ENO Mastersingers - cultural crime in prospect?

[french frank]

I think this is all rather naive and am surprised that ff has used risked some recently won credibility at Radio 3.

Oo-er. I agree there are two separate issues. I was less concerned as some here about the preservation of the production as a permanent record as about it being seen by BBC viewers, and about the lack of opera, generally, on television - much less than there used to be.

And I merely enquired whether a broadcast was planned or not. Televised or on radio, as it would be very good if more people could enjoy it. No?

But thank you for the other compliment

[Prommer]

Both of these are key issues. I was just prompted by this specific question to reflect on the wider picture.

ENO needs to trumpet its successes, especially at the moment.

The Arts Council and the taxpayer needs to see any such successes reaching the widest audience, especially when the fruit of subsidy is art that is critically esteemed, challenging and also popular.

As to who should commission the recording or broadcast, well ideally these days ENO, but this appears not to have happened. Why?

Can anything be done? Something must be done! Step forward those who say 'Yes we can!'

[french frank]

The reply (at Bob Shennan's request) from Alan Davey is:

"The position is that we broadcast this production from Cardiff where it originated in 2010 at Welsh National Opera, when Bryn Terfel sang Hans Sachs. We have broadcast Die Meistersinger in 2013 as part of our Wagner celebrations and more recently live from the Metropolitan Opera on 13th December 2014.

We have to take a view as to what we broadcast several months ahead and in the UK we do this in consultation with the individual opera houses though the final decisions are always ours. In this case we decided not to take ENO's Die Meistersinger on the grounds that we had already captured the production in its first incarnation.

This season we have broadcast a new production of Otello and a revival of Xerxes from ENO and later this season we will broadcast Pirates of Penzance, Tansy Davies Between Worlds and Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades which will be Edward Gardner's last new production as Music Director there. "

I have suggested he might mention to Bob Shennan the lack of opera on TV - even if it isn't his (AD's) business.

[Prommer]

Thanks for doing this, ff.

Mmm... and the fact that this is a different cast, five years on, for a different company, and an all-round triumph makes no difference??

This stage production has still not been captured in the full sense - i.e. on the box - at any point. Shame.

[french frank]

Mmm... and the fact that this is a different cast, five years on, for a different company, and an all-round triumph makes no difference??

I suppose there is the point that there are only so many productions from ENO they would want to take in a season, so when it comes down to choosing which ones the fact that Meistersinger has been heard several times also comes into the thinking. I took the point that AD said that the earlier production had been 'captured' but television is what gets the big audiences (apart from the little matter that opera does have a visual dimension ...).

[Flosshilde]

Mmm... and the fact that this is a different cast, five years on, for a different company, and an all-round triumph makes no difference??

Quite - "we had already captured the production in its first incarnation" would only make sense if they had televised it. In a radio broadcast the production (designs & acting) are almost irrelevant; what is relevant is the musical aspect - which, as you say, is completely different (and highly praised) this time round.

However, one can also accept that having broadcast Die Meistersinger 3 times in the past four years it might be felt that another broadcast might be a bit excessive.

[Prommer]

Yes, quite Flosshilde - you don't really capture a production by recording it audio-only! A radio recording is a broadcast of a performance rather than a production!

I do hope, re opera on TV, that we are not in a position whereby because certain individual houses now broadcast to cinema, the supply of opera on TV has just dried up, never to return.

This will tend to mean that the wealthier houses will dominate as they have the resources to support a regular programme of such 'telecasts' - i.e. the Met and the ROH.

So come on, Alan Davey, an early win in your new role please! A radio broadcast would be better than nowt.

Imagine if the then Controller of R3 had turned down the 1968 Sadler's Wells Mastersinger conducted by Goodall because 'we have just broadcast Covent Garden's.' History would judge that a loss, judged in absolute quality terms - no matter the whys and wherefores.

And how often do English language performances of Meistersinger come round? Should this not weigh? In planning terms, it is quite bizarre given the spending of taxpayers' money through the Arts Council on ENO, and on the BBC though the licence fee!

[Prommer]

Have just found this example from Opera Magazine of a similar failure at the BBC years ago, which resulted in no broadcast for the Lohengrin of 1963 conducted by Klemperer - for which many of us now would kill!

Harold Rosenthal wrote:

'Word of the general excellence of the Don Carlos revival had evidently got around ; tickets were at a premium, and the BBC decided to alter its announced programmes on April 11 — one thought the Thursday Concert was sacrosanct — in order to broadcast the third performance from Covent Garden. (I will never really understand the BBC's opera policy however, for the Klemperer Lohengrin was no less deserving of being broadcast and was even more of an historical occasion ; while the first performance in Britain of Dallapiccola's Night Flight by the Scottish Opera has, I understand, been refused a broadcast!)'

But just goes to show that, at least in those days, plans could be altered - and were!

[Prommer]

Sorry everyone, one more thing: this is the kind of venture that Peter Moores used to help with, but I read that his foundation is being wound up - or already has been?

[Flosshilde]

I do hope, re opera on TV, that we are not in a position whereby because certain individual houses now broadcast to cinema, the supply of opera on TV has just dried up, never to return.

