Gotterdammerung ('Twilight of the Gods') is the final opera of Wagner's epic tetralogy "Der Ring des Nibelungen" ('The Ring of the Nibelung') in which his visionary masterpiece reaches it's cataclysmic conclusion. Betrayal and death, murder and remorse, lie at the opera's heart, in a work that draws together every plot element in writing of blazing intensity. As the ring is restored to the Rhinemaidens, the age of the gods ends, with the opera offering the certainty of destruction but the consolation of renewal. Staged by the award-winning director Stefan Herheim, this innovative new production from Deutsche Oper Berlin features a leading international cast conducted by Sir Donald Runnicles. The release includes "Making Of" documentary featuring interviews with Stefan Herheim and Sir Donald Runnicles, and behind the scenes footage.

Michael Volle's Wotan [... ] is an event, [... ] Rolando Villaz�n plays a fabulous Loge. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) A myth, a heroic epic, a family saga - perhaps all of these together - make up Richard Wagner's Ring tetralogy. This epic production of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden sees a remarkable collaboration between Christian Thielemann, one of the most distinguished Wagner conductors of our time, and Dmitri Tcherniakov, one of the great, internationally celebrated opera directors of our time. The result is "A glittering feast of voices, sounds, ideas and precise direction of characters. Wagner at his best. " (BR Klassik) The Rheingold gives the background to the events that drive the main dramas of the whole Ring cycle. "In this Rheingold, Thielemann mastered the art of nuance and varied interpretation like no other, and without having to bank on exaggeration. " (Bachtrack. Com). "Funny and aching, ironic and horrifying" (The New York Times)

The successful BR-KLASSIK WISSEN ((BR-Klassik Knowledge) series is now being continued with an audio biography entitled Feuerzauber, Weltenbrand ("Magic Fire - World Conflagration"). On four CD's, narrator and noted voice actor Udo Wachtveitl guides us through the turbulent and complex life and music of the composer Richard Wagner- supported by musical selections from canonical recordings featuring conductors Leonard Bernstein, Bernard Haitink, Rafael Kubel�k, Wolfgang Sawallisch and many others. Additionally, the release features the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and Mariss Jansons with four complete orchestral selections, interludes from Wagner's operas to complete this odyssey into the life of Wagner.

To commemorate the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner's birth, Great Wagner Voices brings together ten extremely diverse Wagnerian soloists in a collection of great Wagner arias. The recordings from the years 1963 to 1971 were drawn from the archives of Bavarian Broadcasting.

Peter Seiffert, Petra Maria Schnitzer, Beatrice Uria-Monzon, Markus Eiche, and Gunther Groissbock star in this Gran Teatre del Liceu production of the Wagner opera conducted by Sebastian Weigle and directed by Robert Carsen.

Lance Ryan, Jennifer Wilson, Juha Uusitalo, Gerhard Siegel, and Catherine Wyn-Rogers star in this production of the Wagner opera with Zubin Mehta conducting the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana.

Water Damage turned into luck The Rhine is where Richard Wagner's cycle of operas "Der Ring des Nibelungen" begins and ends - and it was beside the Rhine in 1851 that the composer first dreamed of this equally visionary and monumental work. Even if Wagner's plans for a festival would ultimately be realized in an entirely different part of Germany, the performance of a "Ring on the Rhine" will always remain something very special. And where better to make this happen than at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein? Two cities, two orchestras, two casts of singers - with the Rhine opera's fantastic ensemble of singers and it's two outstanding orchestras, the Duisburger Philharmoniker and the D�sseldorfer Symphoniker, at their two venues in Duisburg und D�sseldorf, the essential conditions were in place. The "Ring on the Rhine" staged by Dietrich W. Hilsdorf and under my own musical direction gradually began to take shape from June 2017 onwards. The successful conclusion of this two year musical and scenic collaboration was planned for the end of the 2018/19 season with the performance of a complete "Ring" cycle at each of the two venues. However, a few weeks before the premiere of "G�tterd�mmerung", a defective sprinkler system flooded Theater Duisburg. The damage this caused made completing the staged "Ring" cycle in Duisburg (for the time being) impossible..." (From the Editorial of Axel Kober)

Juha Uusitalo, Ilya Bannik, German Villar, John Daszak, Franz-Josef Kapellmann, Gerhard Siegel, Matti Salminen, Stephen Milling, Anna Larsson, Sabina von Walther, Christa Mayer and Silvia Vazquez.

