Reginald Goodall

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Sir Reginald Goodall (born July 13, 1901 in Lincoln ; † May 5, 1990 in London ) was an important English conductor , especially valued for his Wagner interpretations .

Life

Reginald Goodall was born in Lincoln in 1901 as the son of the piano teacher, organist and choir director Albert Edward Goodall and his wife Adelaide (née Jones). He spent most of his childhood in Canada . After returning to England he studied piano , organ and conducting at the Royal College of Music in London from 1925 , where he met Benjamin Britten, among others . After his training he worked as a cantor at the Church of St. Alban the Martyr in the London borough of High Holborn. With the local boys' choir he performed sacred works by Anton Bruckner , some of which were premiered in English. During the Second World War , with the interruption of a brief military service, he led the Wessex Philharmonic Orchestra, a touring orchestra that he founded and which no longer exists, with which he performed a wide range of classical orchestral literature and works by contemporary British composers.

Goodall did not become known to a wider public until after World War II , when he conducted the world premiere of Britten's Peter Grimes at London's Sadler's Wells Opera in 1945 . Parts of this production were recorded by the BBC . After the sensational success of Britten's first opera, Goodall got an engagement as Kapellmeister and répétiteur at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. In the 1940s and 1950s he conducted a number of repertoire performances and assisted well-known conductors such as Karl Rankl , Thomas Beecham and Rudolf Kempe . He also supported Erich Kleiber in preparing for the England premiere of Bergs Wozzeck . Traveling to Germany enabled him to make contact with Wilhelm Furtwängler , Clemens Krauss and Hans Knappertsbusch , who had a decisive influence on his later interpretations of Wagner.

In 1962 Georg Solti became general music director at the Royal Opera House . Since he valued Goodall as a répétiteur, but not as a conductor, Goodall conducted no more performances from then on. Instead, he took on further assistance, especially with the elderly Otto Klemperer , whose rehearsal work he did for the most part.

Although everything in the late 1960s indicated that Goodall's conducting career was over, in 1967 he received an offer from Sadler's Wells Opera to conduct a production of Wagner's Meistersingers von Nürnberg , in English. The 66-year-old conductor took the opportunity to rehearse an opera performance according to his own ideas for the first time, and achieved a sensational success with the "Meistersinger". As a result, the English National Opera performed a new production of the entire Ring des Nibelungen in English, which Goodall met with great approval from the audience and critics, and the recordings of which were distributed worldwide. This was followed by performances by Tristan and Isolde and Parsifal at Covent Garden. Towards the end of his life (from 1979) he conducted further Wagner performances at the Welsh National Opera in Cardiff. This resulted in two German-language recordings of "Tristan und Isolde" and "Parsifal", which also received worldwide attention.

Goodall conducted until old age at the English National Opera and the Welsh National Opera. In the 1970s there were also a few symphony concerts with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, where he conducted Bruckner's late symphonies, among other things. His exceptionally shy and reserved demeanor and his enormous rehearsal demands thwarted a career outside of Great Britain. Nevertheless, Goodall is now considered one of the most important conductors of the 20th century.