13895 Wagner News 174 - Wagner Society of England

MUNICH OPERA FESTIVAL WAGNERIN PROJECT
Dame Gwyneth Jones as Cosima Wagner in Wagnerin: Ein Haus der Kunstmusik
Roger Lee
Premiered at Bayerische Oper on 24th June as “an evening without gods or heroes” but
featuring instead the characters of Cosima, Winifred, Gudrun and Katharina Wagner as
well as many blue-clad maidens, a male choir and the Festival Orchestra’s “left-over”
trumpets, the Wagnerin production was devised as part of the Bavarian State Opera’s Ring
Themes programme for the 2012 Munich Opera Festival. The first event of this series
dealing with Der Ring was Wagnerin – Ein Haus der Kunstmusik with Dame Gwyneth
Jones in the role of Cosima Wagner in Sven Holm’s production.
Holm presents the fates of female characters in Der Ring in contrast to the female
succession strategies in the Wagner dynasty. In a surreal manner he gathers Cosima,
Winifred, Gudrun and Katharina Wagner in a future Wahnfried which is threatened with
destruction. He told Wagner News: “Wagner’s work also reflects current events and the
family’s own history, and so this production is an attempt to shed light on the roles and
actions of women in the Wagner dynasty.”
The myth is updated to the present and the parallels of power, fate and mutual
dependence are brought to light in this project. According to Nikolaus Bachler, Manager
of the Bavarian State Opera: “It is precisely in Bayreuth’s present circumstances that this
theme has a particular charm” Producer Sven Holm thus explained his approach: “It has
always been the strong women who reigned in Bayreuth and who to some extent battled
with each other to inherit the Bayreuth Festival.” The Wagnerin project deals with the
absurdity that Wagner basically anticipated the conflicts of his own descendants in Der
Ring, but did so only in the male world of the struggle for gold.
Götterdämmerung, which ended on 30th June with Andreas Kriegenburg’s new
production plays a central role with its apocalyptic scenario as Sven Holm explains: “we
are acting out as fiction an impending demise of the Bayreuth Festival in the near future.
The orchestra and the heroes have departed and only the trumpets remain. In the house at
Wahnfried four Wagner women are sitting and trying to save the Wagnerian idea. The
entire house is one surreal scene where Katharina Wagner pulls the female role-players
out of their graves and tries to make the myth interesting once again with the focus on the
stories of the female figures in the Wagner family as well as the female figures in Der
Ring.”
According to Holm: “the dialectic between a Cosima and a Brünnhilde or a
Katharina and a Sieglinde is crucial with particular regard to the deeply lonely feeling of
growing up in this self-centred atmosphere of the Wagner family and not being able to
escape it.” In the role of Cosima Wagner Dame Gwyneth Jones sings fragments from Der
Ring amongst other items
The production also involves the singers Hanna Dóra Sturludottir as Katharina
Wagner and Ceri Williams as Gudrun Wagner along with the actress Renate Jett as
Winifred Wagner and members of the Bavarian State Opera ensemble. The music has
been taken from the jazz ensemble Vertigo Trombone Quartet who improvise the
Wagnerian motif system and whose frontman Nils Wogram was the 2011 winner of the
BMW Jazz Award.
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