Jochen Kupfer News
German singer and opera singer
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2024-03-24
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2024-01-30 07:50:00
Back with vengeance: Nina Stemme in Richard Strauss' Elektra at Covent Garden
Strauss: Elektra - Nina Stemme, Sara Jakubiak - Royal Opera (Photo: ROH/Tristram Kenton)Strauss: Elektra; Nina Stemme, Sara Jakubiak, Karita Mattila, Charles Workman, Lukasz Golinski, director: Christof Loy, conductor: Antonio Pappano; Royal Opera HouseReviewed 26 January 2024Nina Stemme back on form with a coruscating performance in the title role in a new production that showcases the vividly dramatic performances from the entire cast supported by the orchestra on top formI have been lucky with my Elektras over the years. My first was Pauline Tinsley in 1979 in Harry Kupfer's production for Welsh National Opera. I saw it on tour in Glasgow, and as far as I can tell this was the last time the work has been fully staged in Scotland (and that performance in Glasgow was the first time it had been staged there since 1910).Then in 1988, I was lucky enough to catch Gwyneth Jones on terrific form in the very last revival of Rudolf […]
2022-08-06 20:41:00
Bayreuth Festival (4): Götterdämmerung, 5 August 2022
FestspielhausSiegfried – Clay Hilley Gunther – Michael Kupfer-Radecky Alberich – Olafur Sigurdarson Hagen – Albert Dohmen Brünnhilde – Iréne Theorin Gutrune – Elisabeth Teige Waltraute – Christa Meyer First Norn – Okka von der Damerau Second Norn – Stéphanie Müther Third Norn – Kelly God Woglinde – Lee-an Dunbar Wellgunde – Stephanie Houtzeel Flosshilde – Katie Stevenson Grane – Igor Schwab Valentin Schwarz (director) Andrea Cozzi (designs) Andy Besuch (costumes) Konrad Kuhn (dramaturgy) Reinhard Traub (lighting) Luis August Krawen (video)Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)Bayreuth Festival OrchestraCornelius Meister (conductor) Valentin Schwarz’s Ring ends more or less where it began, bar curtain-calls in which the long-awaited appearance of Schwarz and his team was greeted by the most intensive booing I have ever heard. I suppose a ‘cyclical’ turn will appeal to some who insist on referring to the Ring as a ‘cycle’, when it is nothing of the sort. Even […]
2022-08-03 10:03:00
Bayreuth Festival (2): Die Walküre, 1 August 2022
FestspielhausSiegmund – Klaus Florian Vogt Hunding – Georg Zeppenfeld Wotan – Tomasz Konieczny, Michael Kupfer-Radecky Sieglinde – Lise Davidsen Brünnhilde – Iréne Theorin Fricka, Schwertleite – Christa Mayer Gerhilde – Kelly God Ortlinde – Brit-Tone Müllertz Waltraute – Stéphanie Müther Helmwige – Daniela Köhler Siegrune – Stephanie Houtzeel Grimgerde – Marie Henriette Reinhold Rossweiße – Katie Stevenson Grane – Igor Schwab Valentin Schwarz (director) Andrea Cozzi (designs) Andy Besuch (costumes) Konrad Kuhn (dramaturgy) Reinhard Traub (lighting) Bayreuth Festival Orchestra Cornelius Meister (conductor) The boos are getting louder: not, I think, for the musicians, but for the production of Valentin Schwarz, who has yet to appear for a curtain-call. That need be no bad thing artistically, though the practice itself is fascistic; should a bourgeois audience feel satisfied with what it has consumed, it will be a disturbing outcome for art. Here, though, the open mind I am endeavouring […]
2021-11-24 07:35:19
In his passion for the music of Richard Wagner, Tony Cooper finds himself back in Deutschland attending yet another Ring cycle at Deutsche Oper Berlin
[…] smouldering ashes of Valhalla at Deutsche Oper this time directed by multiple-award-winning Norwegian director, Stefan Herheim, who just happens to be a disciple of Götz Friedrich. He studied under him at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg from 1994 to 1999. A bit of the Old Master has surely rubbed off on him! Wagner: Götterdämmerung - Nine Stemme - Deutsche Oper, Berlin (Photo Bernd Uhlig) Götz Friedrich (as did Harry Kupfer) worked as an assistant to the well-respected Austrian-born theatre/opera director, Walter Felsenstein, the iconic boss of East Berlin's Komische Oper in the early post-war years. His philosophy was that opera went beyond singing to encompass music-theatre: the intersections between music, sound and theatrical performance. His productions focused on pure dramatic and musical values which were thoroughly researched and, indeed, finely balanced. Such a philosophy as this, I feel, defines Stefan Herheim’s direction. He pulls […]
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