Love in the afternoon
Right now on BBC 3, Tristan und Isolde from the Royal Opera.
Tristan …… Ben Heppner
King Marke …… Matti Salminen
Isolde …… Nina Stemme
Kurwenal …… Michael Volle
Brangane …… Sophie Koch
Melot …… Richard Berkeley Steele
Sailor …… Ji-Min Park
Steersman …… Dawid Kimberg
Shepherd …… Ryland Davies
Royal Opera Chorus, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Antonio Pappano (conductor).
Just a heads up, for those who can’t listen right now, to this…
It will be availible on the BBC Radio 3 i-player site , for the next week, following today’s broadcast…
Thanks, as always, Auntie Beeb!
(I’m catching up with the last chance to listen to last week’s broadcast of “Carmen”..)
There are times when aural sex is definitely better! Listening to the BBC stream is preferable than sitting through what apparently is a ghastly production. Stemme is great in the first act.
Jay, I was thinking exactly the same thing – how great it is going to be to hear the climax of the love duet without having its impact utterly trounced by the dreadful goings on in the staging at that point.
C.K., are you in London, can’t remember?
The BBC seems to agree with me that Wagner should be turned up to 11. No, really, the player’s volume control goes up to 11. Cute.
Love Stemme. Heps sounds iffy at times for Act 1. We’ll see how the rest goes.
Jay – yes, saw the production on the last performance.
Shame the announcer is such a prat.
Thanks, Cocky, I went back through La Cieca’s and saw your T&I post. Whilst still a bit on the soft side, these BBC intermission features are infinitely preferable to the drivel we get on Metopera broadcasts.
You have to love the short intermission. At the MET the long intermissions are getting out of hand.
lenski — it’s not live, so they have less space to fill. But at least we are spared Renaaay going backstage and asking Nina Stemme, all hyped up after Act 1, about her dress and “What makes Isolde so special?”
Silly me….I thought it was very short. MontyNostry, you should not take Renaaaay in vayyynnnn.
The beginning of Act 2 is very, very solid…..me likey!!!!
@10, good one! The Met’s intermission interviews beyond embarrassing. Leave the artists alone, for heaven’s sake. Can you imagine Birgit, Leonie or Crespin putting up with such crap?
… But I could have done without hearing the Bigit Nilsson ‘comfortable shoes’ anecdote for the umpteenth time.
I can’t comment on the performance with any authority. The last time I heard T&I all the way through was in about 1978. Yes, really.
Jay – they sure are, although as has been pointed out elsewhere, this isn’t live, so the element of sitting around twiddling thumbs trying to think of things to say isn’t there. Amusing that absolutely everybody felt compelled to mention Nilsson in some context!
I love John Deathridge – so charismatic!
Heppner’s not perfect but it’s a change to hear a performance where the singers & conductor rehearsed together for a month.
How many Isoldes and Tristans were forcefed thru the MET last winter? I lost count. And so did their casting dept, probably.
I’d like to hear the climax of a love duet!
Cocky, sounds like a case of Liebes-Deathridge.
@14, Ck.K. Nilsson was the rock of Gibralter in this opera. I’m glad people still invoke her name because she set the standard from the late 1950s ’til she gave up the role. Stemme is quite good, though. Heppner’s Tristan doesn’t do it for me, however, either live or in this stream. Some really bad notes and so stolid.
I’ve only seen Heppner once — in Sibelius orchestral songs — and he was excellent, but he really sounds like a struggling lyric tenor here. No heroic thrust at all.
At least he sounds like a tenor.
True, Often, but I quite like tenors who sound like baritones with extra top notes!
Now I’m wishing I had left the thing on for the intermission. I missed part of the beginning of Act II because I was thinking of Met intermissions too.
I can’t tell how he would sound in the house but there are a few really lovely moments from Heppner, mixed with some not so good ones. I guess he’s always like that.
Agree, that is the preferred route. But it seems harder and harder to train reliably now. So I am looking at the virtues of tenors (Heppner, Gambill) who move into heroic roles.
This Tristan seems to be dying during Act II
Finally, an Isolde doesn’t jsut get through the role by the skin of shortened intestine. And you can actually tell what pitch she’s singing. What a concept.
Stemme is extraordinarily good. She is a musician. But the Melot was cast to make Heppner sound good.
Was Berkley-Steele covering for Heppner? Salminen is amazing; hard to believe I first him as Marke in 1981. He’s lost some resonance but he sings, rather than barks, his music.
Heppner sounds as though he’s nearing the end.
Oops, Berkeley Steele, not Berkley-Steele (who in any case sounds like an over-the-hill Herod).
I have to agree about Salminen. Amazing indeed. What a smart singer he is to achieve such longevity.
My favorite Salminen performance/moment. I flew to Chicago to attend one of the Götterdämmerungs before the complete Ring. At the end of Act 2, Hagen (Salminen, duh) starts singing and sits on a long table facing the audience. The lights dim and only his silhouette is visible, dark, menacing. We were all spellbound.
