Harry Kupfer's vivid and enlightening production came alive by soprano Anja Kampe's courageous performance and by conductor Oksana Lyniv's briliant direction.
Christian Thielemann, the Staatskapelle Dresden and a star-studded cast compress Wagner's Ring cycle into a tale of Siegmund, Sieglinde, Hunding and Brünnhilde.
Despite a condescending commentary, a strong performance from Anja Kampe as Leonore made this concert staging of Fidelio at the Royal Festival Hall thoroughly enjoyable.
Frank Castorf's Soviet-era farm-setting does not obtrude on the emotional core of Wagner's Die Walküre, with excellent performances from Johan Botha, Anja Kampe and Claudia Mahnke, with superlative playing from the Festival Orchestra.
An impressive Die Walküre with a trio of first act singers that would be hard to better. Throughout, clarity of diction is allied to clarity of the orchestral reading.
Dipping my toes into the murky waters of the Wagner-fest at the Proms this year for the first time, I found myself confronted with the monumental second installment of the Ring cycle, Die Walküre.
Opera being a strongly visual art form as well as a musical one, the idea of a pure concert performance seems a little strange to those unfamiliar with the form.
'First impressions are often the truest', wrote Hazlitt. I was immediately struck by the amount of space on the Usher Hall stage, recently filled by so many large symphony orchestras. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra had plenty of space, a feature which was soon to be borne out in the music.
Beethoven took over nine years to write and edit Fidelio, his only opera. It tells the story of Leonore, whose husband Florestan is being illegally held in prison. She disguises herself as a man, Fidelio, and gets a job in the prison in an attempt to save him.
As The Flying Dutchman nears its close, the crew of Daland's ship are celebrating their safe homecoming and yelling at the Dutchman's unseen crew to join them. To their horror, they realise that they have indeed woken the dead: the Dutchman's crew are ghosts who have wandered the oceans for centuries: the storms cannot burst their sails for they are protected by Satan.
Una ópera escrita rodeado de “tristeza y la mayor infelicidad”, como el propio autor refirió, es difícil que obtenga el prolongado rédito que su factor espera.
Forte d’une tenue et d’une distribution remarquables, portée par un souci conjugué du texte et du symbole, cette nouvelle mouture de Parsifal signée Richard Jones s’empare habilement des fulgurances et ambiguïtés de l'œuvre.
Die Bayerische Staatsoper hat den zweiten Teil des Ring-Zyklus mit exzellenter Besetzung unter der Leitung von Kirill Petrenko wahrlich meisterlich zurück auf die Münchner Bühne gebracht.
Mit einer musikalisch gradiosen Aufführung der Walküre und prägnant-wirkungsvollen Projektionen wurde in Budapest der Ring-Zyklus von Adam Fischer fortgesetzt.
