Insights into an opera stage director's work from an internationally acclaimed director and teacher. Opera is nowadays performed worldwide. But as an art form it is little understood by performers and audiences alike. The Crafty Art of Opera wants to change that. Here, Michael Hampe brings glimpses of the director's work to a wider audience, uncovering the many techniques and rules that should inform an opera's staging: the need for singers to know their orchestra, the importance of space around singers, the gestures of languages, what we all can learn from Mozart, and the primacy of sense over effect, to name but a few. He shows how stories, through music, become tangible and real. Packed with many anecdotes from the author's luminous career, this book is dedicatedto opera-lovers who want to understand 'how it is done'; to opera-makers who want to better understand their craft; and, last but not least, to those who loathe opera, in order to prove them wrong. Eminently readable, it brings both insight and wit from a life spent in opera as director and teacher. MICHAEL HAMPE is an internationally acclaimed opera stage director. The Crafty Art of Opera was published in German as Opernschule.

A well-researched and exhaustive analysis of the role of women in Wagner's operas. Richard Wagner's music contains some of the most powerful portrayals of emotions in all opera, particularly love. Eva Rieger presents a new picture of the composer, showing how the women at his side inspired him and how closely his life and art intertwined. We follow Wagner's restless hunt for the 'ideal woman', her appointed task being to give him shelter, warmth, inspiration, adventure and redemption, all in one. He could hardly have desired anything more contradictory, and this is reflected in the female characters of his operas. They are all in some way torn, faltering between their own desire for self-realization and the societal constraints that impel them to sacrificethemselves for their men. Rieger bids farewell to essentialist, naturalized notions of femininity and masculinity. Her investigations are both comprehensive and convincing, for she avoids the pitfalls of imposing extraneousinterpretation, instead focussing keenly on the music itself. EVA RIEGER is Professor Emeritus in Historical Musicology at the University of Bremen and lives in the principality of Liechtenstein.

The first modern English edition of Richard Wagner's essays on conducting, extensively annotated, with a critical essay on Wagner as conductor: his aesthetic, practices, vocabulary, and impact. Richard Wagner was one of the leading conductors of his time. Through his disciples Hans von Bülow, Hans Richter, Anton Seidl, Felix Mottl, Arthur Nikisch, and their many notable protégés, a Wagnerian art of interpretation became the norm in Europe and America until well into the twentieth century. Wagner's essays on conducting had an even longer impact, and were upheld as central to their art by later generations of conductors from Mahler to Strauss, Furtwängler, Böhm, Scherchen, and beyond. This is the first complete, modern translation of Wagner's conducting essays to appear in English, and the first-ever edition to offer extensive annotations explaining their reception and impact. The accompanying critical essay offers a detailed analysis of Wagner's conducting practices, his innovations in tempo and the art of transition, his creation of a new vocabulary to describe his art, and his success in establishing a school of conductors to promote his works and his aesthetic. A digital edition of this book is openly available thanks to generous support from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

The first extensive study of the life and music of the Swiss composer, Richard Flury (1896-1967). The late-Romantic composer Richard Flury (1896-1967) was born in Biberist, a tiny town outside the Baroque city of Solothurn in northern Switzerland. He went to school in Solothurn, later taught there, conducted its orchestra, andhad his operas and ballets performed at the local theatre by its semi-professional ensemble. But Flury was more than just another conservative composer stuck in the provinces. His teachers included Ernst Kurth and JosephMarx of Vienna, and his music was performed by conductors such as Felix Weingartner and Hermann Scherchen and star instrumentalists like Wilhelm Backhaus and Georg Kulenkampff. His first opera was conducted by a former student ofBerg and Schoenberg who became his staunch advocate, and during the Second World War Flury worked closely with several Jewish emigre writers and musicians from Germany and Czechoslovakia. In his music of the early 1930s, the influence of Berg and Hindemith became apparent as Flury dabbled in modernism and free tonality before moving back to a more traditionalist stance; but he was also a fine tunesmith who loved writing Viennese waltzes and violin miniatures after the manner of Kreisler. In both his aesthetic and his career, Flury offers a fascinating case of a man negotiating constantly between the centre and the periphery - and composing some very good music in the process.The book includes a 23 track CD of Flury's music. CHRIS WALTON teaches music history at the Basel University of Music in Switzerland. He is the author of Othmar Schoeck: Life and Works (2009) and Richard Wagner's Zurich: The Muse of Place (2007).

