Wahnfried

Wahnfried is undoubtedly a provocative work, boldly confronting the darkest elements of Wagnerian mythology. Its uncompromising portrayal of fanaticism’s corrosive power is compelling and challenging, a stark reminder that past horrors continue to echo in the present. I greatly admire Longborough for presenting the UK premiere of a large-scale contemporary opera – a feat few opera houses manage today.

— Gramophone

Opening music with slide whistles surprised many in the Longborough audience at this UK première of Avner Dorman’s ingenious work Wahnfried: the birth of the Wagner cult. Commissioned by Justin Brown, he asked his librettists, Sarah Nemitz and Lutz Hübner to produce an ‘unWagnerian opera’ where every act will have an end. There is some ‘embedded Wagner’ and those librettists earned accolades on the stage with the composer at the final curtain on opening night. Such warm applause is from an audience many of whom are comfortable being described as ‘Ringheads’ and content to be considered members of a Wagner cult! Longborough Festival Opera, with the renowned Wagnerian Anthony Negus as Music Director, is recognised by many critics as UK’s Bayreuth, but with an absence of the many highly publicised and damaging internal conflicts up on the Green Hill. These have been reported over many decades from Wahnfried, Wagner’s beautiful home in Bayreuth, until it became a museum, and, then elsewhere, in Bavaria. No doubt alternative titles for the production were suggested – ‘The Saga of the Wagner Family’ would seem appropriate. It is their work on these conflicts where Dorman, Nemitz and Hübner have demonstrated bravery in writing an opera about Wagner and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the British entomologist, race theorist, Wagner fan and Germanophile. Both were very complex individuals, Wagner’s talents gained recognition across Europe giving so many audiences many thrills. Chamberlain, who married Wagner’s daughter Eva, became a very influential member of the family. Following memorable performances last year in Welsh National Opera’s Death in Venice and as LFO’s Siegmund, Mark Le Brocq gives a brilliant depiction of Chamberlain as a failing bug-hunter, author of an authoritative tome on anti-Semitism and scientific racism, influencing a young Hitler and becoming known as Hitler’s John the Baptist. Bravery deserves reward; this colourful Longborough production moves at pace thanks to conductor Justin Brown energising a responsive orchestra led by Darragh Morgan’s violin supporting first class performances by debut-making soloists, notably, Meeta Raval (Anna and Eva Chamberlain), Edmund Danon (Herman Levi and his ghost), Alexandra Lowe (Winifred and Isolde) and, not least, Susan Bullock as Wagner’s wife, Cosima, the High Priestess of Bayreuth. Wagner dies early in this story; Oscar McCarthy accepts the formidable responsibility in the role of Wagner-Daemon, dressed in a bright green outfit made famous by Kermit the Frog. His energy is infectious as a clown character surrounded by a circus atmosphere which permeates much of the two acts. Tamzen Moulding performs remarkable acrobatics; she is accompanied by many vaudevillian colleagues sporting bright red lips and wearing steampunk clown costumes. They are everywhere as they provide a continuity role. Longborough Festival Opera’s Wahnfried: the birth of the Wagner cult © Matthew Williams-Ellis Co-ordinated efforts by Chorus Master James Ham and Movement Director Adi Gortler carefully determine the vaudeville ventures to be, at times, very amusing, whilst ensuring the serious side of the story was not forgotten. Signposting by the clowns, reminiscent of early cinema days, helps develop the saga which begins in BAYREUTH IN 1882, a year before the Master’s death and spans forty years. Cosima senses the need to preserve the great man’s legacy putting her faith in Chamberlain via a deeply moving duet in which she shows the anguish she feels. Another signpost DRESDEN UPRISING 1849 identified a key aspect of Wagner’s life as he became outraged at the refusal of the King of Saxony to rule a unified Germany as a constitutional monarch. Cosima faces setbacks as the infighting for leadership of the Bayreuth Festival gathers pace. Lighting Designer Peter Small lends a hand with what must surely be deliberate misaligned spot lighting; Designer Max Johns ensures the fragility of the family is not forgotten with the imminent danger of four large Wagner statues falling over; finally, Costume Designer Anisha Fields ensures members of her burlesque troupe express their opinions with the failure to manoeuvre the curtains at crucial moments. Were these first night issues, most probably not! Pulling all these controversial matters together is Director Polly Graham, now firmly established as Longborough’s Artistic Director. This production is another success for her. This new opera has a good future; Composer Avner Dorman recognises the strengths of Kurt Weill and Dimitri Shostakovich by including elements of both in the score and he ensures there is a Götterdämmerung finish to the opera. Wagner-Daemon manages a poorly played theme from Tannhäuser on a toy piano – one of several comic moments – another, ‘Houston we have a problem’, best forgotten!! Wagner’s loyalty to his dogs is remembered with one chorus member frequently scampering across the stage depicting Russ, his black Newfoundland, buried at Wagner’s feet at Wahnfried. With Polly Graham at the helm, Music Director Anthony Negus back in 2026 to conduct Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg the Cotswolds Wagner cult will continue!

