n Japan they buy each ticket and they come from their work directly to the concert.  That’s the reason that their concerts start at six forty-five in the afternoon.  Then they have so long ways home, mostly one and a half or two hours.  So the concert must be ending at nine o’clock so it’s possible for them to go home.

BD:    Do they like Wagner over there, too?

FL:    Oh yes.  They like all our music.  One very clever musician said to me, “We like all of this, but we have it a little bit of difficulty with Schumann.”  With Schubert, not, but Schumann they were puzzled.  Bruckner and Brahms and Strauss and all this is normal for them.

BD:    I wonder what their problem is with Schumann?

FL:    I don’t know.  I don’t understand, and it must be a special thing.  I can do from Bach to the modern things.  In the last year I have done the Sixth Symphony by Karl Amadeus Hartmann.  Nobody knows who it is, but this is one of the greatest composers from our century.   He has now been gone for almost twenty years, and was only fifty-six when he died.  He’s from München, like a great many others including Reger.  He has eight symphonies.  Last year I conducted five symphonies from the eight.

BD:    Are they tonal?

FL:    They are between Reger and Stravinsky, but on the Bavarian side.  The Sixth Symphony was the first one I did in Japan.  It takes a very big orchestra with twelve percussion, but it is a fantastic thing.  At first they said to me, [sadly] “This is a half-program, at twenty-five minutes.  Is it not too much?

BD:    Let’s talk about life in the opera house.  You were the Music Director in Zurich?

FL:    Yes, until last year.  I am finished then, and I am guest conductor in Zurich for the next five years, but I stopped being Director.  I’ve now done forty years as Director of a great institute, and it’s enough, I think.  [Both laugh]  Now I’m free for all my other things.

BD:    When you’re running an opera house, how much do the financial and day-to-day responsibilities dictate the artistic decisions that you have to make?

FL:    In Stuttgart, where I was over twenty years, it was very much to do all the things with money and with engagements and so on.  Not so in Zurich.  When I was coming there, I said, “I don’t like to sit from morning to evening in an office.”  There they ask me to do more, but they do many more things.  I don’t know how much a singer might get for a performance, but if I am interested they might say, “No, it’s not possible because they are too expensive.”  Now I do not have to deal with that.  But you first asked about the future of opera.  When I was a boy of fourteen, they asked me what I would like to do, and I said, “I would like to be director of opera house.”  They said to me, “My boy, this is the end.  Opera is finished now.  You are at an age where it is too late.”

BD:    [Surprised]  Opera was declared dead then???

FL:    But you see, it’s not finished.  After the war it was going up more and more and more.   Now, in the moment it is a little bit going down, but this is always the same with the arts.  It’s going down and up and down and up.  It was this way from the beginning.  From 1810, the time of Meyerbeer, it was a great thing.  Then it was going down.  Then came Wagner.  It was a scandal at first, but then was the great era of Mahler.  So was it always and so is it now.   Naturally it is a question of money.  It must be that the state gives half and the private gives half.  Then you can work five or six months and give more works.  We have in Zurich and in all the opera houses in Germany, three hundred twenty performances each year.  Each day and Sunday very often two times.  You see opera is a really popular thing.

BD:    Here in Chicago, Ardis Krainik said that she could sell another twenty weeks of opera, but then the deficit would be so high that she couldn’t work with it.

FL:    Yes.  This is it.  The answer is a question of money all the time in opera.  Not the other theater, but in opera.  They must have the orchestra, of course, and ballet and then all the other things.  So in all time, it’s a question of money.  When the times are better, then opera was higher, and when it was going down the opera also goes down.

BD:    So it fluctuates with the tenor of the times?

FL:    Yes, very much.  I see how it is, how normal it is to play opera each night.  It’s always sold out.   In Zurich or in German opera houses, always sold out.  And it’s expensive now with millions going into deficit.  This is the situation of the opera, I think.

BD:    Let’s talk a bit about Wagner.  Have you conducted all ten major works?

FL:    All the ten, yes, but not the eleventh, not Rienzi.  I don’t like it.  I remember I have done all the Wagner things with Wieland Wagner as stage master, and then came one time Rienzi, and I said, “Hm-mm, not with me.”  I don’t like Meyerbeer either, and Rienzi is very much this typical great opera style.

