Beyond the valley of the gods
The Bayerische Staatsoper’s Ring cycle scores another triumph with Tobias Kratzer’s take on Die Walküre.
Michael Bauer
11 pieces since 2008 — at 6 companies, most often at Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper.
11
pieces
6
companies
19
years
Queening out
Brett Dean‘s Of One Blood casts a well-trodden Tudor tale in a poignant, new light.
Get in the zone
Tamara Wilson and Stanislas de Barbeyrac are the standouts in Calixto Bieito’s underwhelming Die Walküre in Paris
Direct-to-video
As a burgeoning opera fan, I relied on YouTube to connect me with the art form.
Revolution blues
The opera proved somewhat puzzling—the score representing more a collage of fragmented and incidental musical ideas, and the libretto a turgid, slow-moving mass of purple prose.
‘Wunder’ of wonders
Opera Vlaanderen opened its 2017-18 season with a rare staging of Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane.
How do you solve a problem like Medea?
I was puzzled by my initial exposure to the Medea of Aribert Reimann, a work of 2010.
Crack of doom
It took about 30 minutes for me to grow restless watching the world premiere video of Gyorgi Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre from Gran Teatre del Liceu.
Venus of Barcelona
Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades straddles two genres. With a macabre plot that explores the boundaries of human obsession, it’s an early psychological thriller that makes the audience engage in a kind of voyeurism Alfred Hitchcock loved. Yet the plot drawn from Pushkin and the striking Romantic score with its references to Mozart, Bizet and Grétry firmly […]
The Reimann for the job
In 2006, Aribert Reimann was offered a commission to create a new work for Vienna State Opera. After initial hesitation—”The creative process can sometimes be rather a struggle and isn’t necessarily a pleasant experience”—he went to work. After a flirtation with a Camus drama, he settled on Franz Grillparzer’s version of Medea as his subject […]