Also available on Blu-ray

English-speaking audiences have always found Die Meistersinger to be a life-enhancing celebration of wisdom, art and song. So it proves in David McVicar's production – the first at Glyndebourne – which is updated to the early-19th century of Wagner's childhood. At the centre of a true ensemble cast is Gerald Finley, a 'gleamingly sung', 'eminently believable' Sachs (The Independent on Sunday), supported by the dynamic conducting of Vladimir Jurowski which, like McVicar's production, uses Glyndebourne's special intimacy to bring sharp focus to bear on the subtlety of Wagner's musical and dramatic counterpoint.

McVicar has put on a great show with style, intelligence and insight. -- The Telegraph

Musically, it was judged faultlessly for the scale of the theatre by Vladimir Jurowski, who conjured playing of mercurial clarity not the first words one would normally choose for this gargantuan score from the London Philharmonic Orchestra, sustained with unfailing vigilance and concentration. -- The Guardian

Richard Wagner
DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG


Walther von Stolzing – Marco Jentzsch
Eva – Anna Gabler
Magdalene – Michaela Selinger
David – Topi Lehtipuu
Veit Pogner – Alastair Miles
Sixtus Beckmesser – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Hans Sachs – Gerald Finley
Kunz Vogelgesang – Colin Judson

The Glyndebourne Chorus
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski, conductor

David McVicar, stage director

Recorded live at Glyndebourne, Lewes, July 2011

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: LPCM 2.0 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, French, German
Running time: 300 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

R E V I E W:

WAGNER Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg • Vladimir Jurowski, cond; Anna Gabler ( Eva ); Michaela Selinger ( Magdalene ); Marco Jentzsch ( Walther von Stolzing ); Topi Lehtipuu ( David ); Gerald Finley ( Hans Sachs ); Johannes Martin Kränzle ( Sixtus Beckmesser ); Alastair Miles ( Veit Pogner ); Glyndebourne Festival Ch; London PO • OPUS ARTE OA 1085 D (2 DVDs: 300:00) OA BD7108 (Blu-ray) Live: Glyndebourne 6/2011


John Christie, Glyndebourne’s founder, was Wagner-obsessed and would have dearly loved to present one of the composer’s operas early-on in the Festival’s history. But such an undertaking was not a reasonable possibility in Glyndebourne’s original 300-seat theater. As John Christie’s grandson recounts in one of this Blu-ray’s “extras,” an early Glyndebourne conductor commented “if you put on Wagner, you’ll need to put the audience on the stage and the stage in the auditorium.” Glyndebourne got a new opera house in the 1990s, seating 1,250, and Wagner finally came to East Sussex in 2003 with a production of Tristan und Isolde. This David McVicar-directed Meistersinger represents Glyndebourne’s second Wagner staging, and it’s something special.


Die Meistersinger , at one level, is about intergenerational conflict and being able to cast younger singers as the quartet of lovers is a real plus. (The recent PentaTone Meistersinger on SACD succeeds, in part, because those singers at least sound youthful.) At Glyndebourne, McVicar notes, he could “cast singers that are appropriate to the ages of their characters and are physically convincing.” Marco Jentzsch, the strapping Walther, has got to be 6’3” or 6’4”—a far cry from the all-too-common fireplug Stolzings, whose boots come up most of the way to their protuberant abdomens. If Jentzsch can’t belt out the Prize Song as powerfully as a Ben Heppner or Peter Seifert, he’s fully up to the lyrical requirements of the role and his voice has a pleasant timbre. The Finnish tenor Topi Lehtipuu handles the part of David very effectively, both his character’s palpable horniness and, more critically, the act I exegesis on song writing. Anna Gabler is a complex and passionate Eva, as confused as Nuremberg’s shoemaker about the possibility of a future as Mrs. Hans Sachs. Michaela Selinger, the Magdalena, is perky and vocally appealing.


