lohengrenovation?
Trailer for the new Richard Jones production of Lohengrin at the Bavarian State Opera, featuring Jonas Kaufmann‘s role debut as the Swan Knight.
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I do like Kaufmann and hope that he will grow and become a great tenor. I fail to understand why the Germans want to change operas and produce such terrible blunders. While booing is uncool, i suppose it is the only way an audience can express dissatisfaction.
Fascinating visuals in this promo video! This certainly redefines the job of prop master for opera – guaranteed to attract techies from legit theater to work in the opera house. I can’t wait to see the telecast/video of the complete production.
Why do so many of these, um, re-envisioned productions look so self-satisfied?
La Cieca: Of course I should have said what I actually meant (gosh, what a concept) which was:
And he doesn’t sing after act two. No more heavy lifting.
Thanks for the correction
Unfortunately booing the production team is now so traditional that none of them minds it. (Except maybe Gramm Vick.) It just encourages them: they pissed in public and the grownups noticed! Goodie for me! Maybe this will be loud enough for press coverage, whereupon the production will sell out! (Cf. Bieto’s Seraglio in Berlin.)
“Sympathy arrived in headline tributes from the notables about Gotham. Dolores, dead now, was publicly appalled outright for three weeks daily, although ignorant of the issues.”
–Mawrdew Czgowchwz, now and forever
Why do audiences go to a performance? To be transported to another place, a place of dreams and illusions. Not a scene that looks like the theater rough rehearsal room, a nearby back lane, or a scroungy disused factory with clothes from the charity opportunity shop’s discard bargain bin at 50 cents a item.. End of story.
Harry, you might enjoy going to the opera to escape from the reality of your life for a few hours, but some of us think of opera as a passionate reckoning with real life in all its harshness. Lohengrin is a dark, dark story.
For the record, Richard Jones is one of the greatest opera directors working today. His insight into the time-worn pieces he stages is unrivalled; he offers new ways of seeing which may always challenge, sometimes even provoke, but always reward an audience interested in more than whether the top notes are longer or louder than last time. It is no coincidence that he has only worked once in the US.
Would we really have felt happier had this opera been staged in tights, horns and helmets? How would that have made us think about the drama that is Lohengrin, and the fucked up people it depicts?
What is it with us opera queens – who says we have to be so closed-minded and reactionary?
Beginning of story.
This, No. 27, seems very telling:
“His insight into the time-worn pieces he stages is unrivalled …”
If you find a work like Lohengrin “time-worn,” I feel sorry for you, and I don’t want you anywhere near artistic decision-making.
26-28
I have to agree with 26 & 27.
If it is ‘time-worn’ maybe we should not do it?
Why not write your own story, get a fabulous composer to set it and an innovation director to stage it?
I’m not really into modern re-thinkings, but the thought of everything being period is a bit much also. A period production can be deadly boring if done badly.
However, if the director is SENSITIVE to the drama then the work, whether in period or regie can and will work. The point is that directors have nothing to say – so the only thing they can do is to mutilate these great masterpieces. These guys just don’t have the humility to accept that these works will always be greater than they will ever be. And these works will survive long after all the desecrations of these directors.
PS: I thought that this was a rehearsal – Lohengrin in a shell suit? How very dare they!
I have to add my name to those who think Jonas sounds pretty good here. And for a “modern” production, I will also hold judgement until I see more. I think Jones shows some interesting things here but certainly a 4:30 minute clip doesn’t provide us enough to judge things throughly. If I have to go by this short clip over any short clip from a Robert Wilson snoozefest, I think I’ll go with Jones.
As far as Telramund, I know of one very successful baritone who has stated, “When there is nothing else left to sing, then I’ll sing Telramund”. The tessitura is dreadful and it is very difficult for Telramund to really shine because of the brightness of Ortrud’s light.