Presented here are all of Wagner's mature operas from seven leading European opera houses recorded during the last decade. Featuring many acclaimed Wagner singers of our age these productions exult in the force of Ezra Pound's dictum 'Great art is news that stays news'. The directors Harry Kupfer Nikolaus Lehnhoff David McVicar and others heed Wagner's own persuasive plea 'Children make it new' in staging's employing modern technology within grand designs that face up to the breadth of Wagner's dramatic genius and the social and political implications.

TRISTAN & ISOLDE

DIE WALKUERE

Margaret Jane Wray has performed with some of the most important musical figures of our day, including Daniel Barenboim, Maris Janssons and Seiji Ozawa and enjoys a busy career as a concert artist in addition to her varied operatic performances. Included on this disc is the rarely recorded 1862 concert ending to the 'Love Duet' from 'Tristan und Isolde'.

Wagner's rarely performed early comic opera, based on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, enjoys its Spanish debut in a new production by director Kasper HOlten. The lively score boasts clear Italian, French and Weberian influences that pre-date the composer's mature voice, yet the music continually delights with the unmistakable emergence of Wagner's precocious genius. His adaptation of the Bard's play reflects the rebellious modd of a Revolutionary Germany, vindicating sensual love and attacking the fanatical repression of sexuality by a puritanical and hypocritical authority. Ivor Bolton conducts a vibrant cast featuring English baritone and Cardiff Singer of the World Lieder Prize-winner Christoph Maltman, Turkish-Viennese tenor and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Ilker Arcayurek and Germany's htotest Wagnerian leading lady, Manuela Uhl.

Johan Botha, Albert Dohmen, Edith Haller, and Linda Watson star in this 2010 Bayreuth Festival production of the Wagner opera conducted by Christian Thielemann.

Johan Botha, Albert Dohmen, Edith Haller, and Linda Watson star in this 2010 Bayreuth Festival production of the Wagner opera conducted by Christian Thielemann.

Robert Dean Smith and Irene Theorin star in the Bayreuth production of the Wagner opera conducted by Peter Schneider.

FLYING DUTCHMAN

Wagner: Siegfried, WWV 86C

Classical Music

In the prologue to Wagner's giant masterpiece, Der Ring de Nibelungen, the beginnings of an epic journey unfold when Alberich seizes the ring of gold, it's awesome power unleashing an unstoppable story of deceit, destruction, death and transfiguring love.

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

Also available on standard DVD

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
(Blu-ray Disc Version)

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: 1080i High Definition
Sound format: LPCM 2.0 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, French, German
Running time: 300 mins
No. of Discs: 1 (Blu-ray)

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

In the final part of Wagner's epic cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Siegfried's world descends into falsehood and betrayal before his cursed life is ended by a single spear.

Lohengrin is staged by the enfant terrible Hans Neuenfels, and offers a thought-provoking production of brilliant visual clarity. The performance with 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 other-worldly, which fits superlatively both with the work and the 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. "Great Wagner performances such as this give the sensation of looking down at the world from a sadly omniscient height... Vogt...gave a dreamlike performance... Dasch... was sweetly impassioned throughout. Petra Lang was a properly searing Ortrud... Andris Nelsons... conducted with blazing intensity." (Alex Ross, The New Yorker) ‘‘A magic moment of music theatre.’’ (Handelsblatt) ‘‘Bayreuth's incomparable chorus really deserves a medal for its performance here.’’ (International Record Review) ‘‘All six solo singers are musically excellent and dramatically persuasive, with Petra Lang's excoriating Ortrud and George Zeppenfeld's grave yet warm-toned King Henry particularly memorable...’’ (Gramophone)

Der fliegende Holl�nder is considered to be the first 'true' Wagner opera. The story of the phantom ship and it's haunted master becomes a sensually charged drama with love and tragic sacrifice at it's heart, and this original 1841 version leaves the ultimate redemption of it's central characters unresolved. Wagner originally conceived the opera for Paris, so it is fitting that this production from the Theater an der Wien is driven by French director Olivier Py's unique vision, with a staging that dispels many of the misconceptions surrounding Wagner's art.

