Bayreuth 2013

[slarty]

Report from the Oilfields in Baku. ( Walküre Bayreuth 2013 production)
Act 1 was excellent Botha , Kampe and Selig all sang well, she was even better than at the Proms. Petrenko excellent.
Sounds like Kampe and Botha are the best of it. The Brünnhilde(Catherine Foster) is very shaky and the Wotan (Wolfgang Koch) is overparted.
The Todesverkündigung is about the weakest I have heard. She is not bad when she sings out, but she is holding back trying to save her resources and sounds dreadful at mezzovoce.
Thought so, She saved it for Act 3, and finished well. Koch is giving his all but it is only adequate. He reminds me of Philip Joll, when he first sang Wotan with Reggie in Cardiff in 1984, and that was a much smaller theatre. All middle and higher register , very thin and no bottom to the voice. He is a baritone and that is not enough for this role.
Petrenko is doing well. Very sensitive conducting. I look forwards to hearing more from him when he moves to Munich this Autumn.

[Oliver]

Wagner the musical dramatist has been killed; long live Wagner the composer of concert works.

For decades it was my ambition to go to Bayreuth. The ROH Parsifal with Knights of the Grail in cardies twenty years ago ended all that for me....and now, such a risible production would probably be considered conservative. It is not that so many producers don't like Wagner; they positively hate him. What's next? dispensing with the orchestra and replacing it with synthesisers and a disco beat?
Why not? if a producer is serious about debunking Wagner, why stick to the stage?

[LHC]

Wagner the musical dramatist has been killed; long live Wagner the composer of concert works.

For decades it was my ambition to go to Bayreuth. The ROH Parsifal with Knights of the Grail in cardies twenty years ago ended all that for me....and now, such a risible production would probably be considered conservative. It is not that so many producers don't like Wagner; they positively hate him. What's next? dispensing with the orchestra and replacing it with synthesisers and a disco beat?
Why not? if a producer is serious about debunking Wagner, why stick to the stage?

I remember that production of Parsifal, which I thought was dire (largely because it was so dreary), but even then the use of cardies was hardly radical stuff.

I suspect your worst nightmares have already come to pass. In 2002 Peter Konwitschny decided to interpolate an on-stage disruption into the last Act of Die Meistersinger that broke the score at a crucial moment and led to an additional scene of dialogue. In the closing scene when Hans Sachs (sung by Wolfgang Schone) started to sing about "the foreign mist" that threatens to obscure what is "German and genuine", the other characters exclaimed "Wolfgang, you can't sing that sort of stuff any more". The music ground to a halt, and the cast started a debate on what constitutes "German and genuine".

"That's nationalism," one of the mastersingers shrieked. "It only means the preservation of language and tradition," answered Eva, the voice of cautious moderation. The foray was only halted when conductor Ingo Metzmacher demands the resumption of the music. Cue the inevitable mix of boos and cheers from the Hamburg audience.

A production of le Nozze di Figaro by Christopher Marthaler, first seen in Salzbrug but later transferred to the Paris Opera and set in a modern day wedding retailers featured rewritten recitatives using various instruments including blown-upon beer bottles. All the recitatives were played by an invented, mostly silent onstage character, a reclusive weirdo who played the music on a motley array of instruments, including a portable electric keyboard, harmonicas, makeshift guitars and the aforementioned beer bottles. Occasionally he joined in with an unattractive falsetto. If you are curious, you can still buy this particular production on DVD!

[slarty]

anyone wanting to see a selection of photographs and detail about this new Ring should look here -

http://intermezzo.typepad.com/intermezzo/2013/07/bayreuth-ring-siegfried.html

All four productions are covered. The broadcast of Siegfried begins in a moment.........