Legendary ‘Lohengrin’: David Breckbill appreciates a record of the historic Wieland Wagner production

This fourth release in the Bayreuth Festival’s historical series on Orfeo documents Wieland Wagner’s only Bayreuth production of Lohengrin, which ran for three consecutive festivals (1958–60) and then was revived in 1962. In this production Wieland (according to Andrew Porter) ‘rejected the historical and picturesque aspects of the piece [...]. The characters, impassive as chessmen, play out the myth in which Lohengrin is Perseus or St George, the rescuing hero; Elsa is Semele and Psyche, mortal beloved of a god, who destroys herself by wishing to look on divinity’.