Bayreuth

Arne Nordheim met Richard Wagner’s grandson, Wieland, who took over the Bayreuth Opera and in 1951 organised the first post-war Wagner Festival. Wieland Wagner took a shine to the young Norwegian and invited him to Bayreuth as one of the student musicians allowed to attend all the rehearsals and performances in exchange for help with organisational and technical work.

Thus, in the summer of 1953, Nordheim travelled to Bayreuth, in order to work at the festival and see productions of Wagner’s operas. At one rehearsal, he was asked to operate the bells in Act III of Parsifal. He generated their sound on thetrautonium, an electrophone invented between the wars by Friedrich Trautwein, which was first used at Bayreuth in 1952.

Interestingly, Nordheim rang the peace bell in Larvik in 1945, then eight years later operated the Graal bell in the opera house that during the war had been a cultural bastion of the Nazis. His stay in Bayreuth did not make him an advocate of Wagner, yet Nordheim’s tendency to create monumental orchestral and choral works may perhaps have something Wagnerian about it. (jc)