Patrick Bade
Wagner at the Met
Summary
At the height of World War II, exceptional performances of Wagner’s work were more likely to be discovered in New York than in Berlin or Vienna.
From 1926 until the end of the war, the Metropolitan Opera enjoyed a golden age of Wagner’s works, featuring singers such as Lauritz Melchior, Friedrich Schorr, Frida Leider, Kirsten Flagstad, Lotte Lehmann, Herbert Janssen and Alexander Kipnis.
Patrick Bade
Patrick Bade is a historian, writer, and broadcaster. He studied at UCL and the Courtauld Institute of Art. He was a senior lecturer at Christie’s Education for many years and has worked for the Art Fund, Royal Opera House, National Gallery, and V&A. He has published on 19th- and early 20th-century paintings and historical vocal recordings. His latest book is Music Wars: 1937–1945.
This is very interesting. I mean, because there was the same, of course, Buenos Aires. In New York, I don’t think any of the really top Nazi singers actually appeared in New York, but they did at Glyndebourne, Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender, and they did in the Colon, Bueno Aires. Tiana Lemnitz, who was a red hot Nazi til the day she died, even after the war. I mean, famously in London, there was a Rosenkavalier performance with Tiana Lemnitz and Lotte Lehmann. And of course the curtain goes up and the two of them are in bed together. And Lotte Lehmann, after a few bars collapsed and left the stage. And the story was that there had been clashes and tensions and that Lemnitz had been very nasty to Lehmann. Although I’m told by somebody who knew them both that they both denied this story and said it wasn’t really true.