NYPR Archives & Preservation
Living Opera with Alan Wagner
From 1958 to 1968, New York-area radio audiences made time on Sunday mornings to listen to the friendly and informative voice of Alan Wagner on the program Living Opera, which he wrote, produced and hosted. For its ten-year run on WNYC AM and FM, Wagner played new recordings and interviewed hundreds of luminaries from the music world. From Rudolf Bing to Eileen Farrell to Franco Corelli to Eleanor Steber, during that period virtually every major operatic name passing through New York appeared on Living Opera at least once. Listen here to his brief talk with the great soprano Licia Albanese.
Most of these interviews were recorded at his home or office. Sometimes, though, he had to travel to wherever the subject was, carrying a bulky reel-to-reel tape recorder with him. On one notable occasion, he drove to Idlewild Airport (now JFK International Airport), young wife and baby son in tow, to record a conversation with Richard Tucker before the great tenor had to catch a flight.
The program had to be carefully written and timed in order to fit into its allotted slot, and for that reason it was almost always pre-recorded on Thursday nights, and delivered to WNYC on Friday mornings. There was one notable exception: the Sunday in 1960 after the great baritone Leonard Warren passed away suddenly during a performance at the Metropolitan Opera. On that occasion, the program was quickly rewritten and was broadcast live from WNYC's studio.
In 1961, he published -- with research assistance from his wife Marti, herself a professional in an opera-related field -- a lively book of anecdotes, Prima Donnas and other Wild Beasts, a favorite among opera fans to this day. So great was Alan Wagner's love of opera, The New York Times later that year reported on his pre-empting of his regularly scheduled Sunday program to scold "all parties concerned in the current Met labor negotiations," for the apparently cancelled Met Opera season. Citing them with "indefensible intransigence," he charged that "opera lovers may have been had." [1] At the eleventh hour an accord between the Met and its musicians was reached allowing for the 1961-1962 season of performances.
Living Opera ended only because Wagner’s burgeoning career as a television executive required a move to Hollywood. Opera was Wagner's passionate avocation. Professionally he was a renowned and award-winning television programmer, producer, and consultant. After active duty in the Navy and a tour of the U.S. as a stand-up comic with the Navy Talent Show, which included a live appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” he found work in the television department of advertising agency Benton & Bowles. In 1961 he moved to CBS, rising to become a senior creative executive. In his time at CBS he developed such now-classic series as All in the Family, M*A*S*H, Kojak, The Waltons, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. He was also responsible for many arts-related broadcasts, including Vladimir Horowitz: A Television Concert at Carnegie Hall and Sills and Burnett at the Met, and for the cultural landmark specials A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. In 1982 he was appointed the first President and CEO of The Disney Channel. After establishing the channel’s successful creative and business plan, he left to form an independent film and television production company, Alan Wagner Productions, also known as Boardwalk Entertainment, which has produced films and series for HBO, CBS, ABC, Hallmark, Lifetime, and other outlets, and consulted on creative and new-network development for clients such as Cablevision. He was honored by the Writers Guild of America and the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for his rich and successful body of work.
Even after Living Opera ended, though, Wagner remained a presence in the opera world. In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, back in New York, he was the host and commentator for multiple New York City Opera radio-broadcast seasons. More recently, he made regular appearances on the Metropolitan Opera broadcast intermissions. His on-air highlights include an interview with James Levine, and talks on Richard Wagner as a closet feminist, how to be a Jewish Wagnerite, the devil figure in Romantic-era Europe, and the theology of Parsifal. He served as both moderator and panelist on numerous opera quizzes, hosted a Richard Wagner retrospective for a Season Preview broadcast, paid tribute to the late Robert Merrill, and participated in several round tables, including one on the guilty pleasures of a record collector, and another that he moderated which featured the great African-American divas Martina Arroyo, Reri Grist, Shirley Verrett and Grace Bumbry.
For the Met Opera website, Wagner interviewed beloved broadcaster Peter Allen on the occasion of his retirement. For the Conductors Guild, he was a panelist for a Great Conductor Retrospective program on the Metropolitan Opera. He was also a hugely popular lecturer and enjoyed giving colorful and informative talks on a broad range of operatic subjects for The Metropolitan Opera Guild, The City University Graduate Center, and the Wagner Society of New York.
He wrote for Opera News and the Metropolitan Opera Playbill. His writing also appeared in such publications as High Fidelity, Musical America, Stagebill, Reader's Digest, and the New York City Opera souvenir program.
Alan Wagner passed away in December 2007, but left behind a powerful legacy of music fans who joyfully learned to love opera and other classical musical forms because of his infectious passion for the arts, his warm personality, and his talent for communication. As he once told The New York Times, his WNYC radio show was "not a hobby, it's a passion. There are no lukewarm opera lovers. You can't 'kind of' like opera."[2]
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Thanks to the Wagner family we are currently digitizing some 38 reels of interview tapes from Alan Wagner's WNYC program. While we've not finished with all the descriptions and cataloging, you can listen to them at: LIVING OPERA.
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[1] Hammel, Lisa, "Alan Wagner of WNYC Show Scolds All Concerned in Possible 'Met' Cancellation," The New York Times, August 14, 1961, pg. 45.
[2] Hammel, Lisa, "TV Man With Sideline," The New York Times, December 31, 1961, pg. X15.