BD:    Sure.  It’s a wonderful Meyerbeer opera!  [Both laugh]

FL:    Yes.  Very good.  But the other ten are enough.  I have done seventy times the Ring.

BD:    Seventy full Rings?

FL:    Yes, full Rings and separate Walküres and Götterdämmerungs, naturally.

BD:    When you did the Ring here in Chicago, it was over four years.  Is that a cycle, or is that really just separate pieces?

FL:    This is more separate pieces.  I have done the Ring in Buenos Aires maybe fifteen or sixteen years ago, and in two months I was working and did it six times.  It was one of the biggest successes in my life.  I think it is better to see the four works together.

BD:    What is the ideal spacing?  Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday?

FL:    Normally in the old time it was Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday.  This was normal.  Before the Götterdämmerung a little bit of time, and before Siegfried, too.  Only Rheingold and Walküre were back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday.  A conductor has to stand there for eighteen hours.

BD:    When someone is going to see the Ring on Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday, should they go to see other things in between?

FL:    Yes, sure.  For a great opera house, a Ring is a normal thing.

BD:    But I mean for the public.  If I’m in the midst of the Ring, should I not interrupt it for another opera?

FL:    Better only the Ring.  But there are other people for Bohème and Butterfly.  For a true Wagnerian, it’s a special thing.  Tristan is, too.  I’m sure some of those who like Butterfly don’t like to go to Tristan.   For me, it is not so.  I am going to the Tosca, too, and it is for me perfect.  I can go to the works of another composer.  I can hear them all.

BD:    Would you conduct another work in the middle of a Ring?

FL:    No.  It’s too much, because in the morning you have your rehearsal, and in the evening you have your performance.  That’s too much.  I think there was one time in my life that in the last moment the conductor was sick and I had to do Carmen in between.  But this is more possible with Carmen.  It is a classical thing, so it was not a problem.

BD:    Do you ever approve of cuts in the Wagner operas?

FL:    I hate the cuts in Meistersinger, Tristan, the Ring and Parsifal.  For me, they must be done without cuts.  In this Tristan we are doing just one cut.  It is for the singer of Tristan, otherwise it would be too much.  In the Meistersinger here a few years ago there were none, and with the Ring, too.  The Siegfried was Jean Cox.  I have done it with him in München, too, and it’s hard work for the tenor.  In Stuttgart, in the great time of Stuttgart’s opera house, Wolfgang Windgassen was singing the Loge, the Sigmund and the two Siegfrieds.

BD:    Is that too much to do all four of those in a cycle?

FL:    It is very much.  Yes.  You must know how to sing opera.

BD:    Is it hard on the audience to see the same singer in different roles?

FL:    No, it’s not.  Mostly, it’s different singers for the Loge and for the Siegmund, but I don’t understand that.  Wagner is a special thing.  Wagner was maybe the greatest man for music theater in the last century, and this is like Verdi.  You must not only speak always of Verdi.  It’s not necessary.  Even in the Falstaff, this is a great musical theater.

BD:    It seems that musicians love Falstaff more than the public.

FL:    Yes.  Absolutely, but this is a fantasy.  It is also like a symphony.  The man was eighty years old when he wrote it.   We must be happy that we have all the older times of men who are composers and painters and all the arts.

BD:    Is there any composer at all in the history of music that comes close to being the same level as Wagner for you?

FL:    Yes.  First, number one is Mozart.  It’s that way for life.  If you are young, if you are old, the first man is always Mozart.  I have now conducted The Magic Flute two hundred fifty times, and it is always wonderful like the first!  I have done more than two hundred performances of Figaro, and so on.  It is better and better.  It’s a wonder.  For the music theater, not the symphony, then came Wagner and Strauss on the German side, and on the other side is for me Rossini and Verdi and Puccini.  All three.  It is fantastic that we always have this; it’s a great thing.  I have not conducted all of the Strauss.  Strauss has fifteen operas, and I have done nine from the fifteen.  It’s a pleasure.  It’s not work, it’s a pleasure.

BD:    Is there ever a case where it would be good to do something else on the evening’s program with either Salome or Elektra?

FL:    How do you mean?