— Clive Peacock , Seen and Heard International (2025)

There’s a blood-curdling scream off stage: Richard Wagner has died. The curtain lifts on his funeral and we see the venerated composer’s corpse. He is mourned by his family and acolytes (sporting “W” for “Wagnerian” badges), and the tragedy is underscored in melodramatic, near-comic fashion by wah-wah trumpets. I can’t be the only person who was then surprised when Wagner re-emerged, reborn as the Wagner-Daemon, dressed head to toe in a lime green outfit to rival Kermit, although the frog doesn’t sport such a fetching beret. That surreal twist matches the heightened aesthetic of Polly Graham’s high-energy new production of Avner Dorman’s Wahnfried: The Birth of the Wagner Cult, given its UK premiere, aptly, at the British Bayreuth, Longborough Festival Opera, and conducted by Justin Brown, who commissioned the piece. With a pacey libretto (bad puns aside) by Lutz Hübner and Sarah Nemitz, Wahnfried tackles big themes (art, nationalism, fascism, antisemitism, homophobia, politics and power) with a strong feel for balancing acerbic satire, absurdist theatre and harrowing history. That’s reflected by a compelling score that stylistically zips from sharp Kurt Weill to manic Shostakovich, dissonant Berg to military marches, lilting waltzes to pulsating minimalism. Despite its sometimes homemade feel, and a second act that occasionally lags, the Weimar Republic cabaret-inspired production is more hit than miss. The death of Wagner is the plot’s catalyst for a Succession-style wrangling for power over both his Bayreuth Festival and his legacy — and the Wagner-Daemon, performed with wonderful physicality by Oskar McCarthy, keeps his artistic spirit alive. But the looming Wagner is not Wahnfried’s main character. That’s Houston Stewart Chamberlain, excellently sung by Mark Le Brocq, a bumbling, butterfly-hunting British outsider who becomes an influential insider, welcomed for his horrific antisemitism. (Tracing his journey, the opera moves from English to German.) Ditching his first wife, Anna, Chamberlain marries Wagner’s daughter Eva (both roles appealingly sung by Meeta Raval) and publishes a book on Aryan racial supremacy, which catches the attention of the young Adolf Hitler (Adrian Dwyer). The extent to which our image of Wagner has been twisted and distorted by Chamberlain, the widowed Cosima Wagner (a formidable Susan Bullock) and the Nazis fuels Wahnfried. The brunt of the antisemitic abuse is borne on stage by Edmund Danon’s Hermann Levi (alive and as a ghost), the first conductor of Parsifal. Does Dorman answer the questions about Wagner and the Nazis that he poses? Perhaps not — but he holds up a timely mirror to the malevolent and racist ideologies that still exist today.

— Rebecca Franks , The Times (2025)

