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Margarete joswig kaufman.
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What were your criteria in choosing the pieces for this Wagner album?
The basic idea was to present a survey of Wagner’s development as a composer, beginning with Die Feen. This appealed to me because it was the first Wagner opera I performed in, as the youngest member of an additional chorus at Munich’s Gärtnerplatz Theatre.
But after listening to Die Feen again, I scrapped that idea and decided to start with Rienzi.
From Rienzi to Siegfried — that’s a long distance, not just in Wagner’s composing career but also in a singer’s development.
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Quite true. It spans an incredible range of styles. Rienzi’s prayer is constructed like a classical Italian aria — a singer needs to work out a conception of this music in order to bring it to life. Siegfried’s music is in a completely different style, like recitative throughout: instead of arioso and legato, mainly parlando.
It has to sound as natural as spoken language, which is