Wagner 200 Saturday Classics: Oh dear, Mr Lloyd...

[Bert Coules]

The eminent bass, presenting this afternoon's Wagnerian Saturday Classics, has just given us Walther's Prize Song from Die Meistersinger, complete with a lengthy and somewhat critical introduction and afterword. Unfortunately, the piece he played in between these two stretches of insight wasn't the Prize Song but something else entirely.

And although I can't be sure without doing some quick (and easy) research, I think he was also historically adrift in describing the seventies Sadler's Wells/ENO Ring as the first ever in English.

Edited to add:

And now - after mispronouncing "Götterdämmerung" five times in a row - he's just described the funeral music from act three as "the death of Siegfried". Lloyd is (or was - is he still working?) a very fine singing actor, but he should stick to what he's good at and what he knows. Was there really no-one on hand there to check such elementary, basic things? What was his producer doing?

Bert

[french frank]

He used to do quite a good programme in the week some years ago - was it called Opera Today or Opera Now? In the late afternoon during the week, I think. If he recorded his script separately I presume someone else was responsible for putting the music on. As for the rest, I know not ...

[Bert Coules]

If he recorded his script separately I presume someone else was responsible for putting the music on.

That would certainly explain a couple at least of the faux pas, though I would have thought that Mr Lloyd's script (assuming that he penned it himself) would have specified quite precisely exactly what pieces of music he wanted to be played. But maybe it did and things still went wrong, and Lloyd is sitting at home wincing just as much as I am, in which case I beg his pardon. But the thought that a R3 producer is capable of making such outrageous mistakes, if that is what did happen, is depressing to say the least.

Bert

[Northender]

The other day we had Rob "Cowan's Abduction of the Harem", spotted by a couple of us, and this morning the inevitable "Tannhowza".

[Thropplenoggin]

The other day we had Rob "Cowan's Abduction of the Harem", spotted by a couple of us, and this morning the inevitable "Tannhowza".

Rob Cowan's phoneme-shattering pronunciation of Debussy's Reflets dans l'eau this week will have linguists scratching their heads over his use of bilabial fricatives for years to come.

[Northender]

Rob Cowan's phoneme-shattering pronunciation of Debussy's Reflets dans l'eau this week will have linguists scratching their heads over his use of bilabial fricatives for years to come.

Do you mean to say he'll never learn - or that linguists will spend years trying to find out why he did it?

[Mr Pee]

Rob Cowan's phoneme-shattering pronunciation of Debussy's Reflets dans l'eau this week will have linguists scratching their heads over his use of bilabial fricatives for years to come.

I mist try and drop that phrase into my conversation sometime!

[Nick Armstrong]

I mist try and drop that phrase into my conversation sometime!

Try ordering some in a Lebanese restaurant and let us know what you get!

[Serial_Apologist]

Try ordering some in a Lebanese restaurant and let us know what you get!

Couldn't that be taken as an indecent request?

[soileduk]

Or,at least, evidence that one is a cunning linguist.

[Northender]

Or,at least, evidence that one is a cunning linguist.

[Bert Coules]

Having been (possibly unfairly) critical of him last week, I hasten to say that Mr Lloyd sounds rather happier, and distinctly more authoritative, chatting about Verdi than he did with Wagner.