Wagner from east and west

[ARBurton]

Rheingold from the Met on BBC Radio 3, Rienzi from Madrid on German radio HR2Kultur (a repeat), and Hollander on Italian Rai 3 from Bologna. And tomorrow WFMT Chicago have Tristan Act 2 (I cannot yet tell whether this is a repeat).

Happy listening all..

[meles]

Was it me, or was Rheingold... less than gripping? And I had difficulty in differentiating the men - Wotan seemed a little light and Loge a little dark...?

[Bert Coules]

I didn't hear it all, but my impression of some of the singers was not quite the same as yours in that I thought them very different: the Loge was unusually light-voiced for the part (though perfectly fine) and the Wotan was well parted and rather good, while the Alberich shouted somewhat too much for my taste. The overall thing that struck me was a feeling about the tempi: there seemed to be a lot of sudden variations. Not ineffective, though.

[Belgrove]

On the whole I agree with Bert. A bit of a curates egg, in fact like no other Rheingold I've heard. The tempi was generally slow, which normally is synonymous with weight (e.g. Goodall), but here was surprisingly airy and delicate. The score seemed to be under the microscope with detail revealed to glorious effect, and not in a detached or forensic way. Yet it did not ignite. Too tasteful maybe.

Eric Owens as Alberich, so good when I heard him in this the first time around, seemed rather out of sorts from the outset and even missed a cue at the start of the Nibelheim scene, bit of a flurry between singer and orchestra to get back together. This scene, which crys out for fleetness, seemed particularly flat and leaden.

But weirdest of all was Stefan Margita's Loge - almost counter-tenorish in tone. The narration of his travels through the world in Scene 2 was like being read a fantastical bedtime story by a very strange uncle. On the radio he seemed detached from the entire drama, and yet he is clearly a motivator of much of the action. However that otherworldliness is entirely appropriate, so for all its unconventionality it was the standout performance.

[Bert Coules]

But weirdest of all was Stefan Margita's Loge - almost counter-tenorish in tone.

I missed his scene two narration, but when I did first hear him I actually thought he was a counter-tenor, somehow managing to get all the notes in his falsetto register. Either that or the part was being played by a woman. I was applauding it as a marvellously innovative bit of casting until I looked up his name and checked him out: he is in fact a lyric tenor newly turned dramatic(ish). He's in demand for his Loge: he's played him in Amsterdam, Munich and San Francisco as well as New York.