Ludwig Schwab News
composer
- Czech Republic
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2024-04-24
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2023-08-30 06:28:00
[…] though, Siegfried makes the sofa Mime’s last resting-place. Herr Schwarz, I feel, possesses an ironic sense of humour which comes to the fore in this scene inasmuch as Nothung’s pulled from Mime’s disabled crutch and used as a swordstick. Anyway, it was surplus to requirements. The pupil outstrips the master as always. Siegfried tricks the old trickster for one last time. The third act of Siegfried sees Brünnhilde (sung by Daniela Köhler) with Grane, acted by Igor Schwab, approaching Siegfried through Reinhard Traub’s flooded lemon-green stage with a cosmetic surgery bandaged head (a flashback to her Valkyrie days) representing, I guess, the barrier between the couple (usually represented by a ring of fire) and the highlight to the whole of the opera as well as being a magical piece of theatre at the same time. When she gets ‘unbandaged’ by her super-charged hero ready to greet the sun and light in that big […]
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 […]
2022-08-04 17:19:00
Bayreuth Festival (3) - Siegfried, 3 August 2022
FestspielhausSiegfried – Andreas Schager Mime – Arnold Bezuyen Wanderer – Tomasz Koniezcny Alberich – Olafur Sigurdarson Fafner – Wilhelm Schwinghammer Erda – Okka von der Damerau Brünnhilde – Daniela Köhler Woodbird – Alexandra Steiner Young Hagen – Branko Buchberger Grane – Igor Schwab Valentin Schwarz (director) Andrea Cozzi (designs) Andy Besuch (costumes) Konrad Kuhn (dramaturgy) Reinhard Traub (lighting)Bayreuth Festival Orchestra Cornelius Meister (conductor) This Siegfried made for pretty miserable music drama, I am afraid, the considerable qualities of the music ‘half’ notwithstanding. In a peculiar way, Wagner’s vision was vindicated. His works are not operas, nor are they intended to be. They may well impress in concert performances or in audio-only experiences at home—phenomena worthy of greater attention—but they need to impress musically and dramatically in the theatre, the whole so much more than the sum of its parts. One never knows what might be pulled out of […]
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 […]
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