Weise von neuem
der Niblungen Schar,
dir zu gehorchen,
des Ringes Herrn!
That is why I go to the Opera….
The give and take, the disagreements, during the Act II intermission chats is great, enlightening. Oy vey, can you imagine Margaret J. and Will discussing opera at this level?
You are right, Jay, but a fair degree of dumbing-down still goes on on BBC Radio 3 these days. And most of the announcers are pretty appalling with foreign languages.
I’ve heard the “dumbing down” as well, MontyNostry, on the BBC lunchtime concerts, etc. At least they’re racheting it up for this broadcast
“The give and take, the disagreements, during the Act II intermission chats is great, enlightening. Oy vey, can you imagine Margaret J. and Will discussing opera at this level?”
Will gets a hard time. he does know what he’s talking about, it’s just the muppet MJ that he has to work with that spoils things.
Last night for Foost,Mags only managed to get one thing right. HER NAME
I love it when she says, of course, oh really, I was just thinking about that…. Yeh Mags, of course you were my dear.
Mags would find her true home in the notorious Microsoft 7 ‘party’ infomercial …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cX4t5-YpHQ
Jay – I first heard Salminen’s Marke when he was a youngster in Germany to the Isolde of Helga Dernesch – majestic if short up top – and the Tristan of Hermin Esser – a horrible noise – in 1975. He is simply a phenomenon. His Hagen is still the best in the world.
I’ve only seen Salminen once. He was pretty much phoning in Rocco in Valencia three years ago. Still, the production was dreary as hell, as was most of the rest of the singing, so one couldn’t blame him too much.
I wept, the last act was wonderful.
Has anyone ever heard the Isolde of Irene Theorin? I just saw her Ariadne at Washington National Opera, and it was a performance that makes me very interested in hearing more of her.
We had a lot of her Brünnhilde last season, which was a huge stretch. Lots of hurling of sound (which she didn’t have to spare) out toward the audience. I suppose Isolde would suit her more. Ariadne… can’t imagine, but maybe!
This was my first time out w/ the opera so I had nothing to compare it to, but I felt that her Ariadne was quite lovely, though there were some moments when she sang too softly that she was a bit covered by the orchestra. Overall, it was a very enjoyable performance! She’s singing Brunnhilde in WNO’s concert performance of Gotterdammerung that I might try and check out. I’ve not experienced much of the German rep before, but I’m finding I really enjoy it.
@36 Regina delle Fate, I had to suffer through Esser’s Tristan at Bayreuth in 1981. Ghastly. Salminen and J. Meier more or less saved what they could of the performance.
@39 CL in DC, I also live in D.C. plan to be at both of the upcoming Gotterdammerungs. Email: loge44@aol.com
@40 Squirrel, Theorin’s Ariadne didn’t work for me, but I confess I left after “Grossmachtige Prinzessin”, so maybe the final scene was better. I am hopeful about the Gotterdammerung Brunnhildes here. I liked her in Siegfried. Especially the third performance. She was ailing at the prima and wasn’t at peak form. But she cooked in the third performance.
Jay,
My email to you kept bouncing back. I’ll be at tonight’s performance – meeting some friends at 4:30 near the JFK bust. CLinDC.2008@gmail.com
just listening to this now, in act II — stemme is luminous, particularly in this act. i like koch much better here than in the octavian clips w/ fleming. i think brangäne is a much better fit for her voice.
heppner, on the other hand, is truly pathetic…on this outing at least. doing my best to ignore him and listen to nina. can one really call this singing?
Don’t get me wrong, I think she’s a fine musician, talented and spunky, just not a Brunnhilde for the Met. Not even close. The sound was nice, but in the Immolation scene simply too small and exhausted for the dramatic high notes. I have no other basis on which to judge her, but I think Isolde might be a better fit.
Did Theorin sing the Gotterdammerung Brunnhilde at the Met?!
No, just the Walkure and Siegfried Brunnhildes. Katarina Dalyman sang the Gotterdamerung Brunnhilde.
@39 I heard Theorin’s Isolde, but not under ideal circumstances. Gergiev conducted, Bill Viola’s film was projected above her head, and there was enormous competition from a Brangaene who was totally unimpressed by Gergiev and Viola, and just sung gloriously: Ekaterina Gubanova. I went twice to hear her, but both performances were all about Gergiev and his orchestra – the singers, Gubanova apart, just did not stand a chance.
just a note – these Opera on 3 productions are not live – they are taped and the intermission features are taped earlier as well – needless to say – the commentators are a cut above those utilized by the Met – there seems to be a more serious atmosphere to the enterprise and an expectation of the audience of a certain level of knowledge. oh to be in england…
“Can you imagine Birgit, Leonie or Crespin putting up with such crap?”
You don’t see Gelb casting them either, do you?
@50, and how long have you been flacking for Gelb?