Now we have considered the three “winners” in the Tristan video competition, let’s turn to the also-rans, or, to be more optimistic, the runners up. Read more »
Yesterday we pondered two videos of Tristan und Isolde from the 20th century. Now let us move on to a performance that is definitively of the 21st. Patrice Chéreau, the humanist in provocateur’s clothing, returned to Wagner in 2007 at La Scala with Daniel Barenboim and Waltraud Meier. The three had first collaborated, memorably, on Berg’s Wozzeck more than a decade earlier. Read more »
Director Ivo van Hove, in collaboration with Flemish opera company Muziektheater Transparant, brings his trademark physicality and stripped-down aesthetic to bear on Leoš Janáček‘s “pathbreaking, emotionally raw song cycle” (The New York Times) Diary of One Who Disappeared. Featuring bravura performances by tenor Andrew Dickinson and mezzo-soprano Marie Hamard and additional music by composer Annelies Van Parys, BAM presents the US Premiere of this contemporary update April 4—6 at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House.
In 1917, Czech composer Janáček became obsessed with a married woman 40 years his junior. In the throes of despair, he penned more than 700 love letters and a haunting 22-part song cycle, about a village boy who falls in love with a Romany girl. Van Hove’s contemporary reimagining of Janáček’s Diary of One Who Disappeared paints a deeply affecting portrait of identity, infatuation, and ultimately, alienation. Read more »
“I will never sing the role again. It was frightful. We were a set of madwomen…There is nothing beyond Elektra. We have lived and reached the furthest boundaries in dramatic writing for the voice with Wagner. But Richard Strauss goes beyond him. His singing voices are lost. We have come to a full stop.” Read more »
Anja Silja staked a claim as a leading Senta of her era with a series of searing performances of Der Fliegende Holländer while in her early twenties.
Waltraud Meier‘s one (and probably only) Met Isolde is immortalized visually on the Met Archives site in photos by Marty Sohl.
Cher Public