Stefan Vinke brings to Tristan an indefatigable heldentenor of sturdy, muscular brilliance and a physical intensity that allowed him to fearlessly traverse this complex character’s broad emotional compass.
To conclude its triumphant season, last week the Met Orchestra performed its annual Carnegie Hall concerts under music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and once again performed superbly.
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.
Christine Goerke‘s distracted, tentative Isolde turned out to be the least potent feature of what was an otherwise exciting and effective second act of Tristan.
Bard SummerScape’s concert staging of Die Tote Stadt emerged triumphant thanks to Clay Hilley and Sara Jakubiak.
Cycle II represented an embarrassment of musical riches.
At the Metropolitan Opera’s Götterdämmerung on Saturday afternoon, the fires which consumed the Gods burned lukewarm.
Stefan Vinke’s Siegfried was not so much brawny and terrestrial, but heady and mercurial
I count myself as privileged to have witnessed Götterdämmerungat the Royal Opera House during this season’s revival of Keith Warner’s Ring.
I can scarcely remember a performance where so many conflicting thoughts raced through my mind as happened Thursday night during the Met Orchestra’s “bleeding chunks” of Wagner’s Ring at Carnegie Hall.
First seen in 2005, Siegfried makes a welcome return as a stand-alone production this season.
Absent from Chicago Lyric Opera’s repertory for 21 years, Alban Berg’s Wozzeck came roaring into town on Sunday afternoon in a stunning new production by Sir David McVicar.
There is a mighty appetite among both old Wagnerians and new ones to see a Ring that follows—if not too slavishly—the scenic requests of the libretto.
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.
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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