Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Tokyo Harusai, 07.04.2013

A few years, the Tokyo Harusai (Spring Festival) has opted for a Wagnerian Schwerpunkt, which is a concert performance of a Wagner opera with international casts and conductor every year. This series is supposed to culminate in a Ring cycle with Marek Janowskis starting from next year.

This year, the Harusai has decided to give the proceedings a Bayreuthian flavor by inviting conductor, tenor and baritone from Katharina Wagner’s production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Sebastian Weigle deserves many praises for his sensible choices – the performance was conducted on the safe but sure side, with exemplary internal balance and between orchestra and soloists. The NHK Symphony Orchestra often offered beautiful refulgent strings, accurate brass and volume in Wagnerian scale. These musicians still have to learn to have fun in “serious repertoire”, but the maestro never failed to inject animation right at the moments when they started to loose steam. The Tokyo Opera Singers too deserve praise for the firm, clear and beautiful choral singing this evening. This was certainly a highlight in this year’s concert calendar in Japan.

Replacing Gal James, Anna Gabler sang with beautiful legato and unfailing good taste, but her velvety voice sometimes lacks slancio in the more “Wagnerian” moments. In any case, she launched Selig wie die Sonne with absolute poise. Klaus Florian Vogt was not in his best voice this evening, his high notes often pinched.  This is nonetheless a role where he knows how to pull all the stops and he managed to “sell” his softer version of exposed acuti. Jörg Schneider is a congenial David who makes great use of the text, his Spieltenor easier on the ear than I would first believe. Maybe Vogt was victim of the hay-fever season, for Adrian Eröd too seemed to be below his usual level, his voice getting noticeably rougher during act II. He too is an intelligent and charismatic singer who could build a convincing performance in spite of that. I cannot say the same of Alan Held, a Hans Sachs of Wotan-ian amplitude but little variety who sounded tired and unfocused in act III. Günther Groissböck was an incisive, firm-toned Pogner (doubling as Nachtwächter) and Eijiro Kai was a forceful Fritz Kothner.

Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Berliner Philharmoniker, 05.04.2013

Karl Marx probably did not have the Berliner Philharmoniker in mind when he said that history repeats itself first as tragedy than as farce, but Simon Rattle’s series of remakes of Karajan’s festival opera recordings with glamorous casts puts the trajectory of the famous German orchestra in perspective and makes one wonder about the British conductor’s contribution to its prestigious history.

One would not call Rattle a Mozart conductor, although his live recording of Così Fan Tutte speaks in his favor in this repertoire – but it seems that Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte is a milestone in the career of the Berliner Philharmoniker’s most important conductors: Furtwängler, Karajan and Abbado. A good friend of mine would say that, if a conductor is not able to conduct a solid performance of this opera, he (or she) is not really apt for German repertoire.

I have heard that Rattle’s Zauberflöte in Baden-Baden have not received positive reviews – and this has been seen as a good example of how one should look forward for his recently announced resignation. As a matter of fact, if one compares this evening’s performance with the Berliner Philharmoniker’s discography, this is probably the less coherent and most problematic of all. Some will point out that Karajan’s Berlin recording is far from exemplary – and I would agree – but it has a very clear concept, which the conductor realizes with absolute conviction. Listening to this evening’s performance, I often had the impression that the concept here was basically trying to be different.

When I wrote the last time Bizet’s Carmen was played in the Philharmonie, I said that the performance had been held under “the loving eye of a conductor who read the score afresh and unearthed everything that was there to be found”. If the approach made Bizet’s music more eloquent, I am not sure about its success in Mozart. First of all, as much as I dislike Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s fussy acc. and ritt. in his Zürich recording, there seems to be some method into that, questionable as the results are. This evening, the fact that the rhythmic structure of various numbers were artificially undermined in order to highlight one or other word of the libretto did not seem to make particular sense – some other numbers (Wenn Tugend und Gerechtigkeit or Soll ich dich, Teurer, nicht mehr sehen for instance) were so hectic that one could not help feeling sorry for choristers and soloists spitting out the text in high velocity. Even when the beat did not show any eccentricity (as in Sarastro’s arias), one felt that the music was not being given enough time to breath and produce its effect. There were moments too, when one could see how effective things could be if they had been left alone - Der Hölle Rache, for instance, was very excitingly played in a very organic manner. As a matter of fact, the Berliner Philharmoniker never ceased to marvel with full-toned, clearly articulated playing. Seid uns zum zweiten Mal wilkommen had beautiful effects in the strings. The Rundfunkchor Berlin too sang with impressive accuracy. The excellence of these musicians alone made the performance worth the while, but one would wish nonetheless to see their talents employed to portray a less capricious and more integrated vision of this work.