BD:    A ballet, intermission, Salome, or another opera, intermission, Salome.

FL:    Alone.  Strauss told me — he was very old and I was very young — in Buenos Aires he conducted in the afternoon Salome and then the evening Elektra.  This was normal for them.

BD:    That sounds like suicide.  [Laughs]

FL:    Yes.  But one hour forty minutes is enough.

BD:    At the Metropolitan in the forties, they used to do Gianni Schicchi, intermission, Salome.

FL:    Yes, yes.  Terrible!  I have done in San Francisco Carmina Burana, interval, and Gianni Schicchi.  It was not so terrible, but I don’t like this.

BD:    Have you ever done all three of the Trittico in the evening?

FL:    No, only two.   Not Suor Angelica.

BD:    So, Il Tabarro, interval, Gianni Schicchi?

FL:    Yes.  It’s too much.  It’s very long with the three, and the Sister Angelica is not the best.  Gianni Schicchi is the highest, better than the Tabarro, I think.

BD:    When you do The Flying Dutchman, do you do it in one piece or three?

FL:    I do The Flying Dutchman in Zurich in one.  Some years I cannot do it because I have no time, and I don’t know if they do it in three or one.  In one it is too long, but in three acts it is also not the best because if you do an interval after the second act the third is too short.  But if you only do it after the first act, then it’s second part too long.  The best is in one.  It’s two hours and twenty-six minutes.  It’s enough. 

BD:    What about Capriccio?  Do you do that in one piece or two?

FL:    In two.  You see, I halved Strauss.  He has it written in one because it was the high time in the war, and the air raids came mostly in the evening at ten o’clock.  So we start at six o’clock and do it in one piece and have no interval.  The people can go home and get in the cellar.  This was the reason.  After the war, the old master said to the conductor Robert Hager, who was a very good friend of mine, “Please, could you do a small ending and a small new beginning?”  So he did, and he added sixteen bars to end the first part and eight bars to begin the second part.  This is the form and I do it always now.  They did it this way in Munich and later elsewhere.  So I do it in two acts.  It’s better.  It’s too long.  It’s two hours and forty minutes, so in one it’s too much.

BD:    Yet, we can sit through Rheingold which is about the same.

FL:    Yes, but you have many things to see in Rheingold.  In Capriccio, you have only the play and they speak together.  Next June I will do it in concert broadcast from Paris.  Radio Franҫaise asked me to do it, and one week later a concert with works only from Strauss.  There I do it with the interval and a little bit shorter with cuts, but not too much.  Speaking with Strauss, he knows the cuts.  He found it very good.

BD:    Are there cuts in Rosenkavalier?

FL:    No.  He didn’t like cuts there.  He said to me, “One time in my life, I’d like to hear the third act without cuts.”  I never in my life conduct without cuts because the singers don’t know it.

BD:    [With a gentle nudge]  Can’t you insist? 

FL:    [Smiles]  Yes, but you must have a fantastic, great stage master to make sure that you’re not feeling how long it is.  Most people find the third act of Rosenkavalier starts only with the ending, with the three sopranos, and what comes before this is not important.

BD:    [Gently protesting]  Oh, but it’s such fun!

FL:    I do the first and second act without cuts and in the third act I take something out from the beginning.

BD:    Tell me about Arabella.  Is this as strong a work as Rosenkavalier?

FL:    No.  We have a terrible word, it is the Sklerosenkavalier.  It means it is like Rosenkavalier but a little bit less.

BD:    A little weaker?

FL:    Yes.  But I have done Arabella very often in the last two years, and it is hard.  The second act is going down, but the first and the third act are fantastic.  I like it very much.  They are going to do it here in two years.

BD:    Will you conduct?

FL:    No.  I cannot.  I was asked too late.  [Note: The production at Lyric Opera in 1984 would have Kiri Te Kanawa in the title role, and be conducted by Sir John Pritchard.  To read my interview with those two, click here.]  I cannot do the Flying Dutchman next season, but I will see what the next possible work might be.  I hope always for Parsifal. 

BD:    Someone once said that Der Rosenkavalier stands in relation to Figaro as Die Frau ohne Schatten stands to The Magic Flute.  Do you agree with this?

