Solti in Bayreuth: Where do I go to shul on Friday night?
OperaThe Canadian cantor Charles Heller, in an anthology titled Shul Going, has a fascinating reminiscence of Georg Solti conducting the Ring at Bayreuth in Peter Hall’s production in 1983.
Solti looked around and saw three Jewish condcutors there that summer – himself, Barenboimwith Tristan and Levine with Parsifal.
He asked if the town had a functioning synagogue. Inquiries were made and it turned out the keys were in the hands of the police chief.
Solti demanded he unlock it for a Friday night service. Two newspaper critics, Harold Rosenthal and Max Loppert, agreed to help make up a minyan of ten men. All was set fair when a singer dropped out at the Festspielhaus and Solti was called to deal with the enduing crisis.
Levine was engaged for a decade, 1982-1993, to do nothing but Parsifal, 10 seasons of straight Parsifal, if it was Parsifal it was Levine, if it was Levine it was Parsifal, why was that?
It always struck me as some sort of cruel joke to make a Jew conduct nothing but Parsifal at Bayreuth! Sartre has his definition of hell, but this surely counts as well, lol!
The hazing eventually produced its rewards, Levine got to subsequently do 4 Ring cycles. And not a single Parsifal.
James Levine’s middle name was “ Parsifal”, that’s why. Bayreuth hired worse conductors and singers for less valid reasons. I mean Birgit Turandot Nilsson, Joan Lucia Sutherland, the list goes on.
I know about that. He did Parsifal 1982-85 and 88-93. (Barenboim did ’87 when there was a new Moses und Aron in Salzburg.) He stopped when his number of performances (53 I think) approached Knappertbusch’s record (55?) and they wanted that to stay.
He did 5 summers of The Ring 94-98. 3 cycles each, 15 total. It comes out to 116 when you add in the annual “Geschlossene Aufführungen” for the unions.
My arithmetic may be creaky, but my memory is good.
I heard Barenboim conduct Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1988.
Probably his weakest opera as a conductor (both Bayreuth and NY). Tedious and lacking any structure.
Quite famously, it’s just behind the Markgräfliches Opernhaus…
Shabbat Shalom from New York
The synagogue in Bayreuth was never very difficult to locate. It’s just around the corner from the Markgräfliches Opernhaus.
Good for Solti. Bayreuth – the town, not the festival – was such a stronghold of Nazi and nationalistic ideology. Despite an enlightened and humanistic outreach from the top, namely several mayors. It took them until 2013 to cancel Chamberlain’s honorary citizenship.
Just for clarity and posterity, he doesn’t mean “Neville Chamberlain.”
The other dude.
Oh, the basketball player, Wilt Chamberlin. Thanks for the clarification.
Excuse me, I left out the latter “a” in Chamberlain.
The “singer” who dropped out during rehearsals was Reiner Goldberg, the Siegfried. It was a very big deal. (They ended up with Manfred Jung yet again.)
Both very mediocre.
“He asked if the town had a functioning synagogue. Inquiries were made and it turned out the keys were in the hands of the police chief.”
In Bayreuth…
Why? I would be concerned.