Alistair Miles portrays a Pogner that is Sach’s equal in intelligence and integrity, despite his fat-cat status; Johannes Martin Kränzle’s Beckmesser executes the requisite physical comedy and manages just the correct amount of pedantry and pride to define the town clerk’s obvious short-comings while leaving him a sympathetic character. Beckmesser, here, is a victim of his own personality failings rather than a fundamentally bad person. Any Meistersinger, of course, depends on its Sachs to keep our interest up for five hours, and Gerald Finley is a superb one. He happens to be the best singer here, but his acting is what makes this production so compelling. Finley’s character, we know from the outset, is thoroughly engaged with the dual goals of achieving artistic progress and promoting Stolzing’s romantic efforts—but is also a very conflicted human being. When the curtain goes up for act III, it’s clear that Sachs has been drinking all night and he kicks some furniture around. He uncovers a portrait of his late wife. And just before Walther enters to compose his song, we see Sachs pick up a pen to write something—presumably a contest song to compete for Eva himself. The Knight comes into the workshop and Sachs backs away from the abyss.


It’s that sort of theatrical detail that makes this production exceptional. The size of the stage and hall is still small by Metropolitan Opera or Covent Garden standards and allows for a high level of intimacy. As McVicar tells us “Everyone on stage is a character and has a story.” Watch the Masters as they congregate in acts I and III, especially the guy with the ear trumpet. That’s “Ulrich Eisslinger,” not exactly a major role—he has one line in the act I roll call. The part is positively savored by Adrian Thomson, who responds to every event on stage with facial expressions and body language that are alone practically worth the price of admission. And look at the Masters’ faces when Walther’s final version of the Prize Song takes an unexpected harmonic turn. These guys—the singers and their characters—are really listening deeply.


McVicar moves the action from the 16th century to the early 19th, the era into which the composer was born. In a second extra feature, Die Meistersinger —An Opera with Baggage, the director reminds us that the 1820s and 1830s were a time before Unification when Germans “could point to their culture as an expression of their national identity.” By considering Meistersinger in the context of this time frame, McVicar doesn’t need to directly address the future commandeering of this work for the vilest of nationalistic purposes. I like any Meistersinger where Beckmesser stays on stage after his humiliation. He’s not the “other”—he’s still part of a community.


The production is sumptuously lit and filmed, in the same league as the Met’s venerable Otto Schenk version—and the meadow scene is a real eyeful. The sound is richly detailed with excellent vocal/orchestral balances. (In multichannel, the “auf den theater” brass fanfares are definitely coming from afar.) Subtitles are offered in English, French, and German. Glyndebourne’s Meistersinger goes straight to the top of the heap among the eight video versions in my collection. It registers here, to use David McVicar’s words, as “a profoundly human, wise, warm, loving work.”


FANFARE: Andrew Quint

This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Also available on standard DVD

Lohengrin is staged by the enfant terrible Hans Neuenfels, and offers a thought-provoking production of brilliant visual clarity. The performance by Klaus Florian Vogt in the title role is staggering and impressive. There is beauty and purity in his voice, but in this role in particular, one truly senses something unheimlich, other-worldly, which fits superlatively both with work and production. Conductor Andris Nelsons brings out the best in the festival chorus and orchestra. It is a Lohengrin one does not easily forget and puts Bayreuth back in the vanguard of Wagner interpretation.

