Rienzi

Remarkably I have never seen or heard a note of Wagner’s Rienzi beyond the overture. While it’s not too much of a disgrace for a Wagnerian in the UK to say they’ve never seen a live performance, it is available to watch on Youtube, and on Friday I decided to take the plunge – 51 years after I saw my first Wagner opera – and,  empowered by lockdown, actually watch Rienzi, albeit in a heavily cut production. Here is the link   (242) Wagner – Rienzi (Pinchas Steinberg) – YouTube. This was a 2018 Toulouse Opera production. I have to say it is difficult to say exactly why – other than Der Meister’s say-so – Rienzi isn’t performed at Bayreuth and at the same time The Flying Dutchman and Tannhauser are. There are definite very clear stylistic connections between the three operas, and to be frank I would still prefer to watch early Wagner than early Verdi. With a suitably paced and well performed performance, as this was, it seems, without being a masterpiece, a very watchable and listenable work. I recommend it, and have to say I quite enjoyed it. But I may be in the minority – other critical comments through the ages have included (apart from von Bulow’s jibe about it being ‘Meyerbeer’s best opera’), ‘Meyerbeer’s worst opera’ (Charles Rosen), ‘an attack of musical measles’ (Ernest Newman), though apparently Mahler reckoned it ‘ the greatest musical drama ever composed’ (hmmm). Cosima Wagner recorded Wagner’s own comments in her diary for 20 June 1871: “Rienzi is very repugnant to me, but they should at least recognize the fire in it; I was a music director and I wrote a grand opera; the fact that it was this same music director who gave them some hard nuts to crack – that’s what should astonish them”

Next stop – Das Liebesverbot, also on Youtube