Tag Archives: stemme

DOB Ring – Götterdämmerung

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If you have been following this saga from the beginning you have probably already concluded that Herheim’s approach is radical in some ways and very, very detail oriented.  If anything, in Götterdämmerung, it gets denser and more complex with some of the central production features used in somewhat different ways.  It’s also spectacular.  Not least because of the contributions of lighting designer Ulrich Niepel and video designer Torge Møller.  They were important contributors to the first three operas.  Here they are even more crucial.  This opera also has more going on across the full width of the stage more of the time so it’s actually much harder to film.  So let’s get into it.

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DOB Ring – Siegfried

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So continuing our look at Wagner’s Ring at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, directed by Stefan Herheim, we move on to Siegfried.  I think it’s fair to say that all the elements referred to in my introductory post are present in Siegfried with some more thrown in for good measure.  Let’s look at it act by act.

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DOB Ring – Die Walküre

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The second instalment of Deutsche Oper Berlin’s Ring directed by Stefan Herheim, Die Walküre, carries on with much the same iconography as Das Rheingold.  Once again the set is largely built up of suitcases, a crowd of refugees observes the action, there’s a piano at centre stage and a white sheet in various forms plays a key role in proceedings.  Also, much of the time the characters are working off a score of the piece.

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Lyrical Walküre

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The thing that struck me most about the Royal Opera House’s 2018 recording of Wagner’s Die Walküre is how lyrical it is.  It’s not without excitement in the appropriate places, far from it, but there’s such lovely singing.  Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde is tender and poetic and the combo of Stuart Skelton and Emily Magee as the twin lovers is really good.  Throw in a nuanced Wotan from John Lundgren and a typically elegant performance from Sarah Connolly as Fricka and it’s really a pleasure to listen to.  Ain Anger is not so lyrical as Hunding but it’s a fine menacing performance.  Antonio Pappano and the house orchestra are equally fine.

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Jessye Norman’s Glenn Gould Prize

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Last night the main stage of the Four Seasons Centre was the setting for celebrating the award of the twelth Glenn Gould prize to the great Jessye Norman.  There were speeches, of course, celebrating Ms. Norman’s life as a singer rising to the top of the profession from unpromising origins as well as her lifetime of educational and philanthropic endeavours.  They were decently short and to the point allowing us to get onto to the music, though not before we had heard Ms. Norman’s heartfelt and very touching acceptance speech.

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The Dark and the Light

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David Pountney is rarely afraid of taking risks in pursuit of an idea and that seems to be what’s going on in his 2008 Wiener Staatsoper production of Verdi’s La forza del destino.  The basic concept seems to be to draw as much distinction as possible between the piece’s predominantly dark tone while making the ‘scherzo’ like elements as mad as possible.  And occasionally mixing up the two to create deliberate confusion.  To this end he uses a lot of moving set elements and projections; often fuzzily superimposed on stage action.  Preziosilla and the camp followers are hot pants clad cowgirls.  The full effect is seen in the Act 3 “orgy” where hospital patients, some on drips etc, interact with cow girls and a marching band while giant fuzzy B&W projections of WW2 armour play on the scrim.  It’s really busy and takes some decoding.

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Turandot with the Berio completion

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La Scala and Riccardo Chailly have embarked on a project to record all the Puccini operas.  The first one, recorded in 2015, is Turandot with a new completion of the third act by Berio rather than the usual Alfano version.  The director was Nikolaus Lehnhoff with Nina Stemme as Turandot and Aleksandrs Antonenko as Calaf.

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