Requiring 38 soloists, chorus and large orchestra, “Palestrina”, Hans Pfitzner’s (1869-1949) “most important work” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), is a challenging opera to stage. In Munich, the city in which it was given its world premiere in 1917, the Bavarian State Opera succeeded – director Christian Stückl, best known for his staging of the Oberammergau Passion Play and the Salzburg Festival’s “Jedermann”, transformed the monumental work into an optical pop art event. Stückl’s production infuses such color and life into the serious work that even the German tabloid “Abendzeitung” delightedly wrote: “Who would have thought that Pfitzner could be such fun?”
Parsifal
In the words of Opern Welt, Sinopoli “conjures up sounds of exquisite beauty and compelling poignancy.” Wolfgang Wagner’s production emphasizes the celebratory character of the libretto, which harmonizes superbly with Sinopoli’s insistence on the poetry and mystery of the music. A major role in the staging is played by the lighting, which is used to create stunning effects such as the diffuse play of light and shadow at the illumination of the Holy Grail. One of the production’s most striking moments occurs when the director has Kundry unveil the Grail instead of dying. She thus takes full part in the Grail ceremony, displaying a feminism which, in the Bayreuth context, is truly revolutionary.
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.”
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.
Parsifal
A timelessly classical Parsifal from the 1998 Bayreuth Festival in a mystically poetic staging that exerts an unbroken fascination not least as a result of its expressive lighting effects. Under the direction of the great Wagner conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli, the four main roles are taken by Poul Elming, Linda Watson, Falk Struckmann and Hans Sotin – one of the strongest line-ups in Bayreuth´s more recent history. “Giuseppe Sinopoli coaxed an outstanding performance from the Festival Orchestra and Chorus, throwing light on the elaborate score from an agreeable distance and investing the music with a meditatively flowing quality rather than the usual bombast” (Opernglas)
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Wagner’s ‘Meistersinger’ is a festive opera in its own right, but at the reprise of the work at the Vienna State Opera in January 2008, the festive spirit literally leapt out into the audience as well. Vienna’s dailies exploded with praise such as ‘A feast of singers’ (Der Standard), ‘A feast … grandiose’ (Die Presse) and ‘Nearly six hours of pure enjoyment’ (Kurier). The plaudits applied to all the singers, from Hans Sachs to the night watchman, as well as to the chorus and orchestra. Among the vocal surprises of this live recording is Adrian Eröd as Beckmesser, a fully fleshed-out character whose every gesture and every note reflects a well-rounded concept of the usually unsympathetic role of the critic. As Walther von Stolzing, Johan Botha is pure tenor gold, whose impressive reserves of strength allow him to sing brilliantly and effortlessly throughout the work.