The cast here assembled is particularly cast in small roles, but features some upcoming singers in main roles. Klemperer did the same when he had, for instance, Gundula Janowitz and Lucia Popp in his recording – and he proved to have bet in the right names. Here one is not so sure. One can see a touch of Kiri Te Kanawa in Kate Royal’s voice, but only now and then. At that point of her career, Dame Kiri was already a flawless Mozart singer, while Royal has too many awkward moments. She does have imagination – her Ach, ich fühl’s (not surprisingly her best moments) was less generically expressive than illustrative of the text. It did catch my attention. Replacing Simone Kermes – an odd choice for the role anyway – Ana Durlovsky proved to be very attentive to the text and to have a warm low register and very clear fioriture, but it is a helplessly light voice for the Queen of the Night, especially in the higher reaches. Benjamin Hulett (Pavol Breslik takes the role of Tamino otherwise) too has a light voice for his part and had his taut moments, but the voice is so pleasant and his sense of style so sure that one tended to take his side. Michael Nagy was an almost ideal Papageno: his baritone is warm, his diction is crystalline, his tonal variety praiseworthy. He masters the art of being funny without overdoing it. Dimitri Ivashchenko finds no difficulty in the writing of Sarastro and fills the hall with dark and focused sounds. Sometimes one misses some nobility of tone and emotional generosity, but maybe I’m spoiled by René Pape’s performance in the Staatsoper.

Some have found the idea of casting the Three Ladies with Annick Massis, Magdalena Kozena and Nathalie Stutzmann exaggerated. I haven’t – I found it very exciting to see their combination of their unique vocal and expressive qualities. I am not so sure about the idea using the deleted cadenza for the opening number, though. José Van Dam (Sprecher) does not sound as a veteran singer at all and the three boys from the Aurelius Sängerknaben sang beautifully too.

Mozart’s Requiem and Piano Concerto no. 27, Staatskapelle Berlin, 01.04.2013

This year’s Festtage’s theme could be called “das Ende, das Ende” – first there was the complete Ring with Götterdämmerung and not only one but TWO Requiem masses, Verdi’s (which I’ve unfortunately missed) and Mozart’s. While Verdi had a deluxe guest in the Teatro alla Scala forces, Mozart had been reserved to the Staatsoper’s orchestra and chorus. For the first part of the program, even the Staatskapelle Berlin’s musical director doubled as Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 27′s soloist.

As much as I appreciate Daniel Barenboim’s sensitive playing this evening, it was rather informed by the Romantic point-of-view that this is angelic music that requires some sort of very expressive yet delicately univocal elegance. The orchestra embraced the approach wholeheartedly and painted broad lines rather than small and contrasted paintbrushes. Even if the encore (Mozart’s piano sonata’s no.10′s andante cantabile) had more than a splash of Schubert, it featured more chiaroscuro and more sharply defined phrasing. Again, a matter of taste.

When it comes to the Requiem (here performed in the good old Süßmayr version), Barenboim showed himself as an entirely different conductor who offered a highly theatrical account of Mozart’s last religious work. The maestro employed a large chorus and made heavy demand of his orchestra. The introitus showed a very good sense of balance in a big-scale perspective, but one could see in the Kyrie fugue that the Staatsopernchor is not really in the top of its game in this kind of music – the sound was blowsy, the divisions a bit labored and soft dynamics lacked naturalness throughout. Stimulated by the maestro’s energetic beat, their results could be short of messy (in Dies irae, all musicians were having a hard day’s work coping with the incisive beat and fast tempo). In any case, the dramatic approach did paid off in spite of the shortcomings until the lacrimosa. After that, Süßmayr’s ideas seemed to inspire less commitment from all involved and the impression was rather of hyperventilation than of vigor. The team of soloists was crowned by a thoroughly stylish Maria Bengtsson whose creamy soprano soared effortlessly and elegantly above everything else. Bernarda Fink partnered her well with her warm and velvety mezzo. Rolando Villazón’s phrasing involved an emphatic beginning of every phrase and some reluctance to hold back, but his usual fervor and commitment are always welcome. René Pape seemed a bit unconcerned and miscalculated the important opening of tuba mirum. All in all, a thought-provoking concert that required either more rehearsal or more aptly Mozartian forces.

Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, Staatsoper im Schiller Theater, 31.03.2013

Guy Cassiers’s Ring for La Scala/Lindenoper could hardly be described as a story of success. The première of Das Rheingold was able to create the rare event of an almost consensus among Wagnerians (against the omnipresent dancers); Die Walküre hit the news of Corriere della Sera when Waltraud Meier voiced what everybody had already noticed (no Personenregie); then nobody bothered to comment Siegfried, for at that point it seemed like beating a dead horse.

I would dare to say that there was actually some evolution between the first and the second day of the tetralogy: Siegfried is aesthetically superior to these production’s two previous stations. I would even say that Götterdämmerung is a further step from Siegfried. Although the team of dramaturges display an almost psychedelic imagination  and a colorful bibliography in the performance books’ texts, the issues raised by them do not make into the staging (except for a 1889 frieze from a building in Brussels not even remotely connected to anything Wagnerian but used as some sort of centerpiece in the sets); here the story is told with literalness and stand-and-delivery is the sort of acting one would find here. The insight is entirely delegated to Arjen Klerkx and Kurt d’Haeseleer’s aptly atmospheric yet often overbusy videos. All that said, apart from horrendous costumes, the production is more often than not visually striking, coherent and unobtrusive. This hardly sounds positive, I know, but I wonder how much the pressure of being original did not prevent this creative team of doing the most basic task of staging an opera, which is telling the story. Insights are like melodies – you cannot produce them out of willpower. They are either there or not. When one thinks that almost every production of the Ring – traditional or revolutionary – never solve basic scenic problems such as “what should everybody, Hagen particularly, be doing while Brünnhilde sings the Immolation Scene?”, one should think twice before dismissing directors who are just willing to tell the story in a CONVINCING way. For instance, although I still dislike the idea of the Tarnhelm represented as FOUR dancers (Brünnhilde must have thought very confusing that these FIVE people were actually just one man and not a Big-Love sort of group-marriage), the fact is that the Siegfried-disguised-as-Gunther scene is supposed to be violent. Generally, Brünnhilde looks like a very formidable lady overreacting to a clueless guy with a piece of cloth on his head. This evening, even if the whole concept could be refined, the helpless Brünnhilde was practically violated right before the audience’s eyes.

The Staatskapelle Berlin, as in Siegfried, produced exquisite sounds, but Daniel Barenboim would only intermittently delve into the heart of this score. The Festtage is an athletic task for someone in his 70’s and one can see that the marathon of daily conducting big works has its consequences. This evening, his supply of energy proved insufficient in many key moments – a egg-timer approach to Siegfried’s journey through the Rhine made for a rather lifeless Gibichungenhalle scene; act II had a labored and noisy ending, while act III featured an exhausted, superficial funeral march for Siegfried and a Immolation Scene that never beyond correct in spite of a brilliant soloist. In other moments, though, one would feel as in Wagnerian paradise, surrounded by rich, clear and warm sounds used in the service of the drama.

This evening, Irene Theorin was the very example of artistic generosity. She carried on her shoulders the task of generating the expressive impulse of this performance – and she relished the opportunity. She proved again to be particularly warm-toned in her middle-register and in ductile voice, exploring both ends of dynamic range with naturalness. She produced a rare display of dramatic and musical unity, galvanizing every note and every word in the score with her sensitive and intelligent singing and acting. The Waltraute/Brünnhilde scene, for instance, where Waltraud Meier (who should give her long-abandoned mezzo roles a try again) and Theorin showed you everything you should know about Musikdrama, was an experience to cherish. Although she was not as ideally partnered in act II, she offered the ideal balance of power and subtlety Wagnerians dream about.

Again, Waltraud Meier was in very good voice and offered a deep, intense performance both of Waltraute and the 2^nd Norn, where she was well partnered by Margarita Nekrasova and Anna Samuil (unfortunately, far less successful as a very metallic and blunt Gutrune). The Rheinmaidens were also very well-matched in spirited performances.

Among the men, Johannes Martin Kränzle (Alberich) proved to be the most convincing, even if his voice is not as dark as one would wish for.  His crisp delivery of the text and dramatic intensity were a contrast to Mikhail Petrenko’s disappointing Hagen. Seeing a young singer in this role – one who has the necessary attitude for it moreover – promised new perspectives, but this singer should take some time for an “engine check”. As heard this week, his singing seems drained of overtones, throaty and constricted, entirely different from what I heard from him in a not distant past. Ian Storey (Siegfried) seemed to be making a tremendous effort that brought about very little sound until he was announced indisposed but willing to go just before act III. After that, although one could hear that he was not well, he could find very intelligent and sensitive solutions to make it to the end. Finally, Gerd Grochowski was a boorish and somewhat rough Gunther.

