Nielsen’s Maskarade is a comic opera to a Danish libretto based on an 18th century play. The version given in Frankfurt in 2021, and recorded for video, updates it to contemporary times and uses a rather racy German translation by Martin Berger. It’s really rather fun!
As written, Hans Abrahamsen’s The Snow Queen is a fairly dark piece that cleaves pretty closely to the original Hans Christian Andersen story. The production at the Bayerische Staatsoper (in an English version adapted by Amanda Holden from the original Danish) and recorded in Munich in 2019 takes it to a new level of complexity and darkness. Director Andreas Kriegenburg has added additional avatars of the children Gerda and Kay to the scene creating three Gerda/Kay pairings. There are the children as children played by actors. There’s an adolescent pair played by mezzo-soprano Rachael Wilson as Kay and an actor, Anna Ressel, as adolescent Gerda and a forty-something couple played by soprano Barbara Hannigan as Gerda and actor Thomas Graßle as Kay.
I’ve become a little wary of operas based on best selling novels and/or Hollywood films so I approached Charles Wuorinen’s Brokeback Mountain with a certain amount of skepticism. I should not have. It’s a Gerard Mortier commission; originally for NYCO but, following that débacle, it followed him to the Teatro Real in Madrid where it premiered in 2014. The libretto is an adaptation by Annie Proulx of her original story. Always a good sign.
operaramblings 