This biography of Minna Planer, Richard Wagner's wife of 30 years, reveals her as a self-assured woman and artist who was vital to her husband's creative life. When Richard Wagner first met Minna Planer in 1834, he was an unknown conductor, she a popular actress. His hectic pursuit of her affections culminated in marriage in 1836. Minna endured poverty with him, nursed him through chronic illness, followed him across Europe as he fled from creditors and pursued his artistic goals, and sought to provide him with the stable domestic and erotic life that he craved. He played his works to her as he wrote them, up to Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, and set store by her opinions. But when he went on the run as a wanted revolutionary, Minna only reluctantly followed him into Swiss exile. Domestic peace tentatively prevailed, but was ultimately destroyed by Wagner's passion for Mathilde Wesendonck. In 1858, he and Minna separated, she returned home to Germany, and subsequent efforts at reconciliation proved ultimately impossible. They remained married, however, until Minna's death in 1866. Despite having been at Richard's side as he matured into the composer of the Ring and Tristan, Minna has been given short shrift by most Wagner commentators. In Eva Rieger's acclaimed biography, translated into English by Chris Walton, the author reveals Minna as a self-assured woman and artist who played a crucial role in the creative life of her husband.

Reveals the brilliant musical and pedagogical thinking of the famed eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Neapolitan composer and teacher of royal students. Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816) was one of the most important composers of opera in the eighteenth century. His operas were performed throughout Europe, and his fame led to appointments as a maestro di cappella and composer at prominent European courts. This book is the first study to address his work as a teacher of composition and what we would today call music theory. The practice of partimento (figured or unfigured bass lines) was an integral part of the training of musicians at the renowned conservatories in eighteenth-century Naples. By employing these often-unprepossessing partimento bass lines, young musicians learned the techniques of variation, improvisation, and composition while seated at the harpsichord. Paisiello's Regole per bene accompagnare il Partimento (Rules for Harpsichordists; 1782) survives in both autograph and printed forms. It contains forty-six partimenti that have long been considered the core of his pedagogic oeuvre. However, two recently discovered manuscripts contain a further forty-one unknown partimenti, notated as two- and three-part disposizioni (realizations). The present study offers numerous insights gleaned from the surviving sources and bolsters our understanding of how to perform the music of Paisiello and his contemporaries: music that has often survived in an incomplete form. These findings are relevant not just for keyboard players but also for singers, instrumentalists, and anyone interested in the inner workings of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century music.

Gordon Jephtas (1943–92) was born into an impoverished, coloured, single-parent family in South Africa. He began piano lessons after being intrigued by the harmonium player at the local church. In his teens he worked as an accompanist with the amateur coloured opera group “Eoan” in Cape Town, then moved to Europe to further his studies. His first big break came in 1972 when the Zurich Opera House appointed him to assist the conductor Nello Santi. Jephtas thereafter established an international reputation as a vocal coach of Italian opera, and Switzerland provided him with a liberal environment where he was free to express his sexuality. Both there and later in the USA, Jephtas worked with the biggest names in the opera world, from Renata Tebaldi to Plácido Domingo, Montserrat Caballé and Luciano Pavarotti. He always longed to be accepted back in South Africa, but his attempts to return culminated each time in disaster because talent and experience meant little in a land where “whiteness” trumped everything. An official offer to be made an “honorary white” merely intensified his inner turmoil. Back in the USA, Jephtas’s professional success was tempered by private misfortune. He died in New York in 1992.

