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The Wagner Society is a Registered Charity whose primary function is to promote knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the life and works of Richard Wagner.

02/09/2026

Wagner’s “Wesendonck Lieder”

In 1857, Richard Wagner moved into a cottage on Otto Wesendonck’s estate outside Zurich. Otto was a wealthy silk merchant and Wagner’s patron; his wife, Mathilde, a poet. While Wagner worked on “Tristan und Isolde”, Mathilde wrote poems from which Wagner translated five into music.

These became the “Wesendonck Lieder”, composed between 1857 and 1858. Officially titled “Fünf Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme”, they consist of “Der Engel,” “Stehe still!,” “Im Treibhaus,” “Schmerzen,” and “Träume.” Two of them, “Im Treibhaus” and “Träume”, Wagner explicitly called studies for “Tristan”.

The songs weren’t published until 1862, and Mathilde’s authorship wasn’t publicly acknowledged until after her death in 1902. Today they stand among Wagner’s two most-performed non-operatic works, alongside the “Siegfried Idyll”.

26/08/2026

Wagner’s Radical Years in Dresden

When Wagner became royal Kapellmeister of Dresden in 1843, the city had inherited a musical establishment built for tradition, not innovation. He arrived fresh from premiering Rienzi and Der fliegende Holländer, works that signalled something new was coming.

For six years, Wagner conducted from the podium pushing for strict rehearsal schedules, rearranging orchestral seating, and dismantling seniority systems, ideas that rarely gained traction.

But in the concert hall, he got results: he instituted Palm Sunday performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which became his artistic manifesto. He also staged Tannhäuser in 1845, his most ambitious work to date.

Then came 1849. Revolutionary fervour swept across Saxony, and Wagner took an active part in the uprising, manning the barricades in Dresden. Wagner, no a wanted man, was forced into exile to Switzerland.

05/08/2026

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony opened the 2026 Bayreuth Festival, marking the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Festival in 1876. Beethoven’s Ninth was also chosen to be performed at Bayreuth on July 29, 1951, when Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted it to reopen the festival after the war, followed by Wagner’s Parsifal.

That 1951 reopening fell to two brothers in their early thirties. Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner, both grandchildren of Richard, inherited the festival at a moment when the festival and family name were tainted by their association with Hi**er and the N***s. Wieland announced in a public manifesto, “We don’t want the German gods any more.”

His productions were starkly minimalist: round stages, focused lighting, stripped scenery. He defended the changes as an attempt to create an “invisible stage” that would allow the audience to experience the full psychosocial aspects of the drama without the baggage and distraction of elaborate set designs. This approach defined what became known as “Neu-Bayreuth.”

The response was polarising. Traditionalists rejected it, many protest. But over time, critics came to appreciate the work, and his minimalist approach became foundational to modern opera staging, influencing designers and directors across the art form.

(Disclaimer: images enhanced using AI)

17/06/2026

Death in Venice

On 13 February 1883, Richard Wagner died of a heart attack at the Palazzo Vendramin Calergi on the Grand Canal. He was 69.

Venice wasn’t a coincidence. Wagner visited six times between 1858 and his death, drawn by a need for seclusion and quiet. On his first arrival he wrote: “grandeur, beauty and decadence, all adjacent to each other... Nothing here gives the sensation of real life: everything acts objectively, like a work of art.” That quality suited him entirely. He took rooms at the Palazzo Giustiniani where he wrote the second act of Tristan und Isolde.

When he returned for the last time in 1882, he told Cosima he’d like to die in Venice. That Christmas Eve, he gave his final performance at La Fenice, his early Symphony in C major, for Cosima’s 45th birthday.

On the morning of 13 February, Wagner skipped breakfast and went to his study. He was writing an essay and had reached the words “Love - Tragedy” when he rang for the doctor. He died that afternoon in Cosima’s arms.

The room where he died, overlooking the Grand Canal, is now part of a Wagner museum at the Palazzo, the largest private Wagner collection outside Bayreuth.

04/06/2026

Interesting insights into Grange Park Opera’s “Das Rheingold” yesterday with director and set designer Charlie Edwards and conductor Harry Server.

Thank you for speaking to our members, and we cannot wait for the performances!

03/06/2026

The “Bayreuth of the North”

Most Wagner fans know Bayreuth. Fewer know about the open-air amphitheatre in a Polish forest that once rivalled it.

The Forest Opera (Opera Leśna) in Sopot, Poland has been hosting performances since 1909. Between the wars, it became the home of the Zoppot Festspiele, an annual Wagner festival that drew audiences from across Europe and earned Sopot the title “Bayreuth of the North.” From 1922 through 1944, the stage saw Siegfried, Die Walküre, Götterdämmerung, Parsifal, Die Meistersinger, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, and the complete Ring cycle, multiple times over.

The venue itself spans 4 hectares, seats over 5,000, and has an orchestra pit built for up to 120 musicians — all under open skies, surrounded by forest. The acoustics are remarkable for an open-air space.

