Siegfried Wagner's entire life (1869-1930) was devoted to his famous father, Richard. Initially, Siegfried seemed to be more interested in architecture, but from 1892 he decided to focus entirely on music. He studied composition, learned to conduct and conducted a performance in Bayreuth for the first time in 1896. In 1907 Siegfried took over the overall management of the Festival, which he retained
… until his death. The constant confrontation with the works of his father did not appear to be an obstacle to his own compositional ambitions. It was unfortunate, however, that Siegfried focused almost exclusively on opera, the genre in which his father excelled. This, of course, provoked comparisons that had to turn out to be against Siegfried's disadvantage. That his operas are almost forgotten, curiously, however, is also due to the attitude of the Wagner family, for they preferred to remain silent about his works, focusing exclusively on the pieces of Siegfried's father. Nota bene his widow, Winifred Wagner, infamous for her Nazi sympathies, has regularly tried to prevent performances of Siegfried's works. As a result, the exploration of Siegfried's oeuvre could not be started until after her death. This CD by Marco Polo includes his Bruder Lustig, a work that was completed in 1905. The somewhat confused story - just like his father Siegfried wrote his own libretti - revolves around the adventures of the title character and is set in the Middle Ages. The act is full of emphatic symbolism, as is almost always the case with Siegfried's operas, and the idiom used is a combination of the soft Wagnerian hues of Humperdinck and French influences. The whole thing is undeniably euphonious and effective, but nevertheless the tension subsides a bit more than once. The vocal cast, the Hagen Theater Chorus and the Hagen Philharmonic Orchestra, led by George Fritzsch, sign up for a reasonable performance. (JvG)more