Use of Search function

[Chosen Barley]

I am right sorry to bother you and don't even know if this is the proper place to be posting this.

I am looking for pre WW2 recordings of Rienzi, but when I put "recordings of Rienzi" in the Search box it comes back to tell me I shouldn't put the word "of" in there. So then if I put "recordings Rienzi" I obtain results of both words separately.

Help this poor old technologically retarded gal out.

[Chalkperson]

I don't know of anything other than the Overture, but, if anybody can find it for you it's Topo Gigio...

[Lance]

I did some checking, found a number of recordings, good ones, good artists ... but nothing seeming available now of pre-World War II. The earliest I know if was recorded in 1950. I've always loved the overture, which gets much more play than the complete opera!

[Chosen Barley]

Sure appreciate your trouble, lads. Is there a place where they specialize in ancient recordings but don't necessarily have a website, i.e., a place you can call or something? I know of record stores of that sort but they have only popular recordings. They are veritable holes-in-the wall, covered with dust.

[Corlyss_D]

I am right sorry to bother you and don't even know if this is the proper place to be posting this.

I am looking for pre WW2 recordings of Rienzi, but when I put "recordings of Rienzi" in the Search box it comes back to tell me I shouldn't put the word "of" in there. So then if I put "recordings Rienzi" I obtain results of both words separately.

Help this poor old technologically retarded gal out.

I don't think we've had many discussions of Rienzi here. That's all you'd get with a search here. I'd use just Rienzi alone. You'll turn up whatever threads there are discussing it. If you're looking for 78s don't know we can help you much. You know they didn't do even Wagner's most successful operas on 78s before the war except in highly truncated versions.

[TopoGigio]

A "first" 1941 Rienzi was Max Lorenz,with Johannes Schüler conducting the Staatskapelle Berlin,,,,but...
http://www.durbeckarchive.com/rienzi.htm
==
Matacic 1957 and Zillig 1950, fifty years of difference to our days, are currently released...dates corrected=thanks JohnF ,view post below.

Wagner's Rienzi was, of course, the favourite opera -and Richard Wagner the favourite composer- of Adolf Hitler, who owned the autograph full score of this strange and gigantic work from 1939 until the day that delivered the world from him. The Fuhrer apparently took pleasure in comparing himself with the megalomaniac tribune whose political errors led inexorably to ruin. For the Nazis, Rienzi was a forerunner of their own ideology. But Wagner treated the subject rather as an analysis of a typical fate of a typical demagogue, and he was almost prophetic when his Rienzi, at the very end of the opera, wished to involve the people in his personal disaster:

Frightful mockery! What? Is this Rome? Wretches, unworthy of this name! The last Roman curses you! May this town be accursed and destroyed! Disintegrate and wither, Rome! Your degenerate people wish it so!(1)

Hitler, dull as he was, would probably not have been disturbed by these lines even if he had actually known them. What he was used to hearing in per- formances-like most audiences between Wagner's time and today-were the lines Wagner substituted in 1847, five years after the first performance:

Frightful mockery! What? Is this Rome? Wretches, do you think to destroy me? Then listen to my parting words: Ever while the seven hills of Rome remain, ever while the eternal city will stand, you'll see Rienzi coming back again!

