Discussion with Dr Michael Downes
Discussion with Dr Michael Downes, Director of Music at the University of St Andrews
In December, I reviewed the new book about Richard Wagner’s ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’, Story of the Century, by Michael Downes, the Director of Music at the University of St Andrews, and I thought it might be interesting to follow that up with a more in depth look at the book and have a chat about music in general. I was appointed Honorary Professor of Singing at St Andrews by Dr Downes in 2011, and worked closely with him for about 10 years, encouraging young singers to emerge from the brilliant undergraduate population of the university, with masterclasses, coaching and an annual fully-staged opera in the Byre Theatre. My various medical problems in 2018/19, and a need for a change of emphasis, resulted in the appointment of a new professor, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time at St Andrews, especially as I am myself an alumnus of that great and venerable institution. I have kept in touch with Dr Downes, and it was with great pleasure that I was able to invite him to my home in Edinburgh for a recorded conversation about his new book, and all things Wagnerian.
We touched on many other related subjects, and this article is the result.
Michael Downes completed his first degree at King’s College, Cambridge, in English Literature, and proceeded to take a Masters Degree on Shostakovich, having switched to Music. His PHD on Debussy, particularly the composer’s writings on music, was obtained at Sussex University. A cellist and conductor, Dr Downes held the post of Director of Music at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, before being appointed as Director of Music at St Andrews University in 2008, a position he still holds.
I met him when I was appointed Honorary Professor of Singing at St Andrews three years later, and we worked together very successfully for the following 8 years. I was still fully committed to my career as an international opera singer, a career I had been pursuing since the early 1980s, but whenever I was back in Edinburgh, I was rarely working, and could drive up to St Andrews to coach and mentor the young undergraduate and postgraduate singers. We collaborated on several productions of operas in the Byre Theatre, Michael as conductor and myself as vocal and interpretative coach. My very first appearance on an operatic stage had taken place in 1978 in the Byre Theatre, just after I graduated myself from St Andrews in French and Mediaeval History, in a double bill of Rousseau’s ‘Le Devin du Village’ and Mozart’s ‘Bastien und Bastienne’. In a delightful quirk of fate and serendipity, I shall be appearing in a concert at Dalkeith Palace in August 2025, singing excerpts from those operas which I had sung all those years ago in St Andrews (look out for more details on the EMR later in the year).
Dr Downes has just published a new book, ‘Story of the Century’ (Faber), which I reviewed on the EMR in December. I started by asking about his own experience of the Ring, which was quite different from my own. I was lucky enough to be taken to the very first full cycle put on by Scottish Opera back in 1971, when I was still at school. It was a life changing experience for me, as I had never heard this kind of music before. I remember thinking at the end of each act that I had just heard the greatest music ever written, and I was desperate to hear and see more. There were some great singers – David Ward as Wotan (a native of Dumbarton), Helga Dernesch as Brünnhilde (who had just recorded the role for Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic), Charles Craig as Siegmund and Bill McCue as Fasolt – with Sir Alexander Gibson conducting and Peter Ebert directing. One of my schoolfriends who travelled to Glasgow to see the Ring was Donald Runnicles, now one of the finest Wagner conductors in the world. The production was modern for its time with subtle screen projections, but clearly set in the Norse world envisaged by Wagner.
Michael’s first Ring opera was at Covent Garden, in 1995, the Richard Jones production of ‘Götterdämmerung’ conducted by Bernard Haitink. This was notoriously a production where director and conductor were at loggerheads for much of the rehearsal period, and Jones himself was not entirely happy with it. However, some people liked it, and Michael was one of them, and this seems to have been the template for his understanding and enjoyment of the Tetralogy ever since. I worked with Richard Jones on a couple of productions in my career, and must confess to having found him hard work. He was one of those Wunderkind directors who seemed to court controversy at every turn, but there is no denying that he is a very brilliant chap and did come up with some fascinating productions. My roles with him were too small to be important, and I’m not sure he knew who I was at the time!
What is clear from our discussions is that Michael is far more open to directors interpreting the Ring than I am, and also that he considers those interpretations just as valid as the composers’ thoughts. I have had a look at contemporary reviews of the Richard Jones ‘Götterdämmerung’, which unsurprisingly evinced polarised views from the critics and the audiences. It’s amusing to think that that 1995 production would probably now be considered relatively modest and almost old fashioned. What is also very clear is that both our first direct experiences of the Ring were musically superb, me with Alexander Gibson and Michael with the marvellous Bernard Haitink. who, although not a natural man of the theatre, was truly an expert in late Romantic Teutonic music, fully understanding the works of Bruckner, Mahler and Wagner. In that respect, his natural successor is that very schoolboy with whom I first experienced the Ring, now Sir Donald Runnicles.
