clip (at the link) from “Lohengrin,” with Seiffert’s then-wife Lucia Popp. Lohengrin was a Seiffert specialty, a role he sang several times at the Bayreuth Festival. In 2003, his recording of Wagner’s “Tannhäuser,” with Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin, was recognized with a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording. Everyone loves to point out the fact that Popp was 15 years his senior. So what? I’d have married her myself! Popp died of brain cancer in 1993 at the age of 54, a great loss. Seiffert later married soprano Petra-Maria Schnitzer, who survives him. He was 71 years-old. R.I.P.
Grammy-winning “Tannhäuser,” in more immediate sound
In the 19th century, when your opera was accepted in Paris, it meant you definitely needed a ballet. It was tradition. It provided a danced divertissement for French audiences, who were accustomed to a little light entertainment in the middle of an evening heavy on singing.
Richard Wagner bemoaned the fact, when “Tannhäuser” was accepted there, and he ruffled quite a few feathers when he frontloaded his ballet, essentially “getting it out of the way,” by including it in the first act as a bacchanale – which makes perfect dramatic sense in the Venusberg, the sensual realm of Venus.
Nevertheless, Parisian aristocrats were none too happy, as this conflicted with their dining schedules. (There’s a reason they call it “fashionably late.”) French soldiers too were accustomed to arriving with full bellies and light spirits to ogle dancers during their traditional appearance in a later act.
For this, among other reasons, “Tannhäuser” was met with whistles and catcalls. By the third performance, the backlash had become so intense, with interruptions of up to 15 minutes at a time, that Wagner finally withdrew the opera.
Giuseppe Verdi wasn’t crazy about the whole ballet idea either. Nevertheless, when he was invited to submit “Macbeth,” originally composed in 1847, for performance in Paris (first in 1852, and when he didn’t follow through, for a second time in 1864), he acquiesced. Of course, Verdi being Verdi, it became a much more involved undertaking than he had anticipated, and he wound up revising the entire opera.
Privately, he expressed reservations about the inclusion of ballet in opera, but unlike Wagner, he figured out ways for it to suit the drama AND at the accepted place in an evening’s entertainment. In short, when life gave him lemons, he made limoncello.
Verdi was a canny enough showman to know to give the public what it wanted: cavorting witches!
American heldentenor Stephen Gould has died. Since 2004, he appeared at Bayreuth nearly 100 times. Gould, 61, announced his retirement from singing only last month. Later, he revealed on social media that he had been diagnosed with bile-duct cancer, “with complications,” and that there would be no cure. He took the opportunity to express his gratitude to Bayreuth and for all the fond memories. He faced his disease clear-eyed and went out with real class.
As a young singer, Gould auditioned for a national tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of Opera” – as a joke, he said – and he wound up singing in the show for close to eight years!
I recall this ballsy Bayreuth production of “Tannhäuser,” directed by Tobias Kratzer, from 2019, featuring a dwarf, a drag queen, and Gould in clown make-up. Not sure it’s exactly what Wagner had in mind, but I know you will love it. Sorry, no subtitles. You’ll just have to sprechen sie Deutsch.
