Mainly Opera and Ballet
Richard Strauss’s Salome is one of the greatest dramatic operas ever written, and in his final season as the Royal Opera’s music director, Antonio Pappano has decided to conduct it. In previous productions he has used it as a means to attract big name conductors, but this time he has decided to take it on …
Christian Thielemann conducted this performance in Vienna on 10 October 2019, 100 years to the day after its premiere in the same location. The superb cast was headed by Camilla Nylund, Nina Stemme, Mihoko Fujimura, Stephen Gould and Tomasz Konieczny. See my review in The Article.
Keith Warner’s production of the Ring alludes to connections with modern physics: in Rheingold the tarnhelm deforms the gridlines of Cartesian space to the curved space-time of Einstein’s General Relativity, and in Götterdämmerung, Siegfried’s Rhine journey traverses both space and time. In Siegfried Act 1, Mime adds mathematical symbols to those already written and in …
Does Tristan know Isolde intends to kill him with the drink in Act I? No doubt at all in Christof Loy’s production where both of them lie down to die. But though Isolde sings of hatred, the orchestra carries the truth — love — and Mr. Loy, concerned that the emotional content of the stage action …
How many people know that London and Berlin are twin cities? I didn’t, but it helps explain why Barenboim and the Berlin Staatskapelle came to the Proms with the Ring last year, and Runnicles and Berlin’s Deutsche Opera with Salome this year. Yet it was more than just the city of Berlin that was common …
At the end, Barenboim held his baton up, and five thousand people held their applause. As he let the baton drop the cheers started, and continued until he came on one last time to make a small speech, thanking the orchestra, singers, and indeed the audience for its wonderful silence and rapt attention. He also …
A young man brought up in a foreign country encounters an old man who gets in his way, so he sweeps him aside with his sword, not knowing it is his grandfather. Shades of the Oedipus myth here, but the curse comes not from marrying his mother but taking the Ring. The old man, Wotan, …
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 …
… here we had a young and glorious Brünnhilde in Nina Stemme.
The orchestra performed with distinction under Antonio Pappano, and the Opera House had put together a superb cast, led by Nina Stemme as Isolde. She was terrific throughout, and in the Liebestod she rose effortlessly above the orchestra
