A time for reflection

As any regular opera-goer knows, next year is uniquely one for three major operatic centenaries, two of them, Verdi’s and Wagner’s, bicentenaries, while Britten was born only 100 years ago, but seems to have been dead for a very long time. So we can expect numerous series — of performances, recordings, broadcast radio and TV features — and probably quite a few biographies and critical studies. Indeed they have already got under way in Wagner’s case, with several new German biographies, while the prominent conductor Christian Thielemann has just given his account of Mein Leben mit Wagner, a book and CD;  Marek Janowski, another of today’s leading Wagner conductors, is almost midway through a series of recordings of all the mature operas, CD only, since, like me, Janowski finds most contemporary productions of Wagner impertinent, ugly and distracting. The Verdi and Britten industries have so far been less pressing, but no doubt will get under way in the next few months.