'Wir welken und sterben dahinnen': Carrie Pringle and the solo Flowermaidens of 1882

Musical Times, Spring 2005 by Cormack, David

Hier im Garten pflückt uns der Meister: wir blühen im Sommer, dann welken und sterben wir. Sei uns hold, so lange wir dir blühen!

Parzival second prose sketch, finished 23 February 1877

THERE ARE CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHS of them in costume.1 There is the 1882 playbill showing Frauleins Horson, Meta and Pringle as the first group of 'Klingsor's Zaubermadchen', and André, Galfy and Belce as the second.2 And there is Wagner's own testimony:

The scene with Klingsor's enchanted flowers was utterly unsurpassable, and probably the most masterly piece of direction in terms of music and staging that has ever come my way: it had been a question here of assembling six so-called leading sopranos with equally light, high voices, and of choosing a further twenty-four young leading chorus members with equally good voices and charming appearances. Thanks to the zeal of our admirable conductor, Kapellmeister Levi, whose enthusiasm I cannot praise enough, this was a total success: I had singers from five Court Theatres who normally sing Elisabeth, Elsa, Sieglinde and even Brunnhilde (Frl. André from Brunswick). I cannot begin to describe these ladies' engaging enthusiasm; the admirable Forges had played a significant part in rehearsing them, too.

In the contemporaneous Bayreuth: ein Wegweiser their professional provenance may be found:4

There is more to be discovered about the first Parsifal solo Flowermaidens, some of it on the Internet,5 but much else through traditional research.

Johanna André was born on 30 June 1859 'n Doberan in Mecklenburg. After her début in 1875 in Berlin she was engaged by the Braunschweig Court Theatre, where she remained until her retirement from the stage in 1906. Wagner himself credited her with the role there of Brünnhilde, prior to her creation of the role of solo Flowermaiden, reprised in 1883 and 1884. She later gave concert appearances and taught, Ida von Scheele-Muüller being one of her pupils. She died in Braunschweig on 23 June 1926.

Luise Belce was born in Vienna (as Luise Baumann) on 24 October 1862. She made her début as Elsa in Karlsruhe in 1881 before becoming solo Flowermaiden at Bayreuth in 1882. Glasenapp recorded that after the Festival Wagner sent a note of thanks to her 'as representative, so to speak, of the Flowermaidens' since he was unable to write to each of them individually.6 Belce sang a solo Flowermaiden again in 1883 and 1884, and in 1886 as Luise Reuß-Belce following her marriage to the conductor and composer Eduard Reuß.7 She went on to sing leading roles (notably Fricka) at Bayreuth between 1889 and 1912. Her New York Met début was as Venus in Tannhäuser in 1901. Two days later she sang Elisabeth and in the course of the 1901/02 season also appeared as the Walkure Brünnhilde, Eisa, Isolde, Eva, the Rheingold Fricka, Ortrud, Gutrune and Sieglinde. In 1903 she sang Iolanthe in the Met premiere of Ethel Smyth's Der Wald, in which role and that of Ortrud she was recorded on Mapleson rolls. After her singing career she directed opera and was a formidable singing coach at Bayreuth until 1933. In a kind of ultimatum in 1915 Eva Chamberlain mentioned her daughter Lisel as a possible bride for the bachelor Siegfried Wagner, before Winifred Williams-Klindworth emerged to save the day.8 On 5 March 1945 Luise Reuß-Belce was found dead in a refugee train at Aichach near Augsburg. She had been fleeing the bombing of Dresden. She was probably the last surviving singer to have performed under Wagner's own direction.

Hermine Galfy was born (as Hermine Katzmayr) in Vienna on 25 October 1856. After her career began in Graz in 1874, she joined the Schwerin Court Theatre in 1880, where she sang Eva in 1881. She receives this testimonial in Cosima's diaries some weeks after the 1882 Parsifal performances: 'R. had a restful night, and in the morning he visits the children. Later in the morning he starts a letter to Frl. Galfy but then addresses it to Frl. Belce, since he no longer has any clear memory of Frl. G."; Nevertheless Galfy returned to sing a solo Flowermaiden and First Squire at Bayreuth in 1883 and 1884. She died in Vienna in April 1933.

Johanna Meta is one of the more enigmatic of the Flowermaidens. Born in New York in 1858 (as Meta Schepperl, the daughter of a merchant of German origin), she may have been one of the first English-speaking singers at Bayreuth. She came to Europe, however, at an early age and studied in Vienna with Mathilde Marchesi de Castrone. After two seasons in Munich she sang a solo Flowermaiden at Bayreuth in 1882 and 1883. Her later roles included Elisabeth, Eisa, Agathe in Der Freischütz and Desdemona in Verdi's Otello. She died in Munich on 8 January 1933.

Pauline Horson was born in Beckum on 25 March 1858, studied in Cologne and made her singing début in Sondershausen in 1875. She joined the Weimar Court Theatre in 1876, remaining with the company until her retirement from the stage after her marriage in 1886. Like Galfy, André and Belce, she sang a solo Flowermaiden in 1882, 1883 and 1884. On the 25th [July 1882]', wrote Ernest Newman, paraphrasing Glasenapp but mistaking the month (it was 25 August 1882),