Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

THE MAKING OF THE RING

Victor Carr Jr

The “making of” in this case refers not to Wagner’s Ring itself, but to the famous Patrice Chéreau production that marked the Bayreuth Festival’s centenary

THE SINGERS: BIRGIT NILSSON

Dan Davis

Birgit Nilsson’s timbre, as the late John Ardoin writes in the booklet notes, “was sunlight reflected off a copper surface.” That bright, gleaming tone could

Wagner: Tristan, ”28

Robert Levine

Recorded at Bayreuth in 1928 by English Columbia, this was the first attempt to get a complete Wagner opera onto discs. In fact, it’s hardly

Wagner: Tristan, Bayreuth/Karajan

Jed Distler

Numerous incarnations of the 1952 Karajan/Bayreuth Tristan have danced in and out of circulation on CD. Sonically speaking, it’s on par with other archival Bayreuth

Wagner: Parsifal/Bayreuth, ’54

Jed Distler

Among the Bayreuth Festival Parsifal recordings (official and otherwise) under Hans Knappertsbusch’s direction, this 1954 go-round is closer to the conductor’s weighty 1951 commercially issued

Wagner: Das Rheingold, ’51/Karajan

Jed Distler

In Urania’s 24-bit/96 kHz transfer the murky but still listenable source tape for Herbert von Karajan’s 1951 Bayreuth Das Rheingold gains a pinch of high-end

Wagner Ring Knappertsbusch 58/Melodram C

Jed Distler

At the outset let me say that Melodram now offers the best sounding incarnation yet of Hans Knappertsbusch’s live 1958 Bayreuth Festival Ring Cycle. The

Wagner Tannhauser/Naxos C

Jed Distler

Had Arturo Toscanini not been under contract to Victor, he certainly would have conducted Columbia’s abridged 1930 Bayreuth recording of Wagner’s Tannhäuser in its 1861

Parsifal Knappertsbusch

Jed Distler

Remastered for Philips’ 50 Great Recordings series, the orchestral image in Hans Knappertsbusch’s 1962 Bayreuth Parsifal seems brighter, more forward than before, and I detect