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."