Anyway, our introductions to the Ring were clearly quite different, and so Michael and I talked for some time about how productions of the operas have developed over the years. In fact this is one of the major strands of the book, and so we had a very interesting conversation, coming as it were from quite opposite points of view. Dear reader, no one was injured in this discussion, and indeed we had a most enjoyable chat. I suppose it was inevitable, in that I was coming from the viewpoint of a singer, whereas Michael was speaking for the audience and the musicologist.
Interestingly, it was a production in Berlin conducted by that selfsame Donald Runnicles that found us both at our most extreme and distant points of understanding. The production by the Norwegian director, Stefan Herheim, at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, which I have not seen, was written about at some length in Michael’s book, and it is clear that he was profoundly moved and affected by it. I recently read an interview with Herheim in which he stated: “Opera for me is not about entertaining people or giving them a good time. It is about bringing us together to confront our most pressing and dreadful problems.” He doesn’t present the opera that the libretto specifies in a realistic or literal fashion, but instead builds a Meta-Opera, a critical commentary on the text developed through long discussions. Michael and I had an interesting chat, but it was clear that we were rarely going to be in much agreement about opera productions.
Fortunately, there were plenty other subjects to talk about, not least the very composition which is the subject of Michael’s book, ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’. I asked Michael how the book had come about. He had been commissioned some time ago by Faber to translate a book about Wagner’s family by Wagner’s great grand-daughter, Nike Wagner, the daughter of the great director of the 1950s, Wieland. She and her cousin Eva, daughter of Wolfgang, the other grandson, who I knew when she was an artistic consultant in London, were engaged in heavy machinations around the future of the Bayreuth Festival, a saga offering close comparisons to that of the Roy family in Succession!
Michael’s translation of Nike’s book, working via a French translation, was seen as a great success, and on the strength of that, he pitched the idea of this book to Faber, who were happy to proceed, as they realised there was a gap in the market. There have been countless books about Wagner and almost as many about his operas, but this idea of a sort of biography of the Ring Cycle was completely new, following its journey from an embryonic project through revolution, bankruptcy, fierce opposition, miraculous luck, traumatic relationships, logistical problems, triumphant success, stagnation, Nazi shame, post-war redemption, reinvention, modern controversy and continuing relevance. Writing in a continuous present tense was bold, but I think it enhances the story further, and I have rarely read such a gripping piece of non-fiction.
The subject is endlessly fascinating, and Wagner himself was one of the most extraordinary figures in history, not just musical history. His megalomania, his politics, his restless questioning, his awful anti-Semitism, his vision – it’s just amazing. He wrote all his own texts, he transformed harmony and orchestration, and he stipulated precisely how he wanted his operas to look. Michael made the valid point that Wagner’s meticulous stage directions made it much harder for future directors to put their own interpretation on the operas. Wagner even designed a theatre at Bayreuth which would make his music sound spectacular. I have been there myself, as a recipient of the 1990 Wagner Society Bursary, and can attest to the luminosity of the sound and the clarity of the acoustics which allow the singers to ride comfortably over even the loudest orchestra.
Michael and I discussed many aspects of the sound, and marvelled together at the way Wagner somehow managed to find financial support for his very expensive ideas every time it seemed as if a brick wall had been blocking the way forward. The only comparable composer in our opinion was Hector Berlioz, an extraordinary figure in 19th century music, but a mere novice in megalomania!
We discussed the enormous luck that Wagner had in finding a willing backer in King Ludwig of Bavaria, although even he could not fully finance all Wagner’s ideas and plans, and Michael pointed out, as he has done in the book, how somehow, Wagner was always able to find someone who could rescue him financially. He must have driven everyone mad, as he was a world champion at running up debts, living way beyond his means for most of his life. The extraordinary thing was that he did find benefactors and backers, despite being an obnoxious creep, a serial womaniser and a blatant liar. Women loved him, and it can’t just have been about the music.