These more 'positive' last words announcing the tribune's resurrection seem no less prophetic and, in a sense, even more horrifying, when we consider that they were first performed in 1847 in the Royal Opera House in Berlin, of all cities. Today we Europeans are apparently luckier than in 1933: we are witnessing not the return of the tribune (let's hope) but rather the restoration of Wagner's opera. Since its creation and first per- formances, the historical accuracy and integrity of the text have steadily faded. One may think of the influential Dresden production of 1858 when Wagner's advice was requested but not followed, or of the new edition of the full score made by Cosima Wagner, Felix Mottl and Julius Kniese in the 1890s when Wagner's autograph was consulted but deliberately modified. There have been dozens of performances in the 19th and 20th centuries where nobody bothered at all about Wagner's intentions. Such practices are in any case typical of operatic tradition, and need not be taken too seriously. But in the case of Rienzi there is a further misfortune in that two major musical sources disappeared in 1945: the autograph was lost during the conquest of Berlin by the Allied troops, and the original performing score was burnt in the Dresden opera house, together with most of that city. The enormous cultural losses which have taken place in our century do not seem to contradict the increasing eagerness for restoring the works of art of the past-an activity which is no longer the pet hobby of a few scholars but represents a public and commercial demand. Wagner is only one of many composers from Dunstable to Mahler to profit from this situation. His Rienzi, however, is a particularly elusive work if we expect its recon- struction to be not only a physical but also a spiri- tual one-a 'rebirth', so to speak. When Wagner founded the Bayreuth Festival he did so not simply to ensure the continuity of per- formances of his works as a whole. He wanted to establish a tradition for that aggregation of the arts, the Gesamtkunstwerk, which he thought he had created with his later works; for the late Wagner, 'opera' as an art form had been superseded (by himself, naturally). Rienzi, on the other hand, belongs to a genuine 'opera' tradition-to be precise, to the genre of grand opera. The work has been excluded from Bayreuth (we cannot tell for certain whether Wagner actually wanted it to be excluded), and instead of surviving in the mainstream of Wagner tradition it has nearly fallen into oblivion, together with most operas in the genre, like those by Meyer- beer or Halevy. To revive these operas, more has to be done than, say, for the Ring, whose produc- tions (even in today's Bayreuth) can largely draw on an unbroken tradition. An opera of the first half of the 19th century was not composed for posterity: it was meant to be successful for a few months or years, and then to be superseded. Naturally, it would be changed both musically and scenically for every new production, if not for every new season. Nobody dreamt of complaining about cuts, let alone revised orchestration. This view of operas like Rienzi conflicts drastically with what any new production of early music in our century aims at: the ideal of authenticity, i.e. physical identity between the work and our realization of it.
In 1976 no less than five new contributions to Rienzi have had to face this conflict. There is now a critical edition of the full score (three of the five volumes have so far appeared), and a volume containing Wagner's original texts for the opera as well as many other contemporaneous documents(2) There is a recording made by Ernest Warburton and Edward Downes, broadcast by the BBC on 27 June 1976, which in the introductory talk was called a 'rebirth' of the original work. There is also a com- mercial recording (EMI), and a forthcoming book on the origin and creation of the work mainly devoted to an analysis of Wagner's sketches in a critical and biographical context (3) Each of these contributions aims at authenticity in one way or the other, as designations like 'critical', rebirth', 'documents', 'original' etc show. An essential step in the reconstruction of the work, though, is still missing: a new stage production. Rienzi is particu- larly dependent on the theatre-not because it is by Wagner, but because it is true opera. Admittedly, today's listeners are able to enjoy recorded opera; but the problem with Rienzi is that it belongs to a little-known operatic genre. The listener cannot rely on his opera-house experience with similar works; with this interminable grand opera, he is in a far more difficult situation than he is, say, with a record- ing of minor Verdi. Apart from this, the publications mentioned above should at least make a decisive contribution to our knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of Wagner's work. We are allowed to ask critically how close we can get to the 'original' work with the help of these books and recordings, and what we can gain from them at all. Whereas the scholarly contribution by Dr Deathridge and the documentary volume could well serve as critical and informative guides to an understanding of the opera and its background, the real problem arises with the actual reconstruction of the score, printed as well as re- corded. When preparations for the new Rienzi edition were started, two major difficulties became clear: first, a complete full score of Rienzi could never again be available. It could be proved that no complete copy of the lost autograph had ever been made. The exact contents of the autograph could not be established with absolute certainty. It is true that the most important source before the full score is still extant-Wagner's composition draft, written as a kind of vocal score. As Wagner wrote out the full score directly from that draft, in which he took consistent note of the pagination of the score, one could generally establish which passages were in the composition draft but not in the full score. A few questions remained, however, particu- larly in those places where Wagner had changed his mind and introduced new versions when writing out the full score. The printed vocal score of 1844, a fairly complete arrangement, again provides some indications of the contents of the autograph, but illustrates its state in 1844 rather than in 1838-40 when it was written. The autograph itself, if it were to turn up again, could probably not give us back the original version