The Siegfried Wagner Symposium was held on Sun Feb 16th at 1pm at the New York Genealogical Society. Much to report on this symposium, especially the masterpiece DVD that world-premiered then with the director/producer, Messr. Nin, in attendance, from Barcelona. The DVD is titled Discovering Siegfried Wagner.
Siegfried was the only son of Richard Wagner. He is virtually unknown to most music lovers. He composed 16 operas and librettos for another two which were never completed. Excerpts from the operas were part of the DVD. The music is of extraordinary beauty and fabulously densely orchestrated, Hollywoodian, but in a good sense. The composer proselytized and advanced Wagnerian music performance as conductor and set designer, or at very least consultant, at Bayreuth Festivals and throughout the world, including the USA. His direction of the Bayreuth Festivals, where only the works of his father are performed and only in the summer months, from 1924 until his death in 1930, revamped, with the recent availability of electricity, the productions of Wagner.
His time has come! As a Wagnerian heldentenor, his operas being of mythological, two of fairy tale à la Grimm genre, or historic characters with a wide range of potential, I am like a race horse at the starting gate, eager to get in to the race, to make his oeuvre known to the public, not just the musicologists.
Xavier Nicolás, Prof. Dr. Peter P. Pachl, and Jordi Nin have achieved through their efforts ardent fans for Siegfried Wagner.
Xavier Nicolás started the program detailing the chronology of Siegfried’s life with still photographs and was the one who suggested to Jordi Nin to direct/produce the DVD. Nicolás himself introduces the documentary as the prologue seen seated in an auditorium. Masterful interweaving of music, stills, drawings, and even Siegfried walking, with Nature a riveting component, as it was with Richard Wagner. The panoramic format of the scenery complemented the music and story line. English subtitles translated the German, Spanish and Italian.
As Siegfried once remarked, I will die first before being „discovered“. A loving son, he scored triumphs in conducting his dad’s operas. His own sons Wieland and Wolfgang headed the Bayreuth Festivals and further advanced Wagnerian standards of production.
Professor Dr. Peter P. Pachl was a most charismatic upbeat speaker, eliciting grateful applause.
Everyone involved in the undertaking, President Natalie Wagner, Harry Wagner, publisher of the Wagner Society of New York newsletter, and Elizabeth Riggs, responsible for the technical showing, made this an unforgettable presentation. I spoke to Messr. Jordi Nin after and during the intermissions of the symposium. He told me that he worked for two full months, 4am to 5pm, collating 1.200 pictures. In the poetic and epic and romantic juxtapositioning of music and interviews with the famed Russian mezzo Elena Obratsova (in Italian) and Wolfgang Wagner, one of the two sons of Siegfried and Winifred Wagner, he achieved a short documentary worthy of an Oscar.
The Wagner Society of New York has today a major coup in a multi-level presentation, presented by two unequivocally unique researchers, writers, lecturers on Siegfried Wagner and highlighting a DVD documentary.
Kenneth Bennett Lane