Rhine Road Trip with Stephen Fry

From Bayreuth to Nuremberg, watch as Stephen Fry traveled through Germany in search of Wagner (with an excellent BBC blog post here "My journey with Stephen Fry and Wagner").

Part 2

Part 3

Click the link below for parts 4, 5, and 6!

Comments

[daland]

Great story indeed!
Extraordinarily balanced and honest.

[El Cajon]

It's posts like this that make Opera Chic creme-de-la-creme of opera blogs.

[Viva Verdi]

Brava for the posting! What a wonderful piece, maybe something that only the BBC can still do.....

[Nir]

Hello everyone, Even though I enjoyed Fry on Wagner, I was absolutely mesmerized with Opera Italia with Antonio Pappano.

I am actually not from the UK, but there is a VLC playlist which has live feed of UKTV.
It has 70 channels including all BBC channels.
I watched Opera Italia with it and it worked perfectly, excellent quality, pretty stable, and I am planning on watching the rest of the BBC opera season with it.
Here is a link:

http://rapidshare.com/files/391822729/BTV.rar

To use it, install the VLC program(which I am including), and start the BTV.
You will then see a list, choose the number of the channel you want to watch, and press Enter.
The program will do the rest.
You can watch the re-run of the first episode of Opera Italia on BBC4(number 7) on Saturday, May 29th 7 PM(UK time).
Have fun with the season(and with many more British channels like film four and even a James Bond channel!)

Just to make things even easier, here is a full list of the season(TV and radio):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/opera/broadcasts/index.shtml

[JanF]

Wonderful program. Thank you, OperaChic!
NIR, this seems to be for Windows only. Can't open the downloaded file with a .exe extension on a Mac.

[C'est Moi]

This is AWESOME.

[Joey]

OMG YES!
guess what some is doing on their lunch break!

[Ysabel]

Wow, wow, great documentary. I will try NIR's recommendation but am not very tech savvy. Appreciate any suggestions for other good opera documentaries.

[Nir]

@JANF:Sorry, Here is a version for Mac:

http://rapidshare.com/files/392302639/BTV_Mac.rar

[Col. James M. Rise]

In his book on psychology "The Peak Experiance Phd.Dr. Maslow said it so eloquantly! Listening to what was said while hearing Wagner's great mmost deeply emotionally moving,to me, melodious music in the back ground gave me one! I am indeed indebted to Mark Mandel for sending this (movie) to me! Thank you, viele danke, muchas gracious, tousen tak, shukran, cheche, domo arigato,takk aleke adeg, s'kal s'hadis s'bra, filos, I owe you. Jim

[frank]

Thank you Chiccy! But for you this would have passed me by.

[Bill Philin-Ploplis]

I am too old and penniless to make the pilgrimage to Bayreuth. I comfort myself that I wouldn't care for the casts and the wierd stagings. So, I really have enjoyed this exploration. Danke!

[Lindsay]

I haven't seen a picture of Stephen Fry in a while - he has lost a lot of weight and looks great!

[Gary Campbell]

Wonderfully stated from all of us Wagner Lovers/Haters. Somewhat simplified, but certainly better than most any other commentators. Fry is really remarkable! ALSO re: Dudamel: La Phil: Tommasini: "Sour Grapes" The audience was right!

[Bill Philin-Ploplis]

It suddenly struck me at the end how much Stephen Fry facially resembles Richard Wagner!

[Warren]

Absolutely brilliant. One of the best things I've seen on the composer. And nuanced, Fry explores the dark and the light, & weaves it together in a really moving & personal way.

Jeeves on Wagner, I must be in heaven (if only he'd taken Bertie Wooster with him to Bayreuth). All that's left for me is to curl up with some P.G. Wodehouse and put on Tristan.

[Joey]

There's no better way to spend a dreary California spring day, hungover, with coffee...thanks OC! I just finished it!
xoxo