Mainly Opera and Ballet
What a wonderful start to Wagner’s Ring at Longborough, Britain’s answer to Bayreuth. Set in lovely Cotswold countryside this old barn of an opera house has made a speciality of Wagner, and under the baton of Anthony Negus has succeeded brilliantly. Here were the first two parts of the Ring performed to a very high …
No gold. No Ring. This new production at Bayreuth has offended almost everyone, but contains interesting ideas while departing from Wagner’s story in many ways. For example it is not Hunding who kills Siegmund, but Wotan himself. Sieglinde is already pregnant when Siegmund encounters her. Oh, and Wotan and Alberich are twin brothers! My review …
The first glimpse of what will be Richard Jones’ new production of Wagner’s Ring, for the English National Opera and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, shows some intriguing imagery. Rheingold will appear in the 2022/23 season, with Siegfried and Götterämmerung in 2024 and 2025. See my review of Valkyrie in The Article.
The recent tendency to set operas in the period leading up to the first world war seems to inspire this production by Stephen Medcalf. The Valkyries are in spiked helmets, Wotan is a general, and we are in a grand house furnished with varying collections of such things as butterflies and daggers. In addition to …
After the finest Rheingold I have ever heard, at the Proms with Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Staatskapelle this summer, it would be churlish to draw comparisons with the Bayreuth orchestra under Kirill Petrenko. They played well, and there were some lovely moments, yet the production by Frank Castorf treated it as background music. Rheingold …
At both La Scala and the Berlin Staatsoper, I saw Daniel Barenboim conduct similar casts, in the same production by Guy Cassiers whose Walküre Act III is shown on the front cover of the BBC libretto. The Proms have brought over the Staatsoper orchestra from Berlin, which forms a terrific team with Barenboim conducting, and …
Longborough Festival Opera provided one of the most memorable moments in any Ring I’ve seen — as the lights went out at the end of Walküre a stunned silence enveloped the audience for at least half a minute. Wotan’s farewell to Brünnhilde over, a mist surrounded the god as he knelt by the sleeping body of his …
A pivotal point in Wagner’s Ring is Act II scene 1 in Walküre where Fricka faces her husband Wotan. A strong presence is vital here and Sarah Connolly gave a superb portrayal, avoiding the danger of playing her as overbearing but firmly and gently persuading her husband that he is in serious error. It was beautifully done, and she …
The second act of Walküre is the axis about which the whole Ring turns, and I’ll restrict my remarks mainly to that part. In the first Ring opera, Rheingold, Wotan is persuaded to give up the mighty ring that he stole from Alberich. This is when the earth goddess Erda appears from the depths warning him to Flieh’ des …
… here we had a young and glorious Brünnhilde in Nina Stemme.
… indeed the whole cast came over with supercharged energy, giving us a Walküre to treasure in anticipation of its reappearance in a full Ring during Wagner’s bi-centenary year.
