souffle du printemps (was ring penetration begins)
Werther with Rolando Villazon and Susan Graham continues on France Musique. (Broadcast began at 3:00 pm EDT.)
Concert donné le 28 février 2009 à l’Opéra Bastille à Paris, en simultané avec l’Union européenne de radios. Rolando Villazon : Werther, poète; Ludovic Tézier : Albert, jeune homme; Alain Vernhes : Le Magistrat; Christian Jean : Schmidt, ami du magistrat; Christian Tréguier : Johann, ami du magistrat; Susan Graham : Charlotte, fille du magistrat; Adriana Kucerova : Sophie, sa soeur. Orchestre de l’Opéra National de Paris. Maîtrise des Hauts de Seine. Choeur d’Enfants de l’Opéra National de Paris; Direction : Kent Nagano.
Listing from Operacast.
Discussion of the first afternoon of the Met’s broadcast Ring cycle. (Illustration from P. Craig Russell‘s Ring of the Nibelung graphic novel
Amer, those aren’t comparable. “A young Black woman” is racial, where as blonde is descriptive. A comparable comment would be “A young Jewish woman”. And what difference did it make that the woman was Black; it isn’t relevant to the fact that she was rude.
Re #35. Spot on La Cieca. The Ring itself is revolutionary, as was the Met’s production in the mid 80′s when being so traditional was almost an act of defiance.
Yet here it is almost 25 years later and high time it was retired. After all, shouldn’t the Met, which is THE US opera company, have a more relevant production with something to say to a 21st century audience?
Your comments on Wagner’s historical situation are well taken. Methinks he would have loved the Chereau and Kupfer productions. Ironically, the Chereau production, which is almost 35 years old now, seems more current on DVD than the Met’s!
The only regie aspect of this Schenk ring – most don’t notice it – some deny it exits – is the final moments of Gotterdammerung: the stage descends and we are left with tourists exploring Stonehedge-like ruins. In a production
that is usually banal (i.e. the fire) or ugly (mostly) and eschews horses, a ram and ravens this is a genuinely interesting item.
La Cieca your post was great!
Actually, Cieca, I pretty much agree with what you say at 35. I don’t use “museum piece” as a pejorative, which you understandably assume — understandable because of its most common usage. One reason I consider at least some of Wagner’s works museum pieces is that he built a museum for them.
My point was mostly that Wagner was a thorough man of the theater. Without saying whether he was a *good* man of a theater, it’s worth noticing that he had as good a theatrical background as any opera composer in history.
His evident father Ludwig Geyer was not only in demand as an actor but was a playwright (one play earning the praise of Goethe himself) and a tenor employed by Carl Maria von Weber in several of his productions. Four of Wagner’s sisters were actresses: Luise was much beloved of the public, and Rosalie became the most celebrated Gretchen of the day. He came into frequent contact with many of the leading German theatrical figures. Even the less definable influences that are often determinative in our lives are sometimes blatant in Wagner’s: such were the several family connections with Goethe. Furthermore, one of his few Dresden friends during his residence there was son of the original Florestan of Beethoven’s 1806 *Fidelio* (and was a relative of Hummel, Mozart’s favored student who had lived with him for two years).
But the infusion of the best in nineteenth-century theatricality was frequently very direct indeed. The most famous singer-actress in Germany, Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient (daughter of both the leading German actress and the first German-language Don Giovanni), had been a *Fidelio* Leonore whom Beethoven had seen and praised with an enthusiasm rare for him. She had also been trained in ballet and thus was a kind of Gesamtkunst worker. Schröder-Devrient not only inspired, and explicitly encouraged, the young Wagner to search for new means of musical drama but created the rôles of Adriano Colonna in *Rienzi*, Senta in *The Flying Dutchman*, and Venus in *Tannhäuser*. She repeatedly supported him both artistically and financially over years. As she aged, her chief rival was to be Wagner’s immensely talented niece Johanna Geyer (who would bring some of what she had learned from Schröder-Devrient to the first productions at Bayreuth).
Wagner’s first wife Minna was one of the German stage’s celebrated actresses, who, besides creating much otherwise inaccessible goodwill for the young Wagner in various theaters, also gave him further conversance with the crafts, conventions, and lore of the dramatic art. All his formative years were thus redolent of greasepaint, and his imagination always responded to the least whiff of theatricality. These were anything but hacks that he was associating with, and whether we like all his theatrical decisions or not, they were never unsophisticated.
They were inevitably, of course, of their time, however.
Wow, thanks, alto 64. Some good stuff there.
Agreeing with Will. Schenk RING not bad because it’s conservative and romantic – Schenk RING bad because it does not have an idea in its head.
Your embarrassing Freia blocking catastrophe is noted. This is normal for the Met, however. I remember the otherwise micro-blocked Salome early this season and the soldiers had a hard time deciding whether they were restraining Jochanaan or letting him walk around free-range-style. Make up your mind! Is he a dangerous criminal or a captive prophet? Flight risk or no? C’mon people!!!
Most embarrassing cell phone performance incident: My cell phone ringer went off while I was onstage performing! Solution: I’m a pianist, so I just started playing quite loudly. I later apologized to the singer I was performing with for being so insensitive to the balance between the voice and the piano. Fortunately the incident went by without much notice.