Wagner’s Parsifal, Deutsche Oper Berlin, 29.03.2013

How much metalanguage there is  Philipp Stölzl’s 2012 production of Wagner’s Parsifal is a matter for discussion. The staging turns around the idea of the power of symbolism in two levels: first in what related to objects of worship as in the case of relics; second in the idea of recreation of religious episodes in the shape of mystery plays, more specifically tableaux vivants. The staging of passion of Christ is a very much alive tradition in many countries, and they tend to develop a mystique around themselves – who is going to play Christ this year, for instance? A famous TV actor? Back to our Parsifal, Stölzl’s makes clear that what you see is a representation – the rocky landscape where you see the crucifixion as witnessed by Kundry is clearly set in a large hall lit by cold lamps. At first, I was shocked by how kitsch everything looked – but then it is hard to tell if the concept is kitsch or if the “play within the play” was kitsch (i.e., made to look kitsch on purpose). In any case, the very concept of kitsch involves objects whose practical purpose and aesthetic concept are ill-matched.

As it is, the first act shows us a rocky landscape that confines the stage action downstage, making many scenes unnecessarily crowded or awkward. There is a castle in very poor perspective in the background. Costumes are in Life-of-Brian-style but for Parsifal, who wears a suit. Here time and space are indeed the same thing, for the Verwandlungsmusik accompanies no Verwandlung. Parsifal and Gurnemanz exit, a bunch of self-flogging guys show up and Parsifal, Gurnemanz, Amfortas and a very perky Titurel make their entrance to a ceremony involving Amfortas’s stigmata dripping blood over the crowd. During the many narrative passages, we are offered small tautological flash-black tableaux in top of either of the rocky formations.

Act II looks as if the director visited the Fundusverkauf in Behrenstraße to shop for old productions – the sets could have been borrowed from Götz Friedrich’s Elektra (as on DVD). So, Klingsor has an African-style outfit and is followed by a cult of zombie-likes Flowermaids. Kundry keeps her shabby dress from act I to the end of the opera. The scene itself is very conventional, but Parsifal doesn’t make the sign of the cross. He just kills Klingsor with the holy spear. The closing act shows us the ruined version of the rocky landscape with some people with Lacoste outfits who seem to be in some sort of religious pilgrimage. Among them, Gurnemanz too seems to have had a fashion makeover in Friedrichstraße. Kundry makes her appearance, the Lacoste people are a bit shocked, but the Gurnemanz-guy (what exactly he is to these people is not clear…) tells her that spring has already come (not really…). Parsifal shows up, the Lacoste people anoint him, while Kundry prefers not to join in. In the meanwhile, Amfortas is in his via crucis (literally), Kundry tries to be helpful this time and offers him water, but people keep flogging him. Parsifal shows up and, again!, kills some one with his spear. Actually, this time it was not his fault – Amfortas jumps into it. Everybody knees down and prays, while Kundry stays back and seem unconvinced.

At this point, you probably have guessed that I share Kundry’s disbelief. The concept is at the same time superficial and all over the place, the sets and costumes suggest rather  Night in the Museum than Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia (as the performance book seems to suggest) and the fact that religion is here taken in face value makes it almost a traditional production in disguise. A labored and unclear one.

When it comes to the musical aspects, this evening was quite successful. After a prelude where the violins could be a little bit more refulgent, Donald Runnicles settled for a no-nonsense performance, with ideally Wagnerian full but not overloud orchestral sound, forward-movement and clarity. Act II was particularly coherently conceived – the Parsifal/Kundry scene well-structured and intense. The cast had its ups and downs. Both soprano and tenor were clearly not in a good-voice day. I saw Violeta Urmana’s Kundry in a concert performance in Munich with James Levine back in 2004 and she was note-perfect then. This evening, even if she has showed a deepened understanding of the text and an engaged stage presence, her high register was unwieldy and harsh. By the end of act II, she was clearly tired. Stephen Gould and Parsifal are not a match made in heaven –  his voice and physique do not suggest any boyishness and he himself seemed detached throughout. Moreover, his high notes were tight and his phrasing a bit stiff. By the 3^rd act, he seemed to have warmed and produced some beautiful turns of phrase. Replacing Thomas J Meyer in the last minute after singing Amfortas yesterday in Zürich, Detlef Roth still finds this role on the heavy side for his voice, but shows absolute commitment. Liang Li is an imposing-voiced Gurnemanz with very clear diction and some charisma. His bass is sometimes a bit grainy and there is not this irresistible sense of story-telling that the very great Gurnemanzes provide. But this is definitely a name to keep in mind (he would have been a forceful Hunding or Fafner, since we have been talking about that). Last but definitely not least, Samuel Youn’s powerful, cleanly-focused singing in the role of Klingsor is beyond any criticism. An exemplary performance.

