The second installment of the new Lyric Opera Ring was, if anything, even more gratifying than the excellent Rheingold that I attended a year before. Sir Andrew Davis, celebrating his 30th season at Chicago, led a charged, nuanced and richly romantic reading of the score, and the instrumentalists of the orchestra responded with impeccable musicianship. […]
Halfway through the Ring at the Seattle Opera, there is nothing to report but bliss. The settings are lushly romantic but at the same time not clichéd or illustrative. Great handsome vistas, massive rocks, gnarled tree limbs, impenetrable forests — they invite you to lose your bearings and enter into a world of mythical creatures […]
I have a special relationship to Daniel Barenboim’s music-making. It was Barenboim’s ka-jillion-LP set from which I learned the Beethoven piano sonatas in 1972 or so. It was Barenboim who conducted Tristan in my first visit to Bayreuth in 1981. It was Barenboim who was at the podium for the Harry Kupfer Ring, and who continued […]
Halfway through the collection of “Legendary Performances” released by the Met this year, several surprises came to the fore. One was how poor the chorus at the Met was in the 1940s and 1950s. It was as if they dragged folks in from the street to have a go at the Pilgrim’s Chorus. Apparently the […]
The second installment in the Metropolitan Opera’s new Ring Cycle is a theatrical triumph. It places the exciting drama in a bold, imaginative theatrical space; evokes a profoundly romantic world depicted with contemporary flair; casts new and enlightening insights onto the familiar story; and provides an evening of music theatre that rivals any in the […]
The Wagner Blog is a forum for discussion of contemporary themes arising from the works of Richard Wagner. Discussions relating to Wagner’s musical, literary, theatrical, philosophical, political and theoretic work are all appropriate for this forum.
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