Carrie Pringle

Caroline Mary Isabelle "Carrie" Pringle (19 March 1859 – 12 November 1930) was an Austrian-born British soprano singer. She performed the role of one of the Flowermaidens in the 1882 premiere of Richard Wagner's Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival. Unproven rumours associate Wagner's supposed infatuation with Pringle with the circumstances of his death in Venice in 1883.

Carrie Pringle was born in Linz, the daughter of Basil Pringle, a landowner and amateur violinist, and Isabella, née Latinovics de Borsód, whose family originated from Hódság (then in Hungary, now Odžaci in Serbia), and who was a talented pianist. During her youth the family lived in Germany and Italy. The conductor Hermann Levi had heard Pringle sing in 1878; it seems to have been on his suggestion that Wagner auditioned Pringle in 1881 for the role of a Flowermaiden; in Act II of Parsifal these characters have an important scene in which they attempt to seduce the eponymous hero, on the commands of the magician Klingsor. Although Levi, who was to conduct the work's premiere, was uncertain about her, she was engaged.

Pringle was the only one of the original Flowermaidens not to be re-engaged for the 1883 production of Parsifal, and moved with her parents and siblings to London. In England her career was fitful and she apparently never appeared on the opera stage again. Other members of the family also sought musical professions, including her brother Godfrey Pringle (1867-1900) who wrote two operas. Pringle and her mother both gave music lessons, and she herself sought by advertisement engagements for theatres and seaside piers during the holiday seasons. Pringle never married; she died in Brighton in 1930 of ovarian cancer.

Although Pringle's audition with Wagner in 1881 was indifferent, she performed well in the first production of Parsifal. Wagner was particularly keen on the 'Flower Scene' in the opera, and at this point shouted "Bravo!" at many of the sixteen performances in the Bayreuth Festival Theatre, much to the disgust of the audience (which presumably did not realize who was enthusing). Wagner also enjoyed the company of the Flowermaidens offstage: Cosima Wagner recorded in her diary for 3 August 1882 "[Richard] sits by the stove...amidst the Flowermaidens and talks jokingly with them".

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