in full, because certain passages seem to have been made illegible or even cut out in the 1840s. The two earliest available full scores which are Dresden copies made under Wagner's direction in 1842-3 (the earlier is the so-called 'Hamburg score', now in the Hamburg Public Library) are already shortened by about 15-20%. As far as possible, the editors have reconstructed the version of the autograph full score (the text of which is also printed in the documentary volume, with previous versions of the text), and will give an account of this procedure in the critical report. They could not, though, print the complete full score as Wagner first wrote it. Instead they chose the earliest (and longest) extant orchestral version, the 'Hamburg score', and are publishing the re- maining passages in vocal score in an appendix. A reorchestration of these passages, in order to 'complete' the opera, seemed incompatible with the principles of a 20th-century critical edition. This kind of reconstruction has been undertaken by Ernest Warburton and Edward Downes in their BBC recording. They performed the work from the new edition and orchestrated part of the missing passages as these were indicated to them by the editors and John Deathridge. A few pages of or- chestration were also taken from the score contain- ing the version by Cosima Wagner, Mottl and Kniese, which reintroduces some cut passages in a re- arranged and probably revised form. Since critical reports for recordings are not yet in use, the listener will have to compare the BBC recording with the edited score if he wants to find out where the or- chestration is by Wagner, and where it is by Mottl and Kniese or Warburton and Downes. There was a second main difficulty. An 'authentic' or 'original' version was recognized as being con- troversial simply because the composer had re- peatedly changed his mind about it. (This is what composers often do and audiences are seldom willing to tolerate.) Three major versions were apparently rivalling each other: the version of the autograph full score (finished in November 1840), which is a shortened version of the composition draft; the 'Hamburg score' which Wagner wanted to be per- formed in theatres outside Dresden (though this is not identical with the shorter version performed in Hamburg in 1844); and the first printed score made according to Wagner's instructions in 1844, which is, roughly speaking, a shortened copy of the 'Hamburg score'. There were not only cuts: in the 'Hamburg score' and in the first performance in Dresden (1842), Wagner had already added some new music to substitute for longer cut passages. These additions would naturally have to be excluded, despite their being authentic Wagner, in a recon- struction of the autograph version. The printed score contains even more passages of this kind (all of them published in the new edition), and also revisions of the orchestration, which is not surprising when we consider that Wagner was already com- posing Tannhduser in 1844. The fact should not be underrated that Wagner wanted the 'Hamburg score' and, later on, the printed score, to be models for performances. This is exactly what he did not expect from the autograph when he submitted it to the Dresden Royal Opera: his main concern in the following months was to get it performed at all and to protect it from distorting cuts, though not to oppose cuts on principle. Perhaps he wrote a long score because he reckoned with cuts in advance. No opera composer of hls time would have behaved very differently. Wagner himself made no fuss about the fact that the performances given under his direction were hardly ever congruent with any of the scores he had produced or published. Therefore, the BBC recording and the new edition may be called two possible solutions of several which Wagner would have agreed to (except, of course, the reorchestrations by others). However, he would not have recommended a shorter or re- vised version of the printed score except for some optional cuts he had indicated himself. The EMI recording was projected before the new edition was available. It therefore used the printed score of 1844 (following the advice of the editors), which at that time was the most complete edition in full score, and contains further cuts. It should be clear by now, with regard to the completeness or authenticity of the work, that it is still up to the listener's imagination to make the last step towards this ideal, whichever score or recording he is using. This will be true even after the first stage productions of the reconstructed Rienzi, welcome as they are; their concrete demands may prevent them from being complete or authentic either. If different solutions are possible regarding the production, recording or edition of the work, only one seems to be desirable regarding its presen- tation, the honest one. Is it not a matter of course that the listener or reader be told exactly which sources have been used and how they have been handled? Why should an attempt to reconstruct Rienzi, of all opera scores, be calling itself a rebirth? If we want to revive the work in our minds-and this is what matters-we should also be able to face the limitations of reliving history. It may be argued that too many doubts and too much criticism can diminish the pleasure of listening. I think it is exactly the other way round. Apart from the fact that there is no proof that the com- plete Rienzi is more beautiful than a cut version of it, a reconstruction presented too confidently as being the real thing can only add a fallacious pleasure to our listening. If one is aware that the work is not unequivocally defined by its composer, and is there- fore not a perfectly organized unit, one may enjoy discovering just to what extent it is well organized. Rienzi was a spectacular success on the Dresden stage of 1842. It is not likely to be that kind of success again, mainly because we cannot transform ourselves into the audience for which it was com- posed, an audience which perhaps wept where we feel like laughing, which shivered where we are bored. There seems to be one pleasure, though, which Wagner's contemporaries could not realize but which is reserved for us, the feeling of historical depth. For historical and aesthetic appreciation are not completely independent. I think it is a genuine pleasure for the imagination to measure the widening gap between the works and ourselves. ----
NOTES
(1) Translation by Hilde Beal and Ernest Warburton

