Seht Ihr’s, Freunde? Rachel Nicholls finds the late Stephen Gould’s book to be a fitting legacy

On my bookshelves, Wagner proliferates – and not just the scores. People give me extensive Wagner-related reading as presents, so I own a great many books by Wagner, about Wagner, about Wagner’s women, about Wagner’s operas and about his politics. All are fascinating, though what I mainly do in preparing to sing Wagner is to delve into the characters and spend time with the text and the music, rather than researching the man who wrote them. But I have plunged into all of my beautiful, shiny (and sometimes fourth-hand and tatty) books trying to glean every single bit of information about how the pieces were performed, and about the singers who sang the roles. I am a singing (Wagner) detective collecting precious nuggets of knowledge. Imagine my delight, therefore, in being asked to review Stephen Gould’s Performing Wagner: A Singer’s Perspective on the Major Tenor Roles – a whole book dedicated to the subject area that I love so much.