Heather Locklear engaged to TV co-star Jack Wagner (AP)

NEW YORK – Heather Locklear is engaged to fellow "Melrose Place" actor Jack Wagner.

Locklear spokeswoman Sarah Fuller confirmed the engagement on Friday but offered no other details.

The actress' divorce from Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora was finalized in April 2007. She had been dating Wagner since at least 2008.

Locklear and Wagner worked together in the 1990s on "Melrose Place," a spinoff of "Beverly Hills, 90210." Locklear played Amanda Woodward. Wagner played Dr. Peter Burns.

Locklear also starred on the prime-time soap opera "Dynasty" and the William Shatner police drama "T.J. Hooker."

Wagner isn't just an actor. He sang the 1980s pop hit "All I Need." And he's an accomplished golfer who twice has won the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship, an event usually won by professional athletes.

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Rats and recycling: Wacky Wagner at Bayreuth (AP)

BAYREUTH, Germany – Wagner fans take note: if you like your opera pure, two productions at this year's Bayreuth festival are not for you.

But come, if you have a love of the experimental. While Tannhaeuser fails in attempts to move from the traditional to the trendy, Lohengrin makes that leap of faith. And both productions reflect directing and staging audacity, even if only Lohengrin succeeds in being both bold and believable.

Tannhaeuser is the bigger buzz this year — less because it's a new production, more because of its audacious directing and stage effects that relegate the opera to a supporting role.

Already torn between the quest for carnal pleasure and platonic love that will prove his undoing, the bard Tannhaeuser must deal this year with the additional challenge of his backdrop, compliments of director Sebastian Baumgarten and stage designer Joep van Lieshout.

Instead of the serene pasture or noble hall, the production seen Monday plays out on a factory floor of tanks and connecting pipes depicting a closed cycle of sustenance at its most banal; food, alcohol — and the excrement produced which then is used to fuel the system.

It's enough to drive a person to drink — and extras dressed as factory workers do, occasionally tapping the big red alcohol tank. Some of them earn their keep in the performance seen Monday as members of the choir.

The others just clutter an already messy stage.

In a further challenge to the audience, the love nest where Tannhaeuser trysts with Venus between excursions to the "other woman" — the virginal Elisabeth — is bedlam in a cage that occasionally rises from the factory floor.

Tannhaeuser and Venus rub shoulders with mating ape-like creatures, and giant tadpoles spawned in their cesspool slither and wiggle across the stage. The point seems clear — yuck!

But at the end, Venus bears Tannhaeuser's child, muddying Wagner's original message that virtue triumphs over vice.

All in all, "too much, too much!" — Tannhaeuser's words reflecting his disgust at this orgiastic lifestyle also apply to the oversize liberties taken by Baumgarten and van Lieshout that scuttle this production.

But not all that is modern is maudlin this year at Bayreuth.

Lohengrin, another Wagnerian tale of medieval tragic love, gets yanked into the 21st century by director Hans Neuenfels and stage designer Reinhard von der Thannen — and is more interesting for it.

Instead of knights in armor, man-size rats with glowing red eyes populate the stage, an experimental laboratory where minders in scrubs and face masks prod and push characters on and off stage.

Irritating at first, the conceit works by meshing with Wagner's opera instead of conflicting with it. The rodents are a rat-eat-rat horde — like the medieval men at arms in the original version whose loyalties shift with every development.

And instead of muddying the plot, like Baumgarten, Neuenfels advances it. Over the more than three-hour staging, the rats slowly turn into humans, transformed perhaps by the aura of Lohengrin, the knight blessed by god, who defeats evil, but is ultimately defeated by the inconstancy of Elsa, his beloved.

A visual and intellectual pleasure — accompanied Tuesday by singing that ranged from sub-par to superb.

Astrid Weber, a last-minute stand in for Annette Dasch, failed to convince as Elsa, Lohengrin's paramour. While powerful, her voice had no center and lacked in range, forcing Weber to glide into the top notes. Her vibrato was irritating and her enunciation fuzzy.

Klaus Florian Vogt was in brilliant contrast as Lohengrin, effortless in delivery and diction, his voice so fluid and natural that it almost seemed untrained — no overreaching, no straining.

Petra Lang as Ortrud was another highlight, using her powerful mezzo and considerable dramatic skills to convincingly portray Elsa's evil counterpart, whose scheming ways lead to Elsa's doom. Also good: Georg Zeppenfeld as King Heinrich; Tomas Tomasson as Telramund and Samuel Youn as the Herald.

Conductor Andris Nelsons and choir leader Eberhard Friedrich provided powerful orchestral and choral backing to the soloists, masterfully balancing Wagner's imperatives of musical totality.

