Wagner in Venice (2013)

The photographic art of Carlo Naya, as preserved in surprisingly beautiful glass negatives, sets the scene for Richard Wagner's Venice. In a recording studio, an actor supplies the voice for Wagner's own narrative of the rediscovered first symphony. In the account written a few weeks before his death in the city on 13 February 1883, the composer describes a performance of the symphony by an orchestra made up of the teachers and students of the Venice Conservatory (the Liceo Musicale Benedetto Marcello). The black shape of a piano glides up the Grand Canal and is disembarked at the Palazzo Malipiero, a palace Wagner frequented. As notes float through the rooms, an actress's voice reading the pages of Cosima Wagner's diary interweaves with the memoirs of Giuseppe Norlenghi, who gathered the impressions of the leading players at the historic concert. A pianist introduces and performs some excerpts from the Beethoven-like symphony, revealing how this youthful work is the foundation stone for an architecture that eventually towered up into Tristan, Götterdämmerung and Parsifal.