(2) Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen, in Richard Wagner: Samtliche Werke, iii/i-5 (Mainz, 1974-); Dokumente und Texte zu Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen, in Richard Wagner: Samtliche Werke, xxiii (Mainz, 1976)

(3) John Deathridge: Wagner's Rienzi: a Reappraisal based on a Study of the Sketches and Drafts

[RebLem]

Sure appreciate your trouble, lads. Is there a place where they specialize in ancient recordings but don't necessarily have a website, i.e., a place you can call or something? I know of record stores of that sort but they have only popular recordings. They are veritable holes-in-the wall, covered with dust.

You might want to check out a quarterly Brit mag called Classic Record Collector whose cotributors would have the information you seek, if it exists. It is a hard copy mag, but they have a website, which includes information on subscribing, @ http://www.classicrecordcollector.com/

As for a store, check out Princeton Record Exchange @ http://www.prex.com/

Or check the classifieds in most any serious classical music magazine.

[Chosen Barley]

So, the only prewar Rienzi, then, is excerpts. Well, not really prewar. During the war. Better than nothing, I say. They have it at Subito Cantabile.

I thank you all for being so helpful. But I am going to look at some of the old posts here.

[Corlyss_D]

So, the only prewar Rienzi, then, is excerpts. Well, not really prewar. During the war. Better than nothing, I say. They have it at Subito Cantabile.

I thank you all for being so helpful. But I am going to look at some of the old posts here.

You have no idea how happy that makes me! Last week I discovered that the search engine didn't work without indexing the site after we inaugurated the new software in June. So I unleashed the software to make it happen - it took about 16 hours of non-stop grinding to index the entire site, archives and all. As far as I know, you're the first member to make use of the search function since it's been indexed.

[TopoGigio]

Trying it from June...
"Furtwängler Any suggestions" at last

[RebLem]

Trying it from June...
"Furtwängler Any suggestions" at last

TG,
You need a separate thread for that.

[John F]

the only prewar Rienzi, then, is excerpts. Well, not really prewar. During the war.

The earliest "complete" Rienzi on records dates from 1950, as far as I've been able to find out: Hessian Radio (Frankfurt), conducted by Winfried Zillig, with Günter Treptow in the title role. There's also been published a disk of excerpts with Berlin State Opera forces conducted by Johannes Schüler, with Max Lorenz, probably originating in the studios of Berlin Radio (not in the theater) and dated 1942. If there are other broadcasts or in-house recordings from before the War, I haven't found out about them.

I believe there's only been one truly complete performance of Rienzi in modern times, a 1976 BBC broadcast conducted by Edward Downes. It's been issued on 4 CDs by Ponto, but whether they include every last note, or have imposed cuts, I don't know.

[TopoGigio]

Trying it from June...
"Furtwängler Any suggestions" at last

TG,
You need a separate thread for that.

I was making reference to an old CMG thread, I was searching this:
http://www.classicalmusicguide.com/view ... uggestions
And now we can to find it...
But I dont find my post about "search donnt work"
Perhaps I "corrected" that very soon...

[TopoGigio]

About the Edward Downes ``Rienzi (4hours41minutes)

Richard Wagner: Rienzi
John Mitchinson (Rienzi), Lois McDonall (Irene), Michael Langdon (Colonna), Lorna Haywood (Adriano), Raimund Hericx (Orsini), David Ward (Raimondi), Adrian de Peyer (Baroncelli), Paul Hudson (Cecco), Elizabeth Gale (Friedensbote). BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Downes
Ponto PO-1040 [4CDs]

