It’s that time of the year, when that midsummer classic the Bayreuth Festival begins once again. I will be attending this yearly ritual, and ahead of me will be performances of The Flying Dutchman, Parsifal, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and the new production of Lohengrin, directed by the first American to mount a production at the Green Hill.
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Wagner Operas Podcast
In this podcast my good friends Francis and Julia Creighton discuss their insights into the Santa Fe Opera The Flying Dutchman., which they saw this past summer. Francis and Julia discuss the producti...
This summer the Bayreuth Festival will present a new production of PARSIFAL that will use Augmented Reality glasses. It promises to be a landmark production in the history of Bayreuth.
In this podcast I am joined by my good friend, Francis Creighton, as we explore the custom of presenting Wagner at the MET during Spring time, which coincides with the 2023 new production of Lohengrin...
This Lohengrin is one of the great recordings of the 1930's from the Bayreuth Festival. It features Franz Völker and Maria Müller, two of the leading singers of the time, in excerpts from this opera...
The Metropolitan Opera is currently presenting Wagner's Ring, and the return of the Robert Lapage controversial production. Last Saturday I attended a performance of Die Walküre, and the mechanical...
It’s that time of the year, when that midsummer classic the Bayreuth Festival begins once again. I will be attending this yearly ritual, and ahead of me will be performances of The Flying Dutchman, Pa...
In this podcast, we explore the link between the musical score of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo, written by composer Bernard Herrmann, and the music of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Th...
When Parsifal is playing in town at the Metropolitan Opera it is a not-to-be-missed event. Luckily this year, I get to see it twice. My first visit was yesterday at the Saturday matinee. I was join...
A guidebook to the city of Bayreuth, written at the turn of the century, got me thinking: I wonder what a trip to Bayreuth would have been like in those days. In this video podcast we will take a trip...
The Christmas season does not usually bring to mind the music of Richard Wagner, but it should, for on Christmas morning, in the year 1870, Cosima, the composer's wife, woke from her slumbers to a new...
The Flying Dutchman (Der fliegende Holländer) is Richard Wagner’s answer to Halloween. The story of a ghostly sea captain who is doomed to sail the seven seas for eternity is the perfect opera to enj...
My favorite moment in the Ring of the Nibelung occurs in the second act of Die Walküre. Brünnhilde visits Siegmund to tell him that he will die in battle and that she will take him to Valhalla. This...
My journey to Bayreuth this summer was filled with so many great performers by a host of very talented singing actors. Thinking about the month of August and the great performances I saw and heard, I...
After so many years of doing these podcasts I realized that I had never done a program dedicated exclusively to one of my favorite Wagner operas, Tannhäuser. So here is an audio show highlighting som...
Currently at the Bayreuth Festival there is an exhibit called “Silenced Voices.” It is a tribute to the many singers, artists, and musicians who, during the Third Reich, were banned from the festival...
During these uncertain days, when the whole world seems to be enveloped by confusion, war, and hate, Vincent and his guest Francis visit the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth and speak about their admiration...
This year we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Wieland Wagner, the composer's grandson, who in 1951 revolutionized the staging of his grandfather's work when he reopened the Bayreuth Fes...
The Bayreuth Festival opened this week with a new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Wagner's only comedy. Barrie Kosky, the director of this production has focused on the antisemitism asp...
It’s been seven years since my last podcast. During that time many wonderful things happened including a visit to Bayreuth in 2012. Now, this summer, I am very lucky to have a chance to go back to the...
No stranger to controversy these days The Bayreuth Festival opened at the end of July with a new production of Lohengrin directed by one of the best-known Regietheater directors, Hans Neuenfels. His t...
The Bayreuth Festival opened with a much anticipated production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg directed by Katharina Wagner, daughter of Wolfgang Wagner. As the heir apparent to the family business...
Arturo Toscanini was the most sought-after conductor in the 1930's. He became the first Italian to conduct at Bayreuth, and would have continued performing there had the Third Reich not come to power...
Richard Wagner composed his Symphony in C Major at the age of nineteen. It is clearly the work of a young man influenced by the towering figure and musical innovations of Ludwig van Beethoven. The sym...
For many opera lovers around the world, Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka became a household word this summer after her critically praised performance as Sieglinde at this year's Bayreuth Festival....
On September of this year, soprano Astrid Varnay died in Munich, Germany. She was one of the great Wagnerian sopranos of our times, and one of the artists chosen by Wieland Wagner to re-open the Bayr...
This performance of Götterdämmerung brings to a close the new production of the Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival. One of the shining stars of the last evening was Hans-Peter König who,...
One of the delights of the past two Bayreuth Festivals was listening to tenor Stephen Gould mesmerize audiences with his impressive performances of Tannhäuser. This summer he is making the crowds at t...
At this year's Bayreuth Festival, one thing is certain: the new production of the Ring is receiving standing ovations thanks to the vision of director Tankred Dorst, the incredible conducting of Chri...
The highlight of this year's Bayreuth Festival is the new production of Der Ring des Nibelungen, staged by director Tankred Dorst, and conducted by Christian Thielemann. This new production of Das Rhe...
Most critics will agree that the richest period of Wagnerian singing in The United States took place during the 1940's, and '50's at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. This podcast pays homage t...