Avert your AIs
Bayreuth’s AI-powered “Ring 100010110” marred a first-rate cast and orchestra with nightmarish visuals and horrid dramaturgy.
Patrice Chéreau
52 pieces since 2007 — at 3 companies, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
52
pieces
3
companies
20
years
By company
A favorite Verdi performance from CKurwenal
Like probably all of us, there are so many different things I could have submitted for a favorite Verdi performance.
By CKurwenal
51 comments
Some unholy wars
Caitlin Vincent‘s new book Opera Wars paints a persuasive picture of the problems facing opera today, though her solutions leave something to be desired.
The Solti Ring Cycle is so overrated
It was many decades ago that I first listened to the Solti Ring Cycle.
By Mister Snow
281 comments
A favorite Wagner performance from CKurwenal
Dame Gwyneth Jones as Brünnhilde pretty much started it all for me.
By CKurwenal
59 comments
A favorite Wagner performance from Yuval Sharon
This performance represents a perfect alignment of piece, performer, director, and conductor – the epitome of Gesamtkunstwerk.
By Yuval Sharon
50 comments
This is what trauma looks like
Valentin Schwarz‘s and Simone Young‘s Ring, in its final outing at Bayreuth, is dramaturgically messy and musically excellent.
There’s a parade in town
Les Brigands at the Paris Opera is an expensive joke that never lands
Up stares, down stares
Ahead of tomorrow’s Live in HD, Michael Steinberg talks Leonore, Salome, and the “endemic misogyny” of Claus Guth‘s new production
Bottoms were tougher in those days
parterre box turns 30 on Sunday and writers from around the box are reflecting on the legacy of founder James Jorden and three decades of “remembering when opera was queer and dangerous and exciting and making it that way again”
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.
Stratas in the Sixties
Teresa Stratas turned 83 yesterday and Trove Thursday features one of the recent past’s most interesting yet frustrating artists in two rare broadcasts.
“Così l’anima mia…”
While Harry Rose finishes his senior thesis on Gabriele d’Annunzio, Trove Thursday joins in his fascination with Dante’s damned adulteress with two settings (both from Amsterdam!) of Francesca da Rimini.
It’s the Minnesinger not the song
Tannhäuser pales beside the other great Wagnerian operas in the degree to which it has innovated the Regisseur’s vocabulary for set design and dramaturgy.
What we do in the shadows
The Wiener Staatsoper commemorated its 150th anniversary with a musically sensational presentation of Richard Strauss’ Die Frau Ohne Schatten.
Der Meisterdirigent
Christian Thielemann is widely regarded as our time’s preeminent master of the Austro-German symphonic ensemble.
Handsomely done
Peter Mattei, one of my two favorite baritones these days, in an unexpected title role, Britten’s Billy Budd.
General Elektra
Nina Stemme’s Elektra is familiar to me in three different incarnations.
Revenge served cold
Of course, Stemme had the character’s frenzied fury at her father’s murderers in hand, but she had far more nuance—at times this Elektra was seductive, sympathetic, loving, even humorous in her bitterness.
Brute force
Alban Berg’s compact yet potent oeuvre has long played an outsized role in shaping my understanding of music’s aesthetic evolution.
Dancer in the dark
Patrice Chéreau‘s Elektra brims with ideas beyond its eschewing of the opera’s standard, hysterical trappings.
Burning woman
I count myself as privileged to have witnessed Götterdämmerungat the Royal Opera House during this season’s revival of Keith Warner’s Ring.
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.
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.