The maestro himself took his distance from this work, even though the opera had clocked more performances during his lifetime than all his other opera’s (sorry Gesamtkunstwerken). But this was not at all uncommon. Puccini and Verdi distance themselves from many of their early operas, such as Le Villi, Edgar, and Il Corsaro. And so the Wagner of Tannhäuser has his detectable roots in Rienzi.
Of course, there are quite a few differences as well that the Wagner family probably didn’t want to remind their audiences of them. After all, Rienzi has an interesting historical topic as a subject instead of the silly humbug of Der Ring. Once upon a time Wagner tried to “out-Meyerbeer” Meyerbeer, but nobody in the family wants the public to know that the maestro followed the examples of other composers. Then there is the treatment of the human voice. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau once said that in Wagner’s best known operas “we singers have the honour of accompanying the orchestra” while in Rienzi the vocal line is still supported by the instruments. And, this is really too awful a truth to admit, the maestro even enjoyed writing a long 38-minute ballet without the excuse that the Paris Opéra obliged him to. Admittedly, there are some tedious moments in the opera when the wind section blows too long and too loud, when the choruses repeat themselves or when the melodic inspiration in concertati is sagging but on the other hand there is far more inspired music than Wagner himself acknowledged, such as the fine duet between Rienzi and his sister in the last act.
But to discover this and more, a good recording such as this issue is helpful. More than that, it is the only recording that gives us a real idea what Rienzi is all about. The four CD’s total 4 hours and 41 minutes. An interesting historical issue with Treptow and Eipperle plays for 2 hours and 48 minutes; that’s almost 2 hours of music cut. Even the best commercial recording up to now (Sawallisch – Kollo) gives the listener one hour less of music. This performance is the Dresden version, where the composer made some cuts after he himself found the successful première a bit long (more than six hours though with intervals).
Though this is an entirely British and Commonwealth cast, it is a strong one,,, John Mitchinson never had the morbidezza necessary for Italian roles, though I heard him sing a very fine Verdi Requiem. Nevertheless, he has a strong, big stylish voice easily riding the orchestral climaxes and the infamous Bayreuth bark is not to be found in his interpretation. His German is quite good too and he is an impressive Rienzi. Maybe Lorna Haywood’s voice is a shade too light for the long role of Adriano, the lover of Rienzi’s sister (at La Scala tenor Cecchele sang this role in a horribly mutilated version with Di Stefano). Yet Haywood brings a wealth of experience in Italian opera with her, and this is evident in the fine legato, the sweet sound in an opera, which after all was still firmly embedded in the French-Italian tradition. Lois McDonall as Irene has the bigger voice, and she too was a good Verdi and Puccini soprano and knew how to bring belcanto to a role. Her first act duet with Mitchinson is outstanding, and the voices of the two women blend. All the other singers are well-known names from Covent Garden and the English National opera and they bring their experience to roles they probably never performed anywhere else.
For many years Edward Downes was a household name at Covent Garden where he conducted hundreds of well-reviewed performances, often after the star conductor had left. To opera lovers in the rest of the world, he was mainly known for his inspired accompanying of singers in recitals such as the début albums of Bruno Prevedi and Luciano Pavarotti. Fed up with his London assignments, he went to Sydney to conduct for the Australian opera company. Rienzi was not his first Wagner discovery, as this was only part of a prestigious project by BBC North. But in May of 1976 Downes conducted concert performances of Wagner’s first-born Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot (both available on Ponto), followed by this Rienzi one month later. Downes knows how to shape the music, and, as he was very well versed in Italian Grand Opera, he is completely at ease. He doesn’t drown his singers and succeeds very well in getting over some tedious moments. It’s not his fault that some choruses or marches are a bit loud — Wagner probably thought that the more wind instruments the better the score.
Warmly recommended, especially to the Wagner family who, with the exception of Eva who wanted this opera to go on in Bayreuth, still cling to their outdated dogmas.

[Chosen Barley]

Topo, you outdone yourself. That is lots of information!

[TopoGigio]

Thanks...searching in the net is rewarding,with a password or two...
But in relation to the Rienzi information all that is free...
Your question is a very different affair.No "complete" Rienzi by now...but there
is material in some vaults,sure, some of a prewar "complete" Rienzi or two.
This is a war issue as a Hitlers Inspiration, and the work is cherished/hated/locked, no doubt.

[Gary]

the Search box it comes back to tell me I shouldn't put the word "of" in there.

