Prom 15 - 23.07.13: Wagner – Die Walküre

[bluestateprommer]

I think the orchestra came out tops - definitely their night.

Agreed; even through the limitations of the computer and two speakers, it was great to hear just how well the Staatskapelle Berlin and DB supported the singers, and even keeping in mind that the radio engineers can play with balances to make sure that the voices never get drowned, I got the sense that Barenboim did most of that work for the engineers and made it easy for them in that regard. It was amazing how consistently fabulous and warm (bad choice of words, I know) the orchestra sounded.

Wasn't a big fan of Simon O'Neill as Siegmund, as it was emotionally straining to hear him singing, even if he got all the notes pretty much correct. Anja Kampe was much more involving as Sieglinde. Eric Halfvarson did ham up the bad guy-ness at times, but then Hunding is kind of a jerk anyway. Ekaterina Gubanova was very, very fine as Fricka. Contrary to some others here, I was generally OK with the Valkyries as a whole. Except for her one train-wreck moment in Act III, ,where to use a baseball metaphor (hey, I'm American), three strikes on "Nicht weise bin ich" and she was out, Nina Stemme did well as Brunnhilde. (I remember seeing a bunch of comments on the Proms' FB page to ask that this Ring be made available for sale. Unfortunately, I think that one slip from Stemme would pretty much knock that idea out of contention, since I don't think that she would let it pass for commercial sale. Tiny slips are one thing, but that was more than a tiny slip.) Fortunately, Bryn Terfel saved the day when he sang Stemme's part back to her in that passage. Besides that rescue moment, I liked Terfel as Wotan better than Floss, so we agree to disagree there. BT was just as fine as he was in the Met HD-casts, IMHO.

But getting back to Floss' opening point about the Staatskapelle Berlin, one wonders how they can top this if and when they return to The Proms. Here's hoping, of course, that one day they will. I can't imagine that they wouldn't be invited back. The question is what they would bring next time, since you can't really top the Ring in your Proms debut. Agree also with Barbirollians that Sir Henry no doubt would have loved this, a complete Ring at his Proms in one season, and even one week.