Sir Reginald Goodall (13 July 1901 – 5 May 1990) was an English conductor and vocal coach noted for his performances of the operas of Richard Wagner and for conducting the premieres of several operas by Benjamin Britten.
Early life
Goodall was born in Lincoln, and studied at the Royal College of Music and elsewhere in Europe. In 1929, he became the organist and choirmaster at St Alban's Church, Holborn.
Career
During World War II, Goodall conducted the Wessex Philharmonic, a freelance orchestra which included some ex-members of the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra. In 1944, Goodall joined the Sadler's Wells company, forerunner of the English National Opera. An early triumph was his conducting of the premiere of
Benjamin Britten's
Peter Grimes in 1945. He conducted this again later at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he had first conducted in 1947. He was an assistant conductor to the music director of the Royal Opera House,
Karl Rankl, in the late 1940s. Goodall also conducted at Glyndebourne, including another Britten premiere, this time of
The Rape of Lucretia, which was also his first recording, with
EMI.
Goodall spent much of his career conducting orchestras at the Royal Opera House and Sadler's Wells Opera. At Covent Garden, he was overshadowed by Georg Solti. When Solti was made music director of the Royal Opera in 1961, altercations soon followed, leading Goodall to cease conducting duties and withdraw to an upper-floor room, nicknamed "Valhalla", where he remained available to singers for coaching on request.
For Goodall, conducting success finally came with an appointment at Sadler's Wells, where from 1967 he worked in close collaboration with the head of the music staff, Leonard Hancock.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Goodall conducted several celebrated Wagner productions at Sadler's Wells Opera that reversed the decline in his prestige and established him as one of the leading Wagner conductors of his time.[D. Kern Holoman, "Performers and Instruments: Wagner's Ring in Andrew Porter's English". 19th-Century Music, 1(1), pp. 62–70 (July 1977).]
His last public performance was in 1987 at the Royal Albert Hall, London, where he led the English National Opera Company in a performance of act 3 of Wagner's Parsifal. The cast included Gwynne Howell (Gurnemanz), Warren Ellsworth (Parsifal), Neil Howlett (Amfortas) and Shelagh Squires (Kundry).
Fascism and Holocaust denials
Passionate about all things German, in the 1930s Goodall openly sympathised with the
Nazi regime, which he perceived as a defender of Germanic cultural traditions.
Goodall also actively supported
Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, and he eventually joined the party just five days after Britain's declaration of war on Germany. He maintained his outspoken pro-Nazi views during World War II, the uninhibited expression of which once led him to be briefly questioned by the police. Goodall was known to refer to
the Holocaust as a "BBC Jewish plot".
Reputation and legacy
Goodall achieved his own prominence in later life once he was able to come out from under the shadow of some of the great German and Austrian conductors of his era, for whom he
understudy, conducted rehearsals and provided
.
Goodall was appreciated for his attention to detail and Wagner's annotations, as well as for his extensive rehearsals.
John Lucas published an authorised biography of Goodall in 1993.[Matthew Rye, Review of Reggie: The Life of Reginald Goodall. The Musical Times, 134(1808), p. 585 (1993).]
Family
Goodall married Eleanor Gibbs in 1932. They did not have children.
Sources
External links
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"The First Digital Tristan – a talk with the Maestro, the Hero and the Boss" by Bruce Duffie. Wagner News, vol. IX, no. 1, February 1982
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"Recording of the Month: Review of Goodall's Ring, reissued on CD, 2001" by Richard Lehnert, 3 December 2001, Stereophile
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"Reginald Goodall – the holy fool", On an Overgrown Path (blog), 8 May 2007
