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.
With most of us dug in for the duration, there’s no better time to tuck into a CD box set of neglected treasures. Not that I needed an excuse, mind you.
A sense of celebration was definitely in the air last Thursday at the Vienna State Opera.
Orfeo’s 150 Years box chronologically documents some of the finest nights of live opera from the Wiener Staatsoper in the years following its restoration in 1955.
On this day in 1975 the Metropolitan Opera completed its first integral Ring cycle since 1962.
Wagner’s Ring is an artistic masterpiece that is peerless in its ability to continually reveal layers of musical, theatrical, and philosophical insight
“Trove Thursday” leaps to the end of the cycle with a slightly abridged Götterdämmerung featuring Amy Shuard as Brünnhilde.
Although Gustav Mahler never wrote an opera, his colossal Eighth Symphony “The Symphony of a Thousand” may give us some glimpses of what a Mahler opera might have sounded like
This Sony Classical set of live performances covers a golden quarter century in the singing and staging of Wagner. Birgit Nilsson shared it with many other legends, and many of them appear on these discs.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would be having lengthy telephone conversations with John Raitt.
Another five-Thursday month invites “Trove Thursday” to offer a combo of shorter works.
“Trove Thursday” presents Janet Baker in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde from 1970 partnered by Jess Thomas and conducted by Josef Krips.
Live recordings of Hans Knappertsbusch conducting Parsifal seem to proliferate like stairways in M.C. Escher prints.
The 1965 season was a time of big changes at the Vienna State Opera.
A documentary about the heldentenor Max Lorenz would seem to be an ideal prism through which to examine the moral ambiguities and trade-offs of artistic life in the Third Reich. The preeminent Siegfried, Tristan and Tannhauser of the Nazi era was considered so essential to the success of Bayreuth that Winifred Wagner told Hitler that…
Undaunted by Hurricane Hannah, La Cieca continues her presentation of Lohengrin at Unnatural Acts of Opera. Lohengrin: Jess Thomas Elsa: Claire Watson Telramund: Walter Berry Ortrud: Christa Ludwig Koenig Heinrich: Martti Talvela Heerrufer: Eberhard Waechter Vienna State Opera, Karl Boehm, 1965. Lohengrin Act 2
Scenes from the 1967 production of Die Walkuere from the Bayreuth Festival, stage direction by Wieland Wagner. Brunnhilde: Anja Silja; Siegmund: Jess Thomas; Sieglinde: Helga Dernesch; Wotan: Theo Adam. Thomas Schippers is the conductor.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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