Götterdämmerung is not only the grandest of Wagner’s Ring operas, it is also the most varied. Siegfried’s journey down the Rhine transports him in a short quarter-hour from the hieratic world of the Norns and the World Ash to the soap-opera of the Gibichungs and their anxieties about marriage and political standing (opinion polls?).The second act culminates in a revenge trio worthy of Meyerbeer. Siegfried’s squalid onstage murder – shades of Bizet’s exactly contemporary Carmen – is followed by a thirty-minute disquisition on the end of the world.I exaggerate, but only a little. Read more ...

All that glitters, titular treasure included, is dangerous childsplay in Richard Jones’s third UK staging of what Wagner called the “preliminary evening” to the three main operas of The Ring of the Nibelung. It’s nothing like the previous two, for the Royal and Scottish Operas, in some ways disconcertingly minimal and occasionally ugly to look at. Yet everything adds up and unlike the cast for his Valkyrie, this team has the perfect mix of vocal and acting gold.If there’s a snag, it comes early: Martyn Brabbins simply lets Wagner's music for the Rhine and its Daughters drift along without Read more ...

It’s always a disappointment when the Venusberg orgy Wagner added in 1861 to his original, 1845 Tannhäuser to suit Parisian tastes gives way to foursquare operatic conventions. Especially so in this revival of Tim Albery’s 2010 production, where Jasmin Vardimon’s choreography (pictured below) seems executed with more brilliance than ever and post-viral vocal problems loomed large last night for this hero.The static nature of the rest of the evening, though, - Wagner’s problem, accentuated by Albery, though his living tableaux are well managed - is redeemed by exceptional singing-acting from Read more ...

 Roger Norrington: The Complete Erato Recordings (Erato)Richard Osborne’s booklet essay contains some telling words from Sir Roger Norrington, tucked away at the end of the final paragraph: “I don’t mind if a performance is unhistorical; I do mind if it isn’t fun.” And, whatever your opinions on Norrington’s hard-line, zero-vibrato approach, there’s plenty of fun spread over these 45 discs, all recorded with the conductor’s own London Classical Players. Dipping into his Beethoven symphony cycle takes one back to the late 1980s when the individual discs were bestsellers on EMI’s Reflexe Read more ...

It is mid-way through the new Ring cycle, and we are taking lunch outside the old town hall on the high street in Bayreuth. Discussion at neighbouring tables is intense: “The Ring is a child!”, “Why does Wotan have no spear?”, “The pyramid in the box – what is that all about?”The new production, by Austrian director Valentin Schwarz, is streamlined and modern. It clears away much of Wagner’s symbolism and reassigns the narrative to new and disparate ideas. The reception has been decidedly mixed, but many of the new concepts deserve careful consideration.The production, and the entire Bayreuth Read more ...

Could this be the summer Bayreuth finally sees a new Ring production that comes anywhere near its last great epic success, Harry Kupfer’s, which ran from 1988-92? If so, it’s been pipped to the post by a rather more comfortable and bijou opera house on the other side of the lake to the refuges where Wagner worked on more masterpieces – beautiful sites both, even if the “asyl” next to the Villa Wesendonck is no more..Zurich Opera’s Intendant Andreas Homoki, following a mixed record to date as director and designer, has taken the plunge with Music Director Gianandrea Noseda to dazzle with the Read more ...

He’s the most haunting, at times terrifying Wozzeck I’ve seen, in Richard Jones's Welsh National Opera baked-bean-factory production, and the funniest Falstaff. When we met in his dressing room at the Zurich Opera House, Christopher Purves was about to perform the central role of bitter and twisted Alberich in Wagner’s Das Rheingold, and in a week’s time you can hear him singing Handel again, another speciality at the other end of the spectrum.I guess it also has to be mentioned, if only once here, that he went on from life as a choral scholar at King’s College Cambridge to being a member of Read more ...

Wagner, in his medievalist, pan-European, 19th century way, wanted Parsifal to be a blend of abstract and religious experience for his audiences at Bayreuth, calling it a “festival play for a stage consecration”. Questions for those performing it today include how to do justice to its philosophical baggage as well as its marvellous music, and whether to introduce new elements in the visual staging that the composer never thought of.Directing Opera North’s first-ever performance of the work, Sam Brown’s approach has avoided getting it mired too deep in the philosophy and restricted Read more ...

With a lapse of three years between Das Rheingold and Siegfried, and with only a semi-staged Walküre in between, it’s been hard to stay tuned to Amy Lane’s Ring production at Longborough.Here, for instance, is Mime in his cave (rather well, if shabbily, furnished in Rhiannon Newman Brown’s bric-à-brac set), struggling to mend the sword which we haven’t seen broken, for the young Siegfried, of whose all-important parentage we as yet know nothing (Adrian Dwyer's Mime and Bradley Daley's Siegfried pictured below). Here, later, is Brünnhilde asleep on her mountain-top for reasons we haven’t Read more ...

David Alden’s Lohengrin is back at Covent Garden for a first revival. The defining image the first time round, in 2018, was of the ending, a political rally for King Henry’s regime, with Lohengrin and the swan as its icons. That felt crude – a two-dimensional morality, and tangential to the story.That still smarts, but Alden’s ideas (revived without noticeable changes by Peter Relton) are more diverse than they first seemed and repay a second viewing. Musically, the revival is quite strong, with impressive leads but a weaker supporting cast; a fitful ensemble effort where the first run was Read more ...

The Drama and Romance of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s promotional hook for this concert signalled a heady musical mix. Appropriate for the stark contrasts of mood central to Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, but potentially less so for Dvorák’s Symphony No. 8 that casts barely a cloud to compromise its predominantly sunny G major disposition shared with the outer movements of the Beethoven.In the event, resolution of the conflict between profane and sacred love in Tannhäuser’s ultimate salvation, together with the framing of the concerto’s central dark Read more ...

This remarkable evening should really have been more remarkable still. The unfortunate pianist Cédric Tiberghien took an official pre-travel Covid test that obliged him to drop out at 5pm – even though, as he tweeted in frustration, three subsequent lateral flow tests came out negative. Such is concert life in the Covid era. Nobody could be expected to find a replacement to perform Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand at two hours’ notice, so the work was dropped. Still, what remained made up in sheer wow-factor what it lacked in duration. Entitled “Poems of Ecstasy”, the programme Read more ...