Dame Gwyneth Jones as Brünnhilde pretty much started it all for me.

Júlia Várady‘s smoldering, almost feral Sieglinde from the Sawallisch/Lehnhoff Ring, remains my favorite.

This is one of my favorite operas, and visually and story telling-wise, you can’t beat this production.

This performance represents a perfect alignment of piece, performer, director, and conductor – the epitome of Gesamtkunstwerk.

Rita Gorr as Ortrud, Bayreuth, 1959, Cluytens.

The superb 1958 Bayreuth Lohengrin, under the wonderful Cluytens.

Recency bias is in full swing here, but Glyndebourne’s first ever staging of Parsifal – and my first Parsifal – takes top prize for me.

I went to hear Eileen Farrell conducted by Leonard Bernstein at the Philharmonic in 1970.

I suppose Der fliegende Holländer is my favorite Wagner opera — a riveting masterpiece from start to finish, dramatically and musically.

Eleanor Steber and Wolfgang Windgassen in the Act III bridal chamber scene of Lohengrin.