The Wagner Interviews: Sir John Tomlinson

Is Richard Wagner a genius or a monster? Is his music a remedy or a poison? As the opera world celebrates his 200th birthday, Wagner's legacy remains the source of fiery debate. To mark his bicentenary, the KT Wong Foundation takes you to an exciting tour of the man and his music, in the company of those who know Wagner best: singers, conductors, directors, composers. Here we speak with renowned bass Sir John Tomlinson.
www.ktwong.org
200岁的瓦格纳，是凡人还是偶像？他的音乐，是直面人生还是言不由衷。对瓦格纳的遗产，后人当何以应对？由拿督黄纪达基金会在三国五地采访，与睿智、有趣、尖锐的人物交谈，了解每人心中的瓦格纳。《众说纷纭瓦格纳》，即将问世。

[@santiagoayala2975]

my favorite Wotan. His voice has a timbre that is unique and pleasant to listen. Truly, the 1992 Barenboim production was like a dream team of some of the greatest Wagnerian singers of all time.

[@garylysaght1579]

Jasper Rees is an excellent interviewer, someone "star" interviewers could learn from. Let your guest speak. No interruptions. No attention seeking.

[@maelughran6981]

Remarkable man, he passed over a career in civil engineering to advance his singing - yet he is so articulate he could have been a brilliant journalist/communicator too! My favourite Wagnerian. Incredible voice.

[@finylvinyl66]

A great Wotan.

[@flemmingdalsgaard4979]

Tomlinson does perhaps not surpass George London, but he has a charming "savage" expression, which makes him my favorite Wotan.

[@omairagamboa7821]

May I have the year of recording of this Parsifal version, who are the singers, the director? Just loved the interview!

[@helmuthuber766]

Met him once! Great singer and personality ❤❤❤

[@eddiebeato5546]

Wagner's Music...Like the writings of F. Nietzsche, may still flash on the horizon of dangerous geniuses and overmen: Men, Beasts & Gods by Ferdinand Ossendowskii. Terrible Men.

[@Bacchusmbt]

Tomlinson is my Santa Claus fantasy come to life! 😜😜👍🏻

[@Mosil0]

Anyone know who is singing Gurnemanz in the Parsifal excerpt?

[@telephilia]

He concludes by saying that Wagner's mature works are "the greatest ever composed." Perhaps the grandest but you could certainly get a debate on that by bringing up the finest pieces by the big 3: Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. One could even make a claim for Verdi's final two operas. Categorical superlatives are best avoided when talking about art.

[@hja1891]

The Interviewer only wants to know something about Wagners antisemitism and nothing about the music.. Wagner had close contac to the conductor Levi who was a Jew.. Levy conducted Parsival...Wagners Pamphlet was against the influence of the judism in music. Genious or Monster this question you would never made to Shakespeare ( Macbeth and other bloody stories) no no no... that is an untouchable british. Icon .. but Wagner and Germany slander is allowed as usual Since 1871.. ,

[@margotgraefinvonkoenigsmar6662]

Stimme aus den Bayreuther Festspielen August 2022: Den Nazis gehört nichts, nicht die deutsche Sprache, nicht Wagner (trotz seiner antisemitischen Steilvorlagen), auch nicht Bayreuth. Man sollte drüberstehen können...

[@Dianaemanuel]

Tomlinson is a wonderful singer but the clips from the opera? Awful design choices.

[@robertjones4709]

Wagner.s opera,s are about the world , eternal types and forces. Equating Jews with crass commercialism and musical mediocrity( Irving Berlin, George M Cohan etc in America) does not make him a monster. Like the rest of the world he did not understand the changes within a closed Jewish society wherein the creative arts were no longer equated with the commandment against pagan images. Mendelssohn was an early example. Yet Wagner never slandered nor cursed him. His evaluation of Mendelssohn reads like a typical newspaper music critic. He acknowledged the composers skills and talent but that his music failed to move us deeply. I agree. Mendelssohn is well represented in my cd library but I enjoy him like the coffee and sweet rolls I take on my morning drives. The monster here is the national Jewish ego, the hell that hath no fury when scorned.

[@JohnBorstlap]

So often you hear Wagner enthusiasts saying that RW wrote 'the greatest music ever composed'. Which is naive and incorrect..... Better would be: 'RW wrote SOME of the greatest music ever composed'. It is a music with flaws and highlights, a mountain landscape with tops and deep valleys. His oeuvre is not so consistently great as the music of Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Bach. That people get so over the top about RW is also the result of them being taken-in by loudness, pomposity, scale, and occasionally rudeness, and the postponement of resolution in the harmonic language which can be both exciting and exhausting. There is lots of gold in that music but also quite some mud, and much that is in between. He was a genius with spots.

[@jaikee9477]

+John Borstlap Ridiculous! Wagner is widely considered as the father of modern music.

[@JohnBorstlap]

Jaikee GER And that is not something to be happy about: look what the state of contemporary music is nowadays. Also, it is not RW who was the origin of modern music, but an entirely wrong assessment of his work, as created by Schoenberg and taken-on by academics in the last century: that there were a 'line' of history beginning from Tristan, via Strauss and Mahler to Schoenberg and then via Webern to Boulez and Stockhausen, as some sort of inner, independent dynamic, like a natural force (Hegel). But RW wrote Meistersinger after Tristan, so: a very tonal and diatonic work, and his last work Parsifal combines modal, diatonic and chromatic music all under one umbrella. Mahler never wanted to develop into atonal music and Strauss wisely returned to tradition in Rosenkavalier after his dissonant, but fascinating Salome and Elektra. It was all a false narrative to defend postwar indefensable positions.

[@robertjones4709]

At least you don,t equate Wagner with tanks, storm troopers and dive bombers like that little punk Woody Allen

[@santiagoayala2975]

it's just art. You either love it or don't. And for many people in the world, Wagner is the greatest music in their hearts. But that doesn't mean that they can't love other music, it just means that Wagner is their favorite. Peace brother.

[@jasonhurd4379]

The greatest musical work ever composed is the Matthäus-Passion of Bach.