he Israeli-born Avner Dorman’s opera focuses on Richard Wagner’s clan and the composer’s legacy after his death, together with the family in-fighting presided over by his widow, Cosima, at the family home, Wahnfried. When the idea of the opera was first mooted, Wagner’s great-granddaughter Eva approved it, “as long as Cosima doesn’t come out of it very well”. She doesn’t, almost no one does, and certainly not the extraordinary and appalling figure of Houston Chamberlain. Chamberlain is so little known that he could be a figment of librettists Lutz Hübner and Sarah Nemitz’s imagination, yet the opera’s historical veracity is impeccable. The English Germanophile, a failed scientist and admirer of Wagner, inveigled his way into Cosima’s household, eventually marrying Wagner’s daughter Eva. He was, through his writings on German supremacy, a crucial architect of the antisemitism and hatred that Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler admired and upheld. A group of people standing on stage wearing black-and-white outfits. View image in fullscreen An authentic piece … Avner Dorman’s Wahnfried. Photograph: Matthew Williams-Ellis From the outset, when Chamberlain appears as a naive and ridiculous bumbler who believes that the order of the world is for the strong to kill the weak, the tenor of the narrative is chilling and deeply disquieting, despite moments of clowning black humour. As Dorman observed at the time of the world premiere in Germany in 2017, the same horrors are being perpetrated in the world today – and so much ignored – making Longborough Festival Opera’s UK premiere and director Polly Graham’s brilliant production important and all the braver. symbol 00:00 00:00 Read More The irony in the opera’s title is implicit. Wagner named his home in Bayreuth, Bavaria, Wahnfried, meaning free from delusion, but this is a portrait of madness writ large against a background of blood-red velvet drapes. The deluded fervour first of the Wagnerites and then of Mark Le Brocq’s Chamberlain – simply a tour de force – is monstrous. Le Broq and Susan Bullock’s imperious Cosima are a hateful pair, their philosophy of hate for the Jews carefully delineated. It’s Chamberlain who pushes Cosima to banish her daughter Isolde, spirited into a Tardis-like box with the demand that she reimagine herself in keeping with the true Wagner ethos; he too insists on her brother Siegfried’s homosexuality being hidden. Andrew Watts’s impassioned aria to his lover is a focal point, while the picture of Siegfried’s hardly idyllic marriage to Winifred Williams – the better known figure here for her insidious cosying up to Hitler, sung by the formidable Alexandra Lowe – is a further marker of the authenticity of the piece. Susan Bullock as Cosima with Mark Le Brocq as Houston Chamberlain. View image in fullscreen Impeccable stagecraft … Susan Bullock as Cosima with Mark Le Brocq as Houston Chamberlain. Photograph: Matthew Williams-Ellis Written in 20 scenes, each setting flagged up on a small blackboard, the driving energy of the second of two acts is the more convincing. Dorman’s music, multifaceted in its references – Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Wagner himself – is incisive, with often brittle instrumentation, and dynamically paced by conductor Justin Brown. The impeccable stagecraft carries the evening, but there are two characters who haunt Chamberlain to inject a further dimension. Hermann Levi – the Jew who conducted the Bayreuth premiere of Parsifal, the opera that became core to the family wrangling – is sympathetically portrayed, embracing the terrible and ever-present contradictions, perhaps an alter ego for Dorman. But it is the mischievous figure of Oskar McCarthy’s Wagner-Daemon, the composer’s familiar after death, whose disapproval brings a lighter note. It’s his final judgment that Chamberlain, who aspired to be counted alongside Kant, Goethe and Wagner himself, will – like all Wagner’s heroes – ultimately be a failure. It was Dorman, taking a bow at the curtain call, who was greeted as a hero.

— Rian Evans , The Guardian (2025)

Richard Wagner’s music holds pride of place at Longborough Festival Opera, which, in its nearly 30-year history, has presented three Ring cycles. With the company’s invigorating season opener, the ‘English Bayreuth’ fearlessly grapples with the dark side of the composer. Marc Le Brocq triumphs in the demanding central role of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an Englishman who ingratiated himself into the Wagner family. With his frothing anti-Semitism and fanatical belief in German superiority, Chamberlain helped cement the bond between Wagner’s music and Hitler, who appears as a character near the opera’s end, and laid the basis for the family’s Succession-like power struggle that played out for decades. Related to this ReviewThe Flying Dutchman review The Flying Dutchman review Musicals have a lot to teach new opera about the art of telling a story Musicals have a lot to teach new opera about the art of telling a story Confidently directed by Polly Graham, the opera traces Chamberlain’s progress from admirer to insider in a series of vignettes (witty libretto by playwrights Lutz Hübner and Sarah Nemitz). Wahnfried is the family seat in Bayreuth, where the composer’s widow Cosima (the formidable Susan Bullock) presides over the squabbling family and hangers-on. Enter Houston Stewart Chamberlain and his German wife, Anna Chamberlain (Meeta Raval). As her husband joins the Wagner inner circle – after perfecting his German and publishing an intolerant and shamefully influential historical tome – Anna is discarded in favour of Wagner’s daughter Eva. Among those who suffer in the hothouse atmosphere is Wagner’s son Siegfried, forced into the role of heir apparent. He lacks his father’s talent and must conceal his homosexuality, as he laments in a heartbreaking aria. As Siegfried, countertenor Andrew Watts is mesmerising. Equally affecting is Edmund Danon as the Jewish conductor Hermann Levi, who first conducted Parsifal. Here and elsewhere, Dorman’s score is colourful and evocative, and blooms in the capable hands of Justin Brown conducting the Longborough Festival Orchestra. Such poignant moments are counterbalanced by the broad burlesque sections. The bawdy Wagner dæmon (Oskar McCarthy), wearing clownish makeup and dressed in vivid green (costumes by Anisha Fields), mocks Chamberlain and accuses him of understanding nothing: “Not me, not life. All of my heroes fail.” It’s notable that the only bump in this otherwise fine opera is a strangely tepid scene near the end, when a young Hitler, a would-be Wagnerian hero, makes the pilgrimage to Bayreuth, where his cause is enthusiastically taken up by Chamberlain. While the Wagner dæmon is right in predicting that Chamberlain, who died in 1926, would only ever be a "footnote to history”, what fascinates and horrifies us about this opera is our knowledge of what was to come, and our fears for what might happen in our own era.