FL:    No!  Never.  Mozart is so a separate thing.  Rosenkavalier is so fantastic a thing, it is separate.  It stands alone.  If you read or if you hear the words without music, it’s fantastic, too.  I love Frau ohne Schatten very, very much.  Strauss said to me, “This is the best,” and I said, “No, Salome and Elektra.?”  He said to me, “Yes, maybe.  They are such crazy women.”  [Laughs]  But Frau ohne Schatten was his favorite.

BD:    Have you done Daphne?

FL:    Yes.  This is a wonderful opera.  It is so difficult because you must have two first-class tenors.  I remember one in Vienna with Wunderlich and King when they were young.  It is very difficult, also, for the Daphne to sing.  The words are not Hofmannsthal.

BD:    Was Strauss more inspired by the Hofmannsthal?

FL:    Much more!  Or if he wrote the words by himself.

BD:    As in Intermezzo?

FL:    Yes, like Intermezzo or with Clemens Krauss, like Capriccio.  This was a wedding.  The three things he did with Gregor

Lohengrin and Tannhäuser.  Are these weaker works, or are they just not understood as much?

FL:    I don’t know.  For me, Wagner begins with Tristan, then Meistersinger, Ring and Parsifal, although I have conducted Lohengrin more than hundred times.  It is a fantastic work.  It is the last normal, romantic opera, but the real Wagner is from Tristan to Parsifal.  In the Tannhäuser, if you do the Dresden version, then it is not enough.  If you do the version from Paris, then it’s too much in the beginning and after that it’s too thin.  It’s a problem. 

BD:    So when you do Tannhäuser, which version do you do

BD:    Tell me about your relationship with Carl Orff.

FL:    [Smiles, as he reminisces about many diverse aspects of his friendship]  This is such a special thing.  I have conducted all the stage works that he has written.  I think there are twelve.  The friendship began in ’43 and ended with his death [March 29, 1982].  He was very charming in our last conversation on the telephone a short time before he died.  He was very clever, and what we call ‘wach’ (awake), but toward the end he didn’t remember things so well.  He called me twice many days, mornings and evenings, because he had forgotten that he called me in the morning.  But in the evening he was very normal.  He would ask, “Oh, this morning I telephoned?” and I would say yes because he didn’t know.  But this was one of the greatest men in our century.  First with the Schulwerk... you know there is the Orff Institute in Salzburg, and many, many schools in the world including here in the States learn this.  I found the children are better if they learn of Schulwerk when they make music.  They may not be musicians later, but if they must do things with their hands and with feet, from nursery at three years, they start with this.  I found the enormous advantage to this.  Maybe ten years or twelve years ago, Orff was invited to Tokyo.  When he arrived, he said to his wife, “I’m sure there is a political man on our plane.  Look here at the red carpet,

46, then we were always together.  I made my first performances of Die Kluge, Carmina Burana, Catulli Carmina, and Triumph of Aphrodite and Bernauerin in Munich, and then I did all his works.

BD:    You have also recorded many of these works.

FL:    On recording for me I have Antigonae.  This is from a long time ago, maybe twelve years.  And yes, I have recorded the three

BD:    Let me ask you about performers.  Are singers today better or worse than singers of twenty, thirty, forty years ago?

FL:    I think the voices are all the time better, but the technique and the personality on stage is now much more.  It’s absolutely another type of singer.  I remember when I was a boy the great singer Mafalda Salvatini and also many Italian singers.  Among the Wagner singers there was Lauritz Melchior, who was Danish.  This was a type from this time, and is not possible now.  It is another type and I feel it is no more.  Today they have not so much voice, but they can sing more.

BD:    So they can overcome what they lack and still perform the heavy roles?

FL:    Yes.  Back then, all that was going on stage was the normal voice, and this was enough.  That was all.  During that time, the production, the stage master, the conductor was nothing; only the singers.  Now is it teamwork, mostly.

BD:    How much does the production

This interview was recorded at his hotel in Chicago on September 24, 1982.  Portions were transcribed and published in Wagner News in January, 1983.  Portions were also used (with recordings) on WNIB in 1987, 1992, 1993, 1995, and 1997.  A fresh transcript was made, and it was posted on this website in 2013.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.

Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM.