Christina Nilsson‘s debut enlivens the Met’s new Aïda.
Eli Jacobson inaugurates parterre box’s new “Perspectives on the Aria” feature with a deep dive into Leonore’s “Abscheulicher!” from Beethoven’s Fidelio which returns to the Metropolitan Opera tomorrow with the Met’s current dramatic soprano star Lise Davidsen as Leonore.
This is an astonishing recording by one of the greatest singers of the 19th century.
Unlike more surface-level historically informed practice which has become the norm in early music ensembles, this project stands out in its surprisingly deep engagements with the ethical and practical challenges posed by “recreating” Wagner’s sound.
Dmitri Tcherniakov’s interpretation of Wagner’s Der Fliegende Höllander presents an engrossing character study about Senta and the Dutchman’s struggles against their insular community’s stifling conformism.
Jay Scheib’s Augmented-Reality Parsifal is a cautionary reminder that technological innovation shouldn’t absolve directors from the exacting work of deriving intelligent and fascinating theater from the source material.
In Nike Wagner’s essay “The Sounding Silence,” the German dramaturge argues that “the longing for deathrepresents the central motif” of her great-grandfather’s opera Tristan und Isolde.
At the heart of Tobias Kratzer’s incisively rollicking production of Tannhäuser lies a metanarrative that maps Wagner’s early political and artistic challenges onto its hero’s philosophical struggles.
The parterre team is glad to make available a professionally produced recording of the February 3rd memorial held in honor of parterre box founder James Jorden
After attending three Met Lohengrins I’ve gone into Wagner withdrawal waiting for the upcoming Der Fliegende Holländer.
Diva November meets Wagner December when Chris’s Cache this week offers Régine Crespin as both Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and Senta in Der Fliegende Holländer via a pair of American pirates from the 1960s.
Gianandrea Noseda leads seasoned Wagnerians in Andreas Homoki’s stark production of Die Walküre for Zurich Opera.
Last night’s cast of Die Meistersinger at the Met, dominated by the irascible, unbeatable duo of Michael Volle and Johannes Martin Kränzle as Sachs and Beckmesser, did much to enliven Otto Schenk’s creaky, nearly 30-year-old production.
Imagine my surprise then when I discovered a new recording of Tristan und Isolde released by Navona Records, a small label based in New Hampshire that primarily focuses on recitals of chamber music, solo works, and smaller ensemble pieces.
Over the course of 700 pages, Alex Ross exhaustively—and sometimes exhaustingly—examines an impact that began in the Wagner’s own lifetime and continues unbroken today, with references cropping up in contemporary works as different as The Matrix and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
I still remember, and some of it quite vividly, what it was like to experience Achim Freyer‘s intense and groundbreaking Ring production all these years later.
In the opera world, one of the pieces that underwent a multitude of changes in its reception was undoubtedly Richard Wagner’s longest and most Germanic opera, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
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.
A hefty thunderclap shook Tanglewood’s Koussevitzky Shed just as Andris Nelsons raised his baton for the third act of the weekend’s concert Die Walküre.
In this recital, the Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny and his pianist Lech Napierala present the world premiere recording of Stanislaw Baranczak‘s Podróz Zimowa (Winter’s Journey), which weds the poet’s meticulously crafted poetry to the music of Franz Schubert.
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.
Cycle II represented an embarrassment of musical riches.
Christian Thielemann is widely regarded as our time’s preeminent master of the Austro-German symphonic ensemble.
Wagner’s Ring is an artistic masterpiece that is peerless in its ability to continually reveal layers of musical, theatrical, and philosophical insight
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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