How to portray a group of people obsessed with music in a rather formalistic and rules driven way like the characters in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg? The directorial team of Jossi Wieler, Sergio Morabits and Anna Viebrock, for their production at t6he Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2022, decided that the answer was to set it in a Conservatory.
Humperdinck’s second “fairy tale” opera; Königskinder, is unusual in that, although it includes traditional fairy tale elements, it isn’t based on a traditional fairy tale but rather on a play by Else Bernstein-Porges. It’s, of course, also performed much less frequently than Hänsel und Gretel. It was given at Dutch National Opera, in a production by Christof Loy, in 2022 and recorded for video release.
It’s probably not ideal to begin the review of a new Ring cycle with Götterdämmerung but in the case of the cycle directed by Valentin Schwarz that premiered at Bayreuth in 2022 Götterdämmerung is the first to be released on video. Fortunately the generous two Blu-ray disk package includes a narrated summary (in English and German) of the whole cycle as seen by the director so it’s possible to put Götterdämmerung in context
The remastered SACD release of Siegfried from the Solti Ring cycle is now out. There’s only so much I can add to my reviews of Die Walküre and of the sampler disk of the whole cycle. Overall observations about the technical side of the record remain valid and the Vienna Philharmonic is again fabulous. The packaging is as with Die Walküre… luxurious.
The singing is also very fine and I didn’t have any reservations about anyone sounding “dated”. Hotter and Nilsson are again fantastic and Wolfgang Windgassen’s Siegfried combines beauty and power in full measure. Gustav Neidlinger and Kurt Böhme are back as Alberich and Fafner to good effect. Gerhard Stolze is effective (and not too affected) as Mime and there’s the famous cameo as the Woodbird by Joan Sutherland. Solti’s conducting is once again thrilling. He’s not afraid to take things at pace but can also be intensely dramatic and lyrical; sometimes at the same time. Culshaw’s “soundstage” effects come off really well, especially in the Fafner’s lair scene. This is another impressive instalment in an impressive project.
The version I listened to is the the four SACD disk release. It’s also available (for roughly the price of a Nibelung’s horde) as five vinyl LPs or much, much cheaper digitally in formats ranging from MP3 to 192kHz/24 bit FLAC which I suspect will be very good but not quite up to SACD quality.
Catalogue number: Decca 4853161
Armadillos by Colleen Wagner opened at Factory Theatre last night. It’s really quite complex and I’m grateful for having had the opportunity to meet with cast and crew to discuss it last week. It’s simultaneously a play about two different takes on the myth of Peleus and Thetis and a sort of meta-theatrical questioning of which stories we tell and how they affect us. In the process it examines ideas about the origins of patriarchy and oonsent/non-consent in sexual relations.
English baritone Roland Wood, accompanied by Simone Luti, gave a rather unusual, themed, recital n the RBA on Tuesday lunchtime. It was structured around the typical career path of a baritone and was narrated engagingly by Wood with lots of fun being had with the traditional rivalry between tenors (useless wimps who always get the girl) and baritones (evil sociopaths who never do).
Tuesday’s lunch time concert in the RBA featured some of the people involved in Against the Grain Theatre’s new, updated version of Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle which opens next week at the Fleck Dance Theatre. There was an excellent descripttion of what the project was all about from Gerald Finley (Bluebeard) and Stephen Higgins (conductor and arranger – the orchestration is reduced to a seven person chamber ensemble).
I have now had a chance to listen to the new SACD release of the 1965 Solti recording of Wagner’s Die Walküre. (For some reason Das Rheingold hasn’t arrived yet). I’m not going to do a detailed review of the performance since pretty much everything that could be said about it has been, and by people better qualified than me. As you might expect for a recording twice voted “recording of the century”. I’ve also already written about the technical details of the new transfer in my review of the sampler disk.
Before watching the new recording of The Ring from Deutsche Oper Berlin I set out my expectations based on the bonus materials on the recording and my previous engagement with productions by Stefan Herheim. Fifteen hours or so of watching later how do they stand up?
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.
operaramblings 