A luxuriant Tristan und Isolde Act 2 from Noseda and the NSO

By Sydney Boyd, 17 November 2019

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“Günther Groissböck marched out and lit that stage on fire with heft, heart, and muscle”

Reviewed at Kennedy Center: Concert Hall, Washington on 15 November 2019

Wagner, Tristan und Isolde (Act 2)

Gianandrea Noseda, Conductor

Christine Goerke, Isolde

Stephen Gould, Tristan

Günther Groissböck, King Marke

Hunter Enoch, Kurwenal

Neal Cooper, Melot

Ekaterina Gubanova, Brangäne

National Symphony Orchestra

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Markus Bothe’s Botticelli-inspired production fuses tableau vivant aesthetics with Jörg Halubek’s surgical musical precision, offering a peerless, vivid tribute to the fragrant dawn of opera.

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Very few singers can hold an audience in the palm of their hand the way Brenda Rae as Marie does in this rollicking frolic.

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Carlisle Floyd's operatic setting of John Steinbeck’s classic novella is given a new production in the composer's centenary year at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City.

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Margarita Gritskova leads a fine ensemble performance of Rossini’s most under-appreciated opera by Opera Queensland.

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Sydney Boyd

Sydney Boyd is an arts writer, scholar, and violinist. She has been a music critic in Houston since 2012 and is the blog author of Girl at the Opera. She has a Ph.D. in English literature from Rice University, where she currently holds a post-doctoral Spatial Studies fellowship in the Humanities Research Center.