This book examines the life and career of Gordon Jephtas through the letters that he wrote home to May Abrahamse, a coloured singer with whom he had worked since his teens. They reveal in unique detail the life and achievements of a remarkable musician, but also the psychological damage wrought upon him by apartheid. Jephtas provides a fascinating case study of a gifted South African abroad, struggling with issues of race and sexuality at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

This biography of Minna Planer, Richard Wagner's wife of 30 years, reveals her as a self-assured woman and artist who was vital to her husband's creative life. When Richard Wagner first met Minna Planer in 1834, he was an unknown conductor, she a popular actress. His hectic pursuit of her affections culminated in marriage in 1836. Minna endured poverty with him, nursed him through chronic illness, followed him across Europe as he fled from creditors and pursued his artistic goals, and sought to provide him with the stable domestic and erotic life that he craved. He played his works to her as he wrote them, up to Tannhauser and Lohengrin, and set store by her opinions. But when he went on the run as a wanted revolutionary, Minna only reluctantly followed him into Swiss exile. Domestic peace tentatively prevailed, but was ultimately destroyed by Wagner's passion for Mathilde Wesendonck. In 1858, he and Minna separated, she returned home to Germany, and subsequent efforts at reconciliation proved ultimately impossible. They remained married, however, until Minna's death in 1866. Despite having been at Richard's side as he matured into the composer of the Ring and Tristan, Minna has been given short shrift by most Wagner commentators. In Eva Rieger's acclaimed biography, translated into English by Chris Walton, the author reveals Minna as a self-assured woman and artist who played a crucial role in the creative life of her husband.

The first-ever biography of Richard Wagner's artistically gifted granddaughter who fought against Hitler's Germany but achieved no personal success for her troubles. She was not the 'black sheep' of her family, as often claimed, but a heroic rebel. Friedelind Wagner (1918-1991), Richard Wagner's independent-minded granddaughter, daughter of Siegfried and Winifred Wagner, despised her mother'sclose liaison with Adolf Hitler and was the only member of the Wagner clan who fled Germany in protest. Although Winifred warned her that the Nazis would 'exterminate' her, should she continue her open opposition, she travelled toLondon and published articles pillorying the Nazi élite. All the same, her former proximity to Hitler & Co. made her suspicious in the eyes of the authorities, who promptly interned her. Even the British Parliament debated her fate. Only with the help of the world-famous conductor Arturo Toscanini was she able to gain an exit visa. Once she arrived in New York she broadcast, lectured and published against the Nazis, wrote an autobiography, and became friends with many other emigrants including singers who had themselves abandoned Bayreuth. After the war the Mayor of Bayreuth asked her to run the Festival, but she declined in favour of her brothers. They showed little gratitude, however, for after Friedelind returned to Germany in 1953 she found herself manoeuvred out of any role in the Festival management. She still made a remarkable effort to find a niche in post-war German society and culture, and did her best to cope with a family notorious for its intrigues past and present. Friedelind Wagner remained a staunch friend of artists such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Frida Leider, Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber, Leonard Bernstein, WalterFelsenstein, Michael Tilson Thomas and many others. Drawing on archival research in many countries, Eva Rieger has here written the first-ever biography of Richard Wagner's talented, artistic granddaughter who fought againstHitler's Germany, but achieved no personal success for her troubles. Her book gives many new insights into wartime and postwar musical life in Germany, Europe and the United States. EVA RIEGER is a feminist musicologist and author of many books on music.

An investigation of the considerable influence of Wagner's stay in Zurich from 1849 to 1858 -- a period often discounted by scholars -- on his career. When the people of Dresden rose up against their king in May 1849, Richard Wagner went from Royal Kapellmeister to republican revolutionary overnight. He gambled everything, but the rebellion failed, and he lost all. Now a wantedman in Germany, he fled to Zurich. Years later, he wrote that the city was "devoid of any public art form" and full of "simple people who knew nothing of my work as an artist." But he lied: Zurich boasted arguably the world's greatest concentration of radical intellectuals and a vibrant music scene. Wagner was accepted with open arms. This book investigates Wagner's affect on the musical life of the city and the city's impact on him. Mathilde Wesendonck emerges not as Wagner's passive muse but as a self-assured woman who exploited gender expectations to her own benefit. In 1858, Wagner had to flee Zurich after again gambling everything -- this time on Mathilde -- and again losing.But it was in Zurich that Wagner wrote his major theoretical works; composed Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, and parts of Siegfried and Tristan und Isolde; first planned Parsifal; held the first festival of his music; and conceived of a theater to stage his own works. If Wagner had been free in 1849 to choose a city in which to seek heightened intellectual stimulation among the like-minded and the similarly gifted, he could have come to nomore perfect place. Chris Walton teaches music history at the Musikhochschule Basel in Switzerland. He is the recipient of the 2010 Max Geilinger Prize honoring exemplary contributions to the literary and cultural relationship between Switzerland and the English-speaking world.