Yes, & the tickets for the cinema showings aren't exactly low priced.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Just writing, albeit belatedly , to endorse calls for a relay of this magnificent production . I saw the original Cardiff production and this is by far the superior musically - it is approaching the stuff of legend . I went to see it for the second time last night and if anything the standard of singing was even higher than the opening night No praise is high enough for Edward Gardner - eminent Wagnerian Michael Tanner has even suggested he should be knighted for his conducting. But for this modest man the reward must be directing one of the finest Wagner ensembles I have ever seen. There were plenty of spare seats in the Dress circle last night - tempting to go back for a third time. I sincerely hope that is being recorded by some one or that there's a rethink at R3 . The recent Met Meistersinger relay was distinctly below par . Why cross the Atlantic when we have this on our doorstep ?

[Dave2002]

Yes, & the tickets for the cinema showings aren't exactly low priced.

I went with a friend - we got in for £20 each, which is as cheap as some of the cinema presentations.

I'm still not sure how much I warm to this particular work. Initially I wondered if the cultural crime was the one perpetrated by Wagner by creating the work in the first place - and I found the following quote:

"Of all the bête, clumsy, blundering, boggling, baboon-blooded stuff I ever saw on a human stage, ... and of all the affected, sapless, soulless, beginningless, endless, topless, bottomless, topsiturviest, tongs and boniest doggerel of sounds I ever endured the deadliness of, that eternity of nothing was the deadliest, so far as the sound went. I never was so relieved, so far as I can remember in my life, by the stopping of any sound – not excepting railway whistles – as I was by the cessation of the cobbler's bellowing."

John Ruskin

However, Ruskin was an odd guy so we probably shouldn't take his views too seriously.

As the opera proceeds there are a number of very interesting aspects. The opera is about art and formalism, and also about performance and human nature. There does also seem to have been some historical basis for the concept of a singing contest, and it seems curious that two of Wagner's works which I've been to have similar ideas - the other being Tannhäuser. Does this same theme occur anywhere else, either in Wagner's works, or in those of any other composer?

How rigorous the opera is within itself I couldn't judge. Was it the case that any of the marks "awarded" by both Beckmesser and Sachs had any sound basis - according to the proclaimed rules? Probably not - we are perhaps meant to assume that there isn't a basis, and also to find that rigid formalism doesn't always work - something which Wagner himself might have had strong views on during his lifetime. On the other hand, we might also discover that some formalism can help in the construction of art, even if the "rules" are eventually bent by the creators.

I have tried to watch TV and/or video productions in the past, and never got very far with them. At least this time, as a captive (almost) member of the audience I stuck it out to the last.

The production, was, for the most part very good, as was the singing throughout. I'd probably rather see that again than Britten's Rape of Lucretia, though the scene setting of the first act almost disposed me to leave for an early train.

My final feelings are that I might be tempted to go again, and if anyone who likes the work wants to see it, then the ENO performance and production are of a high standard. It is also possible that this production might convert some who are unfamiliar with the opera, or who have not, so far, got to like it.

[underthecountertenor]

There were plenty of spare seats in the Dress circle last night

Indeed there were: row upon row of them in fact. The stalls looked fairly full, but I dread to think how many empty seats there were in the upper reaches of the house. This is in itself is surely an indictment of ENO management, when a production and musical performance of the very highest calibre, garnered with the highest critical praise and a huge buzz on social media, doesn't even come close to selling out. The artists are being let down badly here.

[David-G]

The reply (at Bob Shennan's request) from Alan Davey is:

"The position is that we broadcast this production from Cardiff where it originated in 2010 at Welsh National Opera, when Bryn Terfel sang Hans Sachs. We have broadcast Die Meistersinger in 2013 as part of our Wagner celebrations and more recently live from the Metropolitan Opera on 13th December 2014.

We have to take a view as to what we broadcast several months ahead and in the UK we do this in consultation with the individual opera houses though the final decisions are always ours. In this case we decided not to take ENO's Die Meistersinger on the grounds that we had already captured the production in its first incarnation.

..."

The highlighted sentence is complete nonsense. In a Radio 3 broadcast one cannot see any aspect of the production. What matters is the fact that it is from the ENO, the musical quality, and that it is in English.

That one of the threatened ENO's most magnificent performances is not being broadcast is indeed a "cultural crime". It is also not helpful to the survival of ENO. Broadcasts from ENO help publicise the company, and support the idea of opera in English.

I really do not understand why Met performances seem to have higher priority in the eyes of R3 than those from Covent Garden or ENO. A similar thing happened recently when the magnificent Royal Opera House "Barber" conducted by Mark Elder was not broadcast, presumably because it was too close to a Met relay of the same work. The Elder performance was much superior, and is lost both to the R3 audience and to posterity.

ff, is there anyone we could write to to ask for a last-minute reversal of this decision?

[Dave2002]

The highlighted sentence is complete nonsense.

That one of the threatened ENO's most magnificent performances is not being broadcast is indeed a "cultural crime". It is also not helpful to the survival of ENO. Broadcasts from ENO help publicise the company, and support the idea of opera in English.

ff, is there anyone we could write to to ask for a last-minute reversal of this decision?

Absolutely. It was a very good production. Seconded!