Music Matters

A Wagner Prelude

Sunday 16 April 2006 17:45-18:30 (Radio 3)

Tom Service presents a special edition of Music Matters as a prelude to BBC Radio 3's Ring in a Day on Monday.

Author Patrick Carnegy takes a look at the history of staging Wagner; while writer and broadcaster Stephen Johnson talks about his often rocky relationship with the composer. Soprano Dame Anne Evans and bass Sir John Tomlinson talk about both the physical and mental strain of performing in such a vast work.

Duration:

45 minutes

In this programme

A Wagner Prelude
This Sunday's show is devoted to an exploration of Wagner, in the build-up to Radio 3's Ring in a Day on Easter Monday. But our Wagner Prelude takes a look behind the scenes of the Ring story. Philosopher AC Grayling and writer Patrick Carnegy join Tom for a programme that traverses the ancient roots of Norse sagas and the contemporary problems of staging the Ring today.


But for anyone coming to the Ring for the first time the plot of Wagner's epic world of gods and monsters can seem forbiddingly complex. We've got the perfect solution: The Guardian's John Crace, author of the Digested Read column, gives us his boiled-down version of the story of Brünnhilde and Siegfried. And Elizabeth Magee will be telling us how Wagner created the narrative of the Ring from a huge library of Nibelung sources, from Icelandic epics to the writings of Hans Sachs, the Nuremberg Mastersinger immortalised in another Wagner opera.


For all the richness of the Ring, Wagner is still the most controversial composer who ever lived. His music and his theatre in Bayreuth were tainted with the stain of Nazism, and his own deeply anti-Semitic writings betray the dark side of his character. Writer Stephen Johnson tells us about his lifelong relationship with Wagner, and his conversion to the intoxicating power of the music through a transcendent experience of his last opera, Parsifal.


We will also hear from Dame Anne Evans and Sir John Tomlinson - the Brünnhilde and Wotan you will hear throughout Monday's Ring - about Wagner's writing for the voice, and the superhuman challenges of singing these mythical roles. In the studio, we'll be discussing Patrick Carnegy's new book, Wagner and the Art of the Theatre, on the political and philosophical consequences of Ring productions over the decades.

Wager and the Art of Theatre by Patrick Carnegy is published by Yale University Press in May. Priced at £29.95

The Ring in a day starts at 8am on BBC Radio 3 on Easter Monday, 17 th April.

Music Matters

Episode and Playlist Information

• 11 June 2006
• 4 June 2006
• 21 May 2006
• 14 May 2006
• 7 May 2006
• 23 Apr 06 English Music Day
• 16 April 2006
• 9 April 2006
• 2 April 2006
• 19 March 2006

Music Matters pages