For the first time, the complete Beyreuth Ring from 1962 is being released on this magnificent 4-volume collection. This legendary performance is conducted by Rudolf Kempe, and features Hans Hopf as Siegfried, Gottlob Frick as Hagen, and Birgit Nilsson as Brunnhilde. Gotterdammerung is the fourth of Wagner’s four music dramas that make up his epic Der Ring des Nibelungen.

For the first time, the complete Beyreuth Ring from 1962 is being released on this magnificent 4-volume collection. This legendary performance is conducted by Rudolf Kempe, and features Otto Wiener as Wotan, Grace Hoffmann as Fricka, Gottlieb Frick as Hundig, Fritz Uhl as Siegmund, and Astrid Varnay as Brunnhilde. Die Walkure is the second of Wagner’s four music dramas that make up his epic Der Ring des Nibelungen.

For the first time, the complete Beyreuth Ring from 1962 is being released on this magnificent 4-volume collection. This legendary performance is conducted by Rudolf Kempe, and features Otto Wiener as Wotan, Grace Hoffmann as Fricka, and Gerhard Stolze as Loge. Das Rheingold is the first of Wagner’s four music dramas that make up his epic Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Richard Wagner 
DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN
(Highlights)

Wotan / Der Wanderer – Juha Uusitalo
Loge – John Daszak
Alberich – Franz-Josef Kapellmann
Fasolt / Hunding – Matti Salminen
Fafner – Stephen Milling
Fricka – Anna Larsson
Erda / Schwertleite – Christa Mayer
Siegmund – Peter Seiffert
Sieglinde – Petra-Maria Schnitzer
Brünnhilde – Jennifer Wilson
Siegfried – Lance Ryan
Mime – Gerhard Siegel
Waltraute / Erda – Catherine Wyn-Rogers

Valencia Regional Government Choir (Cor de la Generalitat Valenciana) Valencian Community Orchestra (Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana) Zubin Mehta, conductor

La Fura del Baus, staging
Carlus Padrissa, stage director

Recorded live from the Palau de les Arts "Reina Sofia", Valencia, Spain, 2007-2009.

Special budget-priced DVD
100 minutes of the most stunning visual and musical highlights of this production by La Fura dels Baus, including two new documentaries about Franc Aleu and Carlus Padrissa.

Bonus:
- Portraits of Carlus Pardissa and Franc Aleu

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: DTS 5.1 (highlights) / PCM Stereo (bonus)
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: German, French, English, Spanish (highlights) / English (bonus)
Running time: 100 mins (highlights) + 30 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 1

R E V I E W:

It might seem I am about to trash this issue but I am actually very impressed by the Valencia Ring so do please read on.

The DVD menu and title sequence is accompanied by music, which is to be deplored. Please can we have silence in these places on concert and opera videos. No one wants to hear the same truncated chunks over and over again whilst trying to work through the labyrinth to get DTS5.1 instead of stereo and subtitles in the right language. The sound is only in PCM stereo anyway on this section just to add to the confusion. The transitions between sections are handled by simple fade-outs; disruptive if you know the music well but what else can one do in The Ring? The length of pauses is variable from almost nothing to several seconds. Though the extracts are in dramatic order there is no indication of where you are in the operas nor is there any hint that one has changed opera, just randomly timed fades in and out. The worst example is the end of Act 1 of The Valkyrie which stops barely a couple of seconds before a chunk of Act 2. I suspect the tea-boy was in charge of post production. I am relieved to say all is well apart from these technical blots and since the music and production are so entertaining, and the sound and picture is so good, one can forgive Unitel these flaws. Do keep the booklet to hand whilst viewing and don't even bother with this DVD if you don't have another complete recording in your collection because you will get hopelessly lost without a plot summary.

