Tag Archives: wagner

Elegant, straightforward Tristan

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Marco Arturo Marelli’s production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde first appeared at the Semperoper in Dresden in 1995.  It was revived in 2024 and recorded for video.  It’s an elegant, straightforward production.  There’s no “concept” but equally there’s not much attempt at “realism” either.  Sets are monumental and abstract.  Costuming is opera house medieval.  On the few occasions props are needed they are what they are; a cup, swords etc.  Atmosphere is mostly down to the lighting and the focus is on the singing and acting.

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Lise Davidsen at the Met

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Soprano Lise Davidsen recently gave a recital at the Metropolitan Opera with pianist James Baillieu.  The live recording of that gig is now being released by Decca in various formats.  My gut reaction was to think that a piano recital at the Met is not such a great idea but the recording turns out to be terrific.

It starts out with a couple of opera arias,  There’s a powerful but very beautiful account of “Vissi d’arte” and a very stylish account of “Morrò, ma prima in grazia” from Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera.  In this one she shows some interesting colours as well as terrific, clean, high notes. Continue reading →

Shostakovich from the Leningrad Philharmonic

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Back when I was first getting acquainted with the music of Dmitri Shostakovich perhaps the most widely available recordings of the symphonies were the ones by the Leningrad Philharmonic conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky on the Melodiya label.  They were quite distinctive; blaring brass, and in some ways sounding rather crude.  Was that what the conductor/composer wanted?  Was that how the orchestra played?  Or was it an artefact of the recordings?  As many of them are now available in various remasters from assorted labels I could dig a bit bit deeper and maybe I will but meanwhile what has come my way is a remastered release from two concerts the Leningrad Philharmonic; conducted by Arvids Jansons (father of Maris), gave in London in September 1971 and which were broadcast on the BBC.

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Lohengrin with a twist

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Sometimes opera directors come up with a twist to a plot hat is illuminating without requiring pretzel logic to actually align it with the libretto.  I think Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabit’s production of Wagner’s Lohengrin for the Wiener Staatsoper in 2024 manages that pretty well.

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Final thoughts on the Zürich Ring

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Overall I rate this cycle very highly.  Andreas Homoki’s production is unusual in that it’s really not conceptual and is often very literal.  That’s rare in Wagner productions in major European houses.  But it’s also not cluttered up with superfluous 19th century “stuff”.  When a thing is essential, it’s there as described.  If it’s not essential more often than not it’s omitted.

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Zürich Ring – Götterdämmerung

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And so to the final instalment… We open with the Rock but now the background room; while still the same 18th/19th century mansion, looks a bit the worse for wear with peeling and cracked paint. The Norns, predictably, are all in white.  It’s all pretty conventional but done well.

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Zürich Ring – Siegfried

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Siegfried has been described as the scherzo of the Ring cycle and Andreas Homoki seems to have at least partly run with that.  There are quite a few places, including some less obvious ones, where he seems to be going for laughs.  The obvious ones are obvious enough.  You can’t really have a bear in the first scene without it being comic but there were also times when Wanderer was camping it up a bit.  We’ll come back to that.

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Zürich Ring – Die Walküre

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Continuing on from Das Rheingold we come to Die Walküre.  There’s a lot of continuity with the earlier work.  It’s basically the same rotating set though in some scenes one of the “rooms” becomes a forest.  Another thing we see is characters who aren’t canonically “there” appearing in scenes.  So right at the beginning, when Siegmund and Sieglinde meet, Wotan is lurking and doing things like handing drinks to Sieglinde.  We’ll see more of this with Hunding’s henchmen appearing in various places, Wotan and the henchmen appearing when Sieglinde is describing her wedding and the Valkyries showing up at the start of Act 2.

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A new Ring from Zürich – Das Rheingold

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A new production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is always a bit of an event and all the more so when it’s in the city where the work was composed.  Andreas Homoki’s production premiered and was recorded for video at Opernhaus Zürich in 2024.  I’ll be working my way through the whole cycle but here are my initial thoughts based on Das Rheingold.

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