After WWII, Wagner largely disappeared from the programme. A 2009 concert performance of Das Rheingold, the first Wagner heard there since the 1930s, attempted to rekindle the tradition. That spark eventually led to the Baltic Opera Festival, founded by bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny, who had a clear vision: making full use of the Forest Opera’s world-class potential as an extraordinary open-air venue for Wagner operas.

This summer the festival returns with a major milestone: Die Walküre on the 150th anniversary of the premiere of The Ring of the Nibelung at Bayreuth, with Konieczny himself taking on Wotan. Performances are on 2nd and 5th July 2026 at the Forest Opera in Sopot.

Link to tickets: https://balticoperafestival.pl/en/program/

01/06/2026

Wagner in June:

5.6. + 6.6.2026 / 19:30
Usher Hall, Edinburgh
Elgar’s Cello Concerto
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Tristan und Isolde: Vorspiel zum Ersten Akt

6.6.2026 / 19:30
St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge, London
An Evening with Brünnhilde: Nordic Dreams with Sir Antonio Pappano
Multiple works by Wagner

11.6.2026 / 19:30
Durham Gala Theatre
Season Finale: Rhapsody in Blue and 1812
Lohengrin: Prelude to Act 3

13.6.2026 / 19:30
All Saints Church, Kingston-upon-Thames
Opera, Glorious Opera
Thames Philharmonic Choir
Lohengrin: Prelude to Act 3

14.6.+ 20.6. + 26.6.2026 / 17:00
Grange Park Opera, West Horsley
Das Rheingold

20.6.2026 / 15:00
Longborough Festival Opera, Moreton-in-Marsh
Tristan and Isolde

27/05/2026

Two Giants, One Family — Wagner, Liszt, and the Bond That Shaped Music History

Few relationships in 19th-century music history run as deep as the one between Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt, fellow composers, friends, and eventually father and son-in-law.

They first met in Paris in 1840, when Wagner was starting to gain real traction as a composer and Liszt was already the most celebrated musician in Europe. The friendship took time to develop, but when it did, it proved decisive. After Wagner’s involvement in the 1849 Dresden Uprising forced him into exile, it was Liszt who helped him escape, arranging funds and a forging passport, and who continued to support him financially and artistically throughout the years that followed.

Liszt conducted the world premiere of Lohengrin in Weimar in 1850, while Wagner remained unable to set foot in Germany. He also created a series of piano transcriptions of Wagner’s operas, which he described as “modest propaganda on behalf of the sublime genius of Richard Wagner”, a way of bringing the music to audiences long before Bayreuth existed.

The two families became bound together when Liszt’s daughter Cosima, who would go on to co-found and lead the Bayreuth Festival alongside Wagner, and to safeguard his legacy for decades after his death, became Wagner’s wife in 1870.

In the summer of 1886, Liszt travelled to Bayreuth for the Festival. He stayed in the house directly beside Villa Wahnfried, where Cosima lived. He attended a performance of Tristan und Isolde, and died shortly after, on 31 July. He was 74.

Today, that house is the Franz Liszt Museum. Villa Wahnfried, now the Richard Wagner Museum, stands just beside it on Wahnfriedstraße. The closeness of the two buildings feels entirely fitting.

24/05/2026

Throwback to the 2025 Bayreuth Festival with Lucy Farrimond, who describes her time as a London Wagner Society Bayreuth Bursary recipient:

“I feel incredibly honoured to have visited Bayreuth as a Richard Wagner Scholar last year. Thanks to the Wagner Society, I had the experience of a lifetime, watching Das Rheingold, Parsifal and Siegfried alongside talks, tours of the city and the iconic Festspielhaus, and other cultural experiences.

Had it not been for the Wagner Society, a trip like this simply wouldn’t have been possible for me, and for that I am forever grateful. A particular highlight for me was the first opera we saw, Das Rheingold. From hearing the brass fanfare calling us to our seats to being immersed in such high-quality music in an iconic setting, the whole experience felt like a real life and career highlight.

I feel so lucky to have had this opportunity and cannot thank the Society enough.”

Thank you, ! We are delighted you had such a rewarding experience.

20/05/2026

Wagner on Screen: The Epic That Matched the Man

Let’s talk about the most outrageously ambitious TV production of the 1980s that you may never have heard of.

In 1983, director Tony Palmer set out to tell the life story of Richard Wagner. Not in a tight two-hour film. Not even in a standard miniseries. He made nine hours of television, filmed across more than 200 locations in six countries, with music conducted by the legendary Georg Solti. And for the title role, the larger-than-life, impossible-to-play genius himself, he cast Richard Burton.

Burton, one of the greatest voices in cinema history, playing Wagner, one of the greatest voices in music history. Two men, sharing the same name, famous for being utterly magnetic and a little bit exhausting in the best possible way. A perfect match.

The supporting cast was equally staggering, Vanessa Redgrave as Cosima, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, and John Gielgud rounding things out. Basically the entire British acting establishment of the time was involved.

The result is exactly what you’d expect: sprawling, gorgeous, occasionally maddening, and full of incredible music. Very much in the spirit of Wagner himself.

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