Wagner’s Siegfried, Staatsoper im Schiller Theater, 27.03.2013

“I have a friend who says you cannot ruin a performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth – the cast may be awful, the director may be an imbecile, but the Bard’s text will shine through nonetheless. Is it Wagner’s Siegfried something similar? I don’t know, but I have realized that, in many performances of the tetralogy in my recollection, it was Siegfried the most effective in the lot (before my 13 or 14 readers ask me which one tends to be the worse, this is Die Walküre). Is it the propulsive rhythms, the inescapable necessity of crisply declaimed texts teaching where the right tempo is, the vertiginous action?”. It sounds utterly unimaginative to quote oneself, but I have to register another occurrence of the Siegfried-phenomenon.

It is hard to believe that this is the same orchestra and conductor from last Sunday’s Walküre. Then I have said that, from the opening bars, one could see that the performance would not take off. This evening, from the onset, Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin caught my attention. The variety of tonal possibilities explored by this orchestra this evening – ranging from the raucous to the crystalline – could tell alone everything you have to know about this opera. Even in the infamously dry acoustics of the Schiller Theater, the fulness of sound was often surprising. Clarity and coloring were the means chosen by the conductor to build his interpretation this evening – and the fact that the cast involved some big voices was reason enough for satisfaction. It was the orchestra the story-teller this evening – and the fact that these singers could be heard over it allowed Barenboim to fill the hall with sound and give his musicians leeway to produce some very interesting effects. Instead of going for excitement and fast tempi in the forging song, for instance, he allowed his tenor to articulate the text, while a kaleidoscopic sound picture unfolded itself around him. Later, when Siegfried longed for the mother his never knew, one could feel the presence of the forest around him in the vividness and warmth of the Staatskapelle’s string section’s playing. If I have to be picky, act III had a less impressive start, with a noisy and unsubtle Erda/Wotan scene; one could also imagine a more otherworldly awakening for Brünnhilde, but this difficult last scene developed very naturally and organically.

I have seen Lance Ryan as the Siegfried in Siegfried both in Bayreuth and Munich – and I have the impression that this evening’s was his most convincing performance. His singing still turns around clear diction, power and stamina rather than legato, sense of line and a truly pleasant voice, but he was both in better shape than in Munich and offered some very impressive full high notes such as I cannot recall to have heard in the Green Hill. I have the impression that he will never do justice to the grandiosely romantic lines of the final scene, but this evening he evidently did his best to sound smoother there.

Peter Bronder is a gifted actor with crisp articulation of the text, but his Mime has very little tonal variety. His very metallic tenor sometimes spreads in the higher ranges and is not really comfortable when things get low. By the end of act II, he sounded a bit tired too. I never cease to be amazed with Terje Stensvold’s vocal health at this stage of his career. His Wotan lacks variety and charisma (and has a patch of nasality in the middle range), but it is an uncomplicated and  very powerful voice, especially in the baritone area of his bass-baritone. The contrast with Johannes Martin Kränzle’s intense, detailed performance as Alberich is quite telling. I was not very impressed when I saw him in Rheingold both in Milan and in Berlin, but this evening he was in very good voice, singing clearly and forcefully. Anna Larson is a soft-centered Erda with rich low notes, Rinnat Moriah was a somewhat edgy Waldvogel, and Mikhail Petrenko’s Fafner was a little better than his Hunding.

Anyone who expects perfection in the singing of Brünnhilde in this opera is bound to be disappointed. The role requires lyrical qualities that no dramatic soprano is able to offer in a tessitura as high as this one – and lyric sopranos find the part basically very strenuous. Irene Théorin trod carefully this evening, switching to mezza voce to produce a flowing line in high-lying passages, never letting go a convenient breathing point and keeping things as light as possible. This had the benefit of making her Brünnhilde sound particularly vulnerable and appealing. The transition to sheer Wagnerian voluminousness in climactic high notes were sometimes a bit abrupt, but she never failed to respond to these requirements. All in all, a very commendable performance.