Speaking of music, Michael and I had a digression about what we liked, and it seems we share similar tastes. Berlioz came up again, and it transpired that he had heard me singing the Ghost of Hector in ‘Les Troyens’ at the Barbican with the LSO and Sir Colin Davis in 1993. We share a love of Mahler and Debussy, although he has less experience with Bruckner. We agreed that his star is not in the ascendant at the moment, and, despite last year being his bicentenary, very little Bruckner has been heard in Scotland recently, a cause for much sadness on my part.
Returning to Story of the Century, we talked about the second part of the book where Michael traces the performing history of the Ring from the first cycle in 1876 right through to his experiences with the Berlin Herheim production. It is fascinating to follow the story from the beginning. The original Festival at Bayreuth was the most astonishing event. Kings and princes, duchesses and princesses, presidents and prime ministers, high society, all came to this little town in northern Bavaria, about the size of Stirling, with a population of just under 20,000. In addition, many of the greatest composers and musicians of the day attended the first cycle, including Bruckner, Grieg, Liszt, Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky, and many more famous people like Nietzsche came too. Tchaikovsky wrote a famous diary for a Russian newspaper, moaning about the impossibility of finding a drink, let alone a meal, and it was clear that the music didn’t inspire him at all!
The book details the first production, with Wagner’s myriad stage directions, and then goes on to relate important events in the work’s journey, not shying away from Hitler’s obsession with the music, and then how Wieland Wagner re-established the cycle after WW2, with clarity and symbolism. I must confess that Wieland’s is the production I would have loved to see, not just for the apparent perfection of the design and the story-telling, but also because my own mentor, Hans Hotter, was the Wotan at that time. I have heard the recordings made during the 50s in Bayreth, live in the theatre with, mostly, Hans Knappertsbusch conducting, but I would have loved to see the staging as well. The standard of singing was staggering with Hotter, Astrid Varnay, Leonie Rysanek, Wolfgang Windgassen, Rita Gorr, Jon Vickers, Gustav Neidlinger and Josef Greindl dominating the proceedings in a way not heard since then.
Michael cleverly lists the Decca recording of the Ring under Georg Solti and produced by John Culshaw in the late 50s and early 60s as a major landmark in the Ring’s story. This was the first studio recording of the work, in full living stereo, using all the modern recording tricks to make the Ring sound even nearer to Wagner’s original ideas than ever. It was where I learned the Ring, and I still listen to it 60 years later as my go-to version. Hotter was slightly past his best but still streets ahead of any other interpretation, and Nilsson, Windgassen, Ludwig, Frick, Neidlinger and Fischer-Dieskau were peerless.
He goes on to describe the famous/notorious Chéreau Ring of 1976 (the Centenary Ring), a production which was hugely controversial at first, but now seems almost a nostalgic throwback. I must confess that I have never been a huge fan of the idea of reinterpreting the story as a sort of commentary on the industrialisation of Europe, but the production is at least consistent within its own context, I think. As I wrote earlier, our discussion reached a certain impasse with more modern productions, especially the Herheim version, but there’s a place for all interpretations, and Michael is quite precise in his descriptions. Let’s just say we agreed to disagree!
Our chat ended with a look at how music is being taught and integrated into university life, specifically at St Andrews, and there is no doubt that Dr Downes’ tenure has seen a huge development in musical provision. I would hope that my spell as Professor of Singing contributed to the success of the department, but he has been the driving force. The opening of the Laidlaw Music Centre in 2022, the first building dedicated to music in the 600 year history of the venerable university, was a fantastic achievement with state of the art practice rooms, super-modern recording facilities and, in the McPherson Room, the first hall in the world with a reverberation chamber.
The only fly in the ointment is that the recent work on the Younger Graduation Hall, where I both graduated and sang many wonderful concerts, is now no longer used for music; it seems that the recent refurbishment to make it more suitable as a lecture theatre has had a detrimental effect on its previously excellent acoustics, and musicians both within and outside the University have found it such a difficult place to perform in since the refurbishment that they have chosen to take concerts elsewhere. Without the Younger as a venue for music, St Andrews has been left without a proper large concert hall, and the University now has to use Holy Trinity Church for choral concerts, and the visits of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and, otherwise, to decamp to the Caird Hall in Dundee, 14 miles away. The Caird is a fantastic hall, modelled on the Musikverein in Vienna, but it’s clearly not in St Andrews. Michael and I both hope that it will be possible for something to be done about this situation in the future.
It only remains for me to thank Michael Downes for his co-operation in this interview, and to encourage you to read his new book, Story of the Century, published by Faber, and to support music at St Andrews University over the coming years.
