Wagner in New Zealand - Memories of Roger Wilson
11.07.2013
[Vorige Seite...] but what a thrill to perform in such a work alongside such colleagues, at least two of whom could hardly have been equalled, let alone bettered, anywhere in the world, then to press the flesh with the great Richard Wagner’s grandson.
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg 1990. Edmund Bohan (Eisslinger), Isador Saslav (NZSO Concert Master), Derek Miller (Ortel), Christopher Dawe (David), Kay Griffel (Eva), Peter Russell (Nachtigall), Irene Waugh (Magdalena), Peter Baillie (Moser), Heinz Wallberg (conductor), Richard Green (Schwarz), Conal Coad (Pogner), Richard Weston (obscured –Foltz), Wolfgang Wagner, Roger Wilson (Kothner), William Ingle (von Stolzing), Andreas Homoki (director), Christopher Doig (Festival Director), Bruce Carson (obscured – Nachtwächter), Donald McIntyre (Sachs) - Photograph: Woolf
In the opinion of many the 1990 Festival production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was the greatest piece of theatre ever seen in New Zealand. For most of us involved it remains unsurpassed. This production, on ‘des Erdballs letztes Inselriff’, would have stood up honourably beside anything in Europe. Apart from our passenger Walther von Stolzing I truly don’t think it lost anything by comparison with productions I’d seen in Zürich and Bayreuth.
Die Meistersinger was a watershed in New Zealand’s operatic history. After this audacious theatrical event on an unprecedented scale it was clear that anything was possible if you tried hard enough. When another enormously ambitious opera, Richard Strauss’s Salome, was announced for the 1992 Festival no one turned a hair and the dissenting voices from 1990 were silent. Since then there have been productions of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Janáček’s Katya Kabanová, Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, Otello and Falstaff, Britten’s Peter Grimes, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Wagner’s Parsifal and other massive undertakings which would have been unthinkable in the pre-Meistersinger years. There were those who stated that this was the first Wagner opera to be staged in New Zealand. Not so: the first was Lohengrin (in Italian!) in Dunedin in 1877. The visiting Musgrove companies in 1901 and 1907 presented Der fliegende Holländer, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser and Die Walküre. All occasioned critical enthusiasm, though there’s no knowing what they were really like. But this mighty Meistersinger was something else altogether. For me, twenty-three years and forty-something other operatic productions later, my admittedly minor contribution to Meistersinger remains the proudest and most enjoyable episode in a long performing career, the culmination of the Lehrjahre, my student time acquiring some competence in German, then the Wanderjahre, the galley years in Europe studying the dark arts of singing and starting a professional career. I’d given dozens of Lieder recitals and been in numerous Bach Cantatas and the like, but for all my years as a professional on stage it was actually the first time, apart from student gigs in Germany, that I had had the opportunity to sing a full opera in German. Fortunately it wasn’t to be the last. Revisiting the photographs and glowing reviews 23 years later I can still feel the excitement of that wonderful summer.
- Wellington 2012
Roger Wilson
studied German at the University of Otago and the Universität Zürich, then music at the Staatliche Musikhochschulen in Detmold and Köln. He began his professional career in Europe in the 1970s and in recent years he has performed in the UK, the USA, Australia and Malaysia, but most of his career has been spent in New Zealand where he is one of the country’s most experienced singers with an extensive opera, concert and recital repertoire as well as being a recording artist and frequent broadcaster.
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg 1990. Edmund Bohan (Eisslinger), Isador Saslav (NZSO Concert Master), Derek Miller (Ortel), Christopher Dawe (David), Kay Griffel (Eva), Peter Russell (Nachtigall), Irene Waugh (Magdalena), Peter Baillie (Moser), Heinz Wallberg (conductor), Richard Green (Schwarz), Conal Coad (Pogner), Richard Weston (obscured –Foltz), Wolfgang Wagner, Roger Wilson (Kothner), William Ingle (von Stolzing), Andreas Homoki (director), Christopher Doig (Festival Director), Bruce Carson (obscured – Nachtwächter), Donald McIntyre (Sachs) - Photograph: Woolf
In the opinion of many the 1990 Festival production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was the greatest piece of theatre ever seen in New Zealand. For most of us involved it remains unsurpassed. This production, on ‘des Erdballs letztes Inselriff’, would have stood up honourably beside anything in Europe. Apart from our passenger Walther von Stolzing I truly don’t think it lost anything by comparison with productions I’d seen in Zürich and Bayreuth.
Die Meistersinger was a watershed in New Zealand’s operatic history. After this audacious theatrical event on an unprecedented scale it was clear that anything was possible if you tried hard enough. When another enormously ambitious opera, Richard Strauss’s Salome, was announced for the 1992 Festival no one turned a hair and the dissenting voices from 1990 were silent. Since then there have been productions of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Janáček’s Katya Kabanová, Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, Otello and Falstaff, Britten’s Peter Grimes, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Wagner’s Parsifal and other massive undertakings which would have been unthinkable in the pre-Meistersinger years. There were those who stated that this was the first Wagner opera to be staged in New Zealand. Not so: the first was Lohengrin (in Italian!) in Dunedin in 1877. The visiting Musgrove companies in 1901 and 1907 presented Der fliegende Holländer, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser and Die Walküre. All occasioned critical enthusiasm, though there’s no knowing what they were really like. But this mighty Meistersinger was something else altogether. For me, twenty-three years and forty-something other operatic productions later, my admittedly minor contribution to Meistersinger remains the proudest and most enjoyable episode in a long performing career, the culmination of the Lehrjahre, my student time acquiring some competence in German, then the Wanderjahre, the galley years in Europe studying the dark arts of singing and starting a professional career. I’d given dozens of Lieder recitals and been in numerous Bach Cantatas and the like, but for all my years as a professional on stage it was actually the first time, apart from student gigs in Germany, that I had had the opportunity to sing a full opera in German. Fortunately it wasn’t to be the last. Revisiting the photographs and glowing reviews 23 years later I can still feel the excitement of that wonderful summer.
- Wellington 2012
Roger Wilson studied German at the University of Otago and the Universität Zürich, then music at the Staatliche Musikhochschulen in Detmold and Köln. He began his professional career in Europe in the 1970s and in recent years he has performed in the UK, the USA, Australia and Malaysia, but most of his career has been spent in New Zealand where he is one of the country’s most experienced singers with an extensive opera, concert and recital repertoire as well as being a recording artist and frequent broadcaster.
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