Wagner
Classical CDs Weekly: John Adams, Dobrinka Tabakova, WagnerSaturday, 01 June 2013
John Adams: Nixon in China Peter Sellars (director), Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Chorus and Ballet/John Adams (Nonesuch)If, like me, you prefer your opera recordings to be heard and not seen, make an exception for this DVD of Peter Sellars’s... Read more... |
Lohengrin, Welsh National OperaFriday, 24 May 2013
What is one to make of Lohengrin, Wagner’s last “opera” (as opposed to music drama), in this day and age? Is it a medieval romance, like Weber’s Freischütz but with a deus ex machina at the beginning rather than the end; or is it a nineteenth-... Read more... |
BBC Proms 2013: Ring operas for a fiver eachFriday, 19 April 2013
First, the good news: you can see Wagner’s entire Ring at the Royal Albert Hall, with absolutely the world’s finest Wagner singers and conductor in concert, for a grand total of £20. The bad news is that unless you have a season ticket – in which... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Heldentenor Ian StoreySunday, 24 March 2013
In 2007 the English tenor, Ian Storey, made a dramatic and highly visible debut as Tristan in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the season opening of La Scala, Milan, conducted by Daniel Barenboim and directed by Patrice Chereau. It was seen by... Read more... |
Die Feen, Chelsea Opera Group, Queen Elizabeth HallMonday, 18 March 2013
Like Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges and Puccini’s Turandot, Wagner’s first opera – The Fairies in English – has its roots in a “theatrical fable” by the 18th century Venetian playwright Carlo Gozzi. There the resemblances end. Only Prokofiev... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch on Strauss and WagnerSunday, 03 March 2013
In many ways the most well-tempered of conductors, Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) brought a peerless orchestral transparency and beauty of line to the great German classics. Even the most overloaded Richard Strauss scores under his watchful eye and... Read more... |
Die Meistersinger Act Three, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterMonday, 11 February 2013
The “Mastersingers of Manchester”, about 350 of them, were gathered together by Sir Mark Elder to celebrate the Wagner bicentenary with this performance of Act Three of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in its entirety. He also pulled in about 200... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Conductor Sir Simon RattleWednesday, 30 January 2013
Sir Simon Rattle (b. 1955) and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (est. 1986) have been together from the beginning. Founded by period-instrument musicians eager to run their own affairs rather than play obediently for conductor-managers like... Read more... |
Der Fliegende Holländer, Zurich Opera, Royal Festival HallSunday, 16 December 2012
Much more regularly than the seven years it takes the Flying Dutchman's demon ship to reach dry land, the Zurich Opera steamer moors at the Southbank Centre. None of its more recent concert performances up to now has branded itself on the memory as... Read more... |
Maestro or Mephisto - The Real Georg Solti, BBC FourSaturday, 10 November 2012
The one thing you can rely on when a programme is billed as "The Real" something-or-other is that that is exactly what you won't get. This film, commemorating the centenary of the birth of the great Hungarian conductor, did a thorough job of tracing... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Dublin: Your City, Your StoriesSunday, 21 October 2012
Irish theatre generates high expectations. So much so, that if there isn’t a premiere of a play by one of Ireland’s leading playwrights – Sebastian Barry, Enda Walsh, Marina Carr, Frank McGuinness, Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson or Mark O’Rowe –... Read more... |
Leopold Trio, BBCSO, Wigglesworth, Barbican HallSaturday, 20 October 2012
The prospect of adventuring from one unpredictable day to the next in the course of Michael Tippett’s Triple Concerto, and from dawn to twilight in just over an hour’s orchestral music from Wagner’s Ring, seemed very much weighted in the English... Read more... |