Most opera productions are characterised by their appearance rather than by the performance. It is almost impossible to ignore what you are seeing and it often clashes with what you are hearing. To my knowledge only Bruckner managed to get through The Ring without noticing that there were costumes and scenery involved! The Valencia production is no different. It is dominated by huge video projections throughout and the DVD production often takes advantage of these to add its own layers of image for dramatic effect. Stage lighting is extremely dramatic which enhances the startling images still more. If you like to see people standing and singing against a plain background à la Bayreuth 1960s then you will hate it because this one really grasps the technical challenge and goes with it. The singing is of uniformly high quality and the conducting of Zubin Mehta is fine so long as you do not expect Solti's fierce drive. The orchestra are excellent and even get a scene for themselves in the prelude to Act 3 of Siegfried. Since you will only buy this to check if it is to be love or hate so far as you are concerned before either ignoring it forever, or ordering the entire cycle on Blu-ray, these are some of the delights in store.

Loge has a great little motor scooter with which to run rings around the rest of the cast literally as well as figuratively. The costumes are complicated and often look very heavy which makes the little cranes used on and off through the cycle to carry characters around the stage very understandable. Act 1 of The Valkyrie has a wonderfully effective and very subtle tree which bears careful study. This creation looms over a decidedly stone-age looking Sieglinde and a very tough Siegmund. These two Walsungs look highly dangerous to me and must have posed a serious problem for Hunding. Since we don't see him at all in these extracts we have no idea how he handles them. The Ride of the Valkyries looks fantastic and is well performed against huge and effective video backdrops. Lots of work for the cranes here! The ring of fire which Wotan places around Brunnhilde is a proper inferno as is the fire for Siegfried's forge which looks positively dangerous. Siegfried by the way can sing well but is a patchy actor as seen here. The forge is animated by many stage hands so that Notung appears to be a product of a busy factory rather than one superman. So much for Siegfried facing down Wotan's plans single-handed but since the helpers look like the Nibelung slaves in The Rhinegold it can be seen as logical. I wasn't so taken by Fafner who looks more like an articulated ventilation duct than anything supernatural but some productions even leave him out, such are the challenges of staging this part. Bayreuth once had the entire stage start to writhe, an effect of such impact that all others pall. The prelude to Act 3 of Siegfried has a massive back-projection of snow-covered mountains and eventually of the whole Earth from which Erda emerges in a moment of highly consequent majesty. Siegfried travels down the Rhine on a river of plastic drinks bottles which is utterly bizarre but does actually work - just believe me! The closing scene also manages to be consequent and we see Brunnhilde, on a crane, returning the Ring to the Rhine maidens before disappearing into the conflagration. The producers use lots of gymnasts in this and other scenes to great dramatic effect and the end here is close to awe-inspiring.

The 100 minutes of opera on the DVD is joined by 30 minutes of supporting documentary material. After some preliminary tele-visual nonsense one film describes the way the directorial team worked up their ideas to fulfil Wagner's intentions and sometimes his explicit instructions - now there's a novel idea - to do what the composer says. Others take note! The other film is about the important lighting design. Both are worth one's time.

A superb marketing tool for the entire cycle available on DVD and on Blu-ray. This performance and production is a great success overall and this DVD needs watching just once before you go out and buy the whole thing.

-- Dave Billinge, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

This is an audio-only (i.e., with no video content) Blu-ray disc playable only on Blu-ray players.

It is also available on standard CD.

Taken from two concert performances in January, 2015, this is the first installment of an entire Ring Cycle from the Hong Kong Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden to be recorded by Naxos. It makes you hungry for the rest.

The recording is clean and clear, with no artificial anything. Van Zweden’s approach is closest in memory to Herbert von Karajan’s–intimate and chamber-like, a family drama that happens to be played out in magical, mythological terms. Also like Karajan, van Zweden takes his time (at 2 hours and 33 minutes, this is on the longish side) and offers seamless segues between scenes. When a solo instrument is featured in Wagner’s dense orchestration, it is given a spotlight, and beautiful moments are to be bathed in–the motif after the Rainbow Bridge is created and the singing that follows rarely have sounded so tuneful and lovely. The Hong Kong Philharmonic is not Berlin or Vienna or the Met, but it has nothing to fear–the playing throughout is smooth and handsome. The opening Rhine passage is dark but clear, the piling up of the gold in Scene IV is beautifully built, and the opera’s final moments are indeed the grandest, as they should be–one of the few instances when van Zweden pulls out all the stops.