Richard Wagner
LOHENGRIN

König Heinrich – Georg Zeppenfeld
Lohengrin – Klaus Florian Vogt
Elsa Von Brabant – Annette Dasch
Friedrich Von Telramund – Jukka Rasilainen
Ortrud – Petra Lang
Der Heerrufer Des Königs – Samuel Youn

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Chorus
Andris Nelsons, conductor

Hans Neuenfels, stage director

Recorded live at the Bayreuth Festival, 14 August 2011

bonus
- Cast gallery
- Interviews with Katharina Wagner, Hans Neuenfels, Klaus Florian Vogt & Annette Dasch
- Animations

Picture format: 1080i High Definition
Sound format: LPCM 2.0 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish
Running time: 209 mins + 25 mins
No. of Discs: 1 (BD 50)

R E V I E W:


WAGNER Lohengrin • Andris Nelsons, cond; Klaus Florian Vogt ( Lohengrin ); Annette Dasch ( Elsa ); Jukka Rasilainen ( Friedrich von Telramund ); Petra Lang ( Ortrud ); Georg Zeppenfeld ( Heinrich ); Samuel Youn ( Herald ); Bayreuth Fest O & Ch • OPUS ARTE OAA BD7103 D (Blu-ray: 209:00) Live: Bayreuth 8/14/2011


& Interviews with Katharina Wagner, Hans Neuenfels, Klaus Florian Vogt, and Annette Dasch. Animations


I saw this vastly entertaining Lohengrin at Bayrueth in August 2011, six days before it was filmed with the same cast for this Blu-ray release, and can attest that it was as enthusiastically received as it appears to be on its video representation. Yes, a few boos can be heard at the close of each act, but this is easily the most successful Bayreuth production since “the girls” (as Katharina Wagner and Eva Wagner-Pasquier, the composer’s great-granddaughters, are known to the locals) officially took over the festival from the long-lived Wolfgang Wagner.


The director Hans Neuenfels, and those who designed the production, imagine Lohengrin as a kind of bio-psychological scientific experiment and the set evokes a “Skinner Box,” the apparatus used for operant conditioning testing. The good people of Brabant are, indeed, rats with cartoon-like hands, feet, tails, and large mesh heads with glowing rodent eyes. A briskly efficient crew of men in blue hazard suits supervises them periodically. These are, it should be noted, rats with a real sense of style, and the stage picture at the end of act II is stunning. The element of fantasy (and, yes, humor) is entirely in keeping with the conception of Lohengrin as a “fairy tale opera.” It’s magical, but there’s plenty of darkness lurking below the surface as well, as there has always been in fairy tales from the Grimm Brothers to Maurice Sendak.


The scientific issue being considered here centers on Elsa, of course: will she or won’t she? Remarkably, these Bayreuth performances represent the German soprano Annette Dasch’s first go at the role and she gives a richly complex realization. Her opening lines in act II (“Euch Lüften, die mein Klagen”) are anything but chaste, a quasi-erotic reverie that concludes with her kissing a swan with a phallicly elongated neck. On the other hand, Dasch makes it clear early on in the act III bedroom scene that Elsa has something else on her mind other than connubial bliss, that is, her obsession with her new husband’s identity.


As opposed to Dasch, Klaus Florian Vogt is the world’s most sought-after Lohengrin, a veteran of many esteemed productions and two video representations—this one in addition to an estimable Lohengrin directed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff and conducted by Kent Nagano— plus an SACD version (with Annette Dasch) on PentaTone. Vogt doesn’t disappoint—his voice is so well suited to the part and his musical instincts so good, how could he?—but his interpretation is by no means fixed. (Says Dasch in her interview feature: “He wasn’t just reeling off his standard Lohengrin!”) Vogt, himself, reports that he learned a lot from the director and feels that the character has been more “humanized,” in this production. But irrespective of a director’s interpretation of the story, the dramatic power of the work rides squarely on the shoulders of the singer in the title role and here Vogt delivers as surely as ever. From his act I entrance right through “In fernem Land,” he holds Elsa, the people of Brabant, and us in his thrall.


