Twisted sisters
Nina Stemme’s Elektra always seemed the sanest individual onstage never quite giving over to obsession or hysteria with a good line in mordant sarcasm and contempt.
Michaela Schuster
16 pieces since 2010 — in 9 roles, at 6 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
16
pieces
9
roles
6
companies
17
years
By role
Role Clytemnestra
Role Die Amme
Die Frau Ohne Schallplattenaufnahme
Not a fairy kingdom, but rather an unheated postwar Vienna ballroom transformed into an improvised recording studio: that’s the setting for Christof Loy‘s new production of Die Frau Ohne Schatten at Salzburg. The production is also (if not more so) notable for Christian Thielemann‘s virtuouso conducting of the Vienna Philharmonic and the hair-raising performances of […]
Role Herodias
Salo, me
David McVicar’s ravishingly lurid 2008 production of Strauss’s Salome for the Royal Opera House Covent Garden has been issued as an HD-filmed DVD from Opus Arte. Now, Strauss’s music is ravishingly lurid on its own, so I came to this production, which claims as a visual source reference the Pasolini film Salo, The 120 Days […]
Role Klytämnestra
The mania event
Christine Goerke‘s puzzling high register has become an increasingly troubling aspect of her singing. One just never knew what was going to come out from one moment to the next.
Role Klytemnestra
Sister, sister, oh so fair
Conductor Eun Sun Kim and soprano Elza van der Heever play to their strengths in a piercing revival of Elektra at San Francisco Opera.
Role Madame Croissy
A study in simplicity and profundity
“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays” – Soren Kierkegaard
Role Nurse
Shadow, no doubt
Richard Strauss’s “last romantic opera,” as he called Die Frau Ohne Schatten, is and has always been a problem child.
Role Ortrud
Under a linden tree
A new CD
features the ten most gorgeous minutes recorded by a tenor in Wagner since World War II.
Mystery date
The moral of Lohengrin is clearly set out: Don’t talk on your wedding night. Even more important, don’t sing. Happily, at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Johan Botha in the title role and Amber Wagner as Elsa of Brabant ignored this advice.
Mostly armorless
I’d never actually seen a production of Lohengrin before I agreed to review a new Decca DVD of Richard Jones‘s staging for the Bayerische Staastoper, starring Jonas Kaufmann, so I hope I’ve got this right: It’s about this architect named Elsa, who lives in an Orwellian steampunk Germany that has videocamera technology but still dresses like […]
Role Waltraute
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.