Places the Swiss composer Schoeck, master of a late-Romantic style both sensuous and stringent, in context and gives insight into his increasingly popular musical works. The work of the late-Romantic Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck (1886-1957) has in recent years enjoyed a surge of interest. His 300 songs with piano accompaniment are now all on CD, as are his orchestral song cycles and five of his eight stage works. Yet despite an impressive discography featuring names such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Lucia Popp and Ian Bostridge, no biographical study of Schoeck has ever been available in English. Chris Walton, authorof Richard Wagner in Zurich: The Muse of Place, charts the turbulent course of Schoeck's life and career with care and candor, from a rampant youth to midlife monogamy and an old age ravaged by fears of neglect. He tracesSchoeck's relationships to musicians such as Max Reger, Ferruccio Busoni, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Paul Hindemith, and Igor Stravinsky, and to writers Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and James Joyce. New light is also shed on Schoeck's uneasy relationship with Nazi Germany and its culmination, for him, in public humiliation and private catastrophe. As an accompanist, Schoeck was an arch-Romantic master of rubato; as a conductor, he was a fervent champion of the new; and in his compositions, he moved from late-Romanticism through a modernist vortex to emerge in full mastery of an individual musical language both sensuous and stringent. In this thorough new biography, Waltonplaces Schoeck the man and the artist squarely in the context of his time. Chris Walton is Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and Managing Director of the Orchestre Symphonique Bienne in Switzerland. He is the recipient of the 2010 Max Geilinger Prize honoring exemplary contributions to the literary and cultural relationship between Switzerland and the English-speaking world.

In this groundbreaking book, the new understanding of the mind-body connection is revealed and you are guided on a journey toward the life you want but haven't yet achieved. Your level of confidence, health, wealth, happiness and success is a direct reflection of the beliefs hidden away in your subconscious mind. Now you can identify those beliefs that are self-sabotaging and replace them with self-affirming beliefs that allow you to express a new level of potential. You will learn the amazing research that explains just how powerful and Incredible You really are and unique and easy to use Mind-Body Techniques that will: Remove subconscious self- limiting beliefs and blocks to success Clear any emotional stress, fears and doubts and boost your energy for an immense leap in happiness and vitality Repattern your subconscious mind for a new level of goal achievement Reprogram your brain and body for optimal health Access your Transpersonal Self to realise who you really are and your amazing potential If you are ready to create the life you want, then reading this book may be the most timely and important decision you make. Includes Brain-Mind-Body Optimisation MP3 Downloads

Presents case studies of "inspiration" in five composers -- Wagner, Mahler, Furtwängler, R. Strauss, and Berg -- examining how the supposedly extrarational world of creative inspiration intersects with the highly rational world ofmoney and politics. Lies and Epiphanies offers case studies of "inspiration" in five composers -- Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Richard Strauss, and Alban Berg. Their own tales of their epiphanies played a determining role in the reception history of their works: the finale of Mahler's Second Symphony was supposedly born of a "lightning bolt" of inspiration at the funeral of Hans von Bülow, while Alban Berg's Violin Concerto was purportedly his direct response to the tragic early death of Alma Mahler's daughter. Chris Walton looks behind these tales to explore instead the composer's dual role as author and self-commentator, laying bare the fissures and inconsistencieswithin these artists' testimonies and revealing how the putatively extrarational world of creative inspiration intersects with the highly rational world of money and politics. As Walton points out, the composer often imposes on the audience an interpretation of a work and its genesis that is as superficial as the score itself is not. This study seeks to show why. Chris Walton teaches music history at the Basel University of Music in Switzerland.He is the author of Othmar Schoeck: Life and Works (University of Rochester Press, 2009) and Richard Wagner's Zurich: The Muse of Place (Camden House, 2007).