For Tannhaeuser, best were Camilia Nylund, a vocally and visually striking Elisabeth and Guenther Groissboeck as her father, Hermann, whose demeanor and supple bass were ideal for the gravitas called for in this role.

Michael Nagy was convincing as Wolfram von Eschenbach, as were Lothar Odinius as Walther von der Vogelweide and Thomas Jesatko as Biterolf. Lars Cleveman as Tannhaeuser shone dramatically but occasionally struggled to make himself heard.

For the most part seamlessly blending or carrying the voices as called for by the score, the orchestra, under Thomas Hengelbrock, sometimes lagged in tempo, unnecessarily slowing the pace of already languid musical sequences.

But even the generally satisfying musical renderings cannot redeem the visual transgressions of this Tannhaeuser.

The opera was booed at its first Paris performance, prompting composer Charles Gounod to proclaim: "God grant me a failure like that!"

He did not see this year's production.

___

George Jahn can be reached at http://twitter.com/georgejahn

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UK's Glyndebourne fest stages tainted Wagner opera (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – The founder of Britain's Glyndebourne festival loved Wagner and performed excerpts from "Die Meistersinger" on the organ, but that was before the Nazis adopted the composer's longest opera as their signature piece.

On Saturday, in its first production of "Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg" and only second Wagner opera, Glyndebourne will attempt to show that a work used to stir up nationalism and anti-Semitism by the Third Reich is fitting musical fare for its well-heeled patrons, fortified for the seven-hour journey with lobster tail and rack of lamb during a long interval.

"I don't think Wagner was imparting ideas which were outspokenly fascist," conductor Vladimir Jurowski, who will lead the performance, said, confronting the issue head on.

"The fact that they (Wagner's operas) have been abused by the Nazis later on only says something about the ambiguity of Wagner's ideas," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Everyone associated with the production, staged by the world-renowned director David McVicar, is aware that a lot is riding on the artistic, as well as financial, success of what is probably the most expensive and ambitious opera produced at Glyndebourne since it was founded in 1934 by wealthy landowner John Christie and his opera-singer wife.

Although details of the staging, as is usual in these affairs, have been kept under wraps, it is known that the historical period of Wagner's tale about a song contest sponsored by an opera guild in 16th-century Nuremberg has been moved to Wagner's time, the 19th century.

In addition to the soloists, there will be some 140 people on stage, including circus performers, a full orchestra in the pit and a chorus of about 90.

These are big -- and costly -- forces for the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, which gets all its funding from sponsors and ticket sales, but the fact that all 10 performances of an opera which begins just before 3 p.m. and, with two intervals, ends almost seven hours later, are sold out is music to the ears of general director David Pickard.

To accommodate those who can't get in for love or money, the opera will be streamed on the Guardian newspaper's website for its final performance on June 26.

"This gives truth to the myth that this place is about nice, light entertainment with a picnic attached," Pickard told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"Serious operas are wonderfully suited to the sort of overall experience here at Glyndebourne, especially spending a day immersed in music and a beautiful garden."

"Honor YOUR GERMAN MASTERS"

Harder to shake are the opera's Nazi associations. It was Hitler's favorite and he was a regular visitor, before and during World War Two, to see it performed at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, the hall in northern Bavaria that Wagner purpose-built to showcase his works.

At the end of the opera, the main character, cobbler and poet Hans Sachs, sings the line that endeared it to the Nazis and has caused trouble ever since: "Honor your German masters."

Jurowski, for one, thinks the words, and the whole opera, have been taken out of context.

"He (Wagner) ...was trying to give his support to (Chancellor Otto von) Bismarck's reunified Germany and ...the idea of national identity in the 19th century in the time when Wagner was growing up was a highly liberal idea...

"But of course we know the consequences of this idea in the 20th century, and we also know about the popularity of this opera in the Third Reich. It was a piece that enjoyed greater popularity than any other work by Wagner."

Canadian baritone Gerald Finley, singing the role of Sachs, is less worried about the political and historical overtones than he is with managing what someone has figured to be 6,000 words of German -- the biggest baritone role in the repertoire.

It is the first time Finley, 51, has sung the part -- a huge departure from his recent appearance as radio personality Howard Stern in the premiere at the Royal Opera House of "Anna Nicole," based on the life of the celebrity playgirl.

"It's been one of the fuller years of my career," Finley said, adding that while it may seem like a huge leap from Stern to Sachs, the first was a supporting role while the second requires him to be on stage almost the entire time.

"But in fact it's one of those things where hopefully one gets into a groove and they're paced nicely with four days between shows," he said. "So there's enough recovery time and, one hopes, rejuvenation time, too."

(Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg" in rotation at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival from May 21 through June 26. www.glyndebourne.com)

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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