The storytelling is at the fore; impeccable diction is the order of the day. As revolting as Alberich always is, we can actually hear the flirtatious playfulness in the opera’s opening moments until he realizes that he doesn’t have a chance. And from then on, he’s simply vile–Peter Sidhom sings with an audible sneer and a ringing top to the voice that we rarely get in this role. He’s a baritone with remarkable “face”.

The back and forth between the fine, unexaggerated Fricka of Michelle De Young and the remarkable, surprising Wotan of Matthias Goerne is natural and familiar, and Goerne is the surprise of the performance. His experience and expertise as a Lieder singer comes in very handy in this opera: his interacting with Loge and his cajoling of Mime and Alberich all are textually and dynamically right-on. The bottom of the voice sounds remarkably rich, and while the top notes are brighter than we normally hear, he has authority. One wonders, however, about his Walküre Wotan….

David Cangelosi’s slimy Mime is vivid and actually sung–note for note, and Kim Begley’s Loge is performed with wonderful detachment: he knows he’s smarter than anyone else. Deborah Humble’s Erda could have been darker-hued, but her attention to the text turns her scene into the “event” it should be. Anna Samuil’s Freia is much like every other soprano’s who sings the part: good at complaining and being afraid. Kwangchul Youn’s Fasolt is on a grand scale; Stephen Milling’s Fafner not so much. Froh, small part though it is, deserves a better profile than Charles Reid gives it, and the Donner of Oleksandr Pushniak begins his “Heda…” on an unsteady note but recovers quickly. The Rhinemaidens–Eri Nakamura, Aurhelia Varak, and Hermine Haselböck–are a terrific, articulate, tuneful trio...


First choice among Rheingolds is still the Decca, but Testament’s release of a 1955 Bayreuth performance with Hans Hotter is certainly in the running, and as a non-gimmicky performance, may even be better. But this new set gives a wonderful overall view of this opera, and at a remarkable price.

-- Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

WEBER, LUDWIG SINGT WAGNER: HO

For the first time, the complete Beyreuth Ring from 1962 is being released on this magnificent 4-volume collection. This legendary performance is conducted by Rudolf Kempe, and features Otto Wiener as Wanderer, Hans Hopf as Siegfried, and Birgit Nilsson as Brunnhilde. Siegfried is the third of Wagner’s four music dramas that make up his epic Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Tristan: Robert Dean Smith
Marke: Robert Holl
Isolde: Iréne Theorin
Kurwenal: Jukka Rasilainen
Melot: Ralf Lukas
Brangäne: Michelle Breedt
Junger Seemann: Clemens Bieber
Ein Hirt: Arnold Bezuyen
Ein Steuermann: Martin Snell
Bayreuther Festspiele Chorus/Eberhard Friedrich
Bayreuther Festspiele Orchestra/Peter Schneider
Stage Director: Christoph Marthaler
rec. live, Bayreuth Festival, 9 August 2009.
Special Features: include ‘Kinder, macht was Neues!’ The making of Tristan und Isolde.
Video Tracks: 16:9
Audio Tracks: 5.1 DTS Surround, PCM Stereo
Subtitle Tracks: English, French, German, Spanish
OPUS ARTE OA 1033 D [3DVDs: 292:00]

As I reported last year this performance of Tristan und Isolde was chosen for only the second live relay from the ‘Green Hill’ following Die Meistersinger in 2008. Katharina Wagner who now controls Bayreuth alongside her half-sister Eva Wagner-Pasquier, wishes to open up the Festival to a much wider audience. So again the Bayreuth Festival joined forces with the city of Bayreuth and a leading German engineering company, Siemens, to present the Siemens Festival Night. This allowed several thousand people the opportunity of a free event at the Bayreuth Festplatz. In addition, the opera, like last year’s, was available on the Internet.

As I look back on what I wrote last August as the reviewer of this performance I was in no danger (in mid-January) of bright sun shining on my TV screen and creating the problems I had initially with the outdoor showing. I had reported on Christoph Marthaler’s 2005 anti-romantic staging of Tristan und Isolde from the theatre in 2008 and most of what I wrote both then and again last year stands without much significant alteration. The Prelude introduces us to the circles of light that are the light bulbs and the recurring imagery for the ocean liner in which the ‘action’ is set. Katharina Wagner has called Marthaler ‘a master when it comes to staging boredom, standstill and desperation’ though whether this is damning him with faint praise I cannot tell. In his metaphysical interpretation there is little eye contact — or any contact for that matter — between the characters. It must not be forgotten that Katharina had little — if anything — to do with this production as, at the time it was planned, the Festival was solidly in the hands of her father, Wolfgang, and late mother, Gudrun.

As revived here by Anna Sophie-Mahler little does happen in this Tristan und Isolde but Michael Beyer’s direction for TV puts our attention directly onto the faces of the singers and the truth they showed holds the viewer’s attention. In the opera house you are distanced from the facial expression of the singers but here we can focus on crucial small moments to mostly good effect. Iréne Theorin as Isolde is revealed to be quite a stunning actress and her best moment remains near the end of Act I when she is quite deranged at ‘Nun lass uns Sühne trinken!’ Here having drunk the ‘wrong’ potion she is beginning to feel the effect of passion and not her death; she very subtlety undoes her top button and then takes her pulse. Robert Dean Smith, as Tristan, also benefits from the close-ups particularly in his Act III ravings. As before, the other highlights include Michelle Breedt’s concerned Brangäne trying to snatch back the Todestrank from Isolde in Act I, King Marke’s pain at being deceived being etched so clearly on Robert Holl’s craggy features and the passing of the knife that fatally wounds Tristan from Marke on to Melot then Tristan and back to Melot and finally returned into Marke’s hands. Then significantly there is Tristan staring straight at Kurwenal (Jukka Rasilainen) convincing me that his coming back to life in Act III is all in his faithful retainer’s mind. Much of this might be missed if – as a member of the theatre audience – you were looking elsewhere.

The walls of the hold where Tristan is shown ‘lying in state’ look even more mildewed and graffiti-covered in the final Act here on DVD than on the night of the relay. Some moments also still look ridiculous such as Tristan and Kurwenal’s Act I hand gesturing when the latter sings about Lord Morold, though this is not now blown up on a huge 90m² screen.

The sound from my DVD player was reasonably faithful to the live transmission though arguably more vivid than before because of the work of the engineers. The voices sound mostly very even and the orchestra under Peter Schneider’s experience baton seems faultless and perfectly balanced though, as outdoors in August, it still seems a little louder than you would get in the Festspielhaus.

As an extra there is a short backstage self-congratulatory feature entitled ‘Kinder, macht was Neues!’ Sadly this urge by Richard Wagner to future generations to ‘do something new’ has often been taken too literally. Here we get rehearsal footage, comments and a justification for the production by those involved and even a plug for the sponsors, Siemens.

Katharina has stated that she aims to ‘make the Festival accessible to a wide public’ and for ‘a strategy of transparency while setting artistic standards for future interpretations of Wagner and winning new opera fans’. With the long wait for Bayreuth tickets it is now more possible to keep up-to-date with what is going on than ever before. It is no good some critics complaining that things are not what they were at Bayreuth without the Wagnerian, as well as the general opera-loving public, having the evidence to discuss the work going on there. At least the recent two DVD releases, along with the Ring CDs conducted by Thielemann, can only help promote the debate that I am sure Katharina and Eva surely welcome from those distanced from — what the blurb on this Tristan calls — ‘the spiritual home of Wagner’s work’.

This imbues this DVD with an historical importance but it is recommended for so much more — and even though the supporting singers are not the same quality — there are still world-class performances from Iréne Theorin’s committed, radiant Isolde and Robert Dean Smith’s lyrical, inexhaustible Tristan. It is also extremely well conducted by the Bayreuth veteran, Peter Schneider and, together with the two central performances; it is often possible to be transported to a realm far away from the drabness of the stage designs.

— Jim Pritchard, MusicWeb International