I’ll plant my own tree
Richard Strauss’ “Bucolic Tragedy in One Act” Daphne is one of his most beautiful and most frustrating works.
Andreas Schager
23 pieces since 2015 — in 10 roles, at 12 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
23
pieces
10
roles
12
companies
12
years
By role
Role Apollo
The constant nymph
The old adage “the third time’s the charm” proved to be the case with me and Daphne, Richard Strauss’s ravishing bukolische Tragödie, when I recently heard it performed by Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra.
Blow a kiss, take a bough
Richard Strauss’s many one-act operas make excellent concert programs, both for their length (usually under two hours) and the primary place each gives the orchestration, a specialty where Strauss’s brilliance seldom deserted him.
Role Doktor Marianus
Veni vidi vici
Mahler’s 8th Symphony is an enormous and enigmatic work.
Role Emperor
Storm of the century
A sense of celebration was definitely in the air last Thursday at the Vienna State Opera.
Role Lohengrin
Rock out with your Tracht out
Lohengrin descended upon the Wiener Staatsoper this month like American college students to Oktoberfest: loudly, spastically, not especially coherent, and in full lederhosen and dirndls.
Role Midas
Golden shower
Claus Guth mines urgent and contemporary commentary from Die Liebe der Danae in Munich.
Role Parsifal
Assault and battery
Jay Scheib’s Augmented-Reality Parsifal is a cautionary reminder that technological innovation shouldn’t absolve directors from the exacting work of deriving intelligent and fascinating theater from the source material.
Role Rienzi
“The most significant dramatic creation since Les Huguenots”
Awaiting the return of Parsifal to the Met, “Trove Thursday” hops to the other end of Wagner’s oeuvre with a recent Rienzi der letzte der Tribunen.
Role Siegfried
Nature boy
With Siegfried, the directorial vision of the Paris Opera‘s Ring cycle finally takes root.
Something With a ‘Ring’ to It
Cycle II represented an embarrassment of musical riches.
The end is the beginning of the end
At the Metropolitan Opera’s Götterdämmerung on Saturday afternoon, the fires which consumed the Gods burned lukewarm.
Cards on the table
The Canadian Opera Company scored a coup when they secured Christine Goerke for the revival of their Ring productions over the last three seasons
Role Tannhäuser
Christian science monitored
In any case, we probably got as good a Tannhäuser cast as could be assembled these days.
Role Tristan
Haus of eternal return
In Nike Wagner’s essay “The Sounding Silence,” the German dramaturge argues that “the longing for deathrepresents the central motif” of her great-grandfather’s opera Tristan und Isolde.
The rich are different from you and me
Whether you love the 2018 Berlin Staatsoper Tristan and Isolde depends on what you think the opera is about.
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
