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A musical odyssey
A pair of 40-something lovers at a corner table, arms entwined so they could imbibe their campari sodas from each other’s straw, two plain sisters complete with coiffures, manicures and superb shoes each sipping delicately from a demi-tasse of double strength espresso, a genteel, elegant mother nibbling a pastry and attentively escorted by a look-alike son. A mere hour after arriving in France, a stop at a footpath coffee shop yielded the quintessential Paris experience. Suddenly the jetlag didn’t seem so bad. This was the beginning of a multi-city trip by a gang of greying Wagner groupies ‘in the footsteps of Wagner’. Organised by cultural tour specialist, Renaissance Tours, it had proved so irresistible it was booked out in days. It may have escaped the attention of much of the population but Wagner is the growth industry of the 21st century. In 2007 the New York Met did a Ring Cycle and so did Covent Garden. In 2010, there will be no fewer than 11 productions of the epic, 16-hour, four-opera cycle in various opera houses around the world. But this trip encompassed more than Wagner and for me the first stop was a rediscovery, after more than a decade, of the world’s most magical city. Of course, as a friend had wryly observed pre-departure, given its history it probably hasn’t changed much. And indeed Montmartre, the Place de la Concorde, the Louvre, the Champs Elysees, were all still there and much as I remembered them. What had changed was the cleanliness – painstaking removal of centuries old grime has revealed creamy stone buildings, gold statues gleam in the sunlight and there isn’t even all that much dog poo. Our next stop in Lucerne saw us check in to the wonderful Hotel Schweitzerhof on the edge of the lake where Wagner had composed the ultimate love paean, Tristan and Isolde, written as a result of his relationship with the beautiful, but unattainable because she was married, Mathilde Wesendonck. A cruise on the lake took us to Haus Tribschen where Wagner and his wife Cosima spent their happiest years. Cosima was also married when she and Richard Wagner met and in what must have been a real scandale célèbre in the mid-1800s, left her husband and bore the composer three children before they were finally able to marry. Our sojourn in Germany began in the wonderfully elegant city of Munich, which not only mounts musical offerings of superlative standard, but also contains some of the best art museums in the world. I had been bowled over by the Pinakothek Moderne on a previous visit and this time discovered the equally stunning Alte Pinakothek with its old masters and the astonishing collection of impressionists in the Neue Pinakothek. Then it was on to the spiritual heart for Wagnerians, Bayreuth, where the composer, who was never backward in thinking big, designed and built the Festpielhaus especially to stage his own operas! Apart from a wartime break, the Festival has been held annually ever since and a wait of seven or eight years for tickets is par for the course. At non-festival times, Bayreuth is an historic provincial town put on the cultural map in the mid-1700s by the cultivated Margravine Wilhelmine, sister of Frederick the Great, who on marriage to the reigning Margrave, set about raising the tone of her new home. In particular she was responsible for the exquisite Margravian Opera House, now the most beautiful baroque theatre in Europe. Perhaps partly because of its communist legacy, I found Dresden oh-so-beautiful but sadly lacking in soul, a tourist town rather than a living, breathing city. If ever there was a monument to the pointlessness of war, this is it. Virtually flattened by World War II bombs the ‘old section’ of the city has been lovingly and expertly reconstructed. The problem is you can rebuild the buildings but you can’t re-inject the humanity. For living, breathing cities one goes to Berlin. I fell in love with ‘post-Wall’ Berlin five years ago and this was my fourth visit since. What a wonderful place. Exciting, modern architecture that somehow works cheek by jowl with classical design and Grecian columns. Museums contain treasures from every era of history, and art galleries range from the old masters of the Gemaldergalerie, to the often confronting contemporary exhibitions of the Hamburger Bahnhof. And Berlin is determined to come to terms with its past. The almost unbearably moving Jewish Museum, the newer Jewish Memorial, the memorial to the Nazi burning of the books in Bebelplatz – Berliners accept their history, good and bad, and weave it into their lives. Hamburg yielded the musical highlights of the trip, with a distinct Aussie flavour. Australian tenor, Stuart Skelton, received tumultuous applause for his performance as Max, the lead role in Weber’s Der Freischutz, and was followed the next night by our very own Simone Young conducting an unforgettable Tristan and Isolde. Simone may have left Australia feeling a touch unloved but they certainly love her in Hamburg – her contract as Musical Director/General Manager of the Hamburg Opera had just been extended to 2015. The advantage of a trip built around a particular interest, in this case music, is that the group consists of like-minded people with an already existing base from which to interact. The group leader is chosen for their expertise and normally gives lectures en route. Our guide, Peter Bassett, is a well-known Wagner expert and his knowledge and charm added immeasurably to our enjoyment. On this trip, as on most Renaissance tours, there was enough flexibility to enable considerable independent activity. As well as exploring wherever we were during the day, my travelling companion and I took full advantage of our proximity to the world’s best concerts and opera and over and above the scheduled performances we took in a musical event every night for the entire three weeks. For a couple of passionate musos, it doesn’t get much better than that. Travel facts |
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A gang of greying Richard Wagner groupies followed in the footsteps of the 19th century composer, stopping in European cities that sing with style, culture and history. 