— Inge Kjemtrup , The Stage (2025)

Seeing this opera half way through a Ring Cycle in Wiesbaden, was like tasting an astringent sorbet between the courses of a heavily sauced Wagnerian banquet. A timely antidote to immersion in the Wagner ethos and warning of the ever present threats of populism, hatred and intolerance.

— John Johnston , BachTrack.com (2017)

Avner Dorman's music-dramatic talent is striking throughout. Surprisingly it seems to have its own language, although it moves rhythmically, tonally, and melodically between the idioms of the last 100 years. One might think of Weill, whose striking force is of course rarely reached or aimed for. Rather Dorman seems to refer to the laconic and cool slyle of Boris Blacher or Gottfried von Einem from the middle of the last century, which preserved classicistic traces.
Dorman appears to be a particularly convincing eclecticist, seemingly bringing the controversial origins of his music into a coherent "uniform" - perhaps the crucial quality leap, ranging from simply recording the musical zeitgeist to a masterpiece. Justin Brown, director of the Badische Staatskapelle with an affinity for Wagner, conducted Wahnfried as a masterpiece with dedication, burning intensity, and perfection in sound which was achieved by the impeccably disposed Staatskapelle and the choir.

— Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich , Opernwelt (2017)

Avner Dorman (…) has put on a loose mix of styles, in which Wagner's quotations, operatic pieces and musical verve penetrate each other. There are "beautiful" arias, sweeping choirs, nostalgically noble string writing, and thundering drum rattles and brass opulence. Sentimentality hardly has a place here, but the rather rattling motoric movement recalls early Sergej Prokofiev or Dmitry Shostakovich. And everything is served perfectly and effectively. Style dogmatologists may turn up their noses but within the framework of this satirical concept, the whole thing works perfectly.

— Gerhard R. Koch , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (2017)

With Lutz Hübner and Sarah Nemitz, the most frequently performed German contemporary theatre authors have written a libretto, which in the best sense masters a balancing act. (…) Although Nemitz’s and Hübner's language has a gritty sense of humor, the librettists bring the political dimension of opera brilliantly to the point. They tear the audience into the wake of a cultural history, which is still silenced to this day.

— OPUS (Online-Version) (2017)

Lutz Hübner and Sarah Nemitz wrote a libretto which (…) stands on its own. It is rich in quotations and allusions, a sharp-pointedly over-satire, which critically captures the Wagner circle and shows in individual scenes a profile of Houston Stewart Chamberlain on his way to the inner circle up to his exclusion.
Avner Dorman composed music that emerges where contempt and reverence collide. Again and again, quotations from Wagner's operas are flashing, which at the moment they sound are pursued in a grotesque and sarcastical way in order to unmask the Wagner heirs in their wretchedness. For this, Dorman uses any means. In the broadly defined field of the neo-modernism everything sounds somewhere between art and circus music, with children's whistles and percussion-variety, sometimes viciously funny, cinematically exciting or down-to-earth. The singing is semi-arioso, half-speaking, always harmonically oriented. (…)
Needle-tip sound colours from the orchestra show the complexity of the score once more. Painfully disturbing, Dorman thereby enhances the perception of the scenery. There is nothing accommodating, conciliatory or melodious at all. (…)
Conductor Justin Brown conducts sovereignly and with all the overview that this complex score requires, and also stringently, so that the dramaturgy never lose its effect in any moment. Undoubtedly there is an expert on the desk.

— O-Ton (2017)

Dorman loves loudness and pushing the limits of the orchestra. The vocal lines are catchy, but not banal, chorus and instrumentalists often act just on the border of overload. When Chamberlain praises the alleged advantages of the Aryan race, it sounds like a dance number from a gloomy operetta - great! Justin Brown takes care of precision, dynamism, power at the podium of the Badische Staatskapelle. The audience cheered.

— br-klassik.de (2017)

Wahnfried brims over with word-wit, allusions and whimsical figures. (…) Dorman, who lives in the USA, writes music that sparkles with ideas. His Israeli parents' house was permeated with German music and literature. He happily loots music history. The "Circus of the Gladiators" and the mourning march from Wagner's "Götterdämmerung" are heard. Most quotations, however, are hidden and alienated with quirky harmonies. Dorman is mainly influenced by jazz, minimal music and baroque music. His music develops an irresistible pull. The highly engaged Justin Brown with his brilliantly performing Badische Staatskapelle ensured the perfect realization of the virtuosic score.

— dpa (2017)