Patrick Carnegy. Wagner’s Theatre: In Search of a Legacy

As former assistant editor of the Times Literary Supplement, former radio broadcaster, founding member of the Bayreuth International Arts Centre and the Royal Opera House’s first dramaturg, Patrick Carnegy has a lifetime of work in music, literature, opera and Wagner to share with his readers, which is exactly what he does in his new book Wagner’s Theatre: In Search of a Legacy. In chapter 13, an essay responding to Susie Gilbert’s 2009 Opera for Everybody: The Story of English National Opera, Carnegy recounts the story of his first experience of live opera in 1959, when he cycled twelve miles to see the English National Opera perform Tannhäuser at the Coventry Theatre, chatted afterwards with conductor Colin Davis in the theatre bar and, upon discovering that Davis had forgotten his Oedipus Rex score and was supposed to be rehearsing the work while he was there, cycled over the next day to lend him his own copy. Anecdotes like this can be found throughout the book and Carnegy’s ability to incorporate his personal experience as both audience member and dramaturg into his writing about opera and Wagner is one of the book’s most successful features. His account of the rollercoaster ride of the Royal Opera House, for example, during and after his tenure as dramaturg in the 1980s, contains real insights into the inner workings of these kinds of institutions, and the sorts of challenges they face even today.