Late-night 'Parsifal'

Synopsis

Okay, raise your hand if you have ever stayed up til midnight to attend the premiere showing of a new film — extra points if you attended in costume as a Hogwarts student! Well, opera fans are no slouches, either. On December 31, 1913, Wagner fanatics arrived at the opera house in Budapest in time to attend a performance of Wagner’s five-hour opera Parsifal that began at one minute after midnight!

January 1, 1914 was the date on which the official copyright protection for Wagner’s last opera ran out. Before then, staged performances of Parsifal were forbidden to take place anywhere else than Wagner’s own festival theater in Bayreuth, Germany.

Parsifal had premiered there in 1882, but since international copyright laws proved unenforceable in many countries, some opera companies just ignored them. The Met in New York, for example, extensively renovated its stage machinery for the sole purpose of staging Parsifal on Christmas Eve in 1903, and there were also pirated pre-1914 performances in Canada, the Netherlands, Monaco, and Switzerland.

One interesting note about that midnight Parsifal in Budapest — the conductor was 25-year-old musical wizard Fritz Reiner, who would eventually be waving his wand — okay, his baton — to lead the Chicago Symphony.

Music Played in Today's Program

Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Parsifal excerpts; Welsh National Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Reginald Goodall, conductor; EMI 65665

On This Day

Births

• 1866 - Russian composer Vassili Sergeievitch Kalinnikov (Gregorian date: Jan. 13)

• 1923 - Jazz vibraphone virtuoso, Milt Jackson, in Detroit. He was a member of the famous Modern Jazz Quartet.

Deaths

• 1782 - German composer Johann Christian Bach, in London, 47. He was the youngest surviving son of J.S. Bach.

Premieres

• 1724 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 190 (Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied) performed (incomplete) on New Year’s Day as part of Bach’s first annual Sacred Cantata cycle in Leipzig (1723/24)

• 1725 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 41 (Jesu, nun sei Grepreiset) performed on New Year’s Day as part of Bach’s second annual Sacred Cantata cycle (1724/25)

• 1726 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 16 (Herr Gott, Dich Loben Wir) performed on New Year’s Day as part of Bach’s third annual Sacred Cantata cycle in Leipzig (1725/27)

• 1729 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 171 (Gott, wie Dein Name, so ist auch Dein Ruhm) probably performed in Leipzig on News Year’s Day as part of Bach’s fourth annual Sacred Cantata cycle (to texts by Christian Friedrich Henrici, a.k.a. Picander) during 1728/29

• 1735 - Bach: Part 4 (Fallt mit Danken, fallt mit Loben) of the six-part Christmas Oratorio, in Leipzig

• 1848 - Moniuszko: opera Halka (first version in two acts in a concert version), in Vilnius

• 1858 - Moniuszko: opera Halka (second version in four acts), in Warsaw at the Weilki Theater

• 1873 - Rimsky-Korsakov: opera The Maid of Pskov, in St. Petersburg (Gregorian date: Jan. 13)

• 1879 - Brahms: Violin Concerto, by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, with soloist Joseph Joachim and the composer conducting

• 1894 - Dvořák: String Quartet No. 12 and String Quintet No. 3 (both nicknamed the American), in Boston, by the Kneisel Quartet (and violist M Zach in the Quintet)

• 1942 - Chavez: Piano Concerto, in New York City, by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Dimtri Mitropoulos, with soloist Eugene List

• 1953 - Bloch: Suite Herbaïque in Chicago

• 1954 - Walter Piston: Fantasy for English horn and orchestra, by the Boston Symphony, Charles Munch conducting

Others

• 1585 - Composer Giovanni Gabrieli becomes the second organist at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice. His uncle, composer Andrea Gabrieli, is the first organist.

• 1791 - Haydn arrives in England for a series of concerts at the invitation of orchestral conductor and impresario Johann Salomon

• 1801 - Eight members of the U.S. Marine band perform the first official music at the unfinished Executive Mansion (the White House) at a New Year’s Day reception hosted by President and Mrs. John and Abigail Adams

• 1908 - Gustav Mahler makes his conducting debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, leading a performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.