Patrick Carnegy – författare

The production of Wagner’s operas is fiercely debated. In this groundbreaking stage history Patrick Carnegy vividly evokes the—often scandalous—great productions that have left their mark not only on our understanding of Wagner but on modern theatre as a whole. He examines the way in which Wagner himself staged his works, showing that the composer remained dissatisfied with even the best of his productions.After Wagner’s death the scenic challenge was taken up by the Swiss visionary Adolphe Appia, by Gustav Mahler and Alfred Roller in Vienna, and by Otto Klemperer and Ewald Dülberg in Berlin. In Russia the Bolsheviks reinvented Wagner as a social revolutionary, while cinema left its indelible imprint on the Wagnerian stage with Eisenstein’s Die Walküre in Moscow in 1940.Hitler famously appropriated Wagner for his own ends. Patrick Carnegy unscrambles the interaction of politics and stage production, describing how post-war German directors sought a way to bury the uncomfortable past. The book concludes with a critique of the iconoclastic interpretations by Patrice Chéreau, Ruth Berghaus, and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg.

Jon Harris has lived, breathed and drawn Cambridge for over 50 years. His architect's sense of structure and fabric, his draughtsman's eye and vigorous use of pen and brush have produced an outstanding body of work. In 1997 the Fitzwilliam Museum honoured him with an exhibition of some 90 paintings and drawings. A great many of his best works are published for the fi rst time in Artist about Cambridge. They include drawings from the more than 40 sketchbooks which have been his constant companions over the past half century. Jon Harris's text describes in compelling detail how the images came into being. Harris's work is not a depiction of Cambridge as the tourist might like to have it, but is rather about his fascination with unregarded vistas, its back streets, crucial buildings lost to the wrecking ball, and with the city's industrial past. The artist's unrivalled knowledge and understanding of Cambridge and its environs inform every painting and drawing, helping you enjoy a thousand things you might otherwise miss.

In Wagner's Theatre, Patrick Carnegy presents the turbulent story of Wagner and his interpreters over the course of the twentieth century. Carnegy gives vivid accounts of Gustav Mahler's radical reinvention of the Wagnerian stage, and of the post-war rehabilitation of Wagner and his work after Hitler's appropriation. He also offers sharply written reappraisals of those great Wagnerian conductors Klemperer, Toscanini, Karajan and Solti. Carnegy provides revealing accounts of the inside-workings of the Royal Opera House and of English National Opera at troubled points in their recent history. In a fascinating conversation with Sir Michael Tippett, the composer talks with unique authority about the problems facing would-be musical dramatists today. Wagner's Theatre is an essential insight into how interpretations of Wagner have developed, and how we can respond to them.