Back to Baku: Die Walküre in Bayreuth

By David Karlin, 24 August 2014

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“Say what you like about Wagner, but the man knew how to write an introduction”

Reviewed at Bayreuther Festspielhaus, Bayreuth on 23 August 2014

Wagner, Die Walküre

Kirill Petrenko, Conductor

Frank Castorf, Director

Adriana Braga Peretzki, Costume Designer

Aleksandar Denić, Set Designer

Catherine Foster, Brünnhilde

Allison Oakes, Gerhilde

Christiane Kohl, Helmwige

Dara Hobbs, Ortlinde

Anja Kampe, Sieglinde

Claudia Mahnke, Fricka, Waltraute

Okka von der Damerau, Grimgerde

Alexandra Petersamer, Roßweiße

Julia Rutigliano, Siegrune

Nadine Weissmann, Schwertleite

Johan Botha, Siegmund

Wolfgang Koch, Wotan

Kwangchul Youn, Hunding

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Staatsoper Hamburg's new Boris Godunov traverses Russian history

Alexander Hall, 16th September

Opening the new opera season, Kent Nagano powerfully directs Mussorgsky's great psychodrama about a famous tsar, marred only by Frank Castorf's visually confusing and symbolically overweighted production.

****1

Méphistophélès steals the show in Staatsoper's Faust

George Jahn, 4th November

Adam Palka shines as the devil in this revival of Frank Castorf's multimedia staging that relocates the work to mid-20th century Paris, around the end of the Algerian War.

****1

Gounod in the Time of Corona: Frank Castorf's many-layered Faust

Chanda VanderHart, 29th April

Faust and Méphistophélès pal around like buddies in Castorf's multi-media staging, the devil here less diabolical and more anarchistic party-boy.

****1

Verdi Wars: Frank Castorf’s Forza del destino at Deutsche Oper

Hugo Shirley, 14th September

Audience uproar brings a much needed sense of theatre to a disappointing production of Verdi’s middle-period epic.

**111

House arrested: Janáček's last opera in Munich

Matthew Rye, 26th May

The profusion of images and ideas in Frank Castorf's Bavarian Staatsoper production of From the House of the Dead threatens to rob Janáček's opera of its humanity.

***11

Devil in the detail: Gounod's Faust in Stuttgart

Matthew Rye, 3rd November

A thrilling new staging of Gounod's opera from the team that brought Bayreuth its current Ring, with musical rewards to match.

*****

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David Karlin

David is a co-founder of Bachtrack. He is a musical omnivore interested in almost all types of music, but with a particular love of Italian opera. You can contact him from this link.