As Ortrud, Petra Lang is about as malignantly evil as Wagner’s villains get, sneering, leering, and glaring pretty much every second she’s on camera and offering up some venomous vocalism. Jukka Rasilainen is no weak pawn of his consort—he doesn’t invoke nearly as much pity as some Telramunds, and that’s fine. Georg Zeppenfeld has a strong bass instrument but his relatively slight physical presence matches well Wagner’s implication of a weak and insecure monarch. Samuel Youn, an experienced Wagnerian, makes the Herald into something more than a talking head. His wild hair and air of efficiency suggest a mad scientist, maybe the one in charge of this experiment.


The chorus, as always at Bayreuth, is phenomenal and Andris Nelsons leads with a sure hand (impressing me far more than he did on a Blu-ray release of the Shostakovich Symphony No. 8, reviewed last issue). This is the fourth Blu-ray release from Bayreuth on the Opus Arte label, and these discs, especially when played back in multichannel, get you as close to the reach-out-and-touch-it acoustic experience of the Festspielhaus as any previous recording. At the end of the evening, when the crowd stomps its approval on the old wooden floor of the raked amphitheater, the sense of a large space being acoustically energized is uncanny. The cinematography is superb and the imaginative animations that are projected onstage at various points throughout the opera can be ideally viewed in the Extra section along with interviews of Katharina Wagner (vacuous), Klaus Florian Vogt and Annette Dasch (interesting), and Hans Neuenfels (profound.) And which of Vogt’s three commercial, high-resolution Lohengrin s should you get—the Blu-ray led by Nagano, the PentaTone SACD, or this one? Sorry. If you’re a true Wagnerite, you need all three.


FANFARE: Andrew Quint

Christian Thielemann writes: “I see Die Meistersinger as the pivot and central point of Wagner’s entire oeuvre. On the one hand it is a reaction to Tristan; on the other, he had found himself in a blind alley with Siegfried, and together those two works showed him the way out of it. The fascinating thing about Die Meistersinger is that you can find everything in it. Hero and anti-hero, comedy and tragedy, upperclass and lower-class lovers, burlesque and reflection, the old and the new, in short a whole world. The magic words summing it up for me are ‘atmosphere’ and ‘poetry’. How can I, as a conductor, make the music glitter in its exaggerations and parodies, and at the same time lend it authority? Conversely, how can I make its emotionalism sound not false but genuine, emphasizing the deeply felt popular note in the music? Wagner is fundamentally asking his interpreters to square the circle, which is what makes Die Meistersinger such a difficult work to perform. Perhaps it can succeed only by osmosis, if we open ourselves up entirely to all its moods, colours and aromas, inhaling them so deeply that they naturally emerge from us again at the right moment.”

This seven-CD box gathers together the complete orchestral music of Wagner's hapless son Siegfried, an amiable composer of modest gifts who spent his life like a herring trapped between two barracudas: his strong-willed, mean-spirited, mother Cosima and his Nazi-sympathizing wife Winifred. Cursed with an impossible legacy in the form of his father's own work, Siegfried lacked the spine to turn his back on the past and write music without inhibition in the forms that best suited him. And who can blame him? We can only imagine what it must have been like for him to write a grand, exuberant work like the Symphony in C only to have everyone around him deny that the work even existed because the great Richard had declared that the symphony was "dead."


The four discs of overtures, the symphonic poems, and the concertos also demonstrate an enthusiasm for symphonic composition, and had he not felt impelled to churn out one opera after another, Wagner, Jr. might very well have become a significant musical voice after all. Of course, the jury's out on the stage works until a representative sample see the light of day in carefully prepared performances and recordings, but as far as conservative, German late Romantics go, you could certainly do worse (Pfitzner, for example). Whether you want seven discs of this stuff, on the other hand, is another question entirely. Start with the vibrantly Brucknerian Symphony in C, and then try the first volume of Overtures, which are symphonic poems in all but name (especially the sixteen minute prelude to Die heilige Linde). If you're hooked, you can continue to explore one disc at a time. Werner Andreas Albert plays this music with his typical consistency and commitment, and the sound is very good. A low-risk proposition for the mildly adventurous. [1/31/2001]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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