Johann Baptist Schenk News
Austrian composer
- opera
- Austrian Empire
- composer, musician, music teacher
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2024-03-23
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2024-01-05 17:27:00
Der Rosenkavalier, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 2 January 2024
[…] a team of opera house crew walk on, in T-shirts saying ‘Staatsoper Unter den Linden’, to mob the Italian singer; such metatheatrical (?) presentism is not evident elsewhere. None of this does any particular harm; by the same token, none of it substitutes for an actual production, its thinking through or its accomplishment, although it might well have offered an attractive if slightly arbitrary mise-en-scene. If I remain some way off declaring ‘Come back Otto Schenk, all is forgiven,’ I could certainly forgive on this occasion someone for saying so. At any rate, it was unclear why it should have been thought necessary to replace Nicolas Brieger’s staging with this lavish Berlin successor. Joana Mallwitz unquestionably brought more in the way of ideas, as well as greater familiarity with the work—and with opera more broadly. (One might have thought such qualities sine quibus non, yet in this brave new world […]
2023-11-27 20:49:00
There's Runnicles
TannhäuserA scene from Act 2Photo: Evan Zimmerman / Met OperaHe's conducting the Met's Tannhäuser, which opens this week. The production is....moth-eaten, from 1977, one of the hyper-realistic (and kinda dull!) Schenk/Schneider-Siemssen productions. BUT it's an excellent cast and conductor:TannhäuserMusic by Richard WagnerLibretto by the composer Thursday, November 30, at 7PMSunday, December 3, at 2PMWednesday, December 6, at 7PMSaturday, December 9, at 7PMTuesday, December 12, at 7PMSaturday, December 16, at 7PMTuesday, December 19, at 7PMSaturday, December 23, at 1PM ConductorDonald RunniclesProductionOtto SchenkSet DesignerGünther Schneider-SiemssenCostume DesignerPatricia ZipprodtLighting DesignerGil WechslerChoreographerNorbert Vesak ElisabethElza van den HeeverVenusEkaterina GubanovaTannhäuserAndreas SchagerWolframChristian Gerhaher*Landgraf HermannGeorg Zeppenfeld
2021-11-21 19:22:00
Die Walküre, English National Opera, 19 November 2021
[…] late intervention from Westminster City Council. Alas, Wotan’s protracted fumbling to attach to Brünnhilde a harness that would awkwardly suspend her above the stage, without the slightest sign of flames that had intermittently flickered earlier, seemed all too apt a metaphor. Quite what the Met, where Jones’s third (!) attempt at the Ring is heading, will make of it is anyone’s guess. It is certainly devoid enough of intellectual content to satisfy Friends of Otto Schenk. But the ‘look’, for that is all it is, and lack of discernible stage action will surely trouble many. Martyn Brabbins’s conducting was sane, measured, and doubtless sensitive—perhaps too sensitive—to the needs of his singers. Brabbins clearly appreciates the need to think in the broadest terms about Wagner’s structures, yet often seemed to confuse that with maintaining a slow speed throughout, occasionally changing gear when that could not conceivably be maintained any longer. A […]
2021-10-29 15:00:57
A bright and appealing Lise Davidsen is supported by strong performances in Otto Schenk’s slightly conservative production
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