As for Guy Cassiers’s production, I cannot see any concept behind the proceedings, which basically tell the story in a very generalized way, the Personenregie often very blank. Since there is a lot of physical action in Siegfried, one feels that less when the title role and Mime are involved. The projections are very effectively use in the forging scene, but generally sets, costumes and props are used for purely visual aesthetics. The bad news is that the dancers are back. This time they have swords and they use them to form patterns (like stars, hexagons and other completely irrelevant and distracting things). They also animate a very primitive dragon, made with a white blanket and projections.

Wagner’s Die Walküre, Staatsoper im Schiller Theater, 24.03.2013

My story with Guy Cassiers’s production of Wagner’s Die Walküre is everything but uneventful: it had a very bumpy start in Milan (with one important compensation); than it became something truly impressive in its first season in Berlin, only to become something notably less spectacular one year later. In the fourth chapter of our chronicle, a trend seems to be confirmed – this evening’s performance proved to be even less compelling than last year. From the opening bars, one could see that the energy of previous years could not be reproduced this evening. Although the conductor could elicit some excitement from his musicians now and then, a sense of structure could not be produced, pace seemed to sag, the orchestral sound tended to be heavy and brassy and occasionally messy (the Walkürenritt was downright bad, a disappointing group of valkyries and the orchestra really poorly integrated). There were moments when the performance seemed to be on, but in a very incoherent way.  Whenever Sieglinde and Siegmund entered in Tristan-esque mood, Barenboim would press the brake predal and opt for a dense string-based sound and heavily expressive style that maybe could have build into a Furtwänglerian experience if this could be sustained for more than two minutes.

His Sieglinde seemed to suffer from the same problem. In the first act, Waltraud Meier seemed out of sorts – low notes left to imagination, faulty legato, approximative pitch and very tense high notes. Later her voice would improve and produce some edgy but powerful dramatic high notes. She seemed particularly adept when she got a moment of Innigkeit and chromaticism. Then she would remind us of her younger self, offering sensuous and exquisite turn of phrases, with beautiful hushed moments.. As much of everything else in her performance, these moments too seemed calculated. There was no spontaneity in this Sieglinde, who behaved rather as if the Feldmarschallin had been kidnapped and held hostage by Hunding. That said, one cannot cease to wonder of how intelligent and perceptive her scenario is.  For example, the way she sang So lass mich dich heißen, wie ich dich liebe: Siegmund – so nenn’ich dich convinced me that all other singers did not truly get what Sieglinde meant there. There is a lot to be learned from a performance with so many instances of superior understanding of the text like this, even if the results were undeniably vocally flawed.

I have seen Irene Théorin produce more exuberant top notes than this evening, but otherwise I have particularly enjoyed what she has done today. First of all, her voice was overall warmer – especially in the middle register – and rounder this evening than what I can remember. Although she usually finds no trouble in singing softer dynamics, today her mezza voce was particularly exquisite and effortless. She reserved her truly scintillating acuti for key moments and, as a result, her Brünnhilde sounded particularly youthful and touching. And she deals with act III as few other singers – it is truly an emotional journey, done with a very wide-ranging tonal palette and artistic generosity. If I sound mean by saying that Ekaterina Gubanova too seemed not to be in her absolutely best day, the explanation is that she was even richer-toned and more forceful last year.

Christopher Ventris is a great improvement in terms of casting in this production. He is the lest hammy Siegmund here since 2010 to start with. His is not a memorable voice, but one used with fine technique and good taste. His lyric approach to the role pays off in moments like Winterstürme and he can produce some powerful notes now and then. There are some underwhelming moments and some instances of indifferent delivery of the text, but I cannot help finding his singing refreshing in comparison to his competition both in the Schiller Theater and at La Scala. René Pape still struggles with the high tessitura, but he was in a better day this evening than last year. Although most of his upwards excursions were constricted or tense, his voice is naturally big and noble enough to offset this most of the time. In any case, he sails through the role in grand style, tackling Wotan’s act II big monologue with crystal-clear diction, sensitive delivery of the text and tonal variety. As for Mikhail Petrenko (Hunding), his bass was often poorly focused and sometimes hooty. In order to make for that, he often “acted with the voice” in a distracting manner.