Parsifal is Wagner’s last opera. He named it “Consecration Play for the Stage,” and in so doing, tried to give the proper framework to what is in almost all aspects a sacred Christian play with music. Wagner also included mythology, mysticism and ancient Indian ideas in this work, whose origins he drew from Wolfram von Eschenbach’s famous courtly epic “Parsival”. But even earlier sources related to the legend of the Holy Grail were used by Wagner as a source for his poetic work. For 30 years no theater other than Bayreuth was allowed to perform “Parsifal” by order of Wagner. Only in 1914 did the work spread across the globe. Wagner achieved the essentially sacred atmosphere of the music through an instrumentation that evokes organ registration and often uses the instruments in groups (woodwinds, brass, strings). The leitmotivic work is less dense in Parsifal than in the Ring of the Nibelung. The brilliant songfulness of the world of the Grail is set against chromatic harmonies which, e.g. in the prelude to the third act, anticipate the twelve-tone music of the New Vienna School. The musical direction of this performance from the Bayreuth Festival is in the hands of Horst Stein; the stage director is Wolfgang Wagner, who also designed the sets. In the lead roles are renowned Wagner singers Siegfried Jerusalem, Hans Sotin, Bernd Weikl and Eva Randova.
Lohengrin
“Lohengrin” was premiered in Weimar in 1850 under the direction of Franz Liszt. The performance was a triumph for the composer, who, however, was unable to attend: he had been exiled for taking part in the 1848 uprisings in Dresden. Director Götz Friedrich took this historical background into account by having the radiant knight appear at the end dressed in black – a symbol for the dashed hopes of the German revolutionaries. The political message, however, generally pales before the aesthetic power of the images which depict the Middle Ages in a totally abstract manner. As Lohengrin, Peter Hofmann gives a performance that is dazzling in every gesture and every tone. Karan Armstrong replies with a very lyrical timbre and applies expressionistic means to convey sorrow, wonder and the bitterness of leave- taking. This production by Götz Friedrich was recorded at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1982.
Arabella
The opera “Arabella” was the last work written by the creative team of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It was given its premiere in Dresden on 1 July 1933 under the direction of Clemens Krauss. Hofmannsthal wrote that the lead role is “a mature and beautiful young woman who has looked too deeply into certain facts of life, and is a little scarred by cynicism and resignation.” The “mature” Arabella is played by Gundula Janowitz, who, in addition to her lovely singing, gives an inspired acting performance. As Mandryka, Bernd Weikl is an ideal partner, a man whose passion is constantly on the verge of breaking social conventions. Outstanding are Edita Gruberova and Martha Mödl in their minor roles. The Vienna Philharmonic is conducted by Sir Georg Solti.
Götterdämmerung
Unitel recorded Alfred Kirchner’s production of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung”, with sets and costumes by Rosalie, in 1997, the fourth year in which it was shown. The production drew chiefly positive reactions from the press, even eliciting an audacious “stupendous” from the staid Vienna daily “Der Standard”. Unanimously lauded was James Levine’s musical direction. In its review of the 1994 premiere, Germany’s leading daily “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” underscored the superb orchestral playing and topped its encomium by adding that Levine “communicated to the Festival Orchestra the quality of tone which Wagner himself must have had in mind when speaking of ‘his’ orchestra…” In light of the superb music-making on and under the stage, most reviewers welcomed the rather Spartan goings-on among the gods and mortals in Rosalie’s outfits. On the whole, critics felt that the production adapted itself subtly to Levine’s epic musical concept. Kirchner presents a relatively straightforward depiction of the legend and lets the singers deploy their glorious instruments under the sensitive hands of James Levine. The production won over more and more theater-goers in the following two years, and in 1996 Vienna’s “Standard” was able to write: “After Siegfried, the audience … leapt up from their seats in jubilation, giving way to total ecstasy at the appearance of the conductor James Levine. No conductor has been so tempestuously acclaimed in Bayreuth since the days of Hans Knappertsbusch and Karl Böhm.”
Don Giovanni
At the age of 27 Peter Sellars was hailed as a wunderkind of the U.S. theater and was already the general manager of the American National Theater in Washington’s Kennedy Center. In his productions, Sellars brings out the timelessness and topicality of the works with such naturalness that he arouses interest around the world and stimulates lively discussions as to whether he is brilliantly modernizing the works or brutally maiming them. Besides “Don Giovanni,” Sellars has also staged “Le nozze di Figaro” and “Cosi fan tutte” and moved their stories to present-day New York, whereby, however, he invented a new world for each opera. Thus “Don Giovanni” plays in Spanish Harlem, “Figaro” in the noble Trump Tower on Park Avenue, “Così fan tutte” in Despina’s dilapidated coffee shop. The Da Ponte trilogy is for Sellars, who studied at Harvard, the nonplus ultra of opera literature. With his Mozart productions, Sellars first caused a ruckus in the New York cultural scene, when he presented his work to the public between 1986 and 1988 at the University theater festival Pepsico Summerfare. Then his da Ponte operas went on a European tour and were finally recorded for television in Vienna. Since then Sellars numbers among the most sought-after, unorthodox directors on the international opera scene. But in spite of his gags and witty ideas, Sellars is not out to provoke; instead, he takes the action of the opera literally, transposing it with dramatic sharpness and intelligence. His productions prove that even a 200-year-old opera does not have to be cut off from present-day life.
Das Rheingold
In 1988, conductor Daniel Barenboim, stage director Harry Kupfer, set designer Hans Schavernoch and costume designer Reinhard Heinrich came to Bayreuth to realize their vision of Wagner’s Ring. They firmly turned away from the work’s time of origin and set their sights on a “critique of the history of mankind and of the entire evolution of culture, the destruction of which we are actively furthering” (Kupfer). While Wagner’s “critique of mankind’s desructive frenzy, its coldness and alienation” (Kupfer) was rooted in Germanic mythology, Kupfer’s team locates its Ring in a present that also embraces the past and the future. The place where present, past and future converge is the “road of history”, which sets the scene for struggles of power and love, and takes us straight into the depths of the human psyche. “Harry Kupfer has created a production of great coherency, hard, cutting, transparent, which will delight those who see in Wagner a contemporary and will displease those who consume Wagner like some consecrated artifact in a museum. The entire mythological apparatus is demolished bit by bit: what remains is what Wagner himself wanted: the ‘pure humanity’ of the myth. […] The entire ‘Ring’ unfolds like an intellectual adventure that provokes unforgettable emotions.” (La Repubblica)
I Pagliacci
“Pagliacci” is often celebrated as one of the finest examples of verismo, or realist opera. It is even based on a true story: Leoncavallo’s father, a judge, once presided over the trial of an actor who, in a fit of jealousy, murdered his wife immediately following a performance. “Pagliacci” is frequently performed along with Mascagni’s one-acter “Cavalleria Rusticana”. Both works are strongly linked with the name of Franco Zeffirelli, the great stage and film director who has been infusing the operatic repertoire with grace, elegance and poignancy. Both his Emmy Award-winning production of “Pagliacci” and his “Cavalleria” feature international star tenor Placido Domingo.
Eugene Onegin
Czech director Petr Weigl shot the opera in authentic locations in northwest Russia. Czech actors depict the tragic love story to the music of the opera recorded under the musical direction of Sir Georg Solti, one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century.
Cavalleria Rusticana
Based on a drama by Giovanni Verga, “Cavalleria Rusticana” relates the lives and passions of simple Sicilian peasants. It was the first opera of the “verismo”, or realist, school. Turiddu has long been one of Placido Domingo’s finest roles, infused with passion and musical intensity. Franco Zeffirelli has masterminded a brilliantly naturalistic filming of this opera, shooting it on location in a small Sicilian town. The Russian mezzo-soprano Elena Obraztsova is a moving Santuzza, totally convincing in her passionate dejection. Together with the other veristic masterpiece, Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci”, “Cavalleria” forms the most popular double-bill in the operatic repertory.
Tristan und Isolde
The premiere of this Tristan production at the 1993 Bayreuth Festival was greeted with “that mixture of enthusiastic approbation and predictable condemnation” (Wolfgang Wagner) which is the usual indicator of success in Bayreuth. Conducted by Daniel Barenboim with fire and sensitivity, the production was staged by the late German dramatist Heiner Müller. The sets were designed by Müller’s longtime associate Erich Wonder, and the costumes by Japanese couturier Yohji Yamamoto. Siegfried Jerusalem as Tristan and Waltraud Meier as Isolde have consistently drawn enthusiastic acclaim for their performances, not only in the year of the premiere, but in subsequent years as well. Müller and Wonder have compressed the monumental story into a clear and fascinating geometry of love. Wonder created highly evocative spaces through projections of colors and forms which shift according to the mood. One widely noted example of Müller’s elegant, restrained interpretation, in which small gestures replace sweeping displays of passion, is the famous love duet, in which Tristan and Isolde, instead of embracing rapturously, stand back to back and side by side and touch, ever so lightly, only the tips of their fingers.