After dark
The Canadian Robert Carsen would appear to love the theater to the point of fixation.
Kwangchul Youn
23 pieces since 2009 — in 18 roles, at 9 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
23
pieces
18
roles
9
companies
18
years
By role
Role Commendatore
Role des Grieux père
When a man loves a woman
At the Met’s performance of Manon Tuesday evening, Michael Fabiano made as good a case as any for renaming the opera Chevalier des Grieux.
Role Fasolt
God grief
Nigel Wilkinson takes on the first installment of the Paris Opera’s new Calixto Bieito-directed Ring Cycle
Gold diggers
Das Rheingold is the outlier among the Ring operas, an ensemble work with a fast-shifting plot, animated dialogue, fewer set pieces and less character development.
By Adriel
7 comments
Role Frère Laurent
Speaking ill of the dead
Plácido Domingo’s conducting reduced the score’s urgency to the lethargy of a jellyfish.
Role Gesler
Mark, missed
Thoughtless direction stifled the epic drama.
Role Gurnemanz
Grail against the machine
A new production of Parsifal at San Francisco Opera stirred something deep inside Michael Anthonio about how music soothes the soul
Regie, redeemed
Stefan Herheim’s production of Parsifal for Bayreuth is the regie Holy Grail—a production that completely fulfills the promise and purpose of Regietheater.
Role Heinrich
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 Hunding
Entry of the God into Valhalla
A new CD set of Der Ring des Nibelungen, recorded live at the Bayreuth Festival in 2008, is slim on superstar casting, but basks in the reflected glory of conductor Christian Thielemann, a controversial artist with a passionate following. So how does the music measure up?
Role King Marke
It’s Brittany, bitch
Sparks flew when the San Francisco Opera opened their new production of Richard Wagner’s monumental Tristan und Isolde on Saturday, October 19th, at the War Memorial Opera House.
Role König Marke
Gould standard
Midway through his traversal of Wagner’s 10 mature operas for PentaTone, we’ve learned this about Marek Janowski:
Role Landgraf
Tanks a lot, but no tanks
The production by Sebastian Baumgarten is the type of regietheater that’s not a rethinking or reconstruction, but just a hot mess.
Role Landgrave
Sacred and Propane
Fertilization; birth; growth; decay. Eating; digestion; defecation; fermentation; biogas recovery; food production. Wagner’s Tannhäuser is a meditation on the relentless, repetition of cycles that define our existence and man’s insistence on the possibility salvation despite all the biochemical evidence to the contrary.
Role Méphistophélès
Youth is wasted on the old
Piotr Beczala, Soile Isokoski and Kwangchul Youn star in this 2009 performance of Faust from the Wiener Staatsoper, idiomatically conducted by Bertrand de Billy.
Role Narbal
No place like Rome
Love grand opera but wary of a six o’clock curtain with five hours of music behind it? (And nothing is grander than Berlioz’s Les Troyens, eh?) Your dilemma has been solved. Show up at the Met at 7:30 or 8:00, whenever they have the first intermission.
Role Raimondo
What women want
Psychology is encoded in the composer’s vocal lines more than his librettist’s words.
Role Sarastro
Psychological projections
“The distance between dreams and reality is called action.” – Brian Tracy
Role Talbot
Queen for a D
Friday’s season premiere at the Met of Donizetti’s opera about the doomed Scottish queen proved surprisingly satisfying and a genuine success for Sondra Radvanovsky.
Role Titurel
Rédempteur à toute vitesse
This week, Our Own Jungfer Marianne Leizmetzerin presents what is perhaps the briefest Bühnenweihfestspiel on record.
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!
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).