Search engines generally don't like prepositions and (in)definite articles, so leave out the following: of, for, the, a, an, etc.

So then if I put "recordings Rienzi" I obtain results of both words separately.

I would put a comma between recordings and Rienzi. That way, you're more likely to get results related to both keywords. But in this case, with or without a comma doesn't seem to make a difference; I just tried both methods and obtained the same results. So no guarantees.

On the other hand, if every word must be included and in a certain order, such as in the title of a book, then do it this way.

Put quotation marks around the title (keywords) followed by parentheses.

Like so: ("Valery Gergiev and the Kirov")

[Chosen Barley]

Gary, thanks. But why do we have to place parentheses before & after? You don't have to do this on google or alta vista or dogpyle or...(or so I am told by my betters). I like what computers can do but I can't stand trying to find stuff. I am glad that there are people here who knew how to find material on Rienzi. Well, I didn't know it was that controversial!

[Gary]

But why do we have to place parentheses before & after?

That I'm afraid I can't answer. That's just the nature of the beast.

You don't have to do this on google or alta vista or dogpyle or...

Allow me to demonstrate the superiority of the parentheses & quotation marks method.

In Image 1 below, I searched the title Valery Gergiev and the Kirov without parentheses & quotation marks, and the first result that's related to the book ranks #5 on the page (see arrow). On the other hand, in Image 2, I entered the same title along with parentheses and quotation marks, and the first pertinent result ranks #2 (see arrow).


Image 1

Google Image 1.jpg (125.09 KiB) Viewed 17505 times

Image 2

Google Image 2.jpg (112.83 KiB) Viewed 17504 times

[John F]

The quotation marks do the job and the parentheses add nothing; you get exactly the same Google result.

I suspect the (" ") idea may have come from Google's Web Search Help Center, where some search terms in quotes have been put in parentheses to make a sentence more understandable: ...conducting a phrase search, which simply means putting quotation marks around two or more words. Common words in a phrase search (e.g., "where are you") are included in the search.

Parentheses can be used in complex queries, such as: "If you're searching for more than one phrase or keyword in addition to the Boolean, you can group them with parenthesis, such as recipes gravy (sausage | biscuit) to search for gravy recipes for either sausages or biscuits. You could even combine exact phrases and search for "sausage biscuit" (recipe | review)."

[Chosen Barley]

Parentheses can be used in complex queries, such as: "If you're searching for more than one phrase or keyword in addition to the Boolean, you can group them with parenthesis, such as recipes gravy (sausage | biscuit) to search for gravy recipes for either sausages or biscuits. You could even combine exact phrases and search for "sausage biscuit" (recipe | review)."

Now, my teenage son tells me that you have to use only the word OR in capitals instead of parentheses and a dividing line:



He pulled this up for me. I could never figure this out for myself.

And now I am going to go a-hunting for more Rienzi recordings

Can't thank you enough. Nice that there are helpful people here.

[Gary]

Parentheses can be used in complex queries, such as: "If you're searching for more than one phrase or keyword in addition to the Boolean, you can group them with parenthesis, such as recipes gravy (sausage | biscuit) to search for gravy recipes for either sausages or biscuits. You could even combine exact phrases and search for "sausage biscuit" (recipe | review)."

Now, my teenage son tells me that you have to use only the word OR in capitals instead of parentheses and a dividing line:

Now I'm confused, too.

[Corlyss_D]

I would put a comma between recordings and Rienzi. That way, you're more likely to get results related to both keywords. But in this case, with or without a comma doesn't seem to make a difference; I just tried both methods and obtained the same results. So no guarantees.

For utter inert brainlessness, the search engine incorporated in the phpbb software is exceeded only by the one the GAO used on its website until recently. The GAO also had no advanced search function, and searching phrases was hopeless. This one can handle +, -, AND, and OR. Your best bet is to find the most uncommon word in the phrase and search on that. Rienzi will disgorge all the threads in which it has been discussed, which ain't many I can assure you.

But why do we have to place parentheses before & after? You don't have to do this on google or alta vista or dogpyle or

Those are phrase indicators, i.e, you want that the search run on that specific arrangement of words. If you use the advanced search function on any of those search engines, it allows you to search on phrases